Ubuntu NAS Hard Drive Config

[xds40]

I am looking to run Ubuntu Desktop on a NAS I built. I am not too good with command line stuff so I prefer this over the Ubuntu Server.

Currently I have (2) 2TB Hard Drives and was curious to the best setup that can also scale if I were to add an additional hard drive.

Do I install Ubuntu on one of these drives or do you recommend getting a small 64GB SSD to install the OS on? Then I could use the larger drives for storage only.

Or do I just pool everything together with some type of RAID setup? I am pretty new to all of this and mainly use my NAS for streaming media throughout the house and holding backups from multiple computers.

 

[_CiPHER_]

Have you looked at special NAS platforms that provide ZFS functionality? Those platforms also give you easy access using a web-interface so you do not need to use the command line. But instead would give you access to high-grade storage technology known as ZFS - this is simply THE way to store your data in the year 2015.

Ubuntu can also work with ZFS-on-linux. It is not as good as ZFS on other platforms though, and doesn't come with a full-fledged web-interface as far as i know.

As for your question: you can use a simple SSD but why would you? You can partition your drives and use a boot partition and use the other partitions for storing data. This is possible with both ZFS and with legacy software RAID (md-raid with mdadm). Booting from HDD is fast enough for a NAS, not much things need to be read or written from the system drive.

If you do consider an SSD, i would recommend buying a real SSD and not a cheap budget crappy SSD. Buy an SSD that you can use for multiple years with good cause, such as Crucial MX200 250GB which can also be used as SLC SSD if you use only half of the storage (max 125GB).

 

[drescherjm]

Currently I have (2) 2TB Hard Drives and was curious to the best setup that can also scale if I were to add an additional hard drive.

Scaling by adding a single drive will not work well with zfs. That basically means you need to raid0 the drive with the rest of your pool. You can add 2 same sized drives at a time as a mirrored pair giving you 1 drive worth of space per pair added.

 

[xds40]

Have you looked at special NAS platforms that provide ZFS functionality? Those platforms also give you easy access using a web-interface so you do not need to use the command line. But instead would give you access to high-grade storage technology known as ZFS - this is simply THE way to store your data in the year 2015.

Ubuntu can also work with ZFS-on-linux. It is not as good as ZFS on other platforms though, and doesn't come with a full-fledged web-interface as far as i know.

As for your question: you can use a simple SSD but why would you? You can partition your drives and use a boot partition and use the other partitions for storing data. This is possible with both ZFS and with legacy software RAID (md-raid with mdadm). Booting from HDD is fast enough for a NAS, not much things need to be read or written from the system drive.

If you do consider an SSD, i would recommend buying a real SSD and not a cheap budget crappy SSD. Buy an SSD that you can use for multiple years with good cause, such as Crucial MX200 250GB which can also be used as SLC SSD if you use only half of the storage (max 125GB).

I have actually been running Xpenolgy and love it but the updating is a lot to keep up with. I am manly using the NAS as a media server. I do backups from my macbook pro's and then backup the important stuff through crashplan.

I am checked out some of the other platforms like freeNAS but havent really been impressed with the media end of things. DSM has apps that play nice with smartphones and tablets as well as the Apple TV. It's tough to find something that works well with everything. I am testing out infuse as well right now and love it. I also think with the app store coming to the new Apple tvs there will be some great apps that allow media to be streamed easily (Plex, XMBC and others)

 

[_CiPHER_]

Consider separating your storage and your applications. This way you can use the best storage technology (ZFS) and not use old fashioned storage that Synology/XPenology uses (Ext4+mdraid+SHR) which is not secure at all since it offers no protection to your data against corruption and bad sectors on your disks. If your data is important, only ZFS, Btrfs or ReFS are to be considered. Even creating many backups is not truly safe since corruption can spread to your backups undetected, which is not possible with a properly configured ZFS setup.

ZFS itself is very easy when using dedicated ZFS platforms, you can use FreeNAS, NAS4Free, ZFSguru and napp-it. All have their own strong suits and weak spots.

If you use a separate machine for the apps you like, you have solved your problem. If you insist on using one machine, you can consider using virtualization to run your apps in a separate VM and use the host for ZFS storage.