Disclaimer: not Fedora specific.
In a former life we ran our backups to QNAP NASes in a data centre. They were nice boxes with a little LED console strip on the front and for when desperate, a video out and a USB socket which would take a keyboard on the back. We were happy.
On that basis we obtained a more recent QNAP for a client. No LED text strip on the front, just a few cryptic LEDs, and nothing on the back of any use. So when it crashes its basicly a black box, maddening.
Has anyone any recommendations for nice NASes for a small office?
Requirements: - some kind of useful front panel - basic status at the very least, ideally some degree of control if it isn't speaking on the network - 10G ethernet, ideally 2 - NFS support - something like 8 3.5" SATA drive bays, hot swap - can run XFS natively inside - ext3 and ext4 are fragile, and we're using iSCSI to do XFS for the large backup volume at present - preferable capable of iSCSI, though if they do XFS inside then just NFS will do us
The QNAPs seem to have a billion features but are a recovery nightmare to us when they have a failure (not a drive failure, that's the usual swap in a new drive RAID shuffle, I mean a crash or filesystem repair situation). The current QNAP is a few years old, BTW, but we're unhappy.
Suggestions and/or experiences welcome.
Cheers, Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au
On 21Aug2020 10:29, Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au wrote:
In a former life we ran our backups to QNAP NASes in a data centre. They were nice boxes with a little LED console strip on the front and for when desperate, a video out and a USB socket which would take a keyboard on the back. We were happy.
BTW, did I say "LED strip". I meant LCD text display - when happy it showed the IP address and a little status, when unhappy an error message.
- Cameron
I've been a Thecus.com NAS consumer for well over a decade. I personally own two now. I bought the N7700SAS, in 2009 when it would support a max of seven 2TB drives, with about 10.5 GB RAID5 storage.In all this time, it's got about 98% uptime and I've only had to ever replace 1 drive. Hot-swapped it, took a day'ish to rebuild the array and been ROCK-solid ever since. Yes it is still up and running.
When that space wasn't enough, I bought the N5550 and initially put five 4TB drives in it, RAID5. Been ROCK solid for 4+ years with zero drive failures. Just a year ago, I swapped out the 4TB drives for 15TB drives, rebuilt the array and its had 99.99%+ uptime on an APC UPS. So, even with house power-outages due to storms, its remained fully up. Firmware upgrades have been painless and they just work. XFS has been natively available for a decade+.
Highly recommended and have NEVER been disappointed with Thecus. I've made suggestions to colleagues about them, and at least 5 that I know of have invested in Thecus. I've made suggestions to several business looking for a quality SOHO NAS over the years and they've all been happy with what they've purchased from Thecus. Disclaimer: I'm only a consumer, no affiliation (and no commissions, damn it). Today, the N5810 could be a worthwhile investment. The PRO version is on their homepage demonstrated. Their site has good pictures of all their equipment. Their SPEC lists are impressive.
The company is out of Taiwan, and their documentation reflects it (i.e. some poorly translated english), but most of it is well-put together. The PRO version comes with a mini-ups... your choice on the value/need of it. After reviewing your requirements; the 5810 tower will meet most of your needs, but:- It only comes in a 5BAY model. Still, you can easily put five 16TB drives in it... so capacity shouldn't be an issue.- Almost all your other requirements are easily met by their standard functionality; check out their SPECs - The only thing I believe it would be lacking is the 10G network(s); it does have dual NICs and can do bonding to accelerate throughput, but it will only be two 1G LAN ports. Having said all that, their next model up which might satisfy you, is a rack-mount, the N8910, which will then meet the 10G dual NICs (review their compatibility list); again it is RackMount. It does have a front-facing small LCD indicator screen. It does support 8 internal drives, and capacity of up to 18TB drives spinning disk (WD Gold Series). Various SSD drives are also supported. A simple search found a price of $1799.99USD for the case itself.
As far as system RAM in any of these, what they provide IS adequate. On my N7700SAS it came with 2GB and hasn't been a problem with TONS of reading/writing; like I said, I'm still using it today. Had iSCSI partitions on it for a while when I was playing in that arena and testing at home. Worked just great. My n5550 came with 4GB and I upgraded it to 8GB. Didn't NEED to, didn't have a problem, but wanted to. It was an effortless upgrade and been rock-solid ever since; just wanted to see if it could be done and what the issues might be (none!). YMMV Thecus does tell you what the MAX RAM upgrade capability is in their SPECs, so that is helpful info to know right up front.
The underlying OS is a busybox-based linux (which may, or maynot be true for the N8910). It works, is minimal and I've had no issues with it. Gaining SSH access was initially a bit of a trick, but do'able after a few internet searches. Their systems usually have an HDMI port and USB ports, so a monitor/keyboard are able to be added and used that way. In both of my systems, simply having SSH access has been more than sufficient; never have needed to attempt connecting a monitor/keyboard. But I've not had crashes like you've described, either.
Hope that helps.
On Thursday, August 20, 2020, 8:33:06 PM EDT, Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au wrote:
On 21Aug2020 10:29, Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au wrote:
In a former life we ran our backups to QNAP NASes in a data centre. They were nice boxes with a little LED console strip on the front and for when desperate, a video out and a USB socket which would take a keyboard on the back. We were happy.
BTW, did I say "LED strip". I meant LCD text display - when happy it showed the IP address and a little status, when unhappy an error message.
- Cameron _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 21Aug2020 01:46, Joe Wulf joe_wulf@yahoo.com wrote:
I've been a Thecus.com NAS consumer for well over a decade. I personally own two now.
[... detailed and encouraging information ...]
Many thanks! This is very helpful. - Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au
On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 5:52 AM Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au wrote:
On 21Aug2020 01:46, Joe Wulf joe_wulf@yahoo.com wrote:
I've been a Thecus.com NAS consumer for well over a decade. I personally own two now.
[... detailed and encouraging information ...]
Many thanks! This is very helpful. - Cameron Simpson cs@cskk.id.au
At home I have a synology I bought I think in 2012. Only has idiot lights on the front so I have to rely on having its logs (plain old syslog since it is Linux based) and SNMP info sent to elk for performance/status info and emails for critical issues like failing drive. I did not put the time to setup an ansible playbook for it yet, so I have to ssh into it to do updates, resize logical volumes, or work on the iscsi partitions.
In other words, it is not as feature rich as the competition but then again my needs are few. In fact I never set it up to do cloud backup or serve as DNS, wiki, git server, itunes, ldap server, mail, db server, or whatever (other gimmick) since all I want it to be is a NAS. Ok, it is acting as time machine for my Macs, but that is the only other thing it is doing besides garden-variety NFS and iSCSI. Being a NAS is a full time job; all I ask of it is to do that well.
Now, I am not saying you should buy a synology. I just happen to like my little guy. When I do need something better, I will build a freenas box because ZFS.
But, for the love of all that is evil and putrid in the world, please do NOT buy a Drobo. There is a special hell for those who created it.
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Cameron Simpson -
Joe Wulf -
Mauricio Tavares