| 1 |
Am Fri, Aug 26, 2022 at 06:26:39AM -0500 schrieb Dale: |
| 2 |
|
| 3 |
> I looked into the Raspberry and the newest version, about $150 now, |
| 4 |
> doesn't even have SATA ports. I can add a thing called a "hat" I think |
| 5 |
> that adds a couple but thing is, that costs more and still isn't |
| 6 |
> enough. |
| 7 |
|
| 8 |
I run a raspi with some basic services, most importantly a pihole DNS filter |
| 9 |
and a PIM server. But I find it hacky-patchy with its flimsy USB power cable |
| 10 |
poking out of the side. I’d prefer a more sturdy construction, which is why |
| 11 |
I bought a NAS-style PC (zotac zbox nano with a passive 6 W Celeron). But |
| 12 |
that thing is so fast for every-day computing that I actually put a KDE |
| 13 |
system on it and now I don’t want to “downgrade” it to a mere server. |
| 14 |
|
| 15 |
> I have a old computer that I might could use. It is 4 core something |
| 16 |
> and I think it has 4GBs of memory, maxed out. I think it will perform |
| 17 |
> well enough but wish it had a little more horses in it. |
| 18 |
|
| 19 |
An Intel Celeron from the Haswell generation (i.e. 8+ years old) did not |
| 20 |
have AES-NI yet, and it reached around 160 MB/s encryption speed. I tried |
| 21 |
it, because I had dealings with those processors in the past before I built |
| 22 |
my own NAS. Your old tech may still be usable, but please also consider |
| 23 |
power cost and its impact on the environment if it runs 24/7. |
| 24 |
|
| 25 |
> I looked at something called ITX but they have only one PCIe slot |
| 26 |
> usually. That's not enough. I'd like to have two 6 or 8 port SATA |
| 27 |
> cards. Then balance the drives on each. I think some of the through |
| 28 |
> put is shared so the more drives on it, the slower it can be. I'd like |
| 29 |
> to have two such cards. 12 or 16 drives should be enough to last a |
| 30 |
> while. |
| 31 |
> |
| 32 |
> Part of me wants to do RAID but not sure about that. |
| 33 |
|
| 34 |
Dealing with so many drives, I think there’s no getting around RAID. All |
| 35 |
drives fail. The more drives you have, the earlier the first failure. With |
| 36 |
that many drives, I wouldn’t want to handle syncs between them by hand in |
| 37 |
order to get redundancy or backups of backups. |
| 38 |
|
| 39 |
> While I don't think I need a super powerful machine, I do want enough |
| 40 |
> that it will perform well. |
| 41 |
|
| 42 |
The question is: what do you need it to perform? If it’s just storing and |
| 43 |
serving files, save the bucks and use any low-end x86 processor with AES |
| 44 |
instructions. My NAS first ran on the above mentioned Celeron, but later I |
| 45 |
did upgrade to a low-power i3 (because the case¹ is very cramped, I don’t |
| 46 |
want too much heat in there). It is a dual-core with SMT and AES at 35 W. |
| 47 |
IIRC, it can encrypt around 800-something MB/s. And that is an old i3-4170. |
| 48 |
Modern chips are most probably much faster still. |
| 49 |
|
| 50 |
> I may use actual NAS software too. |
| 51 |
|
| 52 |
What is “actual NAS software”? Do you mean a NAS distribution? From my |
| 53 |
understanding, those distros install the usual services (samba, ftp, etc.) |
| 54 |
and develop a nice web frontend for it. But since those are web |
| 55 |
applications, there isn’t much to be gained from march=native. |
| 56 |
|
| 57 |
I still run Gentoo on my NAS, just for the old habit and because it comes |
| 58 |
with ZFS right out of the box. But the services I still configure the |
| 59 |
classical way – ssh, vim and config files. |
| 60 |
|
| 61 |
> I'm sure Gentoo would work to with proper tweaking but then I need to |
| 62 |
> deal with compiling things. Of course, no libreoffice or anything big so |
| 63 |
> it may not be to bad. Thing is, the NAS software will likely be more |
| 64 |
> efficient since it is designed for the purpose. |
| 65 |
|
| 66 |
More efficient than what? |
| 67 |
|
| 68 |
My NAS is powered up every few weeks or often months. And then the first |
| 69 |
thing I do is—of cours—a world update. And as you mentioned, the install |
| 70 |
base is rather small. No graphical stuff whatsoever (server board, small |
| 71 |
ASMedia VGA chip on-board, no Intel graphics). The biggest pkgs are gcc |
| 72 |
(around 2 hours build time) and llvm. The rest is user land stuff that helps |
| 73 |
me in dealing with the media files the NAS serves. Mkvtoolnix is a compile |
| 74 |
hog at around half an hour. |
| 75 |
|
| 76 |
> I just know I need a proper machine for the task. I'm getting lots of |
| 77 |
> data fast now. I hit the 80% mark overnight. At 90%, I consider it |
| 78 |
> critical. Something must be done soon. |
| 79 |
|
| 80 |
How about watching the spoils for a change instead of only ever downloading |
| 81 |
it? ;-) |
| 82 |
|
| 83 |
|
| 84 |
¹ https://www.inter-tech.de/en/products/ipc/storage-cases/sc-4100 |
| 85 |
-- |
| 86 |
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’ |
| 87 |
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network. |
| 88 |
|
| 89 |
Everything has its two sides. But a quadrangle has three. |
Archives