Some advice on a home network drive/NAS setup

Yeah once you look into the ReadyNAS the features it has as well as how easy it looks to use it was pretty sold on it to especially as my first nas system.

 

I bought a large, rack mount ReadyNAS as a back up device here at work. It seems to work well and I believe the OS is the same/similar across all the ReadyNAS devices.

 

Was that one of the larger 10+ bay nas?
If it is similar at all to the 2 bay drives it would be a breeze to set up from what I have seen.
What is it used for? Just backing up files, or is there different user set up with access?

 

It's not a 10 bay. Its a 1RU. 4 bay I think?
It's purely for backing up. Basically just runs an Rsync host

 

Hey @Lock90 ,

Most of the choices comes down to the usual things:

How hands on/complex do you want it to be? pretty simple, out of the box setup, minor configuration type deal - or something that requires a engineering degree?
Then there's how much $ do you want to spend (not just initial purchase but does stuff like ongoing power consumption concern you?

Boxes like QNAP/Synology/Netgear are pretty easy to setup, offer many selections with regards setup and draw SFA power.

However they do tend to cost a bit more (unless you can source a 2nd hand one through various sources) and add your disks ontop of the box.

HP Microservers are petty good also, a little more pricey for the newer ones and will require a little more hands on...

The type of NAS is going to depend on what you want it to do - if it's just hosting some movies etc and you don't care about having fuck-tonnes of space and don't care if you lose it - a 2 bay NAS RAID 0 should fulfill all your needs...

If you want to download the internet and keep a copy, then you'll need to look into something a bit bigger (# of bays), that has some sort of protection in the event you loose a HDD you don't lose the lot..

If you are looking to run a media server from the NAS device itself (which quite a few do), you'll need to pay good attention to the one you pick as playback on smaller NAS units with suffer performance hits with CPU/RAM being almost completely consumed and I/O running like shite.

I've used my PS3 as a media server, but shit like Cinevia (Sony's Copy protection) and certain video/audio codecs can cause issues with playback so I dumped with XBMC.

The quickest easy out of the box solution would be NUC/Pi Running XBMC connected your TV/AMP that also has a network connection to *Insert Vendor* (QNAP/Synology/etc ) NAS.

My setup is a Intel NUC running Kodi(XBMC) and it is connected via HDMI into my AMP / TV and I use smart phones via home wifi for remote contols

All my storage is done off a QNAP 4 Bay NAS (4x4TB RAID 5).... (will be replacing it with a Synology unit once the time comes but I'm also looking do some fancier stuff later if I can acquire the kit at the right price (does block and file storage).

This is just scratching the surface btw.... I'm like @Jazz - I deal with this shit at work (mainly enterprise stuff)

So happy to shed more light on setups etc if you want more info...

 

First of all that's for the massive reply, it's nice that people obviously including yourself are willing to spend a lot of extra time to help someone out.
I considered the option where I needed an engineering degree because it didn't look to hard just a little time consuming but the more I thought about it with work and uni is wouldn't have the time for a while and it's something I want to get asap.
Which is why the ReadyNAS was a good option because it would be really easy to set up without much hassle either plus the rest of my family will be using it so the options that is has means I can give them access without alot of trouble either.
As for play back performance I assumed the fact that it has a HDMI output it was designed so that it wouldn't to bad in terms of any delays.
And any light you can shed is greatly appreciated even what you have now is awesome and even more for me to think about.
I'm not a complete noob/stranger to this sort of thing as it is what my degree is but I am still learning and just starting to get into implementing this sort of stuff at home which is why I'm seeking advice as it'll be the first nas I set up and I want something that'll last as well as it being of high quality

 

I bought an 8 bay Synology unit. Half full at the moment with some 4tb drives. Ridiculously easy to get running. Out of space just add a drive and its does its thing. Not cheap though.

 

I'll drop you a msg this arvo and we can go through some finer details

 

If you want a very budget but very portable setup you could buy a WD Live and an external USB drive, you can copy to it from your PC without ever unplugging it from the TV if you wish if you have a wireless network setup, or via network cable, also plays netflix, youtube and whatever else you throw at it.
If you want something a bit more expensive and challenging but still enjoyable to learn there are plenty of great suggestions before me.

 

Ok due to the fact that I am the biggest tight ass when it comes to IT (cos I'm in IT) this is what I did and has been running for several years now.

HP Microserver - N54L , will require additional ram and your HDD's
Microserver was $285 give or take
Ram $ 100 16Gb
HDD's I just bought 4 X 3TB red Weston digital drives abount $90-120 dependes where you get them

Get the HP's on special Look around
http://www.shoppingexpress.com.au/buy/hp-proliant-n54l-microserver-nas-712969-375/712969-375

I installed XPEnology exactly the same as the synology disk station just a distro ver
How too -



It is truly the cheapest and quickest per storage capacity setup ever.

I Raid 5 mine and over the past few years I have only lost 1 drive, I replaced it and started the rebuild on it and off it went again.
as with "SYNOLOGY" storage systems they call them Disk stations and you can join multiple this is the same can do everything that a normal synology disk station can do fo a pinch of the price and as always the disk will be the most expensive bit.

I now have two HP Micro servers N54L's and a G7, oh and an old N40l i blew up.

1 for running xpenology for media and backups
1 for my CCTV system running 7 IP camera's and using open media vault for this
1 for my ESXI server and running VM's on them.

 

I'll second the HP microserver option. I bought one a few years ago, kept the small HD that came with it and popped a couple of 2TB disks in it, installed Ubuntu server and configured it with RAID 10. Simple, cheap, although I somewhat regret using RAID 10 with 2 disks, because it's not easily expandable now. It's my media server, backup server, and also has a web server configured although isn't doing anything. Hard to beat for the price.