Newbie questions about first NAS build

dmark30 · 20. Dezember 2015

Hello,

In my current configuration, the main computer is holding all the media files that I access on daily basis. I want to free up his job and create a separate media storage based on a thin client running OMV. As a future application I would like to use it also as a media streamer, but it's not a must. There are two possible candidates for this task, for one of them there is already a build available : Dell Optiplex FX160 Thin Client. The other one, which I could get for almost the same price is a Wyse (Dell) D90D7. This one has better hardware specs (AMD G-T48E 1.4 GHz + Radeon HD6250 GPU - 2 GB Ram- 16 GB Flash) but was worries me is the lack of available SATA ports, or the possibility to adapt one. The flash drive stays in a SATA port, but this one should be used for the OMV. The only free port is a mPCIe used for the wireless card, but that would mean I need to use an adapter for my 500Gb drive, which could slow down it's performance. As for the FX160 the mPCIe port is blocked only for Wlan cards.
Does anybody have experience with this or similar hardware? Or maybe other suggestions in this matter?

Thanks,
Rudolf

voodooman · 20. Dezember 2015

IMHO, if you're a complete newbie, don't splurge on a new rig. Get an old desktop or laptop, set up OMV and play around with it a bit to get a feel for it. You may find out you don't need anything more powerful than what you already have. For example, I personally use OMV as a torrent seedbox with automation via SickRage and CouchPotato (this is a part of OMV-extras), as well as a general purpose NAS for non-critical backups. For this purpose I'm using an ancient IBM laptop (made in 2005) with a 1TB WD Red drive. It has a Pentium M 1.86Ghz processor (that's SINGLE core) and 2GB of DDR2. This bucket of bolts can't even run Windows 7 properly.

Let me tell you, with OMV it works FLAWLESSLY. It's cool, it's quiet, it's plenty powerful, and it just keeps on going. Yesterday I had to turn it off cause I was moving some furniture around. It had an uptime of 60 days (that's since last reboot). Not one issue in all that time. So please don't rush into buying stuff you don't need and may consider inadequate later anyway. Start with something old, get a feel for the system, and buy accordingly WHEN and IF you need something better. You'll have a much better idea of what you need as well.

mutosan · 24. Dezember 2015

mmmh thin clients for a storage server? I dont know if that is a wise decision. And especially if you like to stream music and video. Does not mather what you take as software then.
But try it out, before you buy something new. Even with both of the thin clients. Also it depends how many people at the same time are accessing it and then even the CPU might
be wrong. Also keep in mind, if many access it, you need also enough RAM. I mean more than 2GB. If you want to make a good NAS or storage server build it up so you can exspand it
later on. You dont have to spend alot of money but out of you text you already have realized that you need more ports. Also I dont know if OMV supports these thin client out of the box.

@vodooman: you cant exspect that windows supports every f...... CPU. Not even Linux does that.
OMV runs as quietly as the Computer is. Software cant make noise except its an audio software.
And his question was not, how good OMV is. I think he wants to know if the thin clients are good enough.

dmark30 · 26. Dezember 2015

Thanks all for your feedback.
I actually went for another thin client the HP T5745 with 1.6GHz CPU and 2Gb RAM, which I got for about 30 Euros. The flash memory is just 1Gb (becomes and upgrade next week to 8Gb) but still I managed to install OMV 2.1 on it and running fine till now. No extras installed yet.
Now, going trough the setting I noticed at the Power Management section there is a possibility to add a scheduled job like going in standby. What does actually standby mean for a storage server? Can this be used in case you use a torrent seedbox? Another thing: how does it come out from standby mode, could this be scheduled as well?

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