Enough of Rpi, now what?

  • Hi


    I've been playing around with Rpi 3 and OMV4 with the goal to reuse parts that I have sitting around and don't waste energy.


    I did try with Rpi3 but I keep having troubles with OMV4, you can easy tell by the number of my posts, recently my Rpi3 keeps loosing the attached USB disks.


    Enough.


    Here is my question: what is the best hardware to low consumption, low noise and good performance?


    Ideally I'd like to reuse spare parts that I have:
    AsRock E350M1 with very noisy fan
    4Gb Corsair Ddr3 1333Mhz
    120Gb Kingston SSDNowV300
    Toshiba 1.0 TB 2.5 STOR.E BASICS USB 3.0
    Seagate 1000GB - 1TB Serial ATA III 2,5" 5400RPM



    THANKS FOR YOUR HELP

  • recently my Rpi3 keeps loosing the attached USB disks

    Just a quick list why any RPi is such a lousy device for the NAS use case: https://forum.armbian.com/topi…findComment&comment=61991


    With most recent RPi 3 B+ RPi Trading folks managed to make things even worse since they chose a poorly performing USB Ethernet chip which not only shows horribly low performance but simply refuses to work with Fast Ethernet cables connected to GbE gear (that's why we in OMV had to configure slow 'Fast Ethernet' mode by default)


    For better options if you want to stay with ARM and lowest consumption: Which energy efficient ARM platform to choose?

  • Thanks for your help.
    My goal is to save money and use minimum power, what I need is to manage:
    One disk, possibly the one I already have, dedicated to torrent and plex;
    An external USB disk dedicated to my photos;
    An external USB disk backing up my photos.
    All connected with Ethernet plug and serving two pc and one smart tv and an Apple TV first gen with Volumio.


    I was curious to use Odroid but I dunno if it can handle external USB disks

  • I was curious to use Odroid but I dunno if it can handle external USB disks

    HC1 and HC2 have one USB2 port left. While you might connect an external USB hub to it I wouldn't recommend this in general for various reasons.


    For me physically separating backups from original data is always a must. That's why I love SBC for this use case since they're that inexpensive and energy efficient that you can put another one in another room or even another location next to you (then using rsync, rsnapshot or in my case btrfs send/receive via a VPN).

  • raid

    I don't need RAID at home. RAID is ONLY about availability (and with RAID5 or 6 also somewhat about data integrity).


    At home I'm only interested in data integrity (I hate silent data corruption since that's something you always realize way too late) and of course I'm interested in data protection. RAID provides 'business continuity' in some rare cases I really don't need.


    The important data here is on my laptop and an archive server (business requirement -- does not apply to home users) and to make use of abandoned old disks I combine them with an SBC and put them in various locations (friends, parents), then syncing data via VPN or sometimes simply opening my laptop when visiting them and let the integrated backup solution (TimeMachine on macOS) do its job.

  • You can aim at Odroid HC1. I have it done with 2.5 hdd and it works well. Or HC2 if you want to be free in the future for 3.5

    BTW: I totally second that idea to spend the additional few bucks and take a HC2 even if it's now only about 2.5" disks.


    In 2 years most probably 10-12 TB 3.5" disks will have the best cost/capacity ratio and then being able to simply replace a small 2.5" with a large 3.5" (to backup all devices around for example) is something worth a thought. Only downside of HC2 compared to HC1: slightly higher consumption since being fed with 12V and so some DC-DC conversion circuitry is on the board. But on the bright side this makes powering much more reliable compared to HC1 where voltage drops resulting in disk access troubles still might occur.

  • Are we talking about these boards?

    See the links @Mr.Grape posted (and keep in mind what @Adoby wrote wrt customs/VAT -- maybe you're also lucky)


    In the past you could order ODROID hardware pretty cheap from pollin.de (but due to some legislative hassles they do not ship to other EU countries any more) and with FriendlyELEC the best option was always to order directly from them. If shipping costs seem too high simply write them an email and ask for a better quote. For the NEO2 I would always recommend buying heatsink and the NAS kit as well.

  • I assume that HC1 would be able to handle 3.5 if it is done by a guerrilla method using only data sata cable and a separate power supply

    The problem then is cabling since HC1/HC2 use a combined SATA data/power receptacle and at least I had a hard time finding an appropriate cable for this that separates data from power (I wanted to test cheap SATA port multipliers with my HC1 back then but did not succeed finding a cable)

  • Something like that?

    Yep. But I also lost interest soon since the SATA PM experiment (SATA port multiplier behind an USB-to-SATA bridge) seemed to be a silly idea compared to doing the same with my EspressoBin (which can even boot from a SATA HDD/SSD attached to a PM).


    But yes, with such a cable and 'creative' powering HC1 and a 3.5" HDD aren't a problem. But since I dealt way too often with SATA cabling and powering problems avoiding such a setup and going for a HC2 instead would be my only advise :)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    A little offtop.
    But if we are already talking about HC1/2 and 3.5 hdd then I assume that HC1 would be able to handle 3.5 if it is done by a guerrilla method using only data sata cable and a separate power supply. Rather HC1 does not require a dummy load on the power port.
    I did this with 3.5 many times on x86.


    I think @tkaiser did it with an ARM too ...
    forum.openmediavault.org/wsc/index.php?attachment/9863/

    Apologies for jumping in on this thread your picture peaked my interest after reading through this thread and @Adoby states that he is using a 12V 20A power supply.


    I take it from your image that is a 12V constant voltage switching power supply, the idea of using something like 2/3 HC2 in the near future is appealing.

  • I take it from your image that is a 12V constant voltage switching power supply


    The above image with the 2 HDD is from my old office. The PSU in the back is a 5V/12V dual voltage PSU used to power

    The WD Green on the left (the last WD I ever bought) is powered by another 5V/12V dual PSU from an external USB-to-SATA adapter.


    When you use an ODROID HC2 all of this complexity is not needed since the DC-DC conversion circuitry is on the main PCB so all you need is an appropriately sized external 12V PSU with the usual 5.5/2.1 barrel plug. I would calculate with 2.5A per HC2 (since 3.5" HDD need up to 2A spin-up current) so simply do the math based on count of HC2 you want to feed.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I use this PSU:


    https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01MRSAT39


    No fans. I run three HC2s, a 16 port switch and a wifi mesh unit from it. 10A would have been enough. But I might run more HC2s and other stuff from it in the future. I bought an identical spare as well.


    20A seems to be the biggest without a fan. There are many smaller without a fan.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Thanks @tkaiser @Adoby @Mr.Grape when I first saw Adoby's NAS post I started searching for the PSU option and you've confirmed what I found, and Amazon UK do a 20A, 10A and 5A of Redrex.


    My next thought was how do these connect together, and again the pictures give that information, looking at using this route for the average home nas setup makes sense, from cost, setup and usage.

  • I hope this does not feel like post hijacking, but I have a question that I feel that fits good here.


    I want to build a fanless, cheap, easily upgreadable and future-proof NAS. I think that "Mainstream" NAS builds do not meet my requirements; the first two for obvious reasons, and the rest because they have a fixed number of bays and a custom OS.


    I thought then that Odroid HC1 or HC2 would fit well here, because it looks like I can just always add another one to increase my NAS capacity, but I yet could not find any place where they explain how to build a NAS with OpenMediaVault, Odroid HC1 or HC2 and how to upgrade later and add another board to the existing setup.


    Is it because it is obvious how to do it or because it is obvious that that is not the way to go? ?( Maybe it is not that bad to have a fixed number of bays, I do not need a crazy amount of storage anyway, but the entry cost I think is high.


    Thanks.

  • I thought then that Odroid HC1 or HC2 would fit well here, because it looks like I can just always add another one to increase my NAS capacity


    Not in a traditional NAS sense (where you have 1 server with n disks inside). If you want to play with n servers with 1 disk each this requires clustering approaches which is possible though nothing OMV would really help and the use cases where this is the answer to a specific 'how to do the storage setup?' question are pretty rare.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I thought then that Odroid HC1 or HC2 would fit well here, because it looks like I can just always add another one to increase my NAS capacity, but I yet could not find any place where they explain how to build a NAS with OpenMediaVault, Odroid HC1 or HC2 and how to upgrade later and add another board to the existing setup.

    We are talking home computing here, or possibly small office. Not a lot of clients. A LOT more reading than writing data. And modest computing needs. But most likely steady slow storage growth.


    One way to handle this is to see the HC2s (or similar devices) as just a flexible method to connect a HDD, at full speed, to Gb Ethernet. When more storage is needed, just plug in another. And that way you can keep extending storage available to some server(s) that use that data to serve clients. Without a fancy distributed filesystems someone needs to manually segment the data between HDDs. By using very big HDDs you can reduce that need. Dedicate a HC2 with a big HDD to video content. Later split that into one each for movies and TV. Even later new and old content. And have backup HC2s for the parts you care about, and not just store for convenience.


    Fancy distributed filesystems might help, but may not be necessary if you use big HDDs. Also any of the HC2s, if powerful enough, may be not only HDD connection but also be a server that use any of the other HC2 connected HDDs. And perhaps a big SSD on one of the HC2s can provide enough fast disk to allow the distributed servers to have access to fast enough random access storage. It may not otherwise be a good fit to use a HC2 with spinning iron as a server. So not only storage scale, so do perhaps the number of servers.


    My current setup is a little like this, but I'm new to this and I'm just trying things out. I find that things tend to become complicated quickly...


    Example:


    I have ctrl, a HC2 with a 500 GB SSD, running Armbian. And I also have nas1 and nas2, both 12TB HC2s running OMV. On ctrl I run, among other things, a Plex server that access nas1 that stores all the media. On nas2 I have versioned backups of ctrl and nas1. Later I may connect two more HC2s, nas3 and nas4, also with big HDDs. (I have two old 8TB "Archival" HDDs with old backup data I may use for unversioned backups.) When I do I may use nas2 for media storage as well. And allow the Plex server to access it there.


    I have my photos and ebooks on nas2 and back them up to nas1.


    I use NFS4 between the HC2s, with autofs on ctrl and on my laptop and PC. SMB on my phone and tablet.


    I can access the media directly from nas1 or or nas2 or stream it from ctrl.


    I launch scripts to backup stuff between nas1 and nas2 from ctrl.


    One thing I would really like to see is a small dual SATA SBC. So I can have spinning iron HDD cached on a SSD to provide a faster (better random access) storage device for the network. And also a good platform for a small server. I'm still curious on the elusive Odroid N2.

  • One thing I would really like to see is a small dual SATA SBC. So I can have spinning iron HDD cached on a SSD to provide a faster (better random access) storage device for the network. And also a good platform for a small server. I'm still curious on the elusive Odroid N2.


    I don't think an ODROID N2 would be inexpensive.


    What I would like to see is a dirt cheap dual SATA SBC based on Allwinner H6 or Rockchip RK3328 (both SoCs are pretty cheap, support Gigabit Ethernet, USB3 and 3 or 4 GB RAM). SATA provided by a JMS561 USB3-to-SATA bridge with integrated PM which should be OK for spinning rust. Today with H6 we have an USB3 write limitation but I would believe this could be resolved soon. With 12V input and some DC-DC circuitry on the board to reliably power two 3.5" HDD a 1GB variant could be made for less than 35 bucks. With some massive metal 'enclosure' like HC1/HC2 most probably 10 bucks more.

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