Hello everyone,
I've been reading a lot of posts on this and other forums, but haven't yet reached a decision on what hardware (for home NAS) to get to fit 2 new 3.5" WD Red 4TB HDD that I bought recently and that will replace my very very old D'Link DNS-323.
So I'm seeking some advice here.
All the posts I found, none really fully fits my needs, so I'll try to give out as much info as possible (sorry for the long post).
First some background about myself:
- I'm an electronics engineer and a Debian user for 20+ years, so OMV seems like the best option software-wise.
Main uses/needs for my home NAS:
- make daily backups from other debian computers (probably using restic)
- store some media files (photos, audio and videos) to be accessed from my LAN (samba, NFS or similar)
- locally connect to gigabit ethernet
- run openvpn client to connect to my personal openvpn server so I can access it remotely if needed
Optional uses for the future (nice to have but not that much of deal breakers):
- run LAMP server
- connect one (or more) surveillance camera(s) and store the images from it (no immediate plans for that, so no idea yet on the type of connection for the cams)
- connect some sensors/switches (GPIO?)
Hardware requirements:
- low power (under 15W idle would be great)
- at least 2 SATA connections (3 or 4 better)
- min. 4GB RAM
- some USB ports are always handy
- GPIO optional, but would be a plus
- SD card slot for running the OS?
- video out (HDMI?) would be a plus, making it reusable for other means in the future
- hardware that I can buy in Europe (online is fine)
Budget:
- under 200-250 euros would be great, but I can be flexible
Some thoughts on several issues:
Low power:
- It will be ON 24/7 and electricity costs me about 1.4€/year per Watt, so this is one of the most relevant points.
- I have an old quad-core with a decent motherboard (ATX) with plenty of SATA connections, that I could use, but power consumption can be close to 100W when idle... that's 140€ at the end of the year... with a low power SBC I could get the new NAS paid in 2 years
Harddrives:
- I already bought 2 WD Red 4TB (it was too much of a bargain to let it pass), so I'll have to stick to that.
- I've always used software RAID-1 (on linux, mdadm+ext4) in the past with no issues, so I was planning to go with that here as well, though from what I've been reading that seems to be an outdated solutions nowadays, so I'm open to alternatives.
- I'm still deciding whether I should add a small SSD for caching and run the OS from it or run the OS from an SD card or USB pen (it would be easy to keep 2 SD's/pens and replace it if one fails) and in the latter case, I wonder how much difference I'd notice if using an SSD for caching
Motherboard:
- Odroid single disc devices don't really convince me, neither sound like the best option for the discs I got... and connecting discs through USB doesn't convince me at all.
- Raspberry Pi 4 or Rockpro64 have the advantage of being low power, both can run Debian-like OS and have GPIO (a good plus, but just an optional one), on the other hand they require an expansion card to get SATA.
- some ASRock ITX boards (J5005?) seem like a popular option as well
- what else would you recommend? (with low power in mind and the HDD's mentioned)
PSU:
- efficiency and price run in opposite directions... 80 platinum would be great, but the extra cost would require quite a few years of electricity saving to recover the initial investment... On the other hand good PSU also means healthier HDDs... So still trying to figure out where the sweet spot is. Any suggestions?
Memory/CPU:
- 4GB RAM and a decent CPU would be nice, so it doesn't run out of steam for a few years and can still be reused for other means in the future
- is ECC really needed? I honestly don't think it is... I understand it's advantages, but this won't be used in a life critical scenario... so if one bit gets corrupted and one file is lost at some point it's not the end of the world... Of course if I can get ECC just for a small (up to 10%?) increase in the price then it might be worth looking into it.
I think this sums it all. Looking forward to hear (read) your suggestions.