What are you doing for home NAS?

[John Abreau]

Even if the MyBook Live turns out to be more reliable than I'd expect, that
doesn't negate the poor performance of the unit, especially when it's
accessed simultaneously by multiple clients. With my usage patterns, that
limitation is extremely noticeable.


On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 10:18 AM, Ken D'Ambrosio <ken at jots.org> wrote:

> On 2013-12-30 09:41, John Abreau wrote:
> > After trying FreeNAS, I'd no longer consider the consumer-level drives
> > such the MyBook Live as serious options.
>
> I think this stance is a little overly cautious; there is  data showing
> that consumer drives don't fail at rates significantly different than
> "server-grade" drives -- e.g.,
> http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/12/04/enterprise-drive-reliability/
> (though I also remember studies done on significantly larger datasets a
> couple years ago, but they aren't leaping at me from Google).  What I
> *have* found to be troublesome is that some RAID solutions don't handle
> drives that spin down very well.  For this reason, I tend to either go
> with "server-grade" drives, or really do my homework, and find drives
> that work with the solution (e.g., 3Ware has -- or, at least, had -- an
> approved hardware list that I find useful).  But I think that, with a
> suitable amount of caution, there's money to be saved here without loss
> of functionality or increased risk of data loss.
>
> $.02,
>
> -Ken
>
> P.S.  One thing I should add here, just from a hoo-boy-did-I-stub-my-toe
> perspective: as a rule, I usually have my arrays use just a leeeeetle
> bit less than the whole disk.  I had a large RAID-5 array once, and one
> of the drives failed.  I got it RMA'd *with the same model number* from
> the manufacturer... and it was one sector smaller.  THAT was annoying.
>
>
> > On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Mark Komarinski
> > <mkomarinski at wayga.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On 12/30/2013 1:00 AM, John Abreau wrote:
> >>> I tried a couple cheaper options such as the WD MyBook Live
> >> network
> >>> drive, but I wasn't really satisfied with them, They were slow to
> >>> access, slow to spin up when inactive, and had serious
> >> performance
> >>> issues when more than one process was accessing them over NFS,
> >> which
> >>> was the only filesharing option I used. They contained just a
> >> single
> >>> drive, which means no raid-1 safety net when the disk starts to
> >> go bad.
> >>>
> >> After getting burned by non-NAS drives in a RAID 5 array, I'm going
> >> RAID
> >> 1 for home use from now on.
> >>
> >>> Then I picked up an HP N40L mini cube server and installed FreeNAS
> >> on
> >>> it, on a usb thumb drive that I plugged into the internal USB
> >> port on
> >>> the motherboard. It was the first NAS I've tried at home that I
> >> was
> >>> happy with.Performance is much better, even with multiple
> >> processes
> >>> accessing the unit, and large file copies both to and from the
> >> unit
> >>> seem to complete more quickly.
> >> Ooh.  I forgot about that little guy.  Replacement for is seems
> >> to be
> >> the N54L.  Fits 4 drives, might just get 2x4TB and leave the other
> >> two
> >> for future expansion.
> >>
> >>> I'm currently using two of the four drive slots with a pair of 2gb
> >>> drives, configured with ZFS as a raid-1 mirror set. To properly
> >>> support ZFS, I followed the recommendations in the HOWTO I found
> >>> online and maxed out the RAM at 8 GB.
> >>>
> >>> It's been a couple years since I set it up, so I imagine there's
> >> a
> >>> newer model available by now that will accept larger drives and
> >> more RAM.
> >>>
> >>> After trying FreeNAS, I'd no longer consider the
> >>>
> >> Err, you cut off there...
> >>
> >> -Mark
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> >> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ [1]
> >
> > --
> >
> > John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
> > Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net [2] / 2013 PGP-Key-ID
> > 0x920063C6
> >  2013 / ID 0x920063C6 / FP A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C
> > 9200 63C6
> > 2011 / ID 0x32A492D8 / FP 7834 AEC2 EFA3 565C A4B6  9BA4 0ACB AD85
> > 32A4 92D8
> >
> >
> > Links:
> > ------
> > [1] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
> > [2] http://www.abreau.net
> >
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-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / 2013 PGP-Key-ID 0x920063C6
2013 / ID 0x920063C6 / FP A5AD 6BE1 FEFE 8E4F 5C23  C2D0 E885 E17C 9200 63C6
2011 / ID 0x32A492D8 / FP 7834 AEC2 EFA3 565C A4B6  9BA4 0ACB AD85 32A4 92D8
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