I’m new here and I’m reading a lot to gather information for building a NAS for my business. We work with pictures and videos, and the purpose of the device is to back up all this data maybe every day at night. I am between two options:
Option 1 - Buy a $2098 True NAS Mini R rack mountable - 8 core 2.2Ghz CPU, 64GB ECC DDR4, 2x10GbE RJ45 ports, 1 M2 port, 12x 3.5" hot-swappable bays. I don’t know why the CPU and motherboard are not specified in the official web, but I found the specs.
The CPU is an Intel C3758 and the motherboard is a Supermicro a2sdi-h-tf:
Option 2 - Build a rack-mountable server. There are a lot of possible configurations and I am lost.
I’ve purchased 6 x 12TB Ironwolf Pro ST12000NT001. I want to set 3 disks to mirror the other 3 disks, is that a good idea? or is it better to set a Z3 raid?
We would work locally on each workstation, and we would automatically back up the work done during the day overnight over the network through the Veeam client. We would also store raw media files just in case.
I’d add you your options a third: buy a suitable rack-mountable server. There are plenty of options out there, but many of them are going to be heavier on CPU than you’re likely to need for your stated use case.
A point in favor of buying from iX is that it’s their system for their software–you know it’s going to work and you’re going to have at least some degree of support from the vendor. Further, if power consumption is an issue for you, the Mini R is almost certain to be more frugal than just about any other rack-mount server you’re going to buy preconfigured from anyone else.
And if you’re comparing it to either buying a new server, or assembling one from new parts, the price compares somewhat favorably. If you’re willing to consider used gear, though, that changes things.
Depends on your priorities. RAIDZ3 will be much safer for your data–it will allow any three of your six disks to fail without loss of data. Striped mirrors will give you better performance and expandability (you can expand your pool by adding another pair of disks, rather than another six disks). Either would give you about the same usable space.
Thanks for your answer! I feel that for that money I could buy something much better in terms of performance, but as you say, I would not take advantage of it XD Maybe in the future I would virtualize some service.
Which suggest that the best option would be 6-wide raidz2: 4 drives worth of space (80% usable) at an intermediate level of redundancy between 3 stripped mirrors and a 6-wide raidz3.
agreed, Z2 should be fine. if it was me I’d probably do an encrypted cloud sync weekly in case of a local disaster if the data is really business critical and is in a dataset.
Pretty likely, particularly if you’re willing to buy used. But you’re probably burning a lot more watts that way. One of the big advantages of that CPU/SOC is decent–not fantastic, but decent–performance on very little power. It is a pretty expensive motherboard for what it gives you in terms of capabilities, but I don’t know of anythingg else on the market that does what it does for the power it burns.
It might be worth comparing what you could build using that motherboard to the cost of the Mini R–from what I’m seeing, that motherboard goes for $700+, so you might not find yourself saving a lot of money.
Now, if you don’t care too much about power consumption, you want the cycles, and you’re willing to consider used/refurbished hardware, the Dell R740xd will give you lots more capability for the money:
A little older OK? The 730xd:
(I’ve never dealt with this vendor, but watched a number of their YouTube videos). In both cases you’re looking at dual-socket Xeon E5 or Xeon Scalable for less money (considerably less, in the case of the 730). Vastly more compute than the SOC in the Mini R–but also lots more power burn.
Sure, and there are lots of options there as well–and plenty of other vendors who “refurbish” used servers[1]. But it’s a little easier to configure-to-order this way.
If you don’t want a 2d-gen Xeon Gold, I think their prices on the 740xd look pretty reasonable. I’m guessing their prices on those chips reflect that they don’t have stock of those. But it’s always good to shop around.
For your use-case even an R720xd would be sufficient. I am running a Supermicro X9SRi-F (E5 1620 and 128 GB DDR3) that also serves around 15 low-performance VMs and it is still almost never above 20% utilization.
…or probably even a 710. But the 13th-gen and newer systems have better current support from Dell, including the “update all the firmware using the BMC, all at once” feature.
