Advice on Network attached Storage??

Off-topic Chatter
24

I used to be an APC fan. In fact I was an authorized dealer for a while. .
But of late the consumer level APC have not impressed me. I have old APCs from DOS 3 era still going strong. But I have ones from 5 years ago that are now junkers. The are not correctly charging the batts.

Cyberpower is what I have been recommending of late in the consumer side.
With Cyberpower you need to check the Web site to see what replacement batteries the things use.
The 1500VA (at least the ones I know about) use a pair of 12v 7AH (or 8AH) batts.
These are common and you can make up a pack easy and not have to pay for a high dollar OEM replacement pack.
All sorts of equipment uses these things.

Some of the 1350VA UPS use 12v SH7 size. Think 3/4 the length, taller, and thicker than the 12v 8AH.
Nobody has those things locally. So you get stuck with shipping a lead cell.
So it’s worth paying the extra to get a UPS that uses a common sized battery.
The UPS will last for years, but you will be replacing the frigging batteries ever 3 years or so.

I keep threatening to make up a LiFe UPS, with a good BMS. But the darn things are so expensive.
If you want long run times, you can always makeup an external lead-acid battery pack and cobble it into a source for a consumer UPS.
All the Best,
Jeff

25

Electronics fail eventually, capacitors etc. Can’t blame APC for that. They used to be the gold standard though.

26

I wasn’t really joking all that much about using a bus-battery. One of my old… 150VA? 200VA?… whatever was the cheapest long’n’skinny APCs with just the lit rocker-switch up front, no other lights… I couldn’t find a replacement battery that wouldn’t cost as much as a whole new UPS (ain’t kidding), so I drilled a hole in the little trapdoor on the bottom, and used quick-connects to run nice thick wires out of the now scarily-light carcass and to a spare car-battery I had. (Car took something like an 80AH but the “emergency” one I got from the boneyard was only 60AH or so.)

Worked great, lots more runtime even if not that much oomf.

27

Back when the only competition they had was TrippLite and that other brand that slips my mind. It was all about quality in the mid-high level single workstation UPSs. Like the SMART 1500s and the XL versions with more batteries. These things refuse to die.

The little flat jobbies that sit on the floor are good for a few battery replacements. But I’ve had too many fail in clients systems to recommend them for critical stuff.

The APC enterprise type UPS are still worth looking at, but are way too expensive and who wants to deal with a UPS that arrives on a pallet?

I also like that you can get a Sine wave output in some of the Cyberpower UPSs at reasonable prices. An O-Scope shot of some older cheap UPSs was an eye opener. Yet still they kept the systems running.
I do have some failed Cyberpower units at the shop. Often it is the LED display that get flaky. One had BMS problems and couldn’t’ be trusted not to over cook the batts.

But none have caught fire and burst into flames like an APC that was on a server several years ago.
It was out of warranty, but still I expected something more from APS other than, well, you are SOL. Buy another.
Then again, I bet I’ve sold 20 or 30 APCs to 1 Cyberpower, so my sample base is skewed.

The problem I face with most users is what to do when the power actually fails. Depending on the battery capacity, a smaller UPS is really only good for giving you (or the OS) time to shut down in an orderly manner.
They are not designed to let you keep working for the next hour.

Another benefit of UPSs is power conditioning. When the guy with the welder comes online next door, the UPS will protect against brownouts and the like.

And LB, I’ve got a pair of deep cycle truck batts powering my test bench power. I don’t want to be shut down in the middle of a data recover run that I may only get one chance at.

All the Best,
Jeff

28

Wow I definitely asked this question on the right thread. Thanks for all the great advice!

29

> Must be FAST when I open files. Little to no load time.

Things would be easy and quite inexpensive it if weren’t for this requirement.

Ok, if you’re using Microsoft Office (or, like me, Google Apps), you can take any supported document and open it via web-interface in parallel on all computers attached to the drive the file is on. Easy. Often used this feature in seminars and workgroups.

My setup is a HP Microserver with 4 HDDs. One boots the system (240GB), two keeps the data in RAID1 (have a spare HDD lying around, each 1 TB), the 4th is a 2TB backup HDD that keeps backups from the RAID system (only data files), the boot HDD (the shortest working image) and my laptop. Disadvantage: It’s good but slow hardware (AMD Turion). Last key element is a USB flash-key that keeps a bootable Linux with my backup software (Acronis True Image).

If you need everything superfast, you’d need a real Proliant-type server for lots of money. If you’re going this route, spent some more money for extra safety (hot-plug drives to keep backups in a safe).

Of course, today you’d take SSDs for the data. They work well if there are not too many writes. Sooner or later I’ll replace HDDs with SSDs in the RAID1 system.

Edit: Of course, a Cyberpower UPS powers the Microserver and the router.

30

What about the cables. Are Cat5s going to give me what I want or do I need to be getting something fancy like this
https://www.amazon.com/Ethernet-Outdoor-Connector-Weatherproof-Resistant/dp/B08JVG63TS/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1GZN6TN8J6E53&dchild=1&keywords=cat8%2Bethernet%2Bcable&qid=1614361377&sprefix=cat8%2Caps%2C358&sr=8-3&th=1

31

I’m a bit late to this thread, but I do this type of thing for work (on a different scale).

Lots of text to follow… TL;DR - CAT6 is my recommendation (check the link) and don’t trust the second HDD in your NAS as a backup unless the data isn’t critical.

First some thoughts: 2 Bay NASs are pretty good for your use case, but a mirrored drive is not a “backup”. Mirrored drives (RAID1 in this case) are for continuity, not disaster recovery. It is possible to lose both at the same time and without a proper backup you would be sad. I always tell people to follow the 3,2,1 rule for any data that is critical:
3 copies of the data, 2 different mediums (disk, tape, cloud, DVD, etc), 1 copy offsite.

In your case, you have LTE internet which likely has a data limit or speed limit. As you’ve mentioned, cloud isn’t really an option you would consider.

You can network your devices with a wired connection or over the existing Wi-Fi network. Wired networks tend to me bore reliable and faster as a rule, and Wi-Fi is more convenient for non-fixed location devices like a cell phone or a laptop. If you plugged the NAS into an ethernet port on on your cellular modem/router/wireless access point combo unit (sometimes called a “gateway” by the ISP) it would be available to anything on your network (wired or otherwise) and should be functional in this configuration.

If you wanted to connect several other devices with wired connections, you may not have enough ports on your gateway device to do so, and you would need a network switch.

If you want to keep your NAS inaccessible to the main Wi-Fi network, the easiest way would be to use a guest Wi-Fi network for non-trusted devices if your gateway has that functionality. If it doesn’t, you can get an access point that does.

What I do at my house is I have several different VLANs (virtual LAN) that separate devices I want to keep more secure or to keep certain devices from snooping (smart home devices, visitors, etc). Setting this up takes a bit more equipment, and if budget/time is a concern, it is probably not the best path to take in your case.

On your question about the cable:
I’d recommend CAT6 cable like this: Amazon.com

They have lots of length and color options, and I like the “flexboot” style connectors. I have these installed all over and they’ve been great. You can get them directly from Monoprice, but I shared the Amazon link since that is what you had listed.

CAT6 can do 10G, but I’d bet your equipment is only 1G anyway. CAT5E is capable of 1G, but the price difference between quality CAT5E and CAT6 isn’t that much for a few cables. As was previously mentioned, CAT8 isn’t a “real” thing at the moment anyway. If I install permanent cable for a business these days I use CAT6.

You can install the cable in your walls and run it through an attic or crawlspace. If you want to go that route, you need solid wire instead of stranded, and that typically comes in a big spool or a box. You also need special tools to terminate the cable, so if you only need a couple of runs, I’d go with the pre-made cables above.

I’m happy to answer questions you may have, and provide recommendations on hardware if needed.

EDIT: UPS is a good call, but match the output and runtimes for your needs. those little powerstrip style UPSs work ok for a router, but you probably need something bigger for the NAS if you have a longer power outage. APC/Schneider has a calculator on their website for sizing a UPS.

32

I have a DS1817 connected to my desktop via 10gb ethernet with a Netgear switch in the middle. For large files, it is FAST. I regularly see 500-600mb/s. If you can reserve two bays for SSDs and enable read/write caching, it is probably even faster (I haven’t tested that just yet)

I don’t use “nas” disks. I just shuck WD external drives and wait for sales. ~$15/tb is when I buy. I currently have 6x 8tb drives but I’ll likely upgrade to 12tb if they go on sale again.
.

On the other hand, there is this…

33

I strongly prefer something that uses commodity hardware with an unlocked bootloader that allows for installing a variety of open source operating systems. I just don’t trust the NAS manufacturer to keep supporting the device with firmware updates for the long run. I was given a LaCie NAS as a gift quite a few years back, and it had a proprietary firmware OS based on an extremely ancient version of Debian that they stopped supporting forever ago. But it was still decent hardware for my needs, and so fortunately I found some extremely sketchy instructions and scripts to unlock the bootloader and do a netinstall of Debian current for ARM. Actually it only worked to install Debian current minus 2 and then dist-upgrade it to the latest Debian release. From there I installed OpenMediaVault on top of that, which converts a vanilla Debian installation into a good NAS-specific low maintenance appliance. But it would much nicer to just have standard x86 hardware with an open bootloader that allows for a normal USB installation of any run-of-the-mill Linux or BSD flavor or a specialized NAS system based on those, preferably FreeNAS.

34

I’ve found that Synology is actually very good about supporting pretty much all of their hardware over significant time. I sent away a 4-bay DS410j unit to a friend a few years back when I got a replacment for my own needs. It ran the current version of their OS at that time. The replacement unit I have dates from 2012, and is still getting front-line updates.

That said, nothing beats rolling your own if you have the time and budget to do it. The advantage to the units from Synology (and similar) is that they kind of just work out of the box.

35

Good to know that, thanks. :+1: What is their OS based on? And what filesystem does it use?

Yeah, I agree that if a turnkey appliance style of device is supported on the long term and uses a solid foundation it can be a good option. That’s why I use Mikrotik routers, I have some really old devices, and yet their Linux-based proprietary RouterOS still supports basically all of their old devices just the same as the newest ones, and it leaves almost nothing to be desired in terms of features.

36

Hey here’s an article on the different levels of CAT cables. I’m building a house and going with CAT 8

37

This is great advice thanks. You’re using the m.2 10 gigabit card? I’m going to be putting my NAS in my network room, plugged into my 10 gigabit switch which has all the ends of the CAT 8’s going to all the rooms of the house.

Just read the specs - dual 10 gig ports!!

38

Hey is it easy to set up remote access to a synology NAS? Although the ideal setup for me would be to set up some kind of VPN server so I can tunnel into my network from anywhere

39

BTW, Qnap has some new multiport 10ge over copper switches that are not astronomically expensive.
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On the other hand, my brother has found that Qnap seems to have systemic problems with the backplanes in their NAS units which causes a drive slot to stop working.
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I need to look into this Cat8. I believe on Cat7, you’re limited to something like 40ft runs at 10ge speeds. Fiber with SFPs can go further but SFPs are EXPENSIVE.

40

Ha yeah I looked at fiber but the idiot I got to build my house could barely figure out CAT cable. Jackass kept asking why I didn’t just use wifi

yes there is a distance limitation - I thought it was 30 meters - but that’s a long run. I like having the option to replace the switch and other gear with 40 gigabit down the road if I want

41

Yeah, the cable BOZOs who came out with Sudden-link had these tools. 1 portable drill. 1 Drill bit, 1 Phillips screwdriver bit, a cable crimping tool, a fish tape, and phone for a light source. They needed my ladder to get to the 10’ ceiling.
Now mind you, this was a new hire and a supervisor. While buggering up my walls, I asked if they didn’t have a drywall saw?
The Sup said he had lent it to someone.
Geeze…
All the Best Jeff

And like was stated before. NAS is not backup. You need to be able to archive data. A second NAS is backup.
Rotating offline storage is a wonderful thing. Offsite offline storage better still.
I ask my clients. “If I took your computer and your external backup away right now. How long would it take you to get up an running again?”
Blank looks follow. Matt, this may be overkill in your case.
All the Best,
Jeff

42

Yeah, I never thought about backing up a NAS. I’m going to do RAID 6 on mine so i have two parity drives and I found a “unlimited data” backup service that’s like $10 a month. Not sure if they’ll complain when I start putting tens of terabytes up there. i have thousands of family videos in 4K, big ripped music collection, etc.

43

Personally for saving hundreds or thousands documents, pictures, etc. you cant beat the OneDrive. Its works perfect, it works anywhere in the world (you don’t have to be on the same LAN,) and its completely free, not to mention , you have it already on your windows 10 computers.