NAS vs. a Desktop Server - Why Buy a NAS?

[sfx2000]

FWIW - I'm not endorsing a config like this - as it is very much dependent on a certain level of trust for users on the the subnet - as everyone by default will have read/write perms to the shared directory - also, it's dependent on the box for a minimal level of security is that the box is behind the NAT - one will not have access outside of the subnet specified..

Anyways, if you want a cheap and dirty NAS, this is a quick way to do it - even on something as simple as a RaspPI or BeagleBoard...

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[stevech]

I have a RPi.. it would be a silly NAS. Starting with its slow Ethernet (via USB). No USB3. No SATA.
It might get 2-3 MBytes/sec.

I have my RPi mount a share that lives on my NAS. It works fine. But I don't move gobs of data on that.

 

[Wolf_666]

The DIY way is what I suggest. A i3/i5 platform running Xpenology is what fulfill any needs. The bill will be cheaper than any Qnap, Synology. Of course you need some advanced IT skills.
I am planning to build a 6 bay NAS, around a Supermicro MB (C2750 CPU) and running Xpenology. My NAS is designed to be a Download Station and a Plex Media Server with the need to transcode maximum 2 1080p concurrent streams....the rest are played directly by clients.


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[L&LD]

A full QNAP or Synology setup will be about $1,000 for my clients (for my fee), but when I am finished, I am not needed anymore (although most still request me to oversee changes on the network topology). This extra is over and above the NAS hardware and any spare drives I recommend to them.

The closest one got to my total pricing was about $25K difference for a server setup.

DIY costs more than most realize. Obviously in time, but sometimes also in security errors or omissions, data loss or simply needing to do the work all over and in the end (unfailingly); just buying the right tool for the job (finally).

If someone is just learning, DIY is the way to go. Not because you'll save money. But because you'll learn something, with enough effort put in.

If suggesting this for a business of any sort; DIY is the same as giving away your free time and sanity (and sometimes your data, inadvertently). I don't recommend it at all.

 

[coxhaus]

A full QNAP or Synology setup will be about $1,000 for my clients (for my fee), but when I am finished, I am not needed anymore (although most still request me to oversee changes on the network topology). This extra is over and above the NAS hardware and any spare drives I recommend to them.

The closest one got to my total pricing was about $25K difference for a server setup.

DIY costs more than most realize. Obviously in time, but sometimes also in security errors or omissions, data loss or simply needing to do the work all over and in the end (unfailingly); just buying the right tool for the job (finally).

If someone is just learning, DIY is the way to go. Not because you'll save money. But because you'll learn something, with enough effort put in.

If suggesting this for a business of any sort; DIY is the same as giving away your free time and sanity (and sometimes your data, inadvertently). I don't recommend it at all.

So do you replace these NASs every 3 years since that is all the support they list as supplying? Microsoft Servers are supported for many years with Microsoft update.

 

[stevech]

No, my DS212 (2012 first production) is supported in the latest DSM 5 software release and in the beta of the next one. I'd say it's closer to 5 years.
Microsoft stopped selling Win 7 retail way too soon. Only OEM now and that is hard to move to a newer PC.
Microsoft Server OS are too pricey for me as a home user. And the features in that OS vs. DSM, for the ones I use, aren't comparable.

 

[coxhaus]

No, my DS212 (2012 first production) is supported in the latest DSM 5 software release and in the beta of the next one. I'd say it's closer to 5 years.
Microsoft stopped selling Win 7 retail way too soon. Only OEM now and that is hard to move to a newer PC.
Microsoft Server OS are too pricey for me as a home user. And the features in that OS vs. DSM, for the ones I use, aren't comparable.

I just run my hardware more than 5 years. It is a good thing Microsoft supports things for many years. My PCs were built by me about 8 pr 9 years ago on good quad processors so they would last. The only things which change are the iPhones and iPads probably ever 3 or 4 years unless they die. I had to replace an iPhone 4 because it died and was not repairable by Apple.

You know Microsoft Server 2003 is just now winding down. They supported it for over 12 years. I expect hardware to last. Three to five years is pretty short for me.
How are the feature in the server OS less than the DSM? What do you use?
I think I would be shocked if a NAS software is more robust than Microsoft Server.

 

[stevech]

With what they charge for Server OSes, versus the home user's budgets, well, there you go.
Let's not talk about the truncated lifetime of Windows Home Server - the earlier one with useful multi-drive management.

Indeed, let's not compare apples to oranges in Windows OSes versus a purpose-build NAS as sold by Synology, QNAP, Thecus.

 

[coxhaus]

With what they charge for Server OSes, versus the home user's budgets, well, there you go.
Let's not talk about the truncated lifetime of Windows Home Server - the earlier one with useful multi-drive management.

Indeed, let's not compare apples to oranges in Windows OSes versus a purpose-build NAS as sold by Synology, QNAP, Thecus.

The old home server multi drive management was supported up until last year, still more years than we were talking about. There was no truncated lifetime as the newer home server was based on 64bit server 2008 whereas the old one was 32bit server 2003. I personally like the newer home server without drive management but I have server skills.

 

[stevech]

as you wish. Just be sure to try the on-line demos at Synology and QNAP as you decide. See the functionality.
The one I really like is time backup - file versioning for last 6 months. Saved my buns many times. And triple automated backups to 3 media.
Plus the multimedia serving and SSL remote access.

 

[coxhaus]

as you wish. Just be sure to try the on-line demos at Synology and QNAP as you decide. See the functionality.
The one I really like is time backup - file versioning for last 6 months. Saved my buns many times. And triple automated backups to 3 media.
Plus the multimedia serving and SSL remote access.

I used to be a big believer in file backup and I still am in large environments. At home with only a few workstations I have come to like full workstation backups. It is so easy to pop in a CD and restore a whole workstation as it was or a few days prior, maybe months prior, it’s up to you. You do not have to spend hours running Microsoft updates and trying to find all your utilities to install to rebuild your workstation. And this is after installing the OS.

 

[L&LD]

So do you replace these NASs every 3 years since that is all the support they list as supplying? Microsoft Servers are supported for many years with Microsoft update.

No, of course not. They get replaced when the hardware dies. And as stevech said, they are supported far past their official cutoff points. Another thing to consider is that 3 years is only warranty support. Not the same thing as the life cycle of these robust units.

I have not personally replaced any with broken hardware yet. They get replaced because the new versions are more economical to run with higher capacity drives.

The PC's you mention of 8 or 9 years ago are essentially obsolete, even if the os has been kept updated during all that time.

Almost any current NAS will be more powerful than those old systems. Matching hardware and software capabilities is a core requirement over a given time period. Letting one go too far ahead (or behind) the other usually gives more headaches than the actual hardware or software is worth. Not to mention some features may not even work or be an option without supporting hardware. You may be familiar with the saying putting new wine into new wine skins?

 

[coxhaus]

No, of course not. They get replaced when the hardware dies. And as stevech said, they are supported far past their official cutoff points. Another thing to consider is that 3 years is only warranty support. Not the same thing as the life cycle of these robust units.

I have not personally replaced any with broken hardware yet. They get replaced because the new versions are more economical to run with higher capacity drives.

The PC's you mention of 8 or 9 years ago are essentially obsolete, even if the os has been kept updated during all that time.

Almost any current NAS will be more powerful than those old systems. Matching hardware and software capabilities is a core requirement over a given time period. Letting one go too far ahead (or behind) the other usually gives more headaches than the actual hardware or software is worth. Not to mention some features may not even work or be an option without supporting hardware. You may be familiar with the saying putting new wine into new wine skins?

My old PCs still run fairly fast. Maybe not the fastest for gaming but still is fast. Mine is setup with RAID0 which was pretty fast before SSDs were big enough to run in a PC. RAID0 was the fastest setup but not very safe which did not matter as I was backing up the whole machine. All I had to do was pop in a CD and restore the PC machine. I can transfer about 80MB of data as long as the files are not fragmented. I run a Q6600 Intel CPU in my PCs. What sizes of CPUs are in the NAS which are faster?
My limited NAS info is they have small CPUs.

 

[stevech]

NASes tend to be I/O bound in LAN I/O and less so, disk I/O.
So CPU speed isn't a big issue as a rule, within reason.
A few really high end NASes attempt to be a NAS and a video transcoder too.

 

[azazel1024]

Well, the "better" 2 and 4 bay. Looking at a lot of data for even the nicer 1 bay and most of the mid/lower 2-bay (and some of the lower 4-bay), they are CPU bound. Most are showing in the range of 110MB/sec or so for reads, but only 70-90MB/sec for writes. Short of it being a really bad NIC in the NASs, with regular 1500MTU sizes, they should manage about 115MB/sec read and write if there is no CPU or disk bottleneck (which there shouldn't be a disk I/O limitation, unless small files).

That said, most of the decent 2 bay and 4 bay can more or less max a single GbE connection, though with smaller files, odds are good, even with the exact same disk configuration in both, even a low end "PC as a server" is going to have much better performance than the 2 and 4 bay NAS out there, as mulitple small files have increase CPU overhead associated with how SMB and iSCSI work. Especially if you have a nice sized RAM installed in the PC as a server.

The NAS are going to have massively better power consumption figures than any Q6600 based system you could possibly build.

My G1610 based server is only using a tiny bit more power than what most typical 4-bay NAS seem to use, with a heck of a lot more capability. I wouldn't dream of using anything more power thirsty/overbuilt than that, unless I really needed the extra CPU grunt (just too expensive to keep operating 24/7).

 

[coxhaus]

I thought that was true with NASs that they were CPU bound. My Q6600 PCs are workstations and don’t run 24/7 so power consumption is not an issue. Old school CPUs in my mind are they run fast but use lots of energy. My server CPU is a low voltage Xeon and more energy efficient but still not up to the best of today’s standards but will run rings around most low end current CPUs.

I would think my PCs can run at wire speed since they are Intel motherboards with built-in Intel NICs. I probably need an SSD or more hard drives to sustain wire speed. So this is probably true for a NAS as well. Do you see a 2 bay NAS sustaining wire speed on big file transfers? I would think 2 hard drives are not fast enough. Caching only goes so far.
PS
This is assuming a RAID configuration which supports read operation of both drives for the NAS. A single hard drive will not sustain wire speed.

 

[azazel1024]

Wire speed is roughly 115MB/sec with 1500MTU, about 117.5MB/sec with 9k jumbo frames (SMB payload size).

Current typical 5400rpm HDDs run about 150MB/sec on the outer edges of the drive and around 90MB/sec on the inner tracks. 7200rpm drives are typically around 170-190MB/sec and around 100-110MB/sec on the inner tracks.

So unless you are talking a 5yr old 1TB drive or something, most "made in the last couple of year" drives have no issues pushing full wire speed for reasonably large sequential transfers.

My one 3TB Seagate 7200rpm drive (15 series) can push 158MB/sec over the wire (I am running 2GbE with SMB Multichannel) and it is at about 72% capacity currently (it was about 190MB/sec when nearly empty). Will soon be joined with a second 3TB Seagate in RAID0 so I can fully saturate my 2GbE connection full time (I can get 230MB/sec burst if what I am transfering is partially/fully cached in RAM on the machine I am reading from, because RAM write caching on the recieving end).

Most mid-grade or better 2-bay and 4-bay NAS have beefy enough CPUs that they are not CPU bound for saturating a single 1GbE link. Some of the ones with 2 GbE NICs in them, if you load them with SSDs (so you can be sure you arent seeing I/O limitations, especially with multiple access) are DEFFINITELY going to be CPU bound when you start talking multiple client sessions, even with large files. Other than some of the best small NAS, they are not going to be able to stuff multiple gigabits per second over their NICs (though the better ones, especially the Atom based ones from what I have seen, can stuff 2Gbps full duplex at once, if the disk I/O can support it, over dual NICs).

It just depends on the NAS. Don't expect a $100 NAS to be able to handle 1Gbps full wire speed, especially full duplex concurrent. You can probably feel pretty secure that a $600 4-bay NAS is likely going to have beefy enough hardware to handle 2Gbps full duplex concurrent (if the disk I/O can handle it), if not full wire speed, then very close to it.

Likely still not going to be up to par with the kind of I/O that a full server could handle, even with one as "anemic" as a Sandy/Ivy based Celeron with a decent amount of RAM, let alone a low end Xenon, but more than enough for most SOHO and even some SMB environments.

 

[coxhaus]

No jumbo frames. I don't like them. Won't use them. They are too much trouble.


When I talk big file transfers usually I use my 700 gig music files for testing. My music is CDs and high res stuff, no mp3 stuff so all the files are large.

I guess I am showing my old age. I don't have enough new drives to test. My old hardware keeps working. I have changed out my server to a SSD for the OS but my Q6600 PCs are still old school.

 

[stevech]

Using SSDs for 2 years now in desktop and laptop PCs.
Spoiled now. Can't go back to HDDs.

 

[coxhaus]

Yes SSDs are addicting. Probably the best thing which has happed to PCs in a while.