In need of recommendation - quite specific

[fonix232]

Hey guys!

I'm planning on replacing my old HP EliteBook 8530W that has been acting as a NAS for some time. It has 2x1TB 2.5" disks that I'd like to re-use.

I do not use my NAS for very heavy-load stuff, say, Android ROM building. It mostly idles, runs Sonarr, Transmission, and a Plex Media Server, and also makes my media available through SMB for local networks. In the future I might also add a home control system, but nothing really heavy-load (sans Plex, but we're getting back there soon).

Currently the two hard drives (HGST 1TB 2.5" 9mm drives) are in RAID0, and I'm running XPEnology on it (shame, shame, shame - but I cannot justify the price of official Synology stuff, especially with them breaking stuff every month with a "small" update - right now 90% of the SynoCommunity repo won't work!). I would gladly replace it though, and I have OMV in mind (FreeNAS, and most of the BSD based distros are not my kind of stuff, unfortunately). As it also supports Docker (and I'm running pretty much all my actively used software in Docker already), it should be a relatively painless transition.

However I'm not so sure about hardware. I'd like something small footprint, maybe even a "tower" NAS, with 2.5" disks - they are more quite, and require less power. Since my current setup eats 40-60W idle, and 90-100W under heavy load, even with 8 2.5" disks under heavy load will only take up half of that, tops.

As I mentioned, I don't need something uber-strong. No need for double Xeon builds with 16 terabytes of RAM, or anything similar. What it should handle though:

• At least 4, but rather, 8 SATA ports (since I'm using 2.5" HDDs, they can be SATA-II), or a way to expand the on-board ports to the required number (mPCIe card, PCIe card, expansion board)
• Small footprint, smaller than mini-ITX ( I was thinking of nano-ITX)
• Support for 8GB or more RAM
• Low power usage, especially in idle mode
• At least one Gigabit

Optionally, it would be nice if it supported the option of adding WiFi (either built into the board, or an expansion port), and maybe even HDMI out (so that I could use it as a NAS+HTPC combo). What I'm considering here is mainly the new Apollo Lake series of Intel (I'd like to stick with Intel if possible). But of course, all recommendations are welcome.

What I wouldn't like: something the size of a HP Microserver or bigger. I'd rather have something half the size of that.

What shall I do? Build my own custom NAS from an industrial-grade nano-ITX board that has 2-4 onboard SATA connectors, and two mPCIe slots? Or is there a NAS specifically designed for 2.5" disks that I missed somehow during my search, with strong enough hardware?

 

[sfx2000]

Ever consider just running Ubuntu or Centos on the machine, and do the same thing, rather than depend on a pirate copy of DSM?

Setting up a simple Samba host is really easy, and with current Centos/Ubuntu - Docker and other services are pretty easy to set up...

Running things on a laptop actually makes sense - as you have the keyboard/mouse/video already in place, and with a good battery in the laptop, you've got some action going...

 

[fonix232]

I did, but unfortunately many features of DSM are not found in any form on free software.

E.g. DSM brings easy two-click port forwarding via UPnP, something that so far has only been achieved either automatically per-app, or via often broken software. It also automatically refreshes the UPnP config of the router, should it change.

Also, it is a server. It does not matter if I have a keyboard and screen connected, as I don't care much for those. It's running headless, it hosts my files, and gives me a nice web UI where I can easily change all the settings, have a dashboard for managing my docker instances and their logs easily, and I could go on.

OMV does come close to this, but still is cumbersome to use compared to DSM.

Still, your comment was in no way helpful. Even if I switch from DSM to something else, I'll still want to stick with x86 systems.