Selecting my Router for NAS

[w1nd3x]

First time here so I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong section. I have been doing alot of research in the NAS-world and I've started to build my very first NAS but the biggest struggle I have so far is choosing the best router for my setup. Any advice in this matter would be extremely appreciated. To give some background, here is my build:

HDD: 5x WD Red 3T
SSD: Kingston 60GB SSD for OS
OS: Linux Ubuntu or Windows Server 2012 R2 ( have not decided )
Motherboard: ASUS H87M-E LGA 1150
RAM: Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 Mhz 4GB
CPU: Intel Celeron Dual Core G1840
Case: Cooler Master K280 Mini-ATX
PSU: Cooler Master Extreme 2 525Watt Power Supply
UPS: APC UPS Back-Up Pro BR1000G
Cooling: 4x NZXT 120MM Fans

Raid5 Configuration

Still undecided on any additional software aside from Ubuntu (plex? FreeNAS? etc)

As well in terms of content it's going to be a mix of flac/alac music, blu ray rips, photo albums, e-books / e-textbooks, and back up documents.

At any given time, there will typically be atleast 4-6 devices accessing this NAS.

The two routers I were considering are :

(1) ASUS RT-N66 Router and
(2) WD My Net N900 Router (WDBWVK0000NSL-HESN )

In terms of what I want out of my router:

- Atleast 1 USB port for a printer or HDD
- App to access the router from my mobile devices and tablets (Apple/Microsoft)
- Speed and performance due to high number of devices accessing the NAS content
- Ability to download content to NAS from router and bypass computer (I believe this is p2p port forwarding??)
- Strong range as the house I live in is 3 floors and very large.

Thank you very much in advance for any insight.

 

[stevech]

Router matters not.
I recommend getting a low cost gigabit ethernet switch, 5 port or more. Connect NAS to the switch. Connect switch to WiFi router. Connect PCs that have gigabit ethernet to the switch, not the router.

Be sure you know the merits of make vs. buy on low cost NASes before you DIY and realize you have inadequate NAS feature software. Be sure to try the on line demos from Synology and QNAP.

 

[w1nd3x]

Router matters not.
I recommend getting a low cost gigabit ethernet switch, 5 port or more. Connect NAS to the switch. Connect switch to WiFi router. Connect PCs that have gigabit ethernet to the switch, not the router.

Be sure you know the merits of make vs. buy on low cost NASes before you DIY and realize you have inadequate NAS feature software. Be sure to try the on line demos from Synology and QNAP.

Just curious as to why you feel the software is inadequate ? As well, do you see any other errors in terms of hardware? As well, what is the benefit to goign with a switch? As well, is the Synology software sold separately? Been having difficulty finding pricing on it...

 

[AcostaJA]

Wrong Raid 5, avoid Raid 5 if you want data safety and reliable operation, instead favor Raid 6 (double disk failure resilence). But if your are Happy with 6TB capacity two 6TB HDD in Raid 1 will provide very good satbility and availability, Raid5 is meant as a sort of Raid0 for N Disks but HDD failures due age, means you need a all new pool of HDD ASAP, cos a 2nd failure its inminent, so this is why datacenters rarely deploys raid5, instead Raid6/RaidZ2 are the norm, providind neough time to renew the pool with safety, coz with aged hdd a 2nd fail is usual days from 1st failure.

If you face an Hdd failure on a 2hdd system, simple buy two new Highr capacity and plug the old surviving HDD to the external sata port, and copy to the new Raid1 pool, coz its fast procedure your danger of total lost its minimal.

OS, Ubuntu SERVER LTS by far best if you dont want and RaidZ2 Pool, this case Use Nas4Free, but youĺl need HW with ECC RAM, lot of ecc ram, since ZFS rq 1gb Ram for each TB available on the pool, if your data is high value one, a RaidZ2 pool worh the expensive hardware.


Since your server will be running 24/7 consider providing it a 2nd NIC and install a competitive Firewall application (there are some packages for ubuntu which allow you to have NAT, FIREWALL etc easy managed), then connect it to an SWITH and connect as many wireless AP(brided) youll need for full coverage.

If you choose Ubuntu, start with an Firewall focused Distro, then install server features thru command line.

Its an very extensie endeavour if you want to to hav it all DIY, but why dont wait for synology DS215air (an NAS/WIRELESS ROUTER AIO ala Apple Airport Extreme timecapsule), just few moths/weeks away, and sure cheaper than you proposed setup.

 

[AcostaJA]

PD?: 4-6 concurrest client on a NAS its very low, so again consider pre-build 2bay nas (if you need upto 6TB safe data) or a 4bay nas in Raid 6 loaded with 6TB hdd (for upto 12TB safe data pool).

DIY NAS its an time demanding endeavour, not as simple as to format a pendrive with Nas4free or freenas, lot of things to consider, configuration to study, updates, pool failures to solve (very frequent idssue with raid5)., unless your data is high value and you want to deploy ZFS (which indeed its expensive) just try a pre-built NAS, maybe not as cheap as some DIY proyects but youĺl save money in personal time you could use being more productive, than configure/assembly/maint a NAS.

For Rookies/SOHO IMHO SYNOLOGY its the best OS/HW, and very affordable too, allow many popular functions as BTsync (bittorent sync) with easy ot install independet packages from synocomunity (app store like).

 

[stevech]

PD?: 4-6 concurrest client on a NAS its very low, so again consider pre-build 2bay nas (if you need upto 6TB safe data) or a 4bay nas in Raid 6 loaded with 6TB hdd (for upto 12TB safe data pool).

DIY NAS its an time demanding endeavour, not as simple as to format a pendrive with Nas4free or freenas, lot of things to consider, configuration to study, updates, pool failures to solve (very frequent idssue with raid5)., unless your data is high value and you want to deploy ZFS (which indeed its expensive) just try a pre-built NAS, maybe not as cheap as some DIY proyects but youĺl save money in personal time you could use being more productive, than configure/assembly/maint a NAS.

For Rookies/SOHO IMHO SYNOLOGY its the best OS/HW, and very affordable too, allow many popular functions as BTsync (bittorent sync) with easy ot install independet packages from synocomunity (app store like).

Agree.
And there is no software suite that's freeware for a DIY that is anywhere close to what QNAP and Synology include and support. I observe that most DIYers either (a) don't know what they don't know about NAS feature sets beyond file serving; (b) don't need/want more than file serving and two or so apps like bittorrent downloads of god knows what.

 

[AcostaJA]

Agree.
And there is no software suite that's freeware for a DIY that is anywhere close to what QNAP and Synology include and support. I observe that most DIYers either (a) don't know what they don't know about NAS feature sets beyond file serving; (b) don't need/want more than file serving and two or so apps like bittorrent downloads of god knows what.

You named a key factor : SUPPORT, I'm only familiar with Synology and WD, support is a thing as vital as raid redundancy, IMHO Synology leads period, WD use to be reliable but beyond security patches WD don't go forward so WD Nas may become obsolete in short term, while Synology provides full OS suite updates, plus Synocomunity ports popular Linux apps in an easy way to install. I've heard too very good appreciations on QNAP (whichs use to be more expensive than Synology) but sometime somebody managed how to install DSM (Synology'os) into their units and for some reason this hack becomes popular...

 

[w1nd3x]

Thank you so much for all the feedback. I'll definitely take a second look into Synology as time is valuable to me so having their software and support would be extremely valuable as you mentioned. The more research I am doing - the more it feels like this would be a huge project to do myself versus a prebuilt system. As well, I have about 10TB of content so I would definitely need atleast 4-5 bays. Also, if I have a backup HDD always ready if one HDD fails is Raid5 then a good choice so I can instantly swap them out and rebuild ? I can't imagine the price of a 6 bay unit to support the 9-10TB i have for double resiliency.

Also, the other option aside from Synology if I don't go the DIY route was Lacie's 5 big NAS PRO enclosure. It has 4gb of DDR3ram and an atom dual core processor.

 

[azazel1024]

Just to quibble, I'd call that a file server and not a NAS. NAS generally refers to an appliance.

Also the power supply is massive overkill for the server. You are probably looking at a maximum of 100w of load, and that would be if the drives are spinning up while the CPU was also under a full load.

I'd look more in the 350-400w range. It'll likely increase the overall efficiency of the PSU as it'll be running closer to the 20-80% sweet spot instead of in the 5-15% range that a 520w PSU would likely be running in most of the time with that setup. I'd also consider looking at getting 8GB of RAM (2x4GB) instead of just 4GB. It provides a much larger cache for SMB performance (write and read caching). I noticed a modest performance improvement in some network workloads when I moved from 2x2GB of RAM to 2x4GB of RAM in my file server.

Also, I am kind of with Stevetech on this one. If this is a learning project, by all means. If this is simply wanting your files available and some things like back-ups, maybe a download server or something, go Synology or Qnap. The simplicity is probably best.

If you are an advanced user, then setting up your own server is a relatively minor undertaking (IMHO), as a novice user, it is a pretty laborious undertaking. Back in the dawn of time slightly post college when I setup my first server (yay windows 2000), even though I was by no means a novice (at that point I was probably around 12 years post-learning my first programming language (awww, QB) and had been using OS's since DOS4 on an 8088), it probably still took me the better part of 3 weeks of an hour or two a day on average to get things really sorted the way I wanted them to be, hunting down config issues, etc.

These days it would probably take me 2 hours from the time I closed the case to the time the OS of my choice was installed and everything configured and installed perfectly (giving some leeway for possibly an hour or two of Windows updates or something).

HDDs don't have a terribly high failure rate. RAID5 is likely fine. I would personally not spend the money on having a spare drive laying around. If you want true data redundancy, you need a backup storage appliance with enough storage to do a back-up/versioning from the main NAS/file server at set points in time (hourly? Daily? Weekly? I personally choose weekly).

RAID is not really about redundancy, it is about up time. If you accidently delete a file or the file system gets corrupted, RAID does NOTHING for you. If the device gets a bottle of soda dumped on it, or an electrical short, RAID is likely to have done nothing to protect the data. How much uptime are you willing or able to sacrafice? Would a day or three of the server being down irreperably damage your life and/or your relationship with any family? If not, don't bother with RAID. Or if you really want the uptime, ensure that the backup appliance is able to fill in as the primary server if needed. Then if there is a hardware failure outside of the storage subsystem of the main server, you can plug the back-up in and be off on your merry way.

It only takes a couple of days to get a new harddrive shipped to you, so even if you were to go with RAID5, I would NOT just waste my money on a cold spare sitting on a shelf. Especially since the odds of you ever needing to swap a drive aren't terribly high. More likely the storage will be inadaquet and you'll look at buying all new drives before one kicks the bucket.

I will say, whatever drives you buy, consider buying them from a couple of sources over a period of several days/weeks. The last thing you need to do is buy 5 or 6 drives from the same source at the same time and find they are all from the exact same batch from the manufacturer. Oh...and then find out that the same manufacturing defect impacted most/all of a batch of drives that that manufacturer produced and you happened to get 5 drives from that batch.

 

[AcostaJA]

Just to quibble, I'd call that a file server and not a NAS. NAS generally refers to an appliance.

.....

HDDs don't have a terribly high failure rate. RAID5 is likely fine. I would personally not spend the money on having a spare drive laying around. If you want true data redundancy, you need a backup storage appliance with enough storage to do a back-up/versioning from the main NAS/file server at set points in time (hourly? Daily? Weekly? I personally choose weekly).

RAID is not really about redundancy, it is about up time. If you accidently delete a file or the file system gets corrupted, RAID does NOTHING for you. If the device gets a bottle of soda dumped on it, or an electrical short, RAID is likely to have done nothing to protect the data. How much uptime are you willing or able to sacrafice? Would a day or three of the server being down irreperably damage your life and/or your relationship with any family? If not, don't bother with RAID. Or if you really want the uptime, ensure that the backup appliance is able to fill in as the primary server if needed. Then if there is a hardware failure outside of the storage subsystem of the main server, you can plug the back-up in and be off on your merry way.

It only takes a couple of days to get a new harddrive shipped to you, so even if you were to go with RAID5, I would NOT just waste my money on a cold spare sitting on a shelf. Especially since the odds of you ever needing to swap a drive aren't terribly high. More likely the storage will be inadaquet and you'll look at buying all new drives before one kicks the bucket.

I will say, whatever drives you buy, consider buying them from a couple of sources over a period of several days/weeks. The last thing you need to do is buy 5 or 6 drives from the same source at the same time and find they are all from the exact same batch from the manufacturer. Oh...and then find out that the same manufacturing defect impacted most/all of a batch of drives that that manufacturer produced and you happened to get 5 drives from that batch.

That was my thinking after seeing a server with 8 hdd in Raid 5 fail 2 hdd same night, hopefully fresh tape backup saved the day. Years later I saw another unrecoverable raid 5 failure, this time was an raid 5+1,the mirroed pool keep the system up, as caution a immediate backup update was done, and replacement of failed hdd .

You can find tons of articles on the Web about raid 5 inconvenience and risks.

Good warning about not source hdd from same lot/reseller an very good tip rarely followed.

I own an ds414slim loaded with 2 old 2 1/2hdd , and a couple of new hdd I purchase at same time the Nas, from the beginning I opted for raid 6, I don't need 3tb free 2 is fair enough for my needs, later I'll rebuild the pool as getting old with 1.5 or 2tb hdd.

I love raid 6 and ultra compact form factor on ds414slim. I done periodically backups to an 3.5 4tb hdd, when I'll move I plan to ship both on different couriers.

 

[AcostaJA]

Thank you so much for all the feedback. I'll definitely take a second look into Synology as time is valuable to me so having their software and support would be extremely valuable as you mentioned. The more research I am doing - the more it feels like this would be a huge project to do myself versus a prebuilt system. As well, I have about 10TB of content so I would definitely need atleast 4-5 bays. Also, if I have a backup HDD always ready if one HDD fails is Raid5 then a good choice so I can instantly swap them out and rebuild ? I can't imagine the price of a 6 bay unit to support the 9-10TB i have for double resiliency.

Also, the other option aside from Synology if I don't go the DIY route was Lacie's 5 big NAS PRO enclosure. It has 4gb of DDR3ram and an atom dual core processor.

A Synology ds1513+ maybe what u need, load with 5 4tb hdd and put on raid 6 and you get 12tb free space, then as hdd gets old and you need more space you can connect am external hdd expansion from Synology, or just replace one by one the 4tb hdd with bigger ones, instead raid 6, you can use Synology Hybrid Raid, allows easy hdd add, upgrade mixed capacity, etc non std but flexible and easy to manage.

 

[stevech]

I advise getting a 2 bay as a first-NAS. Setup with two volumes rather than RAID1. Put in two 2TB or more drives.
Maybe you'll outgrow that. But mine is still only half full after well over a year. But I don't rip DVDs .. have only about 50GB of videos.
Most of my space is for drive images of desktop PCs, done with TrueImage.
The 2nd volume is a time backup with file versioning going back in time. Really worthwhile. Synology and probably QNAP have this among their features.

RAID5 is, IMO, very dangerous in a small NAS (like 4/5 bay). It gives a false sense of security. It will fail or lose the file system at some time - likely not a drive failure. Lots of people suffer failure to recover and they unwisely had no backup. If you have that money, I'd buy 2x 4TB in a 2 bay. But 4TB is kind of state of the art and that adds risk.

USB3 or eSATA for backup, fully automated, is essential. Mine's formatted native to the Linux in the NAS so it's much faster than NTFS format.

"RAID is not a backup"

 

[azazel1024]

Problem is, OP mentions 10TB of data he/she has that needs storing. Can't really do that in a 2-bay NAS.

 

[AcostaJA]

About hdd, hgst drives (also non enterprise) are far more reliable than WD red, other brands are also less reliable than WD blue

 

[w1nd3x]

I can't thank you so much for all of the help. As much as I would love to take this on a project and time sink - I know with my busy/hectic schedule it would turn very quickly into something fun to something frustrating. I'll take a peek at QNAP as well as Synology. Just to echo my earlier post though - is Lacie not a strong choice for NAS? Their 5big NAS Pro system is only around the $450.00 CAD mark and has 5 bays, 4GB RAM, and an intel atom 64bit processor...seems quite strong for it's pricepoint. Something comparable from synology has been significantly more expensive or is their software that much better? Finally, any experience using Chromecast in conjunction with the NAS if it's Synology ? As well would I need any other additional software such as Plex ?

 

[stevech]

Problem is, OP mentions 10TB of data he/she has that needs storing. Can't really do that in a 2-bay NAS.

True.
I don't know what I don't know as to why a residence needs 10TB!

 

[stevech]

I can't thank you so much for all of the help. As much as I would love to take this on a project and time sink - I know with my busy/hectic schedule it would turn very quickly into something fun to something frustrating. I'll take a peek at QNAP as well as Synology. Just to echo my earlier post though - is Lacie not a strong choice for NAS? Their 5big NAS Pro system is only around the $450.00 CAD mark and has 5 bays, 4GB RAM, and an intel atom 64bit processor...seems quite strong for it's pricepoint. Something comparable from synology has been significantly more expensive or is their software that much better? Finally, any experience using Chromecast in conjunction with the NAS if it's Synology ? As well would I need any other additional software such as Plex ?

LaCie.. no go. For many reasons.

 

[azazel1024]

True.
I don't know what I don't know as to why a residence needs 10TB!

I certainly can't disagree with you there. That said, I know my rough 1.8TB of storage requirements isn't all that impressive compared to some. That said, my DVDs and Blurays that I have ripped I only convert to 720p/1080p h.264 depending on what it is (or 480p for DVDs). I don't keep the raw rips laying around. If I did I'd probably have 10TB of storage requirements as well.

 

[AcostaJA]

I certainly can't disagree with you there. That said, I know my rough 1.8TB of storage requirements isn't all that impressive compared to some. That said, my DVDs and Blurays that I have ripped I only convert to 720p/1080p h.264 depending on what it is (or 480p for DVDs). I don't keep the raw rips laying around. If I did I'd probably have 10TB of storage requirements as well.

To be honest, I only keep movies from 2yr with exception of GoT only show I keep complete since few relatives uses to ask for. Elsewhere Netflix or similar more convenient, so my personal library it's about 1tb less than 64gb music and about 300gb on videos I know aren't available online coz aren't commercial neither porn, so not easy to find.

 

[azazel1024]

To be honest, I only keep movies from 2yr with exception of GoT only show I keep complete since few relatives uses to ask for. Elsewhere Netflix or similar more convenient, so my personal library it's about 1tb less than 64gb music and about 300gb on videos I know aren't available online coz aren't commercial neither porn, so not easy to find.

My bit is, you can't take Netflix with you with no internet access and I travel often enough with no internet access. If there was a way to pre-load a TV episode, movie, etc to view offline, I could probably ditch half my library. The other issue is, Netflix is nice, but frankly with Verizon, the quality is so dang degraded so much of the time, the difference between even a 480p rip of something and what I can get with Netflix through a Verizon FIOS connection means that even a 480p rip is often far superior.