NAS storage recommendations

[martin-s]

I'm aiming this mostly at @Edwin

Does anyone have any recommendations for NAS storage? Looking for something to use at the office after a dev server's RAID controller (or one of its disks, not quite sure) failed yesterday.

It's quite an old box, but too much hassle to replace. Figure a NAS is a nice easy option.

Must haves:

• Gb ethernet
• 4TB+
• RAID (mirror at least, but would consider paying extra for more redundancy)

SSD would be nice. Not too fussed about hot swaps, video transcoding, etc.

Western Digital Red drives seem to be popular. Beyond that I'm clueless. Budget anything up to about £500.

 

[Admin]

How about https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ISM5DI6/

 

[martin-s]

Thinking maybe this one:
https://www.ebuyer.com/695478-buffalo-terastation-1400d-8tb-4-x-2tb-4-bay-nas-ts1400d0804-eu

 

[Admin]

Thinking maybe this one:
https://www.ebuyer.com/695478-buffalo-terastation-1400d-8tb-4-x-2tb-4-bay-nas-ts1400d0804-eu

But I don't have an affiliate account with ebuyer

 

[Edwin]

Something like this perhaps?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01BNPT1EG/?tag=acorn06-21

It's the newer version of what I use. Can be specced up to 16TB using the selector on the page, but you'll save a bit by buying the drives separately and slotting them in yourself. From memory it took about 2 minutes (just a few simple screws to undo).

The bare enclosure costs £149.98.
Amazon want to charge £420.32 for the enclosure plus 8TB (i.e. 2x 4TB WD RED drives) making their drive price £135.17 each.

However, you can pick up WD Red 4TB drives from CCLOnline for £119.97 each. I recommend the company - bought components from them on half a dozen occasions without a hiccup, and a family member and a friend both have PCs built to order from them, again with no hitches.
https://www.cclonline.com/product/1...ATA-Internal-Hard-Disk-Drive-For-NAS/HDD2167/

You could even push the boat out a bit and go for 6TB drives (2 of them to give you 6TB total storage) since they're £180.99 each, bringing the total spend to £511.96
https://www.cclonline.com/product/1...ATA-Internal-Hard-Disk-Drive-For-NAS/HDD2470/

For your budget, you're not going to be able to do better than RAID1, because to support a higher RAID number you're going to need at least 3 and probably 4 drives, and that rapidly pushes up the price both of the NAS enclosure and of the total spent on the drives. You're probably looking at £1K+ for a setup that supports RAID5.

NOTE: even with RAID, you could still be down for a couple of days if one of the drives fail and you have to order another one. Because realistically you shouldn't use a RAID array with a duff disk in it just in case you destroy the other half of the array and lose all the data. (I keep an identical spare WD RED drive in the cupboard against just such an eventuality)

 

[Admin]

You win, that's the prettiest nas ive seen...love it in white!

 

[Edwin]

Digging a little deeper, if you want something that will give you more redundancy, then go for a 4-slot NAS enclosure and set it up in RAID6. RAID6 can survive the simultaneous loss of 2 drives.

https://10gbps.io/blog/advantages-disadvantages-various-raid-levels/

RAID6 has speed penalties over RAID1 when it comes to writing, but is even more resilient. So if resilience is the single most important thing then that's going to be the RAID level you want.

(The above is not something I've personally tested, but it seems to make "sense".)

In which case, you'd need something like this:
https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/DS416slim

Or the more powerful https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/DS418

Or the super-specced https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/DS918+

That plus 4 identical drives (set up in RAID6) should give you excellent redundancy. Because of all the redundancy, you will end up with about 7TB of usable storage if you start with 4x 4TB drives.

Though if it's a key production drive, you probably still need some kind of secondary backup to guard against "worst case" stuff (a fire, theft of the equipment, a ransomware trojan horse that encrypts all your files, etc.) Experts warn against RAID as a substitute for a solid backup regime.

Here's a review of an older model Synology 4-slot enclosure in RAID 6 mode.
http://www.santsys.com/s2blog/synology-ds1515-raid-6-initial-performance/

 

[mat]

But I don't have an affiliate account with ebuyer

Please tell me you have a script adding the acorn tag rather than manually editing each post haha

 

[Edwin]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071RLJ6G5/?tag=acorn06-21

Yes, it's automated. It appeared instantly

 

[martin-s]

Or the more powerful https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/DS418

Not a bad shout. I like that it supports RAID 10.

1 x https://www.cclonline.com/product/2...gy-DS418-4-Bay-Desktop-NAS-Enclosure/NAS0262/

4 x https://www.cclonline.com/product/8...s/Western-Digital-Red-2TB-Hard-Drive/HDD1495/

= £570 + VAT with 4TB on RAID 10.

 

[dee]

I've just ordered a Synology 4 bay after doing some research and being recommended by a friend who deals with this stuff for a job. He says they are the best hands down. So another +1 for @Edwin suggestion.

 

[Edwin]

Not a bad shout. I like that it supports RAID 10.

1 x https://www.cclonline.com/product/2...gy-DS418-4-Bay-Desktop-NAS-Enclosure/NAS0262/

4 x https://www.cclonline.com/product/8...s/Western-Digital-Red-2TB-Hard-Drive/HDD1495/

= £570 + VAT with 4TB on RAID 10.

Probably worth reading deeper. Seems to be very little merit in Raid 10 over Raid 1 when you're talking about small numbers of disks (and in RAID terms, 4 disks is still small) since RAID 10 is just a mirrored version of RAID 1.

Sure, RAID 10 gives a bit of a speed-up, but it doesn't provide any additional robustness over RAID 1 as far as I understand it (it can still only survive the failure of a single disk, and there are 4 possible chances of failure not 2 so if anything it's less robust). On the other hand, it can be rebuilt quicker if it fails.

So you'd be pretty much on the same level having a 2-bay NAS with large drives in RAID 1 or a 4-bay NAS with small drives in RAID 10.

RAID 6, on the other hand, is a whole new degree of robustness because of the double parity.

Anyway, the enclosure can be configured for either RAID level. You probably want to pick one and stick with it (because, even if it could be reconfigured later, the data will be at risk during the reconfiguration process). But at least you have either option.

 

[Skinner]

I'm all about Synology, I have 4 of them in all. At 2tb Drives I use Samsung F4s, but all others I'm all Hitachi Deathstars or HGST.

I avoid Seagate like the plague, my only data disaster was when a handful of Seagate drives inside a seagate BA nas all failed at once.

I tried a few different types of NAS and Microserver and Synology is the way forward.

 

[Skinner]

Have a read of http://nascompares.com/2016/07/06/w...tween-synology-hybrid-raid-and-ordinary-raid/. As an alternative in the Raid Discussions

 

[martin-s]

OK, so based on price and a bit of advice from a knowledgeable guy on Ebuyer, I've gone with one of these:
https://www.ebuyer.com/766174-qnap-ts-451-2g-8tb-4-x-2tb-sgt-iw-4-bay-nas-unit-with-ts-451-2g-8tb-iw

His feedback was that Q-NAP has the edge on Synology in terms of hardware spec, and that Ironwolf was a better drive than WD Reds.

Total price was £486 + VAT for the same spec as above - 8TB RAID 5 (his suggestion) = 6TB storage.

Twin GB ethernet giving a bit of a speed boost.

 

[martin-s]

For anyone following this, my first impressions with the Q-NAP are very very good - and I particularly like the integrated backup to AWS Glacier.

 

[lazarus]

Synology ! Simply superb. I own 2 and they have been rock solid and so much more than a NAS device.

 

[ian]

Synology is great, very reliable, but if you get one, make sure it has a decent CPU as otherwise they run really slow from the control panel.