Pre_built NAS or Build a server/nas?

[blueturtle]

Ive read a few NAS reviews on TPU, the pre_built NAS's just dont seen worth the $600+ plus the hdd's Id need, looking at 50+TB(RAID6).

Any pre_built NAS worth $1K? Build the server myself, would cost more yes, but something breaks, it an easier fix vs loosing $1K to a pre-fab. Whats yalls feedback?

 

[chrcoluk]

They seem very over priced for what you get and since I already had a 2nd rig I ended up repurposing it. Not sure about the case of doing that though if you having to build something from scratch for it.

Other benefits from DIY build is flexibility, as you said easier to fix things that break, and upgradeability without replacing the entire thing.

 

[blueturtle]

Anyone recommend a great SATA card(8x ports), pcie nic card and switch? My networking is atm noobish. I’m guessing somewhere under $1K for the 3?

 

[unwind-protect]

Building is the only way to get ECC RAM. That factors big for me.

I also don't like relying on single software vendors and their patch mechanisms.

 

[Bagerklestyne]

I've done both (repurposing a pc during an upgrade) and have increase my raid storage levels from a 1.5tb in 2 raid 5 arrays all the way up to 80tb in my current NAS.

Prebuilts have the advantages of low power consumption, dedicated and curated os and apps. Good for business cases, but also for a home user with a lot of storage needs.

The desktop options have mixed options, do you want a dedicated raid card ? That's a point of failure with a card you could potentially not replace
Do you need more than 8 bays ? prebuilts get real exxy beyond 8 bays generally but a server could potentially house 12+ drives without too much difficulty.

I have a Synology DS1821+ (8 bay) and it's DX517 (5 bay expansion) and I had 1 device failure (a bug in the cpu design of the previous 1815+ unit I had) all I did was pull out my drive and slap them into the new unit, 15 minute initial boot up migration and off I went again.

Building a server gives you options for more cpu power (for transcoding and the like), upgradability and the ability to run substantially more apps, server software, docket containers etc.

I wouldn't go back to repurposing an existing computer anymore, I just need a mild setup (with adequate ports for 80TB and room to grow) and I only run a couple of minor dockers, so you'll need to judge your use case beyond simply storage requirements.

 

[DaemonForce]

If you're building the machine yourself, it's way more cost effective to employ a retired system.
Not to the extreme that I do with a 1c/1t Athlon, 2GB, 2xSata (you're not ready) but get like any Phenom II or FX, any board that comes with lots of sata 6gb.
Otherwise you're looking at getting some expansion card just for the drives and if you work with old stuff, that's gonna be a headache.
The cards are great if you're doing RAID but I won't do that to HDDs, so good luck with that.

CPU should be an easy pick. If you're doing basic apps:
Samba disk shares, iSCSI disk shares, HTTP web/ftp/sql.net, torrent seeding, YouTube/Twitch scheduled stream/video archiving, PNG library archiving, Cloud disk shares, Lightweight VMs
You could easily get by with anything i3-2100 and up. Even something as miserable as my Athlon 64 works great for this.

If you're doing LARGE VMs, video transcoding, virtual container apps, document server, forensic web, Amazon AWS, secure developer environments
The floor to entry is a CPU with nested page tables, which is like AM3 socket and newer. Yes I can confirm it works and it's fine.
Clockspeed and memory seem to be a big hindrance for containers, so you'll need good memory, something upper range like a 65W+ quad core and some patience.

Basically try to pick something super FAST like an i7-4790K and if it can be helped with an accelerator like a cheap Tesla, do that. A lot of these apps take advantage of nVidia technologies.
I don't do ECC memory but my stuff does auto-checksum, so it's fine. If you're mainly doing like a data scraper vault with shares, check it out. Anything precious, look into ECC memory.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Ive read a few NAS reviews on TPU, the pre_built NAS's just dont seen worth the $600+ plus the hdd's Id need, looking at 50+TB(RAID6).

Any pre_built NAS worth $1K? Build the server myself, would cost more yes, but something breaks, it an easier fix vs loosing $1K to a pre-fab. Whats yalls feedback?

The thing with Synology NAS is your really paying for the NAS OS software (updates, and hardware validation) and for the most part making everything plug and play, backup, and update friendly, and administratively easy, also the warranty. I have the prior gen DS920+ a simple 4 bay NAS I snagged on fire-sale from NewEgg for about $400. (they are still quite expensive so I always wait for the sale) Not having a bay for a hot spare SHR-2 (raid6) makes sense for me with only a 4 bay populated to 8TB so if I loose up to 2 disks I can still have enough time to refresh a backup and replace the disks. I have a hard time imagining doing that with 50+TB capacity but I suppose it's doable, the scrubbing time will take forever at 50+TB capacity I imagine. Assuming you have a good backup plan you might consider a different raid strategy for that high of capacity.

I have yet to build my own using ZFS but it's on my bucket list. Building your own means you have to do all the work and put in the time for it including picking the right hardware. If your someone like me that sometimes balks at Synology pricing, when looking at the flip side I don't have to time yet to spend building my own NAS, so a diskless $400 to $600 doesn't seem that bad all things considered. Although when you see a +1 bay price difference of $100 for the next model up it feels a bit like a rip off for just a little more plastic and metal for a 5-bay vs. 4-bay system.