Mini server hardware for home use NAS purposes

[Christian Britz]

Inspired by my previous attempts to implent NFS on my Synology NAS, I am
thinking about buying a mini server where I install Debian to serve as
file share (SMB and NFS) and DLNA server.

It should fully support Debian Stable, have a low price but be capable
of performing the tasks well, ideally have working WIFI, be silent,
low-power and small.

Do you have any recommendations for me?

[Christian Britz]

On 2022-02-02 15:30 UTC+0100, Grzesiek wrote:

> I used Zyxel NSA310 some time ago, Debian howto:
> https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,29970,30036
> More devices are supported

The successor Zyxel NAS326 sounds interesting, but I am looking more for
something which I do not have to hack before I can install Debian on it.

[Grzesiek]

[Dan Ritter]

How small is small for you?

And do you need RAID, or just storage, and if so, how much?

For example, an ASRock 4X4 BOX-R1000V will run Debian Stable
nicely. It's very small. It's very quiet -- one CPU fan, nothing
else. But because it is so small, it only has room for one M.2
drive and one 2.5" SATA3 drive. If you need more storage, it
will have to be via USB3, which I do not really recommend.

(US $250 plus memory and disk).

-dsr-

[Christian Britz]

On 2022-02-02 15:25 UTC+0100, Dan Ritter wrote:

> How small is small for you?

A small box which fits under my desk.

> And do you need RAID, or just storage, and if so, how much?

RAID is overkill and I need approximately 500G of storage.

> For example, an ASRock 4X4 BOX-R1000V will run Debian Stable
> nicely. It's very small. It's very quiet -- one CPU fan, nothing
> else. But because it is so small, it only has room for one M.2
> drive and one 2.5" SATA3 drive. If you need more storage, it
> will have to be via USB3, which I do not really recommend.

Sounds very interesting.

> (US $250 plus memory and disk).

To be honest, I hope to pay less. ;-). A normal sized SATA disk would
already be available. Searching the web now for suitable mini desktops.

[piorunz]

Build it yourself then. mATX or miniITX motherboard, some mini case, and
one hard drive. Easy.
That being said, I wouldn't build that for myself, I learned hard way
that the only memory I will ever buy now is ECC memory. That limits form
factor available when it comes to DIY home server. My DIY home server is
in ATX PC case.

--
With kindest regards, Piotr.

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[pa...@quillandmouse.com]

I'd suggest a Raspberry Pi 4B. The requirements you listed elsewhere
would make this a cheap and workable alternative. The only issue is
that any SATA disks would have to be run through a USB 3 port. Using an
SSD might mitigate any lag. I use one of these with a laptop drive in a
Geekworm case to be the web server on my LAN. My wife an I have NFS
and Samba access to the drive as well. You can run Raspberry Pi OS (a
Debian derivative) on it. Matter of fact, I think you can run the
various media server packages on such a rig as well.

Paul

--
Paul M. Foster
http://noferblatz.com
http://quillandmouse.com

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Feb 02, 2022 at 03:11:57PM +0100, Christian Britz wrote:
>Do you have any recommendations for me?

I have much the requirements and my current solution is documented here:
<https://jmtd.net/hardware/phobos/>



--
Please do not CC me for listmail.

👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ jm...@debian.org
🔗 https://jmtd.net

[Christian Britz]

On 2022-02-02 17:55 UTC+0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 02, 2022 at 03:11:57PM +0100, Christian Britz wrote:
>> Do you have any recommendations for me?
>
> I have much the requirements and my current solution is documented here:
> <https://jmtd.net/hardware/phobos/>

...bookmarked! :-)

[Linux-Fan]

Jonathan Dowland writes:

> On Wed, Feb 02, 2022 at 03:11:57PM +0100, Christian Britz wrote:
>> Do you have any recommendations for me?
>
> I have much the requirements and my current solution is documented here:
> <https://jmtd.net/hardware/phobos/>

I am using an Intel NUC with Celeron J3455 with 8 GiB of RAM.

It has a fan but runs very quietly.

Here, it is only a "backup-server" hence the low-speed CPU is not an issue.

It is currently still on oldstable (see sheet below), but that's only
because I have not found any time to upgrade it yet. Given that it is just a
regular amd64 machine, I do not expect any problems with upgrading.

┌─────── System Sheet Script 1.2.7, Copyright (c) 2012-2021 Ma_Sys.ma ─────────┐
│ linux-fan (id 1000) on rxvt-unicode-256color Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) │
│ Linux 4.19.0-18-amd64 x86_64 │
│ 02.02.2022 22:21:37 masysma-16 │
│ up 65 days, 41 min, 1 user, load avg: 0.02, 0.03, 0.00 781/7856 MiB │
│ 4 Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU J3455 @ 1.50GHz │
├────────────────────────────────── Network ───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Interface Sent/MiB Received/MiB Address │
│ enp2s0 17925 18624 192.168.1.22/24 │
├─────────────────────────────── File systems ─────────────────────────────────┤
│ Mountpoint Used/GiB Of/GiB Percentage │
│ / 246 1817 14% │
├─────────────────────────────────── Users ────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Username MEM/MiB Top/MEM CPU Top/CPU Time/min │
│ root 271 dockerd 0.6% dockerd 972 │
│ backupuser 194 megasync 0.2% megasync 382 │
│ linux-fan 32 systemd 0% syssheet 0 │
│ monitorix 21 monitorix-httpd 0% monitorix-httpd 2 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The system has been running since its installation in 09/2020 in mostly 24/7
operation (a few weeks of vacation per year) with little to no issues -- I
only remember overloading it once with a time series database and having to
reboot to restore some order :)

HTH
Linux-Fan

[...]

[Henning Follmann]

And we can do one better:
the raspi compute module and the cm IO board.
here you will get a PCIe socket which then can take up
a SATA controller.

-H



--
Henning Follmann | hfol...@itcfollmann.com

[Jeremy Ardley]

On 3/2/22 5:42 am, Henning Follmann wrote:
>
>> I'd suggest a Raspberry Pi 4B. The requirements you listed elsewhere
>> would make this a cheap and workable alternative. The only issue is
>> that any SATA disks would have to be run through a USB 3 port. Using an
>> SSD might mitigate any lag. I use one of these with a laptop drive in a
>> Geekworm case to be the web server on my LAN. My wife an I have NFS
>> and Samba access to the drive as well. You can run Raspberry Pi OS (a
>> Debian derivative) on it. Matter of fact, I think you can run the
>> various media server packages on such a rig as well.
>>
> And we can do one better:
> the raspi compute module and the cm IO board.
> here you will get a PCIe socket which then can take up
> a SATA controller.
>
>

My home server is a nanopi M4V2 with an NVME drive main drive. The boot
partition is on an SD card but everything else is on an NVME drive.

It has a fan but never gets hot enough to turn it on. Instead the CNC
case acts as a large heatsink. In summer the room temperature is over
30C but there are no thermal problems.

O/S is straight Armbian with no tweaks. This makes it more compatible
with mainline Debian than Raspberry Pi OS is.

Another advantage of the M4V2 over a Pi 4 is four USB-3 ports. With the
USB-3 it would be very easy to implement a fast RAID array.

https://www.androidpimp.com/embedded/nanopi-m4v2-review/

--
Jeremy

[pa...@quillandmouse.com]

On Wed, 2 Feb 2022 16:42:14 -0500
Henning Follmann <hfol...@itcfollmann.com> wrote:

>
> And we can do one better:
> the raspi compute module and the cm IO board.
> here you will get a PCIe socket which then can take up
> a SATA controller.
>

Can you recommend a tiny PCIe SATA controller to go in there, and
possibly a case to fit it all (with laptop/SSD drive)?

[David Christensen]

I had a similar wish list for a SOHO LAN server/ NAS several years ago.
My conclusion was that small, energy efficient, high-performance
computer hardware commands a premium price and has little room for
expansion or upgrades. Used server equipment is a much better value and
is designed for expansion/ upgrade, but servers are rarely quiet or
energy efficient.


I decided to go with a used Dell PowerEdge T30 with a Xeon E3-1225 v5
processor, 2 @ 8 GB ECC memory, a 2.5" SATA 6 Gbps SSD, 2 @ 3.5 SATA 6
Gbps enterprise HDD's, and a DVD+-RW drive. I installed FreeBSD.


The uATX tower chassis is smaller than all of my other towers, the CPU
and PSU fans are quiet, and energy efficiency is decent. But the HDD's
are attached directly to the chassis internal drive cage, so HDD
activity makes noise. If the machine was located in the bedroom, I
would attach vibration/ sound absorbing materials to the drive cage and
interior surfaces. Or, pay for large SSD's.


The T30 was a worthwhile investment (~US$750), and I still have two 3.5"
drive bays, two memory slots, and four PCI/ PCIe expansion slots
available for the future.


That said, understand that Synology, QNAP, Western Digital, Asus, etc.,
do a lot of engineering and legal work to develop and maintain their NAS
products to interoperate with all of the various devices and
technologies found in a SOHO environment. It's a never-ending
treadmill. I implemented GELI, ZFS, jails, Samba, SSH, and CVS on my
T30. I bounced on NFS and Kerberos, I have yet to try DLNA.


David

[Christian Britz]

The list doesn't seem to like attachments, so please see a picture of my
new server here :-)

http://amiga5000.ddns.net/raspi.jpeg

On 2022-02-05 19:35 UTC+0100, Christian Britz wrote:

> In the end I opted for a Raspbery Pi 4 B. 🙃
>
> I am currently migrating my data, let's see if I will be happy with the
> performance of this really tiny little thing.
>
> First impression: Very cool!
>

[Andrei POPESCU]

The RockPro64 from PINE64 runs pure Debian, has a PCIe slot that takes a
SATA adapter and should run fine with just passive cooling. Availability
might be an issue though...

Kind regards,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser