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Just thought I'd bump this thread with my latest purchase. I got the Thecus N4100Pro and threw 4 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black drives in there in RAID-5. I'm absolutely loving it. The only bad thing is that I'm currently limited by the 10/100 switch in my router. I have a gigabit switch coming to me on Wednesday which ought to triple or quadruple the performance I'm currently seeing. Check out http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3115020 for some more info and pictures.
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Apr 21, 2009 01:48
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iluvpr0n posted:I'm looking to get an NAS (I think it's the most attractive option for me, anyway) and want to go the pre-built route. Based on Fangs404's thread and a couple other reviews I've read (and current price of ~$350 via buy.com/ebay fatwallet techniques), I'm seriously looking at the Thecus N4100 Pro. I answered most of your other question in my thread, but regarding the last question, yes, that is possible. You merely install the new hard drive and hit the gigantic EXPAND button in the RAID options which will grow the RAID array for you. It couldn't be any easier (at least with the Thecus unit).
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Jun 4, 2009 04:40
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Combat Pretzel posted:WDTLER a run once utility? As in permanently changing a flag, or does it need to be run every boot? It's a run-once program.
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Jul 27, 2009 04:52
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movax posted:They are, but 2TB drives are getting pretty cheap--the 2TB 5K3000s may not be a bad choice either. With a limited number of bays, density can be useful. I just replaced all 4 1TB Western Digital drives in my RAID-5 with 4 2TB Hitachi 7K3000 drives. Newegg had them on sale for $99 a pop with a promo code last weekish. They're fast, and they hold a lot of data. I'd definitely recommend the *K3000 line.
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Feb 13, 2011 20:05
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I currently have a Thecus N4100Pro. While it's been a great workhorse, the performance just isn't quite there (20-30mb/s reads/writes). I'm hoping to upgrade. These are what interest me most so far: - Synology DS411+II - $640 (110mb/s reads, 105mb/s writes) - Synology DS411 - $440 (105mb/s reads, 48mb/s writes) The DS411+II is pretty pricey, but it basically offers the same speeds I'd get with a single large 7200rpm drive. These speeds would be a pretty massive improvement for me. What other NAS-in-a-box solutions would you guys recommend that get performance like these?
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Mar 13, 2012 03:39
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D. Ebdrup posted:I get +240MBps read and +160MBps writes (and have lagg'd NICs to enable multiple machines to access the NAS at full speed) with my zfs solution on FreeBSD (started with FreeNAS, which is an excellent out-of-the-box solution) on a HP Microserver. It's as cheap as a four-bay NAS solution. Add in a NIC and 8GB memory (both can be had for cheap) and you're good to go provided you're willing to do a bit more reading than Synology requires. You're using the N40L that everyone seems to be talking about (this, right?)? This is 1/4 the cost of the Synology I was looking at, and those speeds are insane. [edit] Hm, this guy only seems to support RAID 0 and 1. I'm hoping for RAID-Z or RAID-5. I already have 4x2TB drives. Can I still do a RAID-Z with FreeNAS with this guy? Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Mar 13, 2012 |
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Mar 13, 2012 18:58
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IOwnCalculus posted:Yeah, you don't care what RAID levels the controller supports when you're doing everything in software - there's no such thing as a RAIDZ hardware controller that I'm aware of That's exactly what I figured. How do you guys do the OS vs storage? Is there enough room in that box for a small OS drive, or do you just create a small ~100gb OS partition and leave the rest as storage? IT Guy posted:What the gently caress. That's loving ridiculous. I was gonna offer to have it shipped here, and then I could mail it to you.
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Mar 14, 2012 00:24
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Galler posted:Depends on the OS. This is great. Thanks!
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Mar 14, 2012 19:14
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IT Guy posted:I just picked up an N40L and 8GB ECC Server RAM. I'm basically trying to mimic this, what drives did you use to see those speeds? I haven't ordered drives yet. I have 4 2TB Hitachi 7K3000 drives. All hard drives are gonna be stupid expensive because of the flooding in Thailand, but for the price, the 7K3000 is gonna be really hard to beat. The performance is amazing, but more importantly, one of the things that the file storage community likes about these drives is that they're RAID-ready: no TLER crap to deal with like with most other consumer-grade HDDs. With Western Digital, for example, you used to be able to run a utility called WDTLER to enabled TLER for RAID operation on their consumer line of drives. A couple years ago, they removed this ability, forcing you to buy their more expensive enterprise line for RAID rigs.
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Mar 20, 2012 17:04
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Bonobos posted:I have read horrible stories about the Hitachi 7K3000 drives, with Newegg reviews basically calling them 'deathstars' like the old days. No clue as to whether I should take these to heart. I love them. I originally had 4 1TB Western Digital Black drives, but one of them died. I bought them pre-anti-WDTLER (I bought them specifically so I could use WDTLER!), so I was able to enable TLER on the drives. But the cunts at WD customer service refused to RMA my dead drive with a drive that would allow me to enable TLER, so I sold the WD drives and replaced them with the 7K3000 drives. I haven't had one complaint. They're going strong for over a year now. IT Guy posted:$200 for 2GB drives is steep, isn't it? Compared to what drives were when I bought mine ($90 shipped each with a coupon code), yeah, but compared to other drives at the same level nowadays, no. It's all because of the flooding in Thailand. You might check eBay and forums (ocforums, [H], etc.) for used drives that still have a warranty. [edit] http://camelegg.com/product/N82E16822145473?locale=US shows the price trend of the 7K3000 on Newegg. It's steadily dropping. If you're not in a rush, you ought to set up a camelegg price alert and just wait for the price you're willing to pay. I'm pretty sure camelegg is goon-developed actually. Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Mar 20, 2012 |
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Mar 20, 2012 22:03
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thideras posted:I'm running nine 5K3000 drives in my file server that is under a decent load (5 virtual machines, main file share, backups, and archives). I purchased the first 4 back on 7-25-2011 (used for $65 each I agree with everything this man says. Keep in mind that you have to take reviews on a site like Newegg and Amazon with a grain of salt for 2 reasons: - In general, most people that are happy with a product aren't going bother writing a review for it. The result of this is that you see disproportionately many negative reviews when, in fact, there are many more satisfied customers on popular items. - Hard drives are the only major mechanical component in the computer (optical drives are, too, but I don't consider them a major component). As a result, they're fragile and have much higher failure rates than any other component in the computer. Any hard drive, regardless of brand, is going to have a decent number of DOAs. Basically, you should just ignore bad reviews based on DOAs because the chance of a DOA probably correlates more with the shipping company than it does the hard drive make/model. Instead, you should pay attention to negative reviews where the reviewer complains of a hard drive dying X weeks/months after using it. These are much more rare. So basically, just take the reviews for what they are - a very biased random sample (sampling bias, specifically). Hitachi drives are super popular among RAID-ers on large forums like [H] and ocforums for good reasons. Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Mar 21, 2012 |
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Mar 21, 2012 17:35
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http://www.pcconnectionexpress.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=13371257&cac=Result has the N40L for $199 again.
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Mar 22, 2012 17:40
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Civil posted:It was $180 when I bought one last week. Jealous! So I've read a few people say the built-in NIC sucks? Is this true? Should I replace it? Also, I wanna max out the memory since it's so cheap. Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G looks like the way to go. Confirm/deny?
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Mar 22, 2012 18:04
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Civil posted:I'm getting full speed with the built-in NIC on WHS2011. Some people go with an intel NIC for the linuxy server OS's, I think. I guess do some research depending on what software you intend to run. OK, cool. I'm planning on doing RAID-Z with FreeNAS, and there are plenty of Newegg reviews saying it works just fine with FreeNAS, so I think I'll be fine. I went ahead and ordered the 8gb kit. I read that upgrading the RAM is a pain in the rear end, so I figure I'll just go ahead and max it out. I went the ECC route. It's just a little extra peace of mind.
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Mar 22, 2012 18:17
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Civil posted:The only difficult part of upgrading the RAM is unplugging the mini-SAS connector (the large one on the left), the rest is really simple. Unplug the rest of the USB headers, fan plugs, mobo power supply, and slide the tray out. Make sure you plug something into the onboard SATA port if you want to use a 5th internal device in the 5.25" bay while you have the motherboard out. Even if you don't have immediate plans, plug one in and snake it up to the top bay while you can. Awesome, thanks for the advice. I already have 4 2TB storage drives, and I'm planning on using the included 250gb drive for the OS. I know a BIOS mod is necessary to use the 5th SATA port, right? Where do I get that mod?
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Mar 22, 2012 18:50
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IT Guy posted:How many internal Sata does this thing have? Mine hasn't come in yet. I see it has a 5.25" bay that I planned on putting a DVD-Rom in. I was also going to replace the 250GB drive with a 64GB SSD I'm not using for the OS. Then I was going to put in 4x 2TB drives for RAID. This will require 6 SATA ports. I may be mistaken, but I think you can replace the SATA controller with one of your own. It has a PCI Express x16 slot. [edit] From the PC Connection Express specs: Expansion slots: Slot 1: PCI-Express Gen 2 x16 connector with x16 link Slot 2: PCI-Express Gen 2 x1 connector with x1 Link Slot 2-2: PCI-Express x4 slot for optional management card Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Mar 22, 2012 |
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Mar 22, 2012 18:56
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A guy on [H] set up an N40L wiki: http://n40l.wikia.com/wiki/HP_MicroServer_N40L_Wiki
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Mar 22, 2012 19:16
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Civil posted:I was disappointed that the included 250gb drive is installed in one of the bay slots. I pulled it out and stuck it in the 5.25" area in the top, and used the motherboard's SATA port to control it (no bios mod needed - boots fine). Use the 4 bays for your TB drives. Oh, perfect, I didn't realize I could use the mobo's SATA port to control it. So what does the BIOS mod get you?
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Mar 22, 2012 21:54
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Civil posted:AHCI support for that SATA port. Wouldn't I want AHCI support for that SATA port?
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Mar 22, 2012 23:17
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If you guys are worried about the USB drive with FreeNAS, why not use the 250gb drive that comes with the N40L for the OS drive?
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Mar 26, 2012 20:36
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I'm gonna put the 250gb drive that comes with my N40L into the 5.25" bay, but I'd like to secure it. Do you guys know of any 3.5"-in-5.25" devices?
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Mar 27, 2012 18:15
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Ceros_X posted:http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Universal-Mounting-Bracket-BRACKET/dp/B0001UZQWG Civil posted:They're everywhere. Same concept as the 3.5" to 2.5" adapters. Thanks guys!
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Mar 27, 2012 19:14
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Longinus00 posted:RAID != backup. Even ZFS and raidzN are not infallible. This is absolutely true. What I do is keep a single 1TB drive in my desktop which I use for all my "important" stuff (documents, pictures, music - stuff I'd poo poo myself over if I lost). My NAS is used as a local backup of that stuff (I have a nightly robocopy script that backs everything up) in addition to storing non-important stuff (install files, movies, TV shows, documentaries, etc. - stuff I can lose and not cry about). The nice thing about this setup is that it's really the non-important stuff that takes up the most space. My important stuff only takes up about 300gb of space. Finally, I use CrashPlan on top of all that to once again backup the important stuff to the "cloud". CrashPlan (and most other cloud backup services) won't allow you to backup a NAS, so having the 1TB internal drive comes in handy. This setup gives me both a local and a non-local backup, so if my apartment were to burn down or whatever, I'd be covered.
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Mar 29, 2012 00:55
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Charles Martel posted:Are there any catches with services like CrashPlan and BackBlaze? I read a blog post saying that CrashPlan cuts the bandwidth of your data so much that it takes a year to upload 1TB of data. I don't want to run into things like that after I buy a year of service. CrashPlan explicitly states, "We don't limit in any way. No file size limits, no file type restrictions, no bandwidth throttling and no barriers, just backup." I've used BackBlaze in the past, and they didn't throttle either. When I was looking at online services a year ago, JungleDisk and Mozy did throttle.
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Mar 29, 2012 02:18
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My N40L came in Monday, and my 8gb of RAM came in today. I was waiting for the RAM to arrive before I set everything up. I did some research and decided to just use a 2GB USB thumb drive to run the OS (FreeNAS 8.0.4). Everything seems to be working great, but I'm wondering if I should be using a larger (and maybe faster) thumb drive. The main reason is because I know FreeNAS 8.2 will support plugins (which will take up some space), and also, I'm not sure how much space log files take up. 8gb and 16gb drives are really cheap on Amazon. Which thumb drives do you guys use?
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Mar 29, 2012 02:40
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Longinus00 posted:Does freenas really write logfiles to usb sticks? That sounds like a silly idea and would be the first thing I turn off. I thought it would, but after looking through all the options, I'm not sure it does actually. I got everything setup (permissions were a little wonky, but this page pretty clearly walked me through it once I discovered it). I'm transferring some files over, and I'm only getting write speeds around 50-60mb/s (these are large files, too - the ones being moved over now are ~3gb). How are some of you achieving 100mb/s write speeds?
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Mar 29, 2012 05:28
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IT Guy posted:Using a N40L with 4x 2TB 7K3000 drives, FreeNAS 8.04 /w ZFS, I get around 105MB/s average read and write. So take away overhead, I'm maxing out gigabit speeds. I have a switch that supports LAG and 9k frames, I just need to upgrade the NIC in the N40L before I can do that. Once done, I expect I'll see even faster speeds. My read speeds are 60-90mb/s. Are there any special settings you used, or is that basically out of the box? Did you force 4k sector sizes? I didn't manually configure any of the network settings, so I'm wondering if that's it. I'm getting these speeds over Samba/CIFS. Same for you?
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Mar 29, 2012 15:07
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IT Guy posted:My drives are not advanced format so it's using 512byte sectors. I've confirmed this using "diskinfo -v /dev/ada*" in the console. My settings are basically out of the box. We have identical setups - I also have 4x2TB 7K3000 drives. I didn't enable the 4k option, either. I check both "Large RW Support" and "Enable AIO" in the CIFS service options. Now I'm seeing bursts around 120mb/s. Average speeds are slightly up (~85mb/s read, ~70mb/s write). It may be the switch - I have an 8 port DLink green. To be honest, this doesn't really bother me that much. These speeds are still 2-5x what I got with my Thecus NAS. I was just wondering if there was some quick fix setting I should change. Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Mar 29, 2012 |
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Mar 29, 2012 18:30
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IT Guy posted:I would almost think it would be the switch because technically, you should be maxing out a single gigabit line. I do have Send files with sendfile(2) checked. I may look around and see if I can find a better switch just for the hell of it. What do you have?
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Mar 29, 2012 18:41
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IT Guy posted:I bought this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122381 Yeah, at that price, it's hard to beat, but $90 is a little over my budget right now. Maybe I'll setup a camelegg price alert on a few. [edit] I took a bunch of pictures while I was putting everything together, and I just created an Imgur album. Could be useful for anyone that needs to see some details without wanting to take it all apart. http://imgur.com/a/zefOx Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Mar 29, 2012 |
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Mar 29, 2012 19:38
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IT Guy posted:I'm not sure if you noticed but there was also a whole line of screws on the bottom of the door that is visible in one of those pics. There is enough for 5 drives. Wow, holy poo poo. I can't believe I missed that too!
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Mar 29, 2012 20:47
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thideras posted:I would suggest keeping an eye on eBay. I paid $30 shipped for a Dell Powerconnect 5224. All I had to do was replace a fan, which cost me $10. That's amazing. I'm definitely gonna watch eBay now. Thanks for the advice. This is how I setup SMART tests:  Short tests run nightly, and long tests run every 2 months. Does that make sense? Can the drives be used while the tests are running? Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Mar 30, 2012 |
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Mar 30, 2012 03:29
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IT Guy posted:These are my S.M.A.R.T. tests: Do you know how long the long test takes? I know the short test is on the order of a couple minutes, but the duration of the long test will probably determine how often I do them. On a side note, I ordered an 8gb Kingston thumb drive on Amazon for $6, and it arrived today. I love how easy FreeNAS made migrating.
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Mar 30, 2012 19:28
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Awesome, thanks guys! You've all been a huge help getting this all setup.
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Mar 30, 2012 19:56
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IT Guy posted:If you haven't already, you should schedule a cron job to do a scrub of ZFS between 2 weeks and 1 month. Oh, good call. I think I set it up to run every other Friday at 6m:  Is that right? Any other maintenance things I should be doing, or are SMART and scrubs it?
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Mar 30, 2012 20:20
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DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:I'd be all over the N40L if it wasn't plastic. And can anyone confirm the amount of HD seek noise it gives out? If hard drive seek noise bothers you that much, you'll never be satisfied in life. That said, you can hear it if you listen for it. But it's not like you're driving down a highway with the windows down. It's extremely quiet in general.
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Apr 3, 2012 02:10
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IT Guy posted:What kind of steps would I need to take if I wanted to upgrade to FreeNAS 8.2 when released? Unless 8.2 is weird, all you'd need to do is backup your config (just in case) and upload the GUI upgrade (open the web interface, Settings -> Advanced -> Firmware Upgrade (a button at the bottom)). That should be all it takes to upgrade. [edit] Oh, oops, I think you mean how you'd upgrade if you installed those plugins. Nevermind! Fangs404 fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Apr 5, 2012 |
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Apr 5, 2012 05:16
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D. Ebdrup posted:Buy another NIC, the built-in NIC has a problem with the bge driver that FreeBSD uses. Which NIC do you guys recommend? I mentioned some similar performance issues a few posts back, and I'm wondering if replacing the NIC will increase speeds. This guy has a $7 off promo for the next few days. Is there another you guys recommend? For FreeNAS, is it as simple as just inserting the new NIC and disabling the onboard NIC in the BIOS?
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Apr 5, 2012 17:45
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UndyingShadow posted:Well, this is great. Which version of FreeNAS? Maybe I misunderstood, but can you access the shell directly (i.e., by hooking up a monitor and keyboard to the N40L)? Are you running FreeNAS on a thumb drive or a hard drive?
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Apr 8, 2012 19:32
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Galler posted:Some flash drives just can't be made bootable for some reason so it might be that. I have the exact same flash drive, and I was able to install FreeNAS using https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer without any problem at all. That program works for img files but not iso, though.
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Apr 11, 2012 00:31
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