this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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37
Recommendation for NAS (derpzilla.net)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I’m looking for some recommendations to improve my homelab. But first a bit of history to explain where I’m at and where I’m going. I currently have a super old Odroid C2 and a Raspberry Pi 4B. Everything is working great, but I’m missing two things in this setup: -The ability to transcode -A NAS Now a little bit about me, I’ve been using Linux for more than a decade, so I know how to do stuff, but when it comes to hardware, I have close to zero knowledge… So I was a bit surprised when I plugged 2 external HDDs on my rpi and it shutdown them after a few minutes. I found out that it was a power supply issue, so I did the first thing that came to my mind at this time: I bought another HDD with external power supply, to then find out that having a self powered and an external powered HDD would still fail (although it took longer).

So now I know my mistakes, I should have gone with a NAS instead. I checked the Synology NAS and found out NAS are actually quite expensive. I’m looking for at least 4 bays. I’ve been looking at some DIY NAS, but I’m a bit lost. I found some builds using a Jonsbo N2 that seems cool but at the same time I’m reading the fans are always running at full speed and I’m afraid that the power consumption will skyrocket.

So to sum up, I would like to have a NAS, ideally that can transcode and is low power. In the beginning, I wanted to have a NAS and a mini-PC that can transcode to replace my Odroid C2. But it seems the NAS are far more expensive than the mini PC. What are the recommendations here?

-Synology (Can it transcode?)

-A DIY (Jonsbo with an ITX board that can transcode)

-A DIY (Jonsbo with an ITX board just powerful enough for a NAS) + a mini PC

-Something else?

My budget was 500€, but it seems I won’t be able to do much below 700€

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Regardless if you use a NUC or NAS, I would recommend focusing on the processor. Make sure it can can handle the type of codec that you're wanting to transcode to and from (hevc, avc) on the transcoder device. Intel QSV is also pretty nice if your chip supports it and you don't care too much about quality.

Here's my (semi) educated opinion: Get a NAS just for storage and retrieval. Get a NUC with a modern chip and run your apps and transcoding on it. I have this in my lab and it allows me to upgrade in the future depending on what my needs are. If I need more processor power, I get a new NUC. If I need more storage, I can add an expansion device and/or replace the NAS completely.

If you combine the storage and transcoding into a single device on the NAS, you're locked in if your needs change and you will need to start looking at more expensive HCI options.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

and you don't care too much about quality.

QuickSync isn't too bad these days, and the UHD 770 can easily handle 5+ concurrent 4K transcodes.

This thread on the Emby forum says it can do 18 concurrent transcodes but I'm not so sure about that 🤔. This Reddit thread says 8-10 concurrent 4K transcodes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I would vote for running jellyfish off the NAS with powerful hardware Intel 8th Gen and up you should be fine. I personally don't transcode video on my server only audio.

If I'm not sure about a video format working, I'll manually re-encode the video with handbrake to h265 or av1. I also have used handbrake to create lower resolution copies of the same movies to reduce bandwidth needs when roaming on LTE.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I didn’t know about handbrake, maybe it can solve my issues if I transcode before playing the media

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah, you can re-encode on your PC to a compatible codec and that should solve your issues

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thanks

If I have a NAS and a NUC, do I need to have a 10Gb network? I don’t have this right now, that’s why I was trying to build everything in one case.

Also do you know the power consumption of a NUC when idling?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't think you really need a 10gb network, unless you're pulling down 4k and 8k video files or if you have over 10 users connecting at a time.

At idle, power consumption of the NUC is very low--about 5 watts. At load, it's about 100 watts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

At idle, power consumption of the NUC is very low–about 5 watts. At load, it’s about 100 watts.

100W? What kind of monster NUC are you running? O.o

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

How often do you need to transcode? If you're streaming on your local network, you shouldn't need to transcode. It's only needed if you're streaming while away from home.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Oh? This is weird, I have disabled transcoding on my rpi and I have some files that won’t play or the subtitles won’t load. I’m playing from my local network on an AndroidTV. I thought this was a file format issue and that transcoding would solve the issue

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

It's possible it's a file format issue. A video using a common format like H264 or H265 should work fine though. What format is the file and what codecs does it use?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The need to transcode has nothing to do with location. It has everything to do with the codec support on the client.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Modern clients support most of the modern codecs, so codec support isn't as bad as in the old days when we had to use sketchy codec packs.

I mentioned the location because the primary reason to transcode is that you don't have enough bandwidth to stream the original file. That's not an issue over a LAN.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The answer to your prayers. Basically, get a 7th gen Intel CPU. I'm trying myself, waiting on ebay.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

answer to your prayers

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Indeed, this looks really good! The only issue is that there are slots for only two HDDs. But looking at the cheap price I may go with something like this and look for a NAS once my disks are full!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Actually 2 3.5" and one 2.5", with 3 SATA ports, if you actually go for the the Elite Desk instead of Pro. Anyway, Look at it more like a concept. Get a mid tower of your goal is more flexibility. The key is the CPU for transcoding.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (9 children)

Why don't you get a server? You can pickup a old desktop for a fairly reasonable price and then install proxmox. From there you will need a pcie sata card and some drives. Create a new TrueNAS VM and pass though the sata card with virtio. You will have a virtual NAS and then you can install whatever you want in other VMs

Alternatively you could do just TrueNAS but if you are to the point you are worrying about transcoding you should go ahead and get going with virtualization.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I bought myself a second hand Intel Celeron J4105 SBC in a super cheapo mATX case with time bomb power supply and 16GB RAM for ~70-80€ IIRC. I haven't had a serious use for transcoding yet but that thing has an skylake-era iGPU, so it should be capable of that.

I Added a SATA HBA with Marvell chip (or SIL, don't get Asmedia) for ~20-30€ and had myself a NAS for like 100€.

10-20W at idle, so that's about 30€/Year at 0.3€/kWh.

Last year, a new generation of Intel's ATX SBCs finally released in form of the N100, so look out for those maybe. You could probably achieve basically the same using socketed low-end second hand chips from previous generations; I'd take a look at second hand prebuilts.

I didn't know about them when I specced mine but "Wolfgang's channel" on Youtube makes great content about this sort of thing: https://youtube.com/channel/UCsnGwSIHyoYN0kiINAGUKxg

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/channel/UCsnGwSIHyoYN0kiINAGUKxg

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Thanks I’ll look into this!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

DIY NAS all the way. I had a QNAP that had a known manufacturing defect in the Intel CPU and QNAP refused to provide any support or repair options despite knowing about the issue for a long time. I will never again bow down to silly corporate shenanigans when it comes to my data.

My DIY NAS is a bit...unconventional and definitely doesn't fit in your budget requirement, but I'll leave the parts list as an interesting thought experiment: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Lm92Kp

...okay, look, I know its a bit crazy. No, its A LOT crazy. But I genuinely feel like it isn't worth dealing with HDDs anymore when it comes to building a NAS. Back when I was using the QNAP, I had to replace each HDD at least twice and I spent $90-$100 bucks per drive. A NVMe SSD can easily outlast two or 3 HDD drives and you can get the MSI Spatiums on sale for $180, so in the long-term the costs even out. But the speed at which an NVMe array performs during scrubs and rebuilds blows a regular HDD array out of the water. Yes, its a higher up front cost, but an immensely better experience and the costs even out in the long run. Plus, a PCIe bifurcation expansion card is a hell of a lot smaller than 4 HDD drives, so it opens up your case selection for more compact builds.

I got the NZXT H1 because it was easy to build, came with cooler and PSU and just made things simple. It also goes on sale for around $180. You can definitely go with something else entirely. My thought process was that if I ever wanted a compact PC, I could possibly repurpose this case. This is just for me, it is not a hard recommendation.

I picked Ryzen 5600G because it was relatively cheap, decently powerful, and has HW h265 and h264 decode and H264 encode, which is basically what you need for Jellyfin or Plex. Just be aware that it only supports up to x4x4x8 PCIe bifurcation, so if you do go with a NVMe expansion slot, you can only put 3 on there and will have to use a mobo slot for the 4th. That's how mine is currently setup and it works great.

Yeah, its crazy, and I am sure some people here will scoff at the build, but after using it for 3 years, I just can't go back to regular HDD performance. An NVMe array just makes all of the services you host fly.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
DNS Domain Name Service/System
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
PSU Power Supply Unit
Plex Brand of media server package
RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
SBC Single-Board Computer
SSD Solid State Drive mass storage

11 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.

[Thread #488 for this sub, first seen 5th Feb 2024, 17:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'd still use a nas for storage and another system for VMs. Unless you want to make your VM server have an array itself, but then you have to mange that on the same server.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do I need a 10Gb network if separate the two systems?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

No

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I also had issues with raspberry pi 4 and USB drives. Even with working USB drives I prefer SATA by a mile. Like others said, transcoding can be avoided most likely, but you still have to deal with USB...

I ended up recycling old desktop PC components and made all-in-one NAS/media/docker server, while rpi is just 2nd pihole DNS server now. I have ATX MBO with 6 SATA3 + M2 slot and old, cheap intel G3930. The CPU supports QuickSync and it can transcode at least 3 1080p streams at once. I didnt test 4K since I dont have any screen with that resolution. My setup is probably <100€ used without drives. It drains 5x more electricity compared to rpi4, but thats still low IMO ~30W (~30€/year where I live). CPU temp is usually 30-40 C so its super silent (case fans are not even running), only HDD is making noise. It was worth for me, Im super happy with upgrade

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Indeed, this sounds nice! I think 30W to power the server + 6HDD is really fine. I didn’t understand what parts you used from your old laptops?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Indeed, this sounds nice! I think 30W to power the server + 6HDD is really fine.

I wasnt clear about that. I have only 2 SSDs and one HDD (thats ~30W), but motherboard supports up to 6 SATA disks. Im afraid power would increase with 6 HDDs. For example, I had it at 22W with 3 SSDs (before I bought that HDD)

what parts you used from your old laptops?

I used parts from desktop PCs, not from laptops. So I have:

  1. MSI Z270-A PRO
  2. G3930 with stock cooler
  3. 2x 8GB RAM (bought these)
  4. Forgot what PSU exactly, but 550W (would be better if its rated power is lower)
  5. Made a custom case with 2 fans
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

While it's not re-using parts, there are PCIE M2 adapters that provide up to 4 M2 slots, so there are ways of increasing storage substantially within limited physical space.

M2 pricing isn't terrible today, since pretty much all laptops use it now.

There are also cages for mounting 4 SSDs in a single 3.5 mount.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Why do you need to transcode video?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I have some files that won’t play on my AndroidTV, I thought transcoding is what I was missing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

https://xigmanas.com/xnaswp/

I've used this on a variety of boxes since it was called freenas back before a fork long ago. A NAS doesn't need a whole lot of power in itself if the job is just to store and offer disk space. My current setup is in a full 2U rack server with 14 drives (12 spinning, 2 ssd) and it averages 169 watts. If you do the transcoding on whatever box is actually accessing the data it can save on the need for extra compute on the NAS.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Can you share what hardware you are using to run this?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Currently a R730XD, but it has been run on plenty of other things down to a 1.3Ghz/4GB IPX box at the beginning. It's pretty stripped down to run as an embedded system rather than a full server OS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You could take a look here https://forums.serverbuilds.net/c/builds/18

I suggest LGA1151/1200 so it's more power efficient in idle

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Thanks! I didn’t know about this website.

Edit: After checking it out. This is exactly what I was looking for!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The go-to 4-bay Synology NAS would be the DS920+, as the newer DS923+ doesn't support hardware transcoding.

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