Technical > PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews > NAS vs a file server

NAS vs a file server

I'm assuming that it would be similar in both situations. You would need to purchase identical equipment to recover the data on the drives.

I'd worry a lot less about system board failures than drive failures. If you put whatever you decide to purchase on a UPS you'll have a lot fewer issues in the long run.

Unless you want to play with a server I'd recommend the NAS route.
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When will the people realize that with DRM they aren't purchasing anything?

reply to SychoSly
Regarding your failed motherboard question, you can always attempt to move the drives over to an identical system. This means either an identical NAS box (or replace the motherboard if possible) or a new identical motherboard in the home-built system. As long as the drive controller is the same it should work. I say should because there are always unseen things that will invariably trip you up. Different firmware levels are often an issue preventing the data from being read.

This is why a standalone RAID card is best if you are concerned about retaining data. As long as you can plug the RAID card into a replacement system and it has appropriate drivers (just as the original install would need), you will be able to retrieve the data assuming whatever failed didn't take out the drives and/or RAID controller (not much you can do there).

The big question is what do you want to do with this? In almost all cases a NAS is a file server. Some pre-built NAS devices may come loaded with other features or tools such as torrent programs or DLNA music streaming support. That doesn't mean that functionality can't be added to a home-built file server too.

Do you want a file server running something like WHS or do you want linux or maybe FreeNAS/Openfiler?

If you are looking for RAID 5 redundancy (best choice for a file server in most cases) then I would strongly recommend a standalone, hardware RAID controller. Most NAS devices do not have such capability and implement RAID 5 in software requiring the host CPU to perform parity calculations. This is a resource intensive process and even on higher end systems can slow down transfers both to and from the server.

reply to SychoSly
One word: Off-site online storage...

reply to SychoSly
How much external storage do you need?

Do you have a few TB of media files?
Do you plan to backup system images?
Do you have a folder of documents that must-be-saved-forever?

Personally, I run a NAS instead of a file server and use online backup services for the rest.

I prefer the NAS as a good one is literally plug it in with a battery backup and it's good to go. Having a server means patches, dealing with random bugs, and potential security pitfalls. They also seem to be larger and use more power... I like to keep my electric bill low.

I use the NAS to backup my photos (I shoot RAW files with my camera... ~10mb/photo) as well as periodic system image backups of my laptop.

However, I run a mix of Dropbox or Carbonite on other PCs in my network to automatically backup (legitimate) files I own and work with frequently, namely my notes. This way if my laptop is stolen or a desktop fails, I know my most important files are encrypted (TrueCrypt) and backed up already.

Granted, I only use about 2-20 GB in files when dealing with online backup solutions.

Goodluck.

reply to John Galt

inexpensive server with raid is an oxymoron in my opinion. I would not rely on raid to recover my data. You have to factor in the card and the non-consumer disks.

I have a 10Tb server with 4Tb used - only 300Gb I cannot stand to lose and it's synced to 2 laptops and CrashPlan. The rest....easy come, easy go....

reply to SychoSly
Raid5 is generally discredited in the industry, as one of the premises on which its reliability predictions is based, has been proven false.

Specifically, the concept that the probability of failure of a drive is not influenced by the failure of any other drive in the array. Actual stats from systems in the field, show that once a single drive fails, the probability that another drive in the same array will fail during the 5 hours or more it takes to rebuild the array with a new drive, is 4x more likely than any other 5 hour period.

That's a tough thing to swallow, but if you think about it, it does make sense when you consider that you start out with 4 or more drives all of the exact same model, all purchased at the same time and probably mfgrd on the same day on the same production line with same component supplier, etc. So, if there is any issue in the mfgr chain that predisposes one drive to fail, others mfgrd at the same time, also suffer from the same predisposition. It's quite common to see this sort of thing in practice.

While rebuilding the array with a single new drive replacing the failed one, a second drive fails in the same exact way as the first. Then you have nothing. Your data is gone.

Don't do Raid5. You're better off doing it the google way. Just mirror everything 3 times and be done with it. Yes, it requires more drives for a given capacity, but it actually delivers on the promise of not losing your data.

KK

reply to SychoSly
I've used a couple different NAS boxes, and all of them seemed to suffer from the same issue - there would always be one program that would have fits saving a file that was on the NAS. It would usually manifest itself as just a long period of constant network activity, but it could literally take HOURS just to save some edits to a file that was only a few gig in size.

So, I repurposed some old PC hardware with FreeNAS. It worked okay, but as noted in another post, customization and maintenance were a pain. You couldn't just tell it, "Do this", you had to find, install, and configure something in order to get it to do just about anything.

I wanted an appliance that Just Worked, not another hobby!

I ended up with an HP Mediasmart Home Server, and it turns out that was just what I was looking for. It came with just about everything I needed, and add-ins were available for what it didn't include. File sharing is a snap, and unlike the NAS boxes I tried, saving files is almost as fast as if they were local.

Adding storage is as easy as opening the front door, pulling out an empty drawer, inserting the drive, and putting the drawer back in. It even asks you how you want to use the new drive. And you can tell it, on a folder by folder basis to mirror stuff, so if you lose a drive you wont lose any of your folders (you may lose backups, though).

So now I have my appliance (it's even about the size of a toaster ), and all my backup and sharing worries have gone away. Oh, and I think it uses only 45-50 watts,or something like that. Not enough to worry about.

reply to SychoSly
I would be looking to move off movies, pictures, and music off of my main PC. I currently have a Dell desktop with RAID mirroring setup and am using backblaze for online backup.

I am NOT looking for an incredible amount of storage. I need under 5TB and don't see myself surpassing that amount anytime soon.

When I mentioned file server, I was thinking more along the lines of an inexpensive home build. A lot of the motherboards now come with some sort of RAID capability. Purchase a decent motherboard/CPU combo, throw some ram in there, aloing with a few 1TB or 2TB drives and call it a day.

Once the media is on the NAS or server then use that to either stream to the Mac Mini that I have connected to my TV to watch a movie or look at pictures. Or download from the server and then watch.
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~Sly

The only issue I can see with that is using the onboard RAID is if a controller dies you have to find an identical board or one with the same RAID controller to regain access to the data. That said, a mechanical item is likely to fail more often than an electronic one (and if it's a power surge it's likely to take out both meaning you're screwed no matter what you did). Honestly I would worry more about the quality of the drives than the choice of motherboard or ability to replace the NAS if it dies.

You do have to worry about patches for a Windows based system but less so with a purpose built OS like FreeNAS or Openfiler. Yes there are still patches you can do but nothing like what Windows will require.

You don't have to go and put together some big rack mount or large tower file server. In fact the HP mentioned above is an excellent example of a small, purpose built system with just room for drives and the essentials. And yes many are about the size of a toaster lol.

The point about RAID 5 is technically valid but has a flaw. Lets say you get 3x 1TB drives and put them in RAID 5 for 2 TB total storage. If you got them from the same manufacturer and same batch yes you do have a higher chance of them all failing if it was an upstream chip problem or something. Now lets say you take 4x 1TB drives and put them in RAID 10. You have the same 2TB protected storage, and the added benefit of being able to sustain 2 simultaneous drive failures depending on which two drives (RAID 6 can also achieve this but it can be any two drives to die).

So again if you bought the drives from the same manufacturing lot how are the others any less susceptible to failure? By that logic, ALL your drives could fail at the same time. It's a valid point but even in Google's scenario of mirroring everything 3 times, if they bought all their drives at the same time from the same lot, all their drives could also fail at the same time. And yes, I've seen their whitepaper article on the subject. Again, it has a valid point but the only way to be truly safe is to buy your drives from different manufacturers or on different dates. Then again, RAID isn't a backup strategy (I know you know this SychoSly ), and I think that's the point they are trying to get across. People sometimes think "I have RAID, my files are fully protected" ehhh no they aren't.

Anyway, enough of that. I think using RAID 5 or if you can get the extra bays/drives doing RAID 6 (doubt any on board controller can do hot spares) will be just fine for your needs. RAID 5/6 is the defacto level for general file servers. For heavily write used file servers RAID 10 tends to be better but you have a 50% loss in available capacity and for nearly everyone that is an unacceptable loss.

reply to SychoSly
Thanks for all the responses to the RAID/Drives/Mobo failures.

So how about in terms of streaming and/or sharing files across multiple computers?
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~Sly

reply to JoelC707

Nope, that's not what I'm saying. Host CPU in my description = main CPU in yours. Host being the NAS box. The client has nothing to do with this and shouldn't anyway. The NAS box can have an additional XOR processor for RAID 5 parity calculations but most of the cheaper ones will not to save on cost.

When I mentioned slowing down the array on both transfers to and from the server, it will do that even with a decent dedicated hardware. I just recently decommissioned a file server because it was too slow (moved it's drives over to another server with a hardware controller).

This decommissioned server was an AMD Athlon II X2 250, 2 GB of RAM and using onboard ports for drive connection. Tried using the onboard controller for RAID and using Windows dynamic disk RAID 5. This was dedicated hardware, it was a file server for two people. Not anywhere near used to it's full capacity and yet in either case the best I could do either reading or writing to the array was 3-5MB/s. Pretty bad when a 100 meg Ethernet can do 10MB/s or a little faster and even USB can hit faster speeds.

reply to SychoSly
I’m using an HP EX490 MediaSmart Windows Home Server locally for all my backup and storage needs which includes media streaming. It has about ~14TB of storage and uses its eSATA port in conjunction with a four port external drive enclosure. I use an HP LX195 MediaSmart Windows Home Server for offsite storage (~640GB default but expandable).

I’ll also add that I was able to automatically backup both my Windows based systems and Mac systems (Snow Leopard via Time Machine) onto the local server but OS X Lion killed that functionality. I’m sure there is a fix for it though.

Anyway, I prefer the Windows Home Server non-RAID solution approach and have a couple of cheap NAS devices collecting dust.

I will say though, you might want to look into something like this:

Using Apple OS X Lion Server as a Home Server

reply to SychoSly
How many computers will be accessing the files on this server simultaneously? How many on average and how many do you expect at max?

reply to JoelC707

I would think so but I've encountered several issues like that with similar hardware. It was running 2008 R2 with nothing else special running on it, just file serving. I've only tried Openfiler in a VM nd it seems nice. I ended up moving the drives into my virtual server box and making the file server a VM. Same basic setup but now on a hardware controller (granted yes different NICs, CPU and such) and it will flood the 100 meg network (virtual server itself is on gigabit port but all workstations are 100 meg). Therefore I doubt it was the OS choice and I've never had other issues with that hardware but it was only pulling like desktop duty before being made into a server.

reply to SychoSly
I ended up with Synology 4 bay unit. One of the cheaper ones.
I use 2 arrays, mirrored for a storage of 3TB.
My main concern was power consumption. This unit is powered all the time. It is intelligent enough to shutdown disks when not in use. It gives a bit annoying lag when accessing a remote storage, but nothing crazy enough. Already had one drive fail. I was able to back up to external and use existing setup till replacement arrived.

Synology makes good units, they do the job. Works as media server for my playstation as well. Had IP secuirty cam software so I can use it as NVR
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Semper Fi

reply to SychoSly