Hello there,

I am in search of inspiration for solving several issues I am having.

That’s my situation:

  • ageing Synology NAS (4x4tb drives) with multiple docker containers running on it.
  • old gaming rig (i7-6700, Fedora Server) which I use sparingly for game server hosting

What I want to achieve:

  • Upgrade/replacement of my NAS
  • Offsite backup
  • ~20tb of usable storage (~2-3tb of actual important stuff)

Primary use cases:

  • SMB share
  • Docker hosting (Pihole, unbound, Jellyfin, *arr etc.)

Newly added requirements:

  • Cloud storage for mobile devices of close family members on and off site

Complications:

  • Electricity cost is a scam where I live (~0.40$ per Kwh)

I have an ageing NAS whose capacity is getting to its limits storage and horsepower wise. And since I have to do work on my setup anyways, I was wondering whether you might give me some inputs on what I could/should use to achieve my goals.

  1. My NAS is getting to its teenage years and I am getting worried about its eol. Buying some old server HW is out of the question because of power usage and availability. What are my best options? Build something myself with current hardware? Buy a new NAS? What is a good way to migrate data to a new system? From a power consumption standpoint are SSD’s better than HDD’s?

  2. I have an off site which i visit regularly where I could either place backup drives or put a system in a rack. What would be a good option for an offsite backup solution?

  3. I have gotten my aunt (77) a tablet during covid so she could video call us. In recent months a smartphone has entered the ring because daily life is getting impacted when you don’t have one. Now she is all into taking pictures and videos and the storage on her phone is not enough. What are my options? I’ve experimented with Nextcloud but I am uncertain whether it is the right solution, especially from a usability perspective. (I want to avoid third party services for storage)

I will very much appreciate your input since I’m not working in the field and am getting to the edge of my own knowledge at this point.

Thank you in advance for your input.

  • @TCB13English
    1•1 year ago

    What I am not comfortable with is that that generation is already end of life

    The thing is that those are very cheap as people want faster things for Windows desktops and as we both know Samba won’t ever saturate that CPU on a 1GbE to 2.5GbE link. If you can get a last-gen low power solution like an i3 in the same price ranges go for it and ignore my previous advice. But you know an i5-6500 or i5-7400 + motherboard + RAM for 70-80€ is a good deal and enough for the use case.

    For 200€ I can get 4TB SSDs.

    Sorry, my mistake. I meant 4TB.

    Does BTRFS include Raid support?

    Yes many possible configurations and snapshots. BTRFS also tends to be way more reliable than Ext4 and others when the hardware fails, you experience sudden power losses etc. More: https://linuxhint.com/set-up-btrfs-raid/

    As fro Syncthing… I’ll have a look at that.

    Syncthing + FileBrowser is a “killer” setup for a personal cloud. I’m even amazed you’ve never heard about / used Syncthing as it is very popular in self-hosting. You can also use it to sync your main NAS with the remote backup. Very reliable and easy to setup.

    Docker is just nice and simple. I remember times when deploying software on a single server was hell on earth.

    Never had that experience… if the software is properly done and you aren’t using a weird distro things should work out well. Eventually you can use LXC/LXD or even systemd containers to isolate problematic applications without having to deal with all the Docker overhead and mess.

    • @Molecular0079English
      1•1 year ago

      Yes many possible configurations and snapshots.

      Except RAID 5 and 6! Those are still broken on BTRFS and not recommended for use by the devs. It’s unfortunate because I just setup a DIY NAS and I had to go with ZFS because of this.

        • @Molecular0079English
          1•1 year ago

          Eh, RAID 5 and 6 are still viable for home deployments. Not a lot of people want to be running massive drive arrays or expensive disks at home just to get decent storage. I ran a 4x 4TB RAID 5 for close to a decade and it’s survived 4 drive rebuilds. The Intel chip on the QNAP machine I was using to maintain that array died before the array itself did. Now I have an NVMe SSD-based array, so drive rebuilds are even less of a concern.

          The other reason why I brought it up is that the article you linked doesn’t even mention BTRFS RAID 5 and 6 issues until all the way down at the bottom of the article in a small paragraph, when really it should be in bright red letters at the beginning.