I’m currently planning to build a low power nas for my upcoming minirack (10").
It’s going to store daily proxmox vm disk snapshots, some image files and some backups from my laptop, all via NFS. Plus some more in the future, but generally, it’s going to idle 95% of the day. Not decided on the OS yet, probably TrueNAS Core or OMV.
I already have an Olmaster 5,25" JBOD in which I’ll put 3 x 2,5" 2TB SSD via SATA. The JBOD needs a single Molex connector for powering all SSDs. So I need at least 3 SATA + Boot.
Some recherche led me to this post and I tend towards a similar build with a J4105-ITX (cheaper, probably little less power consumption, enough CPU ofr NAS).
These officially are limited to 8GB RAM but seem to work fine with more if you don’t update your BIOS which is not optimal but acceptable if everything else works fine. I’d like 16G for efficient ZFS but I guess even 8 are fine if it’s not doing much else (2GB base + almost 1 for each TB storage + OS), just don’t tell TrueNAS forum users.
While I don’t plan 10G ethernet now, the PCIe slot should leave that possibility open.
I read good things about PicoPSUs, but that depends on which case I get as they usually already got some PSU.
The case question remains open - I tend to get something like the LC-1350MI-V2 as it’s cheap, contains a 72W PSU and fits into the 10" rack nicely. In that case, I would need to go out of the case with the SATA cables and rack the JBOD on it’s own - which is fine since there’s pritable files for exactly that. Other possibility would be to get a case with bays for the 2,5" (seems unnecessary since I already have the JBOD and don’t want to add more requirements to the PSU) or get a case with a 5,25" bay (rare in cases this size).
I’m mostly asking for advice regarding the case/PSU thing but nothing is set in stone other than the SSD/JBOD combo. I’d like to keep the rest < 150€ and prefer used hardware, at least for the case. I’d be glad for your thoughts and ideas!
You might check the YouTube channel Craft Computing. He reviews hardware such as enclosures and knows his stuff (I found a similar channel with a host who seemed to be learning as he went, which is fine, we all start at the beginning, but I prefer someone who knows how to watch out for gotchas that comes from experience).
Thanks, I’ll see if I find something fitting there!
I’ll tell you a secret that will make you feel a bit better about it. I worked on the product, but because I only speak english, I had no idea that button existed until I dated someone from another country. Cheers.
What button?
I replied to the wrong comment in my inbox. My mistake.
There are plenty of Chinese manufacturers that are manufacturing NAS-centric motherboards that come with built-in processors, like Topton, etc, just search AliExpress for them. You might also consider buying a motherboard with ECC support.
Regarding the case Jonsbo has really nice cases, but they are a bit on the more expensive side. But there are plenty of no name brands also on AliExpress offering sturdy NAS cases, one example https://a.aliexpress.com/_mqCnPiL. The Pico PSU is great, and very power efficient, but ultimately what PSU you pick would depend on your case choice. Personally, I wouldn’t go with the case from your link and the outside drive bay.
Some inspiration for you: https://youtu.be/Jr5MjhgPz_c?si=PGh3Yyjwk8JiiHao
I stumbled over Topton as well, and ECC would be indeed some improvement, but most of these boards are fairly new without long time experience while the Asrock SOCs have plenty of posts like “been working fine for 5+ years in my NAS, just upgrading because I need XY now”.
Of course, more features and N100 are tempting but for a NAS they really aren’t needed. ECC, Multiple NICs would be the most interesting thing and maybe something like IPMI/vpro (didn’t check yet if they support that) but everything else won’t be used.
I’ve seen Jonsbo and they seem to be good, but most of them are larger than I’d like them in my small rack (2-3HU).
Gonna check that vid in my break, thanks a lot!
Yes, would be nice to post a follow up post with your setup once you build it.
I went that route two three months ago and eventually bought a second hand Lenovo Thinkcentre PC. Installed two NVMe SSDs for VMs , 1 SATA SSD for booting Proxmox and a single 12Tb HDD for media storage and one of the VMs is TrueNAS.
I played in the BIOS to enable everything possible to lower the power consumption and disabled some interfaces I am not going to use. So overall I paid a bit over 400 Euro for everything with 2x32GB RAM and the CPU is 8th gen, meaning I can use it for hardware encoding and decoding of h265.
The problem with my setup is that it is not much more extensible than that, as it had only one m2 slot, so I bought a PCIe to m2 extension card to fit the second m2 SSD.
The data I will store on the HDD is mostly media, that’s not critical, and I have a cloud backup for my more important documents automated with an rsync job. But I was also playing with the idea to build a proper NAS for a while.