NAS disk problem

Joined
Nov 8, 2014
Messages
12,085
Hmmm.

I have also my OpenSuse Linux machine - my previous gaming machine, so it indeed has sufficient power. I could try to see how that would work, just as an experiment - won't, unlike buying a new NAS, cost me any money. If that works OK, I can always get me a cheap dedicated server at a later stage. I have 4 6Gb disks available. If I had bought a NAS box, I would have set them up in either a RAID 5 or RAID 10 configuration. I see that ZFS support both, despite "ZFS uses odd (to someone familiar with hardware RAID) terminology" (according to http://www.zfsbuild.com/2010/05/26/zfs-raid-levels/).

Sadly, I don't know as much about Linux as I used to. So if you would answer a few questions, that would be fine - just to get me in the right direction.

  1. How would I access the RAID from windows clients. Samba? I assume I can set up the usual home/public/other shares.
  2. A NAS box typically comes with two gigabit network interfaces, which can be linked. Is that possible with a Linux/ZFS setup?
  3. A NAS box can be set up to use an SSD as a cache (The Synology I'm considering suppports M.2s for that purpose). Can that be done on Linux/ZFS?
  4. Applications: On my NAS I've been using among the following applications: iTunes server, Plex server. Are these available under linux? I won't ask about mysql-server and source control, as I would be very surprised if those were not avaliable.
pibbur who no doubt will come up with other questions.

PS: No promises. I'm still leaning towards an-easy-to-setup commerical NAS box. DS.

For the above and for simplicity sake, you may want to look at some dedicated Media Server OSes. I myself prefer unRaid, especially for Plex. There is a cost depending on how many disks you have (3 tiers), but there's a trial period that fully functional. It doesn't support ZFS natively, but I prefer not to deal with ZFS headaches for non-mission critical data such as Plex. unRaid has a very flexible system that is basically JBOD but with up to 2 parity drives. So you can suffer 2 drive failures, but even if you suffered 3, data is recoverable off of all remaining disks, because it doesn't stripe. Takes a few head scratches for people used to raid, to get around. And if you want to add a drive, you just... add a drive. A lot more simple that a ZFS array.

If you do have critical data that you can't lose (family photos/videos, etc) then FreeNAS is probably the one to try for its ZFS abilities (I personally would still prefer unRaid). For best results though, it is ECC RAM dependent (for cache instead of your SSD). For lower system requirements, try OpenMediaVault. It has a ZFS plugin. All of them can be setup to work with Plex and iTunes. Also all simple (relatively) web based interfaces.
 
Joined
Feb 19, 2009
Messages
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Calgary, Alberta
OK, I can configure a RAID under opensuse using the yast administration tool. No need to download anything. NB! This is an experiment, doesn't matter now if other solutions like zfs or whatever is better.

But I have one question: What mount point should I use? The raid will mostly be used from windows clients, and I want a home directory for individual users in addition to public, media, music etc.

Any recommendations?

pibbux

Edit: the default suggestions by suse is /srv and /usr/local.

Edit2: I chose /srv.
 
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Yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about which directory to use. Different distros have different conventions for where they tend to put things, but as long as the share isn't in a system folder with permissions complications, it should be fine. Hopefully yast will make a lot of the process quite straightforward.
 
Joined
Nov 8, 2014
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I am a bit ashamed, and I thoght maybe I shouldn't post this. But you've all been a great help, and I think that I owe you to tell you how it went.

tl;dr; I've ordered a Synology DS918+ NAS.

Installing a RAID10 on my Suse machine was easy, yast was very user-friendly. But installing Samba proved to be much more difficult. Installing Samba itself was not too bad, and I could connect to my home directory. But making the NAS accesible turned out to be difficult. It may have had something to do with the fact that I installed the RAID as an addition to an existing Linux system, I did not reinstall Linux, which maybe would have made things easier. Anyhow, clearly I've done something wrong or I didn't know what I was doing. And even more clearly, my Linux knowledge leaves something (a lot) to be desired.

So, I realized it would take me a lot of time and a lot of trial-and-error to get all the components/services/applications I wanted working and easily accessible for me and my family. And I didn't want to spend that much time on it. (Heck, I missed yesterday's mountain track on Tour de France, trying to configure the system).

Besides, the Synology comes with a PACS server application, and as a former radiologist wannabe, I simply couldn't miss that opportunity (correct English?). What remains now is to get me an MR-machine. I can get one with a permanent magnet (so I won't need all that Helium) for as little as 100,000 USD (admittedly with limited use).

Trying to get this to work on Linux was absolutely worth it, and could have saved me quite a lot of moner. However, in the end I realized getting it to work as I wanted, would take more effort than I was willing to spend (correct English?).

Again, thank you all for great help in this.

pibbur who will be NASed again on Monday (probably).
 
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Just an fyi:

It has nothing to with the fact that you installed the raid after the fact (but more to do with the fact that the default configuration only knows about one path). You have to add a configuration file and set a password for the samba user - here is an example of one I did:
(/etc/samba/samba.conf)

[xxx_photo]
path = /home3/xxx/photo
available = yes
valid users = yyy
read only = no
browsable = yes
public = yes
writeable = yes

[xxx_games]
path = /home3/xxx/games
available = yes
valid users = yyy
read only = no
browsable = yes
public = yes
writeable = yes

(note that the user in this case can have a unique password - there is a sep samba password that you can set with smbpasswd (i have mine to set blank so that the windows machine can access without a password - i download gog games to /home/xxx/games/…. and then can access them via the windows box)

I am a bit ashamed, and I thoght maybe I shouldn't post this. But you've all been a great help, and I think that I owe you to tell you how it went.

tl;dr; I've ordered a Synology DS918+ NAS.

Installing a RAID10 on my Suse machine was easy, yast was very user-friendly. But installing Samba proved to be much more difficult. Installing Samba itself was not too bad, and I could connect to my home directory. But making the NAS accesible turned out to be difficult. It may have had something to do with the fact that I installed the RAID as an addition to an existing Linux system, I did not reinstall Linux, which maybe would have made things easier. Anyhow, clearly I've done something wrong or I didn't know what I was doing. And even more clearly, my Linux knowledge leaves something (a lot) to be desired.

So, I realized it would take me a lot of time and a lot of trial-and-error to get all the components/services/applications I wanted working and easily accessible for me and my family. And I didn't want to spend that much time on it. (Heck, I missed yesterday's mountain track on Tour de France, trying to configure the system).

Besides, the Synology comes with a PACS server application, and as a former radiologist wannabe, I simply couldn't miss that opportunity (correct English?). What remains now is to get me an MR-machine. I can get one with a permanent magnet (so I won't need all that Helium) for as little as 100,000 USD (admittedly with limited use).

Trying to get this to work on Linux was absolutely worth it, and could have saved me quite a lot of moner. However, in the end I realized getting it to work as I wanted, would take more effort than I was willing to spend (correct English?).

Again, thank you all for great help in this.

pibbur who will be NASed again on Monday (probably).
 
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Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
7,758
Location
usa - no longer boston
Thank you, @you;.

Come to think of it, I have a couple of 3Gb disks and one partially unhealthy 6Gb. I could set up a RAID 5 on my Linux machine for further experiments. Which may result in more questions. Yes, I know that in a RAID 5 the 6Gb disk will give me only 3 Gb, and that I should replace it, which I will do as soon as I can get a new 3Gb NAS disk at a ridiculously low price.

pibbux who would like the watch to know that his Linux machine has a mathematics theme, and he has therefore named it "sinux". And who likes doing things like that.
 
I guess you can't wait to get a status update. Well, you probably can, but you'll get one anyway.

My Synology DS918+ has arrived, and I've set it up, using 3 new 6TB WD Red Pro disks in a RAID 5 configuration. Synology offers proprietary RAID configurations (called SHR), which among other things handles disks of different sizes better than standard RAID setups. I chose standard. In the fourth bay I installed a spare SSD-disk as a read-cache. Don't know if it will make a difference, but since I had the disk, I might as well try.

BTW: 3 of the disks in my previous NAS failed within the last 3 months. I now think that the NAS may have had something to do with it. Fortunately I'd made a complete backup when the disks started to fail.

The NAS comes with 4Gb RAM, officially upgradable to 8Gb. Unfortunately, Synology only supports its own RAM, which is prohibitively expensive (and not easy to get in Norway). However, on the net it's repeatedly claimed that the CPU supports 16 Gb, and users have instaleld 16Gb without any problems. So I bought 16Gb Mac RAM (suggested by my pusher) and it works very well. It may void the warranty, but actually, it's years since I had any equipment fail before warranty expired, so I take the chance. The 2x8 Gb cost me approximately the same as 4 Gb Synology RAM

Now I'm busy restoring the backup, which will take some time. After that I will install the PACS server, and an OsiriX DICOM viewer. Yay!

pibbur who can't wait to play a radiologist wannabe again.

PS. I've also installed 2x3 Gb disks in a RAID 1 configuration on my Linux machine, as a learning project. DS.

PPS. I will of course eventually program a DICOM viewer. Just for fun. DS.
 
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