Stones Posted July 31, 2011 Share Posted July 31, 2011 (edited) Need some help. I am debating wheather to build a FreeNas server vs buying a prebuilt qnap. I could build it cheaper by using FreeNas but I am just wondering about reliability. I know with QNAP you will be paying (Alot!!) for the reliability. All suggestions/Info welcome The custom build so far is looking like this: Zotac H55ITX-C-E Motherboard Lian Li - Mini ITX PC Case Intel Core i5-650 3.20Ghz 4MB DDR3 LGA1156 Kingston ValueRAM ValueRam 2GB 1333MHz DDR3 Power Supply (Yet to be decided) 6x Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green SATAII 64MB Edited July 31, 2011 by Stones Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted July 31, 2011 Share Posted July 31, 2011 Personally I would buy a Qnap NAS, it has plenty of features and has a good reputation too. However if budget is an issue, you should be just fine with Freenas. Here is a list of compatible hardware. http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.2R/hardware.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DLSS Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 dont quote me on this but it think synology has a little more active community then qnap, both use pretty much the same base and both support ikg packages to add software i do like the web interface of synology more and believe it might have a few more functions by default. that said i bought mine to mod it into a download station and as to have something to ssh through ... and eventually went for the synology cos it was a little cheaper then the equivalent on the qnap side. i'm currently using a ds110j running dsm3.1, sabnzbd+, sickbeard, couchpotato, transmission, and a few other things ... did i mention it has 2 usb ports on the back wich support most usb hubs, and multiple external harddrives (so for example you can put 1 2TB inside , and hook 5 or so external HDD's up to it via usb, it can put them to sleep if not in use) the ds110j is pretty affordable these days i'd say check via their website : http://www.synology.com/us/products/DS110j/index.php best of luck :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 @DLSS, what's the performance on those synology boxes like? Any good! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DLSS Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 @DLSS, what's the performance on those synology boxes like? Any good! pretty great seeing i have it multitasking, and while doing downloads & uploads from bittorrent & usenet, and indexing my tv shows on sickbeard i am still able to stream 1080p from it, but that seems to be about the max i can pull from it, when i try to stream 2 hd it has a bit of difficulty. but for actual numbers i'l just point you to snb: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31125-new-to-the-charts-synology-ds110j afaik the ntfs problems have been solved since dsm 3.0 (also according to that article you can probably solder on a esata connector :P, so that's my next hardware mod as soon as my soldering skills improve) the only thing i'm not yet doing with it is use the itunes server and security center(it can manage and record up to i think 5 ipcams so cant comment on that. oh i forgot it can also run as a squeeze box server, hell with the right adapter or a set of usb speakers you can even use it as a stereo/webradio xD (including if i'm not mistaken an android & ios app to control it) i'm running it almost 24/7 for a bit over a year now with no problem (i have it shut down for 15minutes at night) and th little fan is quiet to unhearable (if anything its the HDD i hear xD). for some guides on the mods check their forums : http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewforum.php?f=77 or if you speak dutch, i find their dutchboards a tad better organised and better for guides : http://www.synology-forum.nl/viewforum.php?f=54 also there's a huge amount of easy to install packages, but in some cases i prefer installing the (not really) hard way over ssh cli because that way you can install em where you want and usually set wich ports to use while these packages set a default port for that package : superzebulon puts out some good packages and keeps em well updated : http://synoblog.superzebulon.org/ (he has packages for couchpotato, python, sabnzbd+, transmission, midnight commander, and he's working on a headphones package) merty also put out some great packages but isn't as frequent as superzebulon, but he was first to release a sabnzbd+ package, and his had the advantage of being able to update with the sabhelper (just feed it the official python package) or if that doesnt work update from sourceforge or repositories in the cli instead of waiting for a new ipkg to be released ... http://www.mertymade.com/syno/ some dutch guides on installing and configuring some of the packages : http://www.storvision.nl/synology-addons/ there is so much more to say xD i love this thing and i couldn't live without it now, hell i even turn my computer on less often, cos it auto downloads the movies and tv series i want, i can check in and add things over the net (so while @colledge i can simply tell it to download other things i find) and when i come home i just need to turn on my xbmc media center and let it play the new episodes :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 (edited) @DLSS, read the review on that NAS box and it doesn't seem to do RAID at all. That could explain why its struggling to stream x2 HD movies simultaneously. But it does look good to me. But since I am a power user, I would expect more from the box. Edited August 11, 2011 by Infiltrator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DLSS Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 @DLSS, read the review on that NAS box and it doesn't seem to do RAID at all. That could explain why its struggling to stream x2 HD movies simultaneously. But it does look good to me. But since I am a power user, I would expect more from the box. well it is only a 1 disk box,if you get the 2 disk version (so DS210J instead of the DS110J) it does support raid1 (and ofcoarse their multiple hdd nas systems support more raid options but are waay above my budget) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stones Posted August 22, 2011 Author Share Posted August 22, 2011 Unfortunatly I am looking for alot of space for the Nas. I plan on using to hold VM images, Stream media, host databases so would need a decent performance from the nas itself. Also raid is key for an extra layer of security. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infiltrator Posted September 5, 2011 Share Posted September 5, 2011 Unfortunatly I am looking for alot of space for the Nas. I plan on using to hold VM images, Stream media, host databases so would need a decent performance from the nas itself. Also raid is key for an extra layer of security. I would get a NAS box that does at least RAID 5 or RAID 6 (can sustain a failure of 2 HDDs at once) but I wouldn't entirely depend on it for data protection. I would still revert to the traditional back up method (tape drive). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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