NasMaster Posted March 12, 2016 Share #1 Posted March 12, 2016 My First post here: So thanks for suggestions and helpful info however trivial. I'm looking to build my first Xponolgy nas with some future proofing in mind. So my criteria will be a 6 to 8 disk array running raid 6 with either a hardware raid card and semi decent board cpu and ram or running as server board and use the soft raid feature of the mobo and loose raid 6, what to run instead please. I am willing to put some decent monies down for the right equipment but need reliability and ease of use and will be looking for you guys to help me pick the right route, with a view to running version 6 of the software that is in RC at present. I also need to be able to run plex and Logitech media server on the Nas SELF BUILD options: 1) LSI MegaRAID SAS 9261-8i SGL LSI LSI00279 MegaRaid LSIBBU09 Battery Silverstone SST-DS380B case be Quiet SFX PSU = 300W Asus H81I-Plus Mini ITX Motherboard 8Gb RipjawsX 1600Mhz Ram~ 5-4460 3.2Ghz 4 core cpu or 2) Do away with build above and use this board with onboard raid and ECC RAM ASRock C2550D4I I have be running an original infrant nas NV+ (Netgear) for 10 years but I'm a not Linux geek i can run basic commands but would rather not have a build that is needing constant attention. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pastrychef Posted March 12, 2016 Share #2 Posted March 12, 2016 If you will be using XPEnology, there's no need for hardware RAID. The Synology OS handles the RAID. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NasMaster Posted March 12, 2016 Author Share #3 Posted March 12, 2016 Thanks for the the reply Pastrychef, Just thought hardware raid was a preference for raid over software raid. Is it as reliable doing it from a mobo over a dedicated card. Have you experienced any failures using this method and did you recover your system ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pastrychef Posted March 12, 2016 Share #4 Posted March 12, 2016 I have an 8 drive SHR2 array in my XPEnology build and I have swapped out six of them to upgrade to higher capacity drives. It took a long time but I never experienced any problems or lost any data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brantje Posted March 12, 2016 Share #5 Posted March 12, 2016 Here another happy user. First in a vm to test it, then i switched to bare metal. Speeds are great, support is good, and the community is awesome =). As for your hardware, what are your requirements? Going to do alot of VM / plex? Or just for storage / owncloud? Posted via Xpenology.us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NasMaster Posted March 13, 2016 Author Share #6 Posted March 13, 2016 Not sure of the term bare metal. I will be using plex but shall only be transcoding occasionally, Own Cloud is a must. but need long term storage area for photos etc virtual machine is something i am getting into. Video cam server for storage But goal is a solid array with high availability and little maintenance, So question is will my hardware run out of the box with Xpenology and be reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pollux4092 Posted March 13, 2016 Share #7 Posted March 13, 2016 I would suggest to have a look at http://xpenology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10973 to see if all the hardware you will buy is supported. If you are planning to go virtual (ESXi maybe?), my advise would be to go for a platform wich supports VMDirectPath, so you can use a cheap controler. https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&externalId=2142307 Baremetal is the simpelest way to get up and running. Just write an USB stick and you're away. (and maybe, depending on your hardware tweak the lancard) I just bought a Proliant ML10v2 runs really nice and not to expensive.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pastrychef Posted March 14, 2016 Share #8 Posted March 14, 2016 Not sure of the term bare metal. I will be using plex but shall only be transcoding occasionally, Own Cloud is a must. but need long term storage area for photos etc virtual machine is something i am getting into. Video cam server for storage But goal is a solid array with high availability and little maintenance, So question is will my hardware run out of the box with Xpenology and be reliable. Bare metal means to run XPEnology directly rather than going through virtualization. Look at the hardware I use in my signature. I have this system running 24/7 with Plex. I stream to my Apple TV 4 with absolutely no problems. I have never tried Own Cloud or security cameras. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brantje Posted March 14, 2016 Share #9 Posted March 14, 2016 I run ownCloud on my Xpenology, is fast =). As for security camera's, i don't know how your russian is, but in the russian forum section i've seen a Survailance station with 99 cam license. How many camera's are you going to attatch? Will they record 24/7 or just when there is motion? I don't know the plex preformance of the C2550 maybe another user can shine some light on this. Posted via Xpenology.us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Razor237 Posted March 14, 2016 Share #10 Posted March 14, 2016 I just built My first XPenology nas after my Synology system took a surge and died. Im still in the process of tweaking and testing before i start to use it full time. I went bare metal on a Gigabyte GA-B85M-DS3H-A, I5-4960K, 8GB Ram. 2x4TB drives, HP NC364T 4-port nic. So far it seems to run good. Ive tested plex and was able to transcode a 4K movies with out issue so far, cpu went to 98% for 5 min then went to 20-40% for the rest of the movie, I have installed surveillance Station and added two cameras it works just fine as it did on my original DS. I have a need for more cameras now so the only thing im worried about is buying camera licenses and adding them to my xpenology nas, ive been searching and have read mixed comments on it so that would be something to look at. I havent tested anything else yet still working on it. only issue ive had so far is i cant get it to shutdown the pc and wont always restart. i assume it has something to do with a driver and my motherboard not list as a supported device or a bios setting. just figured i would share my experience so far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
butter_fry Posted March 14, 2016 Share #11 Posted March 14, 2016 When I built this box in my signature, the branch of choices you laid out looked similar to mine. Though I was looking at the C2750 (8core version). My needs were similar, but I also wanted do do some virtualization of a few preexisting servers I've got. I loved the idea of the Avodon boards, It seems like they are built with the NAS appliance in mind. the build cost would be fantastic considering you don't have to buy a CPU or an extra SATA card. But in the end, it comes down to cpu horsepower. While others may disagree, the ATOM chips just aren't there yet for what we're asking the xpenology boxes to do. I'll again reinforce this is for me, but this is what I found in my research. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... Hz&id=2331 <-- notice the single thread performance. Not all processes are multi threaded. Loading up one cpu intensive task on a single core can be a killer here with this chip. http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu ... Hz&id=2230 <-- now look at this single thread performance. One core has nearly the same power as the entire chip. Of course you can say you can't compare Atom to i5, but we have to, this is what you're asking. My experience over the past few years with Plex tells me don't under power it. Plex is great, like the ultimate swiss army knife, it'll do anything well, some things great, others are a compromise. But the one thing that stands out, is even if you don't think you'll be transcoding all that much, you will transcode more than you think. The variety of devices and screens we ask plex to serve to demands it. Even if on paper it should be able to direct stream, sometimes it forces a transcode. My choice was a bit more clear, i knew i needed and wanted the power to do multiple streams, and multiple VMs. I needed the high single thread rating and multiple threads. Of course I don't have an that C2750 to compare, but numbers don't lie. I'm sure it does fine, but throwing more cores at an atom only makes it wider, not more powerful. I'm of a mind to spend a few dollars more and overbuild, having built servers for a living and countless PCs this is my accumulated opinion. I really want those Atom boards to work, but they just don't have enough horsepower for all the things xpenology can do. I know others will protest, but again the numbers don't lie, just make sure the numbers are right for your uses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Razor237 Posted March 14, 2016 Share #12 Posted March 14, 2016 If a main purpose is Plex i would agree with butter_fry . CPU is very important when it comes to plex and transcoding. The only way i see to never have to transcode media was if you were going to have all your media in the perfect universal format for the devices your playing it on. Most of my media is setup for my main device with high quality full audio tracks so my server will direct play to that but all my other devices have to transcode and if your cpu isnt up to the task it can be a nightmare lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
butter_fry Posted March 14, 2016 Share #13 Posted March 14, 2016 .." all your media in the perfect universal format for the devices your playing it on" .. and as we know this is a pipe dream. Plex can even do that for you in the background, but then you've got your CPU loaded up most of the time anyhow with background transcodes. Of course i'm talking video here.. audio should be pretty straighforward for any modern processor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unlight Posted March 15, 2016 Share #14 Posted March 15, 2016 I run the i5 mentioned in the initial post with 4gb ram. 24/7 plex with 2-3 streams simultaneously, 2 of them transcoding full HD stuff. Besides 6 cams recording permanently, timemachine and Windows backups running frequently. Only problem was the crappy Realtek driver which caused lockups with too many connections, but since the last xpenoboot version that's history and the machine works like a charm. Unlight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Razor237 Posted March 15, 2016 Share #15 Posted March 15, 2016 I run the i5 mentioned in the initial post with 4gb ram. 24/7 plex with 2-3 streams simultaneously, 2 of them transcoding full HD stuff. Besides 6 cams recording permanently, timemachine and Windows backups running frequently. Only problem was the crappy Realtek driver which caused lockups with too many connections, but since the last xpenoboot version that's history and the machine works like a charm. Unlight Did you have any issues with adding more camers ? I wanted to add more cameras to surveillance station but have been hesitant to buy the activation keys Razor237 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unlight Posted March 15, 2016 Share #16 Posted March 15, 2016 I had the keys from my real diskstation. Everything went fine when transferring them to xpenology. Gesendet von meinem RAINBOW JAM mit Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Razor237 Posted March 16, 2016 Share #17 Posted March 16, 2016 I had the keys from my real diskstation. Everything went fine when transferring them to xpenology. Gesendet von meinem RAINBOW JAM mit Tapatalk Good to know, thanks for the info Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NasMaster Posted March 16, 2016 Author Share #18 Posted March 16, 2016 I must thank you all for your input, lots to read up for now maybe some more questions later, I think the i5 route is key for me. and as was said earlier atom cpu's are limited in the transcoding world and not to sure if 8 cores would be supported by the Xpenology not that i was thinking of going that route. Just going to start the VMware requirements and will take more advice later. Why is it that the supported hardware list does not show suitable motherboards reading through chip controllers is a pain unless i missed something obvious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pollux4092 Posted March 17, 2016 Share #19 Posted March 17, 2016 If you go for an intel c222 with xeon cpu all options are open.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brantje Posted March 17, 2016 Share #20 Posted March 17, 2016 I must thank you all for your input, lots to read up for now maybe some more questions later, I think the i5 route is key for me. and as was said earlier atom cpu's are limited in the transcoding world and not to sure if 8 cores would be supported by the Xpenology not that i was thinking of going that route. Just going to start the VMware requirements and will take more advice later. Why is it that the supported hardware list does not show suitable motherboards reading through chip controllers is a pain unless i missed something obvious. Will be added in next version, good idea =). Posted via Xpenology.us Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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