Low power NAS hardware recommendations

[j911]

Hi,

 

I'm currently running TCRP with DSM v7 on a HP Micrsoserver gen8 with 4 3TB disks. It runs 4-5 docker containers for adguard, Ubiquiti wifi manager and planning to install BlueIris and potentially plex as well.

 

My energy monitor display say it's using around 100-150W. I'm looking to move from mechanical to SSD for the disks and switch to something like a Lenovo USFF pc running an i5 6th gen and NVME + SATA SSD(some on eBay for around £100 with 8GB RAM and 256 NVME and i5 or i7 6th gen). Peformance isn't much of a concern as it's used in a home environment just be myself. Would like to keep the budget under £200 if possible.

 

Thought I would get some recommendations first to see what others have done.

 

Thanks

Edited October 1, 2022 by j911

[CopeyJC]

Hi @j911,

 

Im looking to do the same - Did you make any progress?

 

Many thanks

[j911]

I haven't come up with a long term solution. I'm looking at the likes of a Lenovo M920 but for now I have a M910q with ESXi 7 installed and a USB 3.0 dock with 2 x SSD's presented to ESXi as local storage (You have to disable the USB arbitrary service). Xpenology is running as a VM set to autoboot. So far it's been stable and power usage is almost negligible. I will eventually upgrade to the M920q as it supports 2x NVME's when available in the UK as that is sufficient for my needs. 

 

It also allows me to run other VM's which has been a bonus and it supports AI on a second instance of DSM by exposing the builtin intel UHD 630 graphics  Also using CMS provided a free 3rd licence for my cameras. So it's been a win for me.

 

The M910q also supports intel vpro which uses the single nic to provide remote management, though I had to buy a DVI dummy dongle to ensure display is available in headless mode.

 

[namvan]

Interested to know whether you have measured the power again from both that M910q and the USB 3.0 dock.

[j911]

Well, the TAPO plug also powers an Asus RT-AC86U and a couple of other devices, Siemens N300A and a gigaset handset. With all these plugged in 24/7 the Tapo plug is showing realtime draw as 20W, compared to the 100-150W realtime draw by the Gen8 microserver it is certainly a significant saving for me.

 

Monthly averages:

March: 12.25 kWh

April: 15.179 kWh

 

DSM is also running some docker containers 24/7 Adguard Home, Unifi Wifi controller ,HomeAssistant and WatchTower to update the afore mentioned containers which all run 24/7.

I'm hoping to replace the Asus Router as I don't use the wifi function from it and replace it with x86 version of DD-WRT, OpnSense or SophosXG when I have time. Hopefully that helps reduce the power draw further.

Hope that helps.

Edited May 18, 2023 by j911

[j911]

Daily average after with the USB dock is 0.52 kW/h or monthly 15.2 kWh. Without the dock it was 0.44 kW/h. So it costs me approximately £3 a month on my tariff.

[namvan]

Thanks for the info. It's a large reduction to celebrate.

Do you have good transfer speed using the USB Dock? Copying large files, like 5-20GB would be at > 100 MB/s?

[j911]

I believe so, this is a disk to disk transfer in the dock

 

The second is downloading from Dock ssd to laptop over ethernet which is between 88-101MB/s read using Chrome.

Upload direct to Lenovo is over 100MB/S, to do dock it was averaging 60MB/s. 

 

Those external disks contain data which is mostly read but seldom new data gets written to it. It can also vary between Docks, cable quality etc etc.

Edited May 20, 2023 by j911