Just for clarification, the Pegasus R4 or R6 on Thunderbolt is a DAS and not a NAS.

But of course they also have NAS called SmartStor.

I've no experience using the DLink as a DLNA. Do you have the latest firmware? Usually the commercial type lower end NAS are not able to decode and stream videos reliably due to lack of internal CPU power. If they are able to, somehow something is compromised.

Solution? Get a capable network type media player or a HTPC to playback the file that is located in the DLink 320L NAS. The DLink as a storage and the media player or HTPC does the playback decoding. Preferably wired network and not wireless.

Yes, 2 x 2TB = 4TB in RAID 0.

2 x 2TB = 2TB in RAID 1.

No, you cannot just switch to RAID 1 or RAID 0 like a flip switch. You loose all data when you switch to either RAID format. Therefore once you have decided on which RAID to go with, you need to stick with it. If not, it'll be a painful process of transferring / backing up files.

That said, you can use RAID 0 provided you understand the consequences.

I'm going to guess that it will be expensive.

For the first part, you sound like you know what you want and talk about. Yes, Thunderbolt is fast but are you sure you can transfer 20TB in one second with Thunderbolt?

I wish LAG was simple and works in a straight forward fashion. 4 LAN port with teaming will only reach a peak like 350MB/s if you have 4 PCs equipped with 1 Gigabit NIC accessing the NAS simultaneously. Or 2 PCs with dual NICs each in teaming mode accessing the NAS simultaneously. Hope you get the picture. Oh, this assuming you have LAG enabled switch too.

1 PC with 4 NICs in teaming mode accessing the NAS with 4 ports in teaming mode will still give you 125MB/s traffic unfortunately.

At the moment, the only one with 4 port GBit NAS is the Synology DS1513+. If you want more bandwidth point to point, you need to go to 10GBe. That would be super expensive finding 10GBe switch and NICs and NAS with 10GBe connections.

Yes, that argument used to be valid but not anymore with the advent of SSD equipped systems.

How are you playing the AVIs from your laptop and PC? Browse and double click on the AVI file on the DLink via Explorer?

What about on your Android?

I think best bang for the buck is the HP Microserver. N36L or N40L if you can still get them Can run your own choice of OS and in a way not subjected to proprietary software in the event of a recovery. Upgrade memory and be close to a powerful higher budgeted NAS.

How long did it take to rebuild?

15MB/s?

2MB/s? If your internet bandwidth is fast enough, use that instead. If the data is not important, you can always redownload.

Well the one I'm referring to is from HP. The one you are referring to is the WD Sentinel which only uses the WD enterprise class RE drives which are bloody expensive. Performance is so so only. You are better off with a Synology for the same price.

The HP Microserver does not come with an OS. You can put anything inside it. Run Unix or Windows OSes and have your 4 hardisk (more than 4 hardisk have to do a little hacking) run in different RAID modes. Some people even run Synology's DSM on these HP Microservers and find them faster than using them on Synology's own hardware.

If you can find the Microserver N36L or N40L (difference is only in the AMD processor clock) which should not be more than RM 600 or so (somebody can update on this nd their availability?)

I'm currently running 2 N36Ls. One at 8GB memory with 4 x 3TB WD Red running WHS 2011 and the other one at 16GB memory with 4 x 2TB Samsung F4E running Windows Server 2008 R2.

I stream full bluray iso across the Gigabit network with no problems. Both do not have problems hitting 100 to 120 MB/s transfer rates across the network.

Need to check still available or not. HP clears their stock and price can be even lower.

Can try HP shops?

There was quite a bit of discussion on the Microserver availability in the older NAS thread.

We also discussed how if we could build our own small form factor NAS which could house 4 drives using available parts. Came to the conclusion that cost wise, we could never be competitive and build one under 1k. Perhaps now can? I haven't checked out yet.

Drobo is a new player. When Drobo first came out, they were notorious. Not cheap either and the pricing puts me off. No idea how they are now.

Famous photographer Scott Kelby had his fair share of Drobo problems. It is very unfortunate if problems start happening to someone who makes money on pics and images that's stored over the years and starts to go missing.

http://scottkelby.com/2012/im-done-with-drobo/

Well, so far I must say that big players such as Synology and QNAP have good support even with their older products.

If you don't want proprietary software / hardware, then using Windows built-in mirroring is pretty safe.

As you know, a PC takes more power and space.

Anyway, forgot to mention that with one of my Microservers, I have an eSATA 4 bay external box attached to it. I have to install a Silicon Image PCIe card into the Microserver to provide the eSATA ports as the eSATA port on the Microserver is not PM aware. Anyway, no biggie since there is space and that the eSATA 4 bay box came with the eSATA card.

And that is why I like the Microserver. I can add a 2 port Gigabit PCIe card or even a 10Gbe PCIe card if you're adventurous enough. Some people even put a HD6000 series graphics card and use it as a HTPC.

Old kakis come out already.

Wah, you want to manage server remotely? Tried to find on ebay yet?

Nice find, especially on the casing. Budget is pretty close. I believe you only get to use 4 x hardisk as there are only 4 SATA3 ports on the motherboard. With the Microserver, if you include the bundled OS drive and shift it in the DVDROM area, you can fit 5 drives in total.

The interesting thing about the HP is its already a built-in PnP solution. That is IF you can still find them. If you cannot find it, your proposed build sounds like a good solution.

I tried to do a quick comparison between the N36L and the Zacate E-240 processor;

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/215/AMD_A...ries_E-240.html

The N36L has more CPU cores (2 vs 1) and hence can execute more threads at once. At the same time, it consumes less power .

The Zacate has a higher base frequency and already comes with Radeon HD 6310 GPU. Useful for HTPC but not a must for NAS.

If you can snag a half working Microserver with good PSU, then probably worthwhile. Eh, I thought I remember you took the optional Carepack?

Since I have 2, I use a KVM switch to utilise a spare LCD screen that I have.

Yes ! Cable management is a nightmare in a small tight casing.

Hard to say. Depending if you're desperate enough to want it. How much memory and what's the size of the boot drive?

But then again, for that money, you cannot find anything close to it in terms of flexibility and power. You should be able to do what you intend to do.

Wah, you're underutilising your Microserver man.

Yeah, I have 2 DVDROMs. With USB thumbdrives, DVDROMs nowadays redundant.

Hmmm... There is none. Unless you install something like Synology's DSM in your Microserver.

Anyway, since it's just file sharing / streaming, what do you consider complicated in the management? Treat it just like another PC.

Yes, it's a normal type DVDROM unlike the slim DVDROM notebook type on Gen 8.

Got to confess that I do have a Synology box myself. Since I foresee myself expanding over time, could not resist having 12 drives in one unit.

You run online monopoly ah on the server?

I think some sifus here tried Freenas before. I have not. But from what I've read, it's slow. Windows is faster.

You can also try Synology DSM. Very polished interface. I've used the DSM interface in a real Synology DS2413+ and I like ti a lot but not installed it in a Microserver. Apparently the DSM performance in the Microserver is comparable to Synology's own high end hardware.

Of course that one expensive. Gen8 runs on Intel.

Disk Station Manager

Yeah, wildwestgoh gave a link. I believe there are a lot more links if you google up that talks about Xpenology.

http://xpenology.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2

I have not tried it yet but the gains truly outweigh the effort put in.

Wah, congrats !

Never knew you would take the Microserver and Xpenology advise seriously.

Anyway, for NAS, go for WD Red. Avoid WD Green if you can.

I think he mentioned it earlier? 800 from Lelong?

With the Xpenology, I believe you need to boot from Pendrive.

Don't kill the messenger !

Actually I would not consider it as hacking since it's open source. There's no support directly from Synology (as expected) but the software is the same one used by them. So if it's not safe on Xpenology, it would not be safe on Synology DSM also.

I'm assuming you're on a Windows PC?

Since the file format from the Synology is EXT4 linux system, you need to download something like this.

Actually contrary to popular belief, switching the hardisk on and off is more stressful than just leaving them powered on.

Hope you get it sorted out. Rebuild of that size would take days I reckon. If I recall, SHR or RAID 5 does not give any redundancy during a rebuild. Best is to make sure the Synology gets a UPS hooked up during the rebuild.

Usually with that amount of array size involved, it would have been better to stick with SHR-2 or RAID 6 that allows for 2 drives to fail. Yeah, you loose space from 2 hardisk instead of just 1 with SHR or RAID 5.

With this number of IP cameras, I would not recommend wireless but wired instead. 1 or 2 wireless IP cameres is fine but 30 is just asking for trouble. The expensive wireless routers would be able to handle the throughput alone but I don't think it can serve 30 IP cameras polling at the same time. Wiring is going to be messy and would add up the cost but it's a sure way of making the 30 IP cameras work.

A wired solution would be using a PoE type of IP camera. A 30 port PoE switch that is also gigabit is going to be rare and mega expensive. But looking at your requirements, the NAS needs to write around 2.5MB/s worth of data. That's pretty easily achieved with 100Mbit PoE switches which are more reasonable in price. Best is to split the 30 IP cameras to 2 x 24 port 100Mbit PoE switches with each switch going into two Synology units (for example 2 units of 4 bay DS412+ or 2 units of 2 bay DS713+ because of the powerful processor and 20 IP cameras support for each unit). I assume you calculated 5 to 6 TB of H.264 video stream data base on standard quality and not at highest quality. So going by that amount of data, you can put 4 x 1TB hardisk (or 2 x 2TB for 2 bay) in each Synology unit configured to RAID 0. RAID 5 or RAID 1 redundancy is optional since in this case it is not required.

Link Agregration (hence a managed switch) is not required since one 100Mbit connection can handle the data stream.

Link Agregration (hence a managed switch) is not required since one 100Mbit connection can handle the data stream.

Yup. My DS2413+ handles 20 IP cameras max.

In detail, the following is listed;

600 FPS @ VGA (640x480)
Which means for 20 cameras, it can support 30 fps @ VGA (640 x 480) quality

200 FPS @ 720p (1280x800)
Which means for 20 cameras, it can support 10 fps @ 720p (1280x800) quality

100 FPS @ 1080p (1920×1080)
Which means for 20 cameras, it can support 5 fps @ 1080p (1920×1080) quality

I believe with a 1.3MP IP camera, case 2 with 200 FPS applies.

If the 30 IP cameras are split and handled by 2 NAS boxes, then it can support 13.3 fps @ 720p (1280x800) quality.

1. Yes. Only 1 license is given for 1 NAS unit. But if you use the higher end Synology NAS, max IP cameras supported is 20 per NAS unit. And because of this limitation, you need to get 2 Synology NAS boxes. In your case, you need to add 28 licenses.

2. Trying to make 3 wifi routers (each connected to 10 wifi IP cameras) to a gigabit router is going to be a challenge. With all the interferences, there's bound to be a dropped connection at any one time with the 30 wireless IP cameras. Wireless = not reliable.

Good thing about using wired connection with PoE switches is the switches can be powered by UPS which powers the PoE IP cams as well.