C-Fu's LYN guide for NAS & Homelab solutions

23/4/2018: First release
27/4/2018: Added Download and installation steps
3/5/2018: Added hardware considerations, and sixth step (almost final step)
28/11/2018: Updated to use simpler, easier tools, and newer DSM 6.2 version. Change name from NAS4Free > XigmaNAS (same thing)
29/10/2019: Added Table of Contents
21/07/2020: Added google drive integration via rclone


Table of Contents
Intro & Guide: this post
Docker & VM
LSI card for extra sata ports

I've been building and selling NAS solutions for many years now, exploring most of the options available in the market and DIY. Since my 60TB RAID is slooooowly building, verifying, parity checking (whatever they call them), I decide to make this guide. I've now come to the conclusion that DIY is the best.

But seems to me that not many people here have a clue, especially when it comes to deciding which DIY NAS solutions that you like. So here's what I know. A different kinda guide than what you can google, I think.

Guide level: Beginner and intermediate. This guide isn't for lazy people. You still need to google and read up. And if what I write here is not true because you're a pro, you're absolutely right. I wrote it in such a way that's easy for noobs to understand, that's all. Feel free to argue, I don't mind

Why go with NAS instead of traditional, typical shared storage (external HDD, windows share)?
- Centralised storage access, with/without cloud (anywhere) access
- Reliability of your data, because honestly, my data is much more expensive than the price of harddisks
- Low power, low cost
- More features than just "share files" (more on this in a bit, and the best thing about NAS in 2018)
- Flexibility in choosing the method (old servers, old pcs, old harddisks)
- Fun to explore and try out. You might just realize that NAS features are the exact thing that you need for a long, long, time but never knew existed for cheap (or free).

DIY, or ready-made solutions?
- ready-made for peace of mind, access via USB (DIY method uses ethernet/wlan only) but really lacking in features or hardware -> buy Synology, QNAP, other RAID-in-a-box devices like Seagate NAS (please, please don't)
- DIY for learning, experimenting, and because you're kedekut and wanna use existing stuff lying around, or even because you got cash to spare and wanna get the best bang for your buck and peace of mind.
- Various ways of RAID-ing your drives - RAIDz2,RAID 5/6/10,SHR,DriveBender,DrivePool,Linux MDADM,etc
- Can do more than just share folders - host servers, become media centers, download stations, automatic torrent downloaders, run multiple OSes at the same time, etc.

DIY NAS features that you don't know you want:
- Personal Google Drive
- Virtualization - also run a bunch of OS and appliance on the same PC. Think a PC with 8 Core CPU & 16GB RAM can do
2C+4GB: NAS OS
2C+4GB: Windows 10
1C+1GB: Webserver/Plex media center manager/Firewall OS/Point-of-sale via browser/Automatic Torrent downloader/Odoo ERP and CRM/Owncloud/Another NAS/other appliances
2C+4GB: Ubuntu/Raspbian/Linux Mint
1C+2GB: Android

All at the same time, accessed via the browser (think Windows 10 from browser), via VNC (TeamViewer/RealVNC) or via GPU's HDMI/VGA out (1 GPU outputs Windows 10, another GPU outputs Linux Mint).
- Containers - Run prebuilt,preinstalled apps ready to go without having to setup and configure shit, especially if you know next to nothing about Linux. Want your own Visio via browser? download draw.io container. Want a collaborative-based Office via browser? download Feng Office container (think 2 people opening the same file on the NAS, and both edits are updated in real time with each other). Want Odoo but dowan to reserve 1C+1GB of your resource? Can also.
- Need to do automatic backup to your preferred choice without nas-in-a-box company limitation, like Thecus with their Microsoft-centric solution.
- Want NAS and other OS in a virtualized (esxi) environment - think esxi as the host OS, and from there you deploy 2C+4GB+HDD abcd for NAS, 2C+4GB+1TB of HDD e for Windows 10 #1, 2C+4GB+1TB of HDD e for Windows 10 #2, etc.
- TONS of things that you can do!

----------Steps!-------------

FIRST STEP - storage
See the storage that you have - a bunch of old harddisks, or buying new mechanical hdds, or if you're rich, got yourselves a bunch of 500GB SSDs for storage :x

Old hdds will die. My experience, if you have old seagates, don't bother and get new hdds. YMMV.

Some solutions and methods demand same hdds only. some can mix. some have compatibility issues with certain hdd models and serials and date. So decide on what you have and want to use for this project. Benefit with Xpenology is, you can (sort of) mix and match harddisks with various capacities into one RAID, so if you have a bunch of harddisks lying around, only go with Xpenology (note that you need to add the smallest harddisks first into your SHR Raid, then add bigger and bigger capacity HDDs after that. Limitation is once older smaller hdd dah kong, can only replace with the biggest hdd in that RAID).

SECOND STEP - hardware
The hardware that you have/want to buy. In all intents and purposes of this guide, minimum requirements for a NAS (but not exactly bad performance!) is LGA775-grade, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Core2Duo PCs. Perfectly fine to run Windows 10 for basic usage on this ancient junk. Can get one whole PC for less than RM500. Most ready-made NAS boxes are using cheap old pc-grade stuff in them.

But if you want to get more benefit out of your NAS, then you need a PC/processor/motherboard with these features built-in: VT-d, HyperThreading, AES-NI (to run a bunch of windows 7/10), AVX (for video transcoding on the fly) 4 RAM slots, 4 or more SATA ports, PCIe 1x (for extra gigabit lan card, or USB3 card) and 16x slot (for GPU and/or additional SATA cards for more storage option), PCI slots (for SATA cards) and so on.

Also don't forget! Since your NAS uses gigabit ethernet, you would also need Cat5E/Cat6 cable AND a gigabit switch/router for best file transfer performance (around 60MB/s to 120MB/s file transfer speed).

Expansions for your old board:
PCIe slots can give you
- [PCI-e x1, x4] Extra gigabit ethernet cards (around RM20-100 each). Most NAS OS allows you to group a few ethernet ports into one, either for load-balancing (if one port transfer speed is full, the other card can take over), bonding (combine all cards' transfer speeds for double/triple the transfer rate) or failover (if one card dies, the other takes over). Personally I just load-balance the ports, better than failover. Bonding requires all of the cards to have bonding feature. Can also add USB 3.0 card just for some fast USB (RM30 at lowyat).
- [PCI-e x4] RAID/sata cards, 4/8 ports are pretty cheap, from RM20-RM250. LSI SAS3081E-R is a very famous name for you to find. better get the splitter cables as well. I got 2 of these in one NAS, giving me space for 16 hdd in addition to 4 hdd from the mobo (and 1 IDE hdd).
- [PCI-e x8] Some RAID/sata cards need x8. Some 10 gigabit cards need x4 or x8.
- [PCI-e x16] if your mobo has 1 x1 & 1 x16 PCI-e slots, use x16 la. Can also be used for (old) GPU, which you can use/reserve for VM use. For example: I use an old nvidia Quadro 512MB for 2 Win10 VMs, 256MB each in NAS4Free, so 1 machine runs a NAS & 2 OS at the same time (the NAS has no use for GPU). I got one very old Win98-grade PC at the office that on startup I open chrome fullscreen to one Win10 VM url.
[PCI] Pretty old, but I bought a PCI 4 port sata raid card that works well for this. But some older mobos have compatibility issues with this card. It's cheap though (RM45).

THIRD STEP - NAS OS/Filesystem
Choosing the filesystem will determine the NAS solution that you can choose. But one thing for sure, you HAVE to use RAID to take full functionality.
hardwareRAID - must have hardware/chip for the RAID to function. Hardware rosak, then hopefully all you have to do is to replace the RAID SATA card, or worse, the motherboard.
softwareRAID - the NAS OS (and your processor, and maybe RAM) will handle the RAID. Hardware rosak, just reinstall the NAS OS and import your RAID array.

Windows 10|NTFS is "free" in a sense that you don't need a serial, and don't need to activate. Just will have a watermark at the bottom right of your screen. Since NAS boxes are most of the time have no monitor attached to it, it doesn't matter la.
Pros: Familiar, easy to setup (initially). You're probably are running Win10 already. Can install Hyper-V for free (see Virtualization), easiest way to set up compared to esxi, proxmox, etc
Cons: Mafan, difficult to extend features other than having Windows fileshare, and have to pay for good things
Things to have/buy/search: DriveBender/DrivePool for modern-style softwareRAID

NAS4FreeXigmaNAS/FreeNAS/FreeBSD|ZFS is the enterprise-grade filesystem. Rock solid like crazy. FreeNAS needs more resource than XigmaNAS, but both are similar in terms of featureset.
Pros: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naKd9nARAes. Got VirtualBox built-in via plugin (see Virtualization). Easy to install
Cons: A bit of a learning curve, but not too difficult. Less flexible, and need to plan way ahead. The HDDs must be the same. For every few TB of storage you have, need to have 1GB of ECC RAM (if possible). So if you have 100TB of storage, you'd need about 128GB of ECC RAM. Although, for small-medium companies I've deployed NAS4Free with a few TB of storage with less-than-recommended RAM with no issue.

Xpenology/OpenMediaVault/UnRAID|btrfs/ext4 - Best of the best in terms of overall ease and functionality. I personally choose Xpenology over any other for home/sme use. Basically Synology uses open source codes for their Synology DSM, so people took the opensos code and made it run on consumer PCs. UnRAID is not free, but is a very close second. If you want to use it for playing games (GPU Passthrough), then UnRAID is your only sensible choice - think 2Core+2GB RAM for UnRAID, 6C+14GB+1GPU for Win10.

Xpenology
Pros: Most functionality built-in via packages - Plex for media, Office for collaboration, a bunch of ways to backup, google drive integration, super easy to setup (just use the DS3615xs package if you're unsure)
Cons: Very difficult to setup, need hours of reading, understanding and doing things that are not normally what you want to know in computing, like your USB PID & VID. But once you understood did it, it's actually not difficult at all. No GPU passthrough, so if you want to setup a virtual Windows 10 machine with Steam, you cannot make use of your GPU.

OpenMediaVault
Pros: Similar to xpenology, but less user-friendly, and less package. Much easier to install.
Cons: Not as feature-packed as Xpenology

UnRaid
Pros: Gaming-friendly, GPU passthrough, quite easy to setup, runs off USB (like most of the NAS OS above)
Cons: Not free

GPU passthrough example:
8 Core CPU, 16 GB RAM, 2 GPU, 2 monitor, 2 keyboard, 2 mouse can be splitted like this:
NAS OS: 2 Cores, 2GB RAM, access via browser
Windows 10 #1: 3 Cores, 7GB RAM, connect to 1 LCD with GPU #1, use keyboard #1 & mouse #1
Windows 10 #2: 3 Cores, 7GB RAM, connect to 1 LCD with GPU (or browser, kinda like TeamViewer or VNC) #2, use keyboard #2 & mouse #2

FOURTH STEP - Downloading necessary software & extra hardwares
Below are the common generic (free) softwares that you will need for any/all of the NAS OS above. Most NAS OS rely on installing the OS onto your USB, so you can free up sata ports for your data. You don't need a big USB drive, most can do with 8GB or even 4GB USB if you have that lying around as most OSes will be in your RAM.
ALL IN ONE TOOL FOR XPENOLOGY: https://mega.nz/#F!BtViHIJA!uNXJtEtXIWR0LNYUEpBuiA
1. Win32DiskImager - this is to flash (copy) the .img files directly into your USB drive
2. 7-Zip, download the 64bit x64 version
3. Rufus or Etcher.io, this is to flash .iso images into your USB drive
4. OSFMount, if there's a need to edit the .img file, usually to set boot options for certain NAS OSes
5. A browser, to view the dashboard/desktop of the NAS. Everything is headless, so no need for a monitor, just a spare pc connected to your home network via ethernet (no installation via wifi for now)
6. Ethernet (mobo built-in or ethernet card) & a monitor just for the initial view of the installation, and to find out the IP of the OS so we can login.
7. Putty & WinSCP - this is for post-installation, so not important. Putty is to enter the NAS OS punya terminal/command line, and WinSCP to view the files on your drive for some special purpose (normal use, can just browse via My Computer>Network)
That's it!

Download links

Name	Xpenology	NAS4Free	OpenMediaVault
Requirements	LGA775	ECC RAM/Servers preferred (not necessary), DDR2 min.	Any common PC minimum
Current Version	ALL IN ONE TOOL FOR XPENOLOGY	11.2.0.4, get liveUSB .img.gz file or liveCD .iso file	4.1.3, get the amd64/x64 file and flash to USB via Etcher
Notes	See FIFTH STEP	Extract, flash .img using Win32DiskImager	Flash .iso using etcher/rufus

FIFTH STEP - Installing and booting your NAS OS
When you boot your pc, you need to set your BIOS to boot from the USB (Changer the boot order).

XigmaNAS & OMV : This is a live image, meaning everything is ready to run WITHOUT INSTALLING. So you can check out the web interface and all, and as long as you don't change any setting related to the hdd in your machine, nothing will be saved and everything will be wiped out after reboot.

Xpenology setup:

Download the all-in-one tool and run it. if Windows SmartScreen says can't run, click on info, and Run Anyway (it's safe). Refer this image for each steps.



STEP 1: Click DOWNLOADS. Choose DS3617XS Loader (.zip file/synoboot.img file) and DSM 6.2 (.pat file) for the same version.
Note: If you are using 4th gen processor, like i7-4790 then it's best to use DS916+ as it supports hardware transcoding for video... if you need it. works with apps like Emby and Plex (Plex needs Plex Pass, about 110USD)


STEP 2. While downloading, use USB IMAGE TOOL to find your USB Drive's VID and PID. Xpenology's bootloader pelik sikit, it checks your USB info to successfully boot from it.


STEP 3: Unzip the loader zip file that has synoboot.img. Open OSFMount, find the synoboot.img and open partition 0 only (not entire image). We need to open usbdriveletter:\grub\grub.cfg file using notepad++.


STEP 4: Generate a new serial for your DS3617XS (or whatever model you choose to use). Not really needed, but since it's there why not.


STEP 5: Open usbdriveletter:\grub\grub.cfg file using notepad++ and change these three values. OPTIONAL you can change set timeout='1' to set timeout='5' if it's too fast for you during booting. Save in notepad++.

STEP 6: In the main OSFMOUNT window, click DISMOUNT ALL & EXIT.

STEP 7: Use USB IMAGE TOOL > Restore button and select your synoboot.img file. Your USB Drive needs to be formatted as FAT32, and there's no point in using a USB Drive more than 4GB so get the cheapest possible.

STEP 8: Boot your PC into the USB drive. Wait few minutes while your system boots (no need a monitor after the first time). Use SYNOLOGY ASSISTANT tool or http://find.synology.com to scan and find the IP of your machine. Follow instructions, pick the .pat file you've downloaded in STEP 1. DO NOT CHOOSE TO UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY. DO NOT USE QUICKCONNECT. Remember the IP, and you're done!
-----------------

Hopefully with these infos you can get started. This is not meant as a thorough guide, but merely an introduction to get you up and runningresearching. Feedbacks are welcome, and I might expand this later. Donations of old pc hardwares like CPU, RAM, are very much welcome

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Jul 21 2020, 12:15 AM

SIXTH STEP: The fun begins

You can find these in Xpenology's app store and various docker images.
Prerequisites for you to know:
Port forward from your router



Media Centers & Managers - catalog, stream your media locally or remotely, automatic transcoding (convert to whatever video format your device/phone/tv can accept automagically while playing, very CPU intensive)
Plex - Most SMART TVs can download Plex from the TV's app store
This is mine

Emby - Similar to Plex, but can use GPU for transcoding
This is mine


Documents & Office
Office - Very similar to MS Office, runs in your browser. If you convert into it's own format, all opened browsers of the same document will get live editing, best for collaboration
Draw.io - Visio-like diagramming and technical drawing software


Book/Comic/Manga reader
Ubooquity - mostly for comics and manga

Calibre/Calibre Web - for your ebooks, magazines, etc

OS
Ubuntu - since Xpenology is linux based, we can also use docker version of ubuntu. Access the OS via browser.



DOCKER vs VM
A very basic explanation is this:
with Docker, you share your PC's resources (like CPU, RAM, etc) with both the NAS and the appliances, mostly web-based. NAS and appliances share the same underlying OS (Xpenology uses Linux, so your applications must be Linux jugak).
with VM, you partition a subset of your PC's resources dedicated for that machine, kinda like a (few) smaller PCs inside a big PC (your NAS). So your NAS can be Xpenology or XigmaNAS, then use 2 Cores + 8GB RAM for a Windows 10 VM, usually accessible using TightVNC or web browser as the "monitor/display". The choice is yours! My reasoning for using Docker is simply because (one of) my Xpenology PC only has 12GB of RAM, and only 4 Cores so not enough to dedicate for a few VMs. Most of these specialized/dedicated OS (like webserver/wordpress OS) are also available as Docker, and in my use-case, most of my web-based apps are used by less than 50/100 people so no need to dedicate resources for multiple VMs.

A curated list of famous, good applications:

https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted
Selfhosting is the process of locally hosting and managing applications instead of renting from SaaS providers.
This is a list of Free Software network services and web applications which can be hosted locally. Non-Free software is listed on the Non-Free page.

https://bitnami.com/stacks
Bitnami is the leader in application packaging providing the largest catalog of click to deploy applications and development stacks. Quickly and easily launch your favorites on your own servers or deploy to every major cloud environment. Choose from local installers, single VMs, multi-tier VMs, container images or Kubernetes Helm charts.

EXAMPLE: WORDPRESS APPLIANCE
VM Version: https://bitnami.com/stack/wordpress/virtual-machine
Docker Version: https://hub.docker.com/r/bitnami/wordpress/


DOCKER EXAMPLE
Basically, Docker is pretty cool, services/softwares are prebuilt, preinstalled with all the necessary configs and tools in an image. You download the image, create a container with that image, and access the image via ports (like http://yournasIP:portnumber). No need to install, configure this that and what you traditionally do before running the software. For example, if you wanna run a wordpress webserver, first you need to install the OS, then install the webserver, configure whatever, then install wordpress. With docker, download the wordpress image, and launch. That's it!

With xpenology, the GUI is pretty powerful, can do 99% of the time from the GUI itself. I'll show an example by installing draw.io.
1. From the package center, install Docker
2. Run docker, go to Registry, and search for draw.io. get the one with the most stars (the top one). If you want more info, click on the link next to the image name. Choose the latest version. We will need to consult the link for additional installation steps (if needed).

3. If you go to Image, you can see the download progress. Once it finishes, click Launch. Give it a name. Click Advanced Settings.
4. Go to Port Settings. From the image's docker hub page, we see that it uses port 8080 and 8443 (80 for http, 443 for https). You can change the Local Port to whatever you want/need. In my case, I already use 8080 for some other image, so I change it to 11080 and 11443.

5. Go to Advanced Settings and create a shortcut on desktop. point it to your NAS IP with the http port.

6. You're done! Turn on via Docker>Container or Xpenology Desktop icon.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Nov 29 2018, 12:41 AM

LIKE

continue broo..i'm always interested to build my own NAS. Got some LGA775 board with Xeon proc lying around

nice post...
Reading and try to understanding...
sorry, uncle old liao.. a bit slow.
but want to build my own nas.

park for references. nice info.

added installation steps. Most NAS OS are quite straightforward - download the img/iso file, flash/burn to USB, boot from the USB, choose install, follow instruction. With the exception of Xpenology la, but a more straightforward way will be released soon.

Note that while we're using old pc, I would personally recommend to max out the RAM and the proc if possible. one LGA775 Core2Duo Acer machine that I got, I use 8GB DDR2 RAM (RM60 for 4x2GB RAM sticks).

ako pon uncle took me 1+ hour to do & understand the whole xpenology setup from the tutorial link hahaha the first time. 2nd time, 5 mins. Good luck

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Apr 27 2018, 02:30 PM

So it that meant, the PC running 24hour?

it's up to you really.

it's like any/most cloud-based service like google, with the exception that you control everything - from your data that you put there, to the services that you have.

you want it to auto turn on at 8am and shutdown at 12am, up to you.

you want it to turn on whenever you want (via WOL), up to you.

you wanna store movies, download movies, up to you.

you wanna have an online microsoft office, up to you.

wanna have visio-like software but web-based, up to you.

wanna have a comic book reader, up to you.

wanna have a windows 10/osx machine on the nas, but access via web browser, up to you.

minute 3:20

as I'm going to focus on xpenology more, in the next update i'll walk through some of the features I think most of you will really like.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: May 1 2018, 12:47 AM

excellent write up and knowledge.
kudos for sharing!
thanks

So the power consumption more or less like desktop pc?

I want everything! Currently got IIS, PHP, MySQL, MSSQL, Python, Activeperl, Windows File Sharing.


If you use a low power CPU like Pentium G4560, power consumption won't be high. It depends on amount of disks you have. Power supply also plays a role too.

This post has been edited by TristanX: May 3 2018, 10:19 AM

correct.

most of the time, NAS feature sets depend more on RAM than CPU speed. CPU matters during times like indexing your files and running VM OS, like you assign few CPU cores dedicated to that VM.

your power consumption consists more on the drives IMO.... which is very little. and disable spindown of your hdds, as the power saving that you get is very very little compared to the wear & tear of the drives from spinning up and down repeatedly.

can (with the exception of IIS since it's microsoft's)! Few ways to do it from Xpenology:

1. Install from the app store
2. Docker (easiest, fastest, most flexible)

I'll add some docker intros. edit: DONE!



This post has been edited by C-Fu: May 3 2018, 02:47 PM

I have tried both XPenology and OpenMediaVault.
I like XPenology very much.
But in the end I go for OMV.
Something about XPenology, I can't see how long it will last.
There are also cases where synology update may also stall your server.
I recalled the dev (jun loader) has gone missing, some hardwares do not work with it especially AMD.
With docker, OMV has so much to offer.
But I agree that OMV UI is less user friendly especially for first time user.

You can use anything you want, that's the beauty. Most of the additional features and services are the same across most NAS OSes, like Windows Share, Plex, Docker, etc.
I haven't tried any AMD machines before, but from what I've read AMD and xpenology works quite flawlessly.

The only main major advantage of Xpenology is SHR, which you can just dump any hdd of mixed sizes and it'll just work. Other than that, everything is pretty much the same.

Add anything you know to the guide, I'll add it to the post.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: May 3 2018, 05:38 PM

hi nice guide
i am finding casing on it
any recommend casing?

Depends on type of casing you want.
I cannot find nas case locally.
I bought mine at taobao.
Example:
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r....bucket=9#detail
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1...14-e0f0342c09b6
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1...14-e0f0342c09b6
https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1...14-e0f0342c09b6

Nice write up

I see you using both Plex and Emby. Is it purely for example purpose or you are using both of them?

This post has been edited by lol4291: Jun 2 2018, 12:38 AM

i do use both. I'm still evaluating the best ones for my needs, and here's what I've found:

plex
- very fast, responsive UI
- most smart tvs got plex app in their own app store, for free
- android app have to buy, but I bought one years ago for RM1 when got sale
- plex won't correctly find some movies and tv shows, and difficult to make sure plex correctly catalogues the media
- some movies cannot be converted, but probably because of my old processor lacking in certain instructions

emby
- not so fast UI
- a lot more plugins
- only some tvs have emby app
- easier to match media, like i could go to anidb, search for the specific anime, copy the ID in url, and point the media to that url
- got CPU AND GPU transcoding, and more transcoding options available

I read somewhere the tech guy say make sure have hardware raid controller, if just software raid it is too unreliable. How true is that?

you should ask amazon, google, oracle, as to why they almost exclusively use software RAID

generally yes, but in the computing world, you can't really use "generally" la.

the thing about hardware raid is that hardwares fail all the time, especially in enterprise situations. performance also are limited to the chips that are present, some are super fast (and super expensive, especially if it uses some proprietary battery), some are inconsistent (still needs SSD as cache, and that also tengok pada the type of SSD u got, AND hopefully your OS/NAS got the driver for it), and some are just fake hardware RAID that depends on your processor (like software RAID).

only major advantage is that it has memory built-in that stores your currently-used data if suddenly no power. software RAID solves this somewhat by leveraging on your RAM and CPU.

rule of thumb: if you're willing to spend thousands for a hardware raid card, and don't mind paying hundreds more for a fresh new battery for it, and can guarantee your OS got the drivers, then go for it.

rule of thumb #2: if you plan on using only SSDs for your NAS and demand max performance, get a hardware raid (since you've already spend tens of thousands for the SSDs anyway, so the total cost of ownership after adding hardware RAID isn't that much extra), or get a fast CPU.


in this case, ZFS, Synology RAID, Linux MD RAID is far superior overall. flexibility and free alone makes it much better than hardware RAID. dulu2 yes la hardware card is needed. ZFS was built because of the limitations and problems of hardware RAID after all.

in 2018:
H/ware RAID: not use in enterprise or data center anymore
S/ware RAID: used from your laptop to enterprise and data centers

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

So if using software raid only it's better to use ecc ram.

But how software raid solve the issue of when write half the OS crash or power outage, how do it know whether the date was compromised or failed?

please continue sharing information

good question.

like hardware raid also, it depends on the implementation.
generally speaking of there's a corruption, two things will occur:
- the NAS OS/raid will trigger a scrubbing process, data will be restored from parity
- no error will be reported

xpenology/synology/btrfs will trigger. ZFS will trigger. others I can't remember. But it's likely that by now most software RAIDs will trigger some sort of error that error-checking/fixing will occur either automatically or you'd be notified in some ways.


one common mistake is that people think ZFS needs ecc. that's not true. ECC is very important in an enterprise situation, but normal usage you won't see any difference between ECC and normal RAM. there IS a chance that you'll get flip bits - 1 in 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936


tl;dr version: a bad ram stick will damage your data faster than power outage.

Hi

I would like to ask, can I put movie in NAS and stream it across on Apple TV 4K? Most of the file are 4k movie average about 70gb size. How efficient is this in the of speed and etc?

Thanks

yes. it depends on your NAS really. if your NAS can stream 4k then it'll work. a tip:
- your NAS' CPU capable of decoding 4K - nothing really in the market, although getting a beefy CPU that can handle H264 H265 is a must, provided
- your file is also H264 H265 encoded to avoid transcoding, so it'll be direct play.
- Gigabit connection from NAS to your gigabit router/switch to your Apple TV. Wifi will be a hit/miss thing.

if your 4K media comes from bluray, then most likely it's actually 2K upscaled, as that's pretty much how most 4K bluray are currently.

if you really want 4K, consider using Emby with it, as only Emby (currently) uses GPU for transcoding or 4K.


but if you're using 4K, there's no point to transcode really. just make sure your media are mp4/h265/ac3 and a current/previous gen PC should do fine.

Thank you for the information. I will do more study on this

no worries. 4K is really an uncharted territory, kinda like how 1080p back then needs something like GeForce 8800 10 years ago in order for it to play smoothly. once CPUs have built-in AVX and AVX2 instructions then and only then 1080p medias started being common. so at the moment the "best" we have is H265, so if your medias are encoded as H265, should be relatively OK with semi-current hardware setup.

Interesting project to do soon! Nice sharing. For now I just use Plex and windows file sharing for home network.

There's a new tool that has everything that you need to install quite a bit easier. I'm gonna test it out and update the tutorial later ALL DONE!

Also, I just tried installing DS3671xs on a haswell/4th gen machine, and it is super, super fast compared to DS3615 on a socket 775 machine

Also, there's a new bootloader for a new NAS machine based off DS918+ that's reportedly are far faster (if you have a newer machine for this).

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Nov 29 2018, 12:28 AM

Hi.... if in event of power trip. how do u keep the nas intact?

do u let the nas box trip and reboot when power comes back?

the buffalo was hit a few times, end up the hdd went dead.

Good sharing and thanks for writing this up.

best way is by using UPS with USB.

plug the UPS into your PC's USB port, and some/most NAS OSes like Xpenology will detect it.







As for auto reboot, there are a few ways.

In BIOS, enable
Wake On LAN - you can ping the machine, and it'll reboot. you can set a cheap PC/machine like Raspberry Pi to auto ping your NAS every few minutes to bring it back to life once the RPi is also back to life
Wake On RTC/Clock/Alarm - auto turn on machine at a set time everyday, so even if everything else fails, your machine will at least turn on once at a specified time once a day everyday.
On Power Loss - Always Turn On - so whenever power is back on, machine is turned on.

If you DIY and use battery-powered RAID card, then your data is safe in the event of power failure. this is one of the big reason why I chose the DIY way - I hate how we pay premium price, especially here in Msia, for a really crappy (essentially) PC.

as for to save your HDD's life, best way is via UPS IMO. No other better way. After 7 years and frequent power trips for the last few months, one of my 3TB WD Red started showing bad sectors. One of the reason why I gladly pay premium and only use NAS-grade HDDs like IronWolfs and WD Reds and HGST Heliums. I rather get NAS-grades than risk using normal/consumer grade harddisks and get peace of mind.

Thank you. I did thought about setting up a small nas for home archiving purpose and also serve as some repository for my dvr files.

Apc smart ups iirc are those active ups that has those agent that graceful shutdown the nas rite?

Isnt these ups costs quite prohibitive for home use?

just search for usb ups in lazada or shopee or wherever. The cost is more less about the same as a cheap 80+ PSU. I think 150-200 is a small price to pay for peace of mind

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm looking to run concurrently Windows 10 (for gaming) and MacOS Mojave (for the rest), is this HomeLab build the right path or am I heading in the wrong direction.

lebih kurang. apart from needing two gpus for each OS (for best performance), the base OS needs to be xcp-ng, esxi or unraid. setup a VM with resources that you want for Win10 and Mojave, and perhaps another VM for Xpenology.

Thanks for the quick reply. Have you heard about ProxMox? What I want to build is something like this YouTube video, just less resource intensive. I don't do 4K video editing nor do I play graphics-intensive games.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdYyfoZcgJI

Edit: No idea why it isn't showing up.

This post has been edited by Two5Kid: Jun 11 2019, 01:16 PM

Can run Hassio also


This post has been edited by Fubar20: Jun 11 2019, 02:14 PM

True but it's a bit overkill. Haha! Thanks for the help!

proxmox is also fine. just that in most comparison promox is often considered to be for a more advanced user. you can use whichever host OS that you want.

personally after trying them all (with my limited skillset), in order of ease of use to paling mafan:

esxi
xcp-ng (can use xen tutorial)
unraid (once you understand this should be the best IMO)
proxmox

but if proxmox makes sense to you, use it! nobody's stopping you

doesn't matter if you're an exclusively solitaire player, if you want your VM OS to see your GPU, you need a host OS with GPU passthrough. in this sense, Xpenology can only passthrough intel iGPU. and while all of the above OS can indeed do software RAID, it's just not as good as a dedicated NAS OS like freenas or xpe. hence, my earlier reply

Note that if you like your hair, only use radeon with hackintosh.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Jun 12 2019, 03:39 PM

Thanks for the heads-up. Interesting to know. Will research on it further.

no worries.


OS like unraid and esxi are a different purpose than a NAS OS. although in the case of unraid and proxmox, it does have some of NAS OS's features, there are features that are not readily available (like offsite backup methods for instance, or a built-in web office suite like google docs).

Probably not going to run the CPU as a NAS, I was just itching for something which I only need to boot once, and I can use both Windows and MacOS on two screens. Maybe play a non-resource intensive game while waiting for MacOS to render some travel videos.

The other reason why I was considering this was that I could probably save half a PC or even half the price of an iMac, with the ability to upgrade the hardware when the time comes. Instead of buying a PC and an iMac at the same time.

I'm considering moving to Ryzen 3 3200G with MSI X470 Gaming Plus setup. My Corsair Carbide 400R has 6 + 4 bays. Intel security issue is scary.

Currently running IIS, PHP 5 and 7 (can set PHP version per folder), MySQL, Windows File Transfer, Universal Media Server, Media Streaming, Torrent.

This post has been edited by TristanX: Jun 14 2019, 09:27 AM

From what I know, with Xpenology:
IIS - only on windows, no linux version, no docker version
PHP 5 and 7 - built in once you install a few of the core apps like calendar, or just install extra ones via docker
MySQL - syno app is available, but I prefer using via docker for each project. plus can easily shift to MariaDB with docker with no issues
Windows File Transfer - turn on samba/windows file sharing
Universal Media Server, Media Streaming - there's the official synology video station, but I prefer the super powerful Plex. there's a bunch more of DLNA apps available anyway.
Torrent - the official Download Station is more than enough, supports torrent youtube and so much more. but can always install deluge, transmission, and a few others.

Xpenology with Ryzen has more issues than with Intel, so put temporary hdds and the usb boot disk to see if everything works. Start with 3617, if that doesn't work, 3615. if 3617 works, try ds918.

Is there a video tutorial to set up and build my own NAS?

Probably

but the fifth step is super easy, can't get any easier than that

Placeholder for VM tutorial

Is Xpenology not working well with AMD hardware? I have one AMD board with 6 Sata port which i would like to use..but from the reading only version 6.1 is compatible using the old loader. Any feature i will be missing out if using the old version?

This post has been edited by soul_gamerz: Sep 27 2019, 03:41 PM

nope. all of the major feature differences between 6.1 & 6.2 are mainly the splitting of some functions into separate apps, like replication. if 6.1 works well for you, I suggest you to wait until got confirmation that your hardware works.

since I have no idea on your hardware, a quick search reveals this:

- Outcome of the update: SUCCESSFUL
- DSM version prior update: DSM 6.2.1-23824-1
- Loader version and model: JUN'S LOADER v1.04b - DS918+
- Using custom extra.lzma: NO
- Installation type: BAREMETAL - Gigabyte B450 (AMD Ryzen 3600)
- Additional comment: reboot required

I'd suggest you to get an additional usb, with a spare drive and try a fresh install. DSM 6.2-23739 works well for me, and I've got no time to try since the newest current update won't work with my DS3617xs.

Well if you really wanna try 6.2, install esxi, and passthrough your drives (or better yet, connect your drives to a LSI card and passthrough that). this would be the easiest
https://mega.nz/#!eWokUSiS!6_vFRKsB...8sl58aF9otD0Gbc
admin:synology2019$$$
mac1=0011322CA785

Once everything is set up, shutdown the VM, and save snapshot. you should be able to update at least to 6.2.2-24922 Update 2, but if it screws up, just restore the snapshot.

Save 2 cores for ESXi, or 1 core if it's low usage. at least you can get better VM performance than xpenology's VMM. Hell you can even install hackintosh using spare cores if your CPU has them.
https://www.sysnettechsolutions.com/en/vmwa...mware-esxi-6-7/

My hardware is quite an old one.. below is the spec:
Mobo: Asrock 960GC-GS FX
CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 B59
RAM: 2GB DDR2

so far I'm able to boot up the v6.1..but since i missing some sata cable to test as it need hdd detected before can continue. I'm planning to use below enclosure to house all the 6 Hdd. hopefully the project is a success..i have a lot of data to park inside


This post has been edited by soul_gamerz: Sep 29 2019, 11:17 AM

uh no, you're not booting 6.1..... yet. the installer is just an installer, it'll work even in socket 775 cpu. once you put in the .pat file then it'll install the DSM 6.1. or 6.2.

try it on a test hdd first, if it works then you're set!

if you have only 2GB of RAM then I don't suggest you to use a lot of apps, maybe just the really essential ones like download station and SMB/Windows/NFS/WebDAV file share.

that enclosure is fine, but I've yet to see anybody test the heat performance anywhere so you'll be the first then as long as you understand that it's for 2.5" hdd

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Sep 29 2019, 12:23 PM

Ah yaa..didnt managed to get past the pat file yet. Ram can be added later..that all i have at hand right now that is compatible with the board. Yup..2.5" it have integrated fans inside the bay..hopefully thermal is not an issue

FYI soul_gamerz my DS3615 is still running well on my E8400 socket 775 system. It was a surprise even till this day lol.

Well try out and lemme know! If the pat is listed in Xpenology_Tools program then it should work.

Question, question: If starting a DIY NAS, and start with only 2 4TB HDDs, want to start with RAID 1, then what is the migration plan to RAID 5 or 6 when want to add more HDD?

If you use Xpenology...


RAID type > Can be changed to…
Basic > RAID 1 & 5
RAID 1 > RAID 5
RAID 5 > RAID 6
SHR-1 > SHR-2

I personally recommend SHR, simply because it maximises the use of space in all of your mixed-capacity drives.

In my case...



It's not an issue if all of your drives are the same capacities.

Also bear in mind that with SHR and BTRFS, should you have a catastrophic RAID failure (3 drives dead, etc), you can just use an usb disk with ubuntu live on it, boot it and mount the remaining drives and you can still recover whatever files that's left.

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Oct 8 2019, 05:59 PM

^
Hmmm. I thinking going OMV or FreeNAS route. More like OMV route becoz FreeNAS prefers-more-like-requires Intel.

Considering my main reason for NAS remains file-storage-reliability, so ABSOLUTELY no need for superfluous transcoding, Plex media streaming, torrent, UNLIKELY-TO Internet port forward NAS (yet), or running anything other than on-off file transfers/syncs.

It is, cold-store NAS.

EDIT: Also quick Googles say SHR is on the way to being deprecated? Xpenology already disabling it in DSM?

This post has been edited by trencher10: Oct 8 2019, 06:47 PM

parking

Not quite.

SHR is a feature enabled by default on selected models. It's not enabled on DS3615, 3617 and ds918. So you have to enable it yourself by editing 2 lines in a config file.

Steps:
1. install putty on your windows machine.
2. enable SSH in your DSM web ui.



3. Use PuTTy to ssh into your machine - insert the IP and port number. login using your account.
type this:



4. type ?supportphoto then press i. insert support_syno_hybrid_raid = "yes" above it, and press Esc to exit insert mode.



5. type ?supportraidgroup, press i and add # in front of it. press Esc.



6. type to save and exit, reboot. and you're set.


SHR advantages:
+ sits on top of BTRFS, so in the event of a raid failure your data is still available as long as the drive is physically OK
+ maximises your disk space
+ parity is split in all drives, different than most other software raid where 1 or more disks are just for parity/protection.
+ snapshot in case file becomes corrupted
+ VERY fast
+ survives fresh DSM install where you can just migrate the disks to other xpenology/synology system

SHR to me has been very reliable and solid for years.

FreeNAS, XigmaNAS, uses ZFS. OMV supports ZFS with a plugin. ZFS too is reliable, but less flexible. In my case I have a lot of drives with mixed capacities so SHR is the only way to go. You can 100% use OMV if you want, nobody's stopping you but since OMV uses btrfs by default, might as well go with xpe and run omv as a VM in it if you really need some omv apps/plugins that's not available in Xpe (I found none, but I wasn't looking hard enough).

FreeNAS is a total beast, and while it used in enterprise setting, to me it's overkill for a NAS, not to mention the high(er) hardware requirements. But you don't need ECC ram for ZFS, no matter what people say It's a little scary, but your risk of losing everything in your ZFS pool is 1 in 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,853,269,984,665,640,564,039,457,584,007,913,129,639,936. it benefits greatly with ECC though.

If you just need fileserving function, Xpe fully works with a RM200 PC can't beat that yo

This post has been edited by C-Fu: Oct 8 2019, 07:15 PM

boss..is it a good idea to mix up the controller for the disk? I want to use the 6 bay disk enclosre but the original mobo i plan to use which has 6 SATA port just died after i stress it for a while ..now i have second board which only have 4 port, then i want to buy 2 or 4-port PCI-Express Expansion Card *link in shoppe*. Can i use 4 internal SATA port and then additional 2 port from the expansion card? Will Xpenology detect it correctly?

yes. but that's a port multiplier. it means it takes 1 sata port and splits the speed into four.

also it runs very very hot, even with just one port used.

you need a lsi card. some are 3G, some are 6G. the 3G kind supports a max of 2TB per drive, so get 6G version if possible.

if you need more slots, get a LSI card, and an expander card.
the (rebranded, so cheaper) LSI card:


https://www.ebay.com.my/itm/Fujitsu-D2616-L...XEAAOSw9mpaLmFu

the card must be flashed to IT mode so the software (unraid/freenas/xigmanas/xpenology) will handle the raid. flashing is as easy as flashing mobo bios.
there are a billion models available, this is just the cheapest that I found on ebay using the search term "lsi 6G" but there are cheaper cards (I bought mine for RM60, can't remember the model name).

the card as 2 sas ports, so you can connect 2x4 sata ports using this SFF 8087 cable:


https://www.lazada.com.my/products/cabledec...5I6eg3&search=1

expander card:


https://www.ebay.com.my/itm/IBM-ServeRAID-6...VUAAOSw-kdXzYni


if you wanna connect it to the expander, you need two of this cable to connect to the above expander


https://www.lazada.com.my/products/07m-inte...8fP0LD&search=1

and 4x SFF 8087 breakout cable from the expander, giving you 4x4 sata ports.

there are other ways, but this is the cheapest that I know of.

on one of my boards, I mixed the onboard sata ports with 1 lsi 2 ports card, 1 expander, and 1 lsi 4 ports card.

ah i see..thank you for the information sifu

Thanks to CFU for the summarized contents, will try to contribute. Agreed DIY means learning the complications, which is better than depending on adverts and general here say, for ready made NAS.

Sharing from my experience ya

First rule of NAS

1. Secure your data
2. Back up your data
3. Take care of your data

Second rule of NAS

1. Choose OS wisely
2. Choose hardware wisely
3. Have back up hardware that is repeatable

Third rule of NAS

1. Contribute to community
2. Expand network relevant to the chosen OS
3. Pool resources

There are 2 parts to NAS-Data & Services

Here are the temperature for the disks. all of this is only temporary as i will replaced them all with high capacity down the road . using SHR i can replaced 1 disk with high capacity and it will expand right?

hmm, this is an interesting thread, now I think my old phenom II will have a new purpose

something I'm worried about which is power consumption, if I were to build my NAS with phenom II and running it 24/7, any idea will it cost a lot for my electricity bill?

Hi bro, just wondering what is the difference between getting 2 SAS cards vs 1 SAS card + 1 Expander? Both would result in 16 HDDs config

no, the biggest capacity usually used as redundancy

I see..if i replaced few of them? Eventually i want to replace all of it with 2tb drives

Im using intel 4590 as esxi & xpenology ds918 image. Passthrough the onboard intel gpu & onboard sata for xpenology...boom ... U got esxi & nas all in 1. Why ds918?simple, gpu transcoding. Emby server is working, nas is working, bunch of vm is working, docker in xpenology is working. Only VMM inside xpenology not working since it needed nested hw in esxi

I have no idea sorry. It's too vague. Phenom II I think is 125W at max, and need to calculate drives (15W per drive) and mobo+ram sticks (50? 100? Can't remember). Some enable hdd spindowns, but since you won't save that much with spindowns but introduce more wear and tears, I'd personally recommend AGAINST it.

Then it comes to your house tariff. 100kWh? 300kWh? 100kWh is 33.40 cents. so if your rig is at max load 24/7 and using 130W + 60W (4drives) + 100W = 300W, that would mean 0.3kWh x RM0.35 x 24h x 30 = RM75.60 per month, the absolute worst-case scenario. Hence a good efficient PSU will be your best first investment, second is a low-powered proc (like E5 2650L instead of E5 2650).


Effectively no difference other than costs.


Not quite. Syno's RAID implementation is different than normal RAID.

You don't use the biggest just for redundancy, but you use all/most drives for redundancy AND space to minimize wasted space.

Try it here https://www.synology.com/en-my/support/RAID_calculator


you can enable nested hw in esxi. but if you're already using esxi, might as well use esxi's VM implementation instead of VMM.

very detailed explanation there, really appreciate the breakdown and easier for me to do some planning. I guess if i were to carry on with Phenom II, might need to try to downclock + downvolt to achieve better power efficiency, but testing stability may be another hassle. Will see how to move on from there

I don't think you need to. a more accurate or average estimate would be to calculate using idle cpu wattage since it's not gonna be 100% all the time. even if you use things like plex that uses cpu transcoding for videos, it'll happen during the duration of the video only.

only way to be sure is to use a watt meter, set the cost according to your place, and leave it for a week and see for yourself.



This post has been edited by C-Fu: Dec 8 2019, 12:21 AM

I assume the purpose is to build a large logical drive instead of 2 logical drive with 2 cards?

nope. 2 cards can also build single logical drive using raid from freenas, DSM, etc. using passthrough/IT mode.

This post has been edited by edministrator: Apr 22 2020, 11:37 AM

Oh, I didn't mean software RAID from freenas etc... I mean from hardware RAID point of view where expander required as compared to 2 raid cards.

Anyway, I've been googling about flashing firmware for Fujitsu D2616 and it doesn't seems to be supported... Can anyone able to confirm?

Considering building an unraid NAS for Plex...

RAID-Controller - SAS 6 Gb/s RAID 5/6 512 MB (D2616) = LSI SAS2108 6 Gb/s RAID-on-Chip

so far SAS2108 does not support IT mode

you wouldn't want hardware raid on unraid, let alone on freenas.

you can, but you would want the software raid to handle most if not everything.

Also there's a total of ONE thread out there that states how to crossflash D2616 to LSI IT firmware, but links are either dead or my internet's dead.

C-Fu,
Thanks for taking the time to write this beautiful post.
Very inspiring for this "another" old uncle.

Inspired by you, I enthusiastically (which doesnt happen for a long while) pull out my i5-2400 from storage and did some refurbishing. Now it has 16GB ram (was 4GB), a new RM80 128GB SSD + 3TB HDD (was 500GB), a RX580 (was GT something-something) and a new bronze 500W PSU (was the gray box stuff) I picked up online for cheap, one at a time, mostly used items. None of the following fun would happen if I did any sort of budgeting... LOL

Still trying out most of the NAS softwares you listed by creating new VM,s to see what are the things I need. As I have no idea what I want ... All in the name of science LOL

After fiddling for about 2 months, what I have currently running is Ubuntu 20.04 LTS because I am kedekut and because I reckon the lighter Linux Os will benefit my old girl AND it just came out in April 2020. As for the Virtualization, I use the in-built virtual machine in the kernel KVM with VirtManager GUI don't know what to call it, a hypervisor? anyway, it works . I can not notice any difference in performance running SolidWorks and Autocad in VM from running in local machine. Ya, both are as slow as you can imagine with this Sandy-bridge i5. The important point is still can-use-la.... btw, the RX580 with 8Gb does give the rendering a huge boost.

Ubuntu 20.04LTS of course you can choose other distro such as PoP! Arch etc etc everyone is releasing their new LTS 5 year support version.
https://releases.ubuntu.com/20.04/

Manage virtual machines with virt-manager
https://virt-manager.org/

In case you are interested in how I GPU passthrough I just followed the following blog to the teeth...
https://heiko-sieger.info/running-windows-1...hics_processors

Pinyin input is important to me,
https://pinyinjoe.com/linux/ubuntu-18-gnome...inese-setup.htm

SAMBA is my pick to serve files to my other devices, (which dont really happen very often...) and I really don't have much data to store for now... This may change since I now have the superpower to create a NAS when I want with a few click on the keyboard and buying a few HDD
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-configure-sa...cal-fossa-linux

I also fiddling with Jellyfin now and I am thinking of retiring my Pi music streamer...
https://jellyfin.org/

As I continue to fiddle with stuff, I realized I am stuffing more work for the poor i5-2400 with just 4 core w/0 hyper-threading.... My current temptation is an XEON E3-1230V2 which is 4C/8T.... about RM200... a huge price cut from the i7-3770 with nearly same performance. which is about the biggest LGA1155 socket can take... no, wont change the mobo unless I get one for free... at least for now..

My old girl may accidentally rejuvenate into a Virtualization Server .... who would ever guess that 3 months ago.. LOL

OR my kiddo come hijack this old girl when he see papa playing Steam games at 1080p ultra setting ,,,
mmmm... better not put any RGB light near the box don't need the attention...
https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-install-st...n-ubuntu-20-04/

This post has been edited by KenC: Jul 19 2020, 03:42 PM

That's AWESOME! Congrats!

Whatever people say, 2nd gen is MORE THAN CAPABLE for normal use. As you have noticed, pretty much everything still works.

For Xpenology on QEMU/KVM, a good guide is here.



few notes:
Hypervisor=kvm=VMM
For intel 2nd gen, max you can go is E3-12**v2. On top of my head, I can't remember if E3-1xxx series has a igpu built-in or not - I think it doesn't. iGPU is important if you want to use something like plex/emby/jellyfin for video transcoding purpose. if you want h264/mp4 video transcoding, I believe you need at minimum a 4th gen cpu. if you want a GPU to help with that, just get a minimum 1050 or 1050Ti for extra memory for more video transcoding at the same time. Some 1050Ti cards have no need for external power, so might be a very useful and cheap card for multiple clients.

jellyfin supports amd video transcoding, but performance wise isn't as good as nvidias. But if it works, it works.

you don't have to use virtmanager. there are alternatives, my preferred way are web-based ones.
https://github.com/mistio/mist-ce
https://ovirt.org/
Proxmox (my fav, a standalone OS, a bit complex to set up in the beginning, but totally worth it)
https://github.com/retspen/webvirtcloud (try this first)
https://github.com/kimchi-project/kimchi (try this first also)

Yes, 2nd gen Sandy bridge still solid when it comes to real work. Autocad, Solidworks very stable and snappy with the aid of a "dated" mid-range gpu (RX580), more ram and SSD. Still can keep up with most real workload, though a bit slower in rendering but a minute or 2 is never a life and death situation. If I still has the need for a CAD workstation, I will not hesitate to bring this old girl back online. Will keep a VM packed with CAD on the side... never know what life will bring

Transcoding is be something I want to figure out sooner or later... at the moment, no dire need... LOL old uncle dont watch much porn LOL

ALL XEON don't come with iGPU. so a GPU is mandatory. I am not in a hurry or in real need of anything. Will wait for the price drop after AMD and Intel have their new release. Ive-bridge 3rd gen i7-3770K is best la, can play overclock some more but the cheapest LGA1155 4C/8T is the E3-1230V2 for now.... if can cheaper lagi best la... if any of the 3770k, 3770, 1270v2, 1240v2 drop below 200 buck I grab also wan I just want more threads... period

Lately, while digging for ideas to put this old girl to good use, I sesat jalan and ran into Machine Learning, Deep learning, Computer Vision stuff, looks interesting. Contemplating the idea of a GTX 1060 6GB to transform it to a machine learning rig too 1050ti will be very affordable but ram tak cukup... 1070 8GB would be nice but too expensive for a toy.
Will be cool to play scissor paper stone with the pc.

Apparently, NVIDIA is more useful in the real world.... no wonder more expensive la

Thanks for the heads up on the web-base hypervisors and Proxmax. That will keep me busy for a while.

I think some how this built is slowly transforming into a FunStation... You are right about VM is something I didint know I need LOL...BUT I don't want to draw any conclusion just yet, let it evolve into whatever it will be...

It would be great to squeeze another 5 years of use from this old girl, which is looking promising at the moment.

Macam participant in Junkyard War...

This post has been edited by KenC: Jul 21 2020, 12:18 AM