NAS recommendations and expectations
#1
Hi,
I already run UNRAID. I have around 5TB of Media storage, and 1GB of general documents (docs/pdf etc) . UNRAID is slow. I would like advice on selecting a NAS for my network that will provide me with the fastest speeds for managing my files. I will backup this NAS to my UNRAID server, so no need for redundancy, just speed. In terms of storage capacity, it would be nice to go to 5TB, but strictly speaking, this could be as little as 2TB.
I run Windows 7 pc's and Android tablets.
Thanks for the help.
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#2
Unless you have a budget limit(?) and speed is everything just go 10-15 Samsung 840evo 500gb in raid 5 preferably with a high quality dedicated raid card on a pc using ecc memory, will run you way above 5000$.
I'm currently setting this up for a client, 16drives pushing above 1gBps through cat6 Smile
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#3
(2014-08-29, 02:31)RaggSokk3n Wrote: Unless you have a budget limit(?) and speed is everything just go 10-15 Samsung 840evo 500gb in raid 5 preferably with a high quality dedicated raid card on a pc using ecc memory, will run you way above 5000$.
I'm currently setting this up for a client, 16drives pushing above 1gBps through cat6 Smile
My Swedish friends think that you Norwegians are 'funny'. I think that it is fairly clear from the requirements and the usage that I am an enthusiast rather than a fringe connoisseur. Hence spending $5000 (I assume USD? - coz you did not specific), is a little rich. I think that I mentioned that there was no need for redundancy. So your answer though gratefully received, is a little off the mark in terms of relevance.
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#4
5 tb? no problem, a 2 bay NAS with up to 8tb (2x4tb drives) should do the job.

Check the youtube links i gave in this post: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1779092

Synology and Hitachi/HGST NAS drives my favs
My XBMC/Kodi folder: addons, skins, addon/menu backgrounds & more
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#5
Thanks Veronica.
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#6
Which part of your unraid is slow?

I can read from my unRaid box at over 70MB/sec (megabytes, so almost 7200rpm disk speed).
I can write to my unRaid box at around 60MB/sec (I have a cache drive)

This is more than enough to stream 4 HD movies at the same time (from the same disk!)

Given your requirements to no have any fault tolerance, it seems like adding a cache drive will fit the bill. If you have some extra cash then lash out and put in a big SSD for your cache drive!

Sure its not your network link at 100Mbit ?
Are you running gigabit?

It is very easy for a NAS to saturate 100Mbit switch (even a cheap one these days).
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#7
(2014-08-29, 02:21)fishypops Wrote: Hi,
I already run UNRAID. I have around 5TB of Media storage, and 1GB of general documents (docs/pdf etc) . UNRAID is slow. I would like advice on selecting a NAS for my network that will provide me with the fastest speeds for managing my files. I will backup this NAS to my UNRAID server, so no need for redundancy, just speed. In terms of storage capacity, it would be nice to go to 5TB, but strictly speaking, this could be as little as 2TB.
I run Windows 7 pc's and Android tablets.
Thanks for the help.

unRAID slow? Sounds like something isn't right with your build.

I have been running unRAID for a long time on both an HP Microserver (there is a BIOS setting that needs to be made to increase write speeds ISTR) and a couple of home builds. I get pretty much the same read speeds over the network as I get with directly connected SATA drives under Windows, and with a cache drive, pretty much the same write speeds. I'm running cabled GigE and get ~80MB/s (i.e. ~640Mb/s) That's a lot faster than a lot of ARM-based NAS setups.

What rates are you getting with unRAID? Sounds like it might be worth sanity checking your setup before spending money on a new solution. There is absolutely no reason for unRAID to be slower than a consumer NAS solution.
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#8
unRAID is pretty slow for writes since it has to deal with the parity (write to two disks) and limited to the speed of a single disk for reads since it's not striped.

An alternative for the OP would be to switch to FreeNAS or NAS4Free and used ZFS if the existing hardware is sufficient.
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#9
(2014-09-01, 04:23)drawz Wrote: unRAID is pretty slow for writes since it has to deal with the parity (write to two disks) and limited to the speed of a single disk for reads since it's not striped.

An alternative for the OP would be to switch to FreeNAS or NAS4Free and used ZFS if the existing hardware is sufficient.

Almost...

You can increase the performance by adding a Cache drive. All writes are committed to the Cache drive so you get speeds over 60MB/Sec
There is a batch process that takes the contents from the cache and commits it to the array in the early hours of the morning (when you sleep). So you don't notice any performance issue.

You have a *kind* of striping... where each file can be located on a different disk in the array.
In your average 4 disk array, you could have about 5 HD movies streaming from each disk in the array before the 1Gb interface would max out. (theory).

I *only* have 3 XBMC endpoints in my house, and unRAID can serve up all three clients with HD content at the same time (from the same disk).

How many users are you attempting to service? unRAID designed for serving home media, not some enterprise grade fileserver.
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#10
Forgot about the cache drive, but I have used unRAID quite a bit. Keep in mind that your data is not protected when it is on your cache drive but hasn't been written to the array yet.

I'm actually in the process of moving on to FreeNAS. I'm personally doing it for ZFS support, including double parity, checksumming, snapshots, etc. I just feel like my data will be more secure (not worried about media, but rather documents, family photos, and backups). Still deciding what to do with media, but thinking of moving it directly back into the HTPC since I only really have one xbmc client.

unRAID was plenty fast for just serving media, and even the level of data protection was fine for that. Not sure why the OP wants more speed.
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#11
(2014-08-29, 09:51)noggin Wrote: There is absolutely no reason for unRAID to be slower than a consumer NAS solution.

This.

I ran UnRAID on an Atom D2550 machine and it could read at 80MB/s and wrote at 30MB/s to 5900rpm drives. That's more than fast enough for anything you'll be doing with a media server.
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#12
(2014-09-01, 09:57)HellDiver Wrote:
(2014-08-29, 09:51)noggin Wrote: There is absolutely no reason for unRAID to be slower than a consumer NAS solution.

This.

I ran UnRAID on an Atom D2550 machine and it could read at 80MB/s and wrote at 30MB/s to 5900rpm drives. That's more than fast enough for anything you'll be doing with a media server.

While there is no doubt that is plenty of speed for streaming to multiple XBMC clients, that is most certainly not as fast as many consumer NAS solutions. See here:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view

If you're just doing media streaming, unRAID is perfect.
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#13
(2014-09-02, 04:21)drawz Wrote:
(2014-09-01, 09:57)HellDiver Wrote:
(2014-08-29, 09:51)noggin Wrote: There is absolutely no reason for unRAID to be slower than a consumer NAS solution.

This.

I ran UnRAID on an Atom D2550 machine and it could read at 80MB/s and wrote at 30MB/s to 5900rpm drives. That's more than fast enough for anything you'll be doing with a media server.

While there is no doubt that is plenty of speed for streaming to multiple XBMC clients, that is most certainly not as fast as many consumer NAS solutions. See here:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view

If you're just doing media streaming, unRAID is perfect.

Are those tests measuring the transfer from a single drive or from striped arrays? Most of use unRAID to avoid striping - and to ensure our data is intact should we need to pull drives from the array (and to ensure that if we lose more drives than the parity drive can reconstruct we don't lose the entire array, just the drives that have failed)
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#14
I would say a cache drive will help with the speed issue. Also look at your network for any problems.
Here is what my speeds through the gig network to and from the Unraid box from my desktop..

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#15
(2014-09-02, 11:47)noggin Wrote:
(2014-09-02, 04:21)drawz Wrote:
(2014-09-01, 09:57)HellDiver Wrote: This.

I ran UnRAID on an Atom D2550 machine and it could read at 80MB/s and wrote at 30MB/s to 5900rpm drives. That's more than fast enough for anything you'll be doing with a media server.

While there is no doubt that is plenty of speed for streaming to multiple XBMC clients, that is most certainly not as fast as many consumer NAS solutions. See here:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view

If you're just doing media streaming, unRAID is perfect.

Are those tests measuring the transfer from a single drive or from striped arrays? Most of use unRAID to avoid striping - and to ensure our data is intact should we need to pull drives from the array (and to ensure that if we lose more drives than the parity drive can reconstruct we don't lose the entire array, just the drives that have failed)

Striped of course. As with everything, there is a pro and a con to using striped and unstriped. Performance suffers to be unstriped, but you get the benefits you mentioned above. If unRAID had double parity and checksumming, I'd probably still be using it. The performance was a non-issue for me, but it is definitely possible to be faster.
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