[lug] NAS - OpenNAS, FreeNAS, NAS4Free, or COTS?

[Orion Poplawski]

On 12/08/2014 11:44 AM, Quentin Hartman wrote:
> I have to just put in a plug for a Synology device. They are pretty well
> bullet proof and super easy to maintain. If you need to do anything weird they
> are linux based, but out of the box they are very capable. They are more
> expensive up front than rolling your own, but inexpensive enough that the
> difference is more than made up for by the time savings in most cases. I have
> a couple at the office, and use one for general NAS / file sharing stuff, and
> the other as a backup destination. They are great.

good to know, thanks.

> also re RAID-5, in my experience, most of the problems with RAID-5 are largely
> theoretical, until you get up to raid sets with about 10 disks or more. I've
> never had problems with sets smaller than that, in terms performance,
> reliability, or recovery time. If budget is a concern, and you are using a 4-5
> disk array, RAID-5 with a single hot spare (or even without if the data is
> reconstruct-able and an array failure would be annoying but not catastrophic)
>  makes a lot of sense in my opinion.
> 

Well, I recently lost a 6-disk RAID5 array of 2TB disks due to multiple disk
failures.  Admittedly, it was compounded by SMART checks having been turned
off accidentally, but it is quite possible for it to happen.  I also lost a
RAID10 array to double disk failure.


-- 
Orion Poplawski
Technical Manager                     303-415-9701 x222
NWRA, Boulder/CoRA Office             FAX: 303-415-9702
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