NAS / OpenMediaVault

[stuartiannaylor]

USB RAID yeah prob a joke but keep thinking about the Rock64 with its cost/IO and how it could be a great "TV Box NAS".
Its at a cost for SoHo use that with USB3.0 you still have the bottleneck of the 1Gig ethernet.

I keep wondering more about ease of use and if you could just stack cheapo 2 bay Raid1 or single drives where when you just need more space Just Add Another via USB3.0.
Anyone ever played with AuFS and knows how much the performance hit is?

I keep thinking apart from Docker AuFS & OverlayFS could provide some novel simple storage solutions that sort of fit the simplicity of 'Settop NAS'
Things are getting really cheap as look at what you get with a Rock64 same with 2bay RAID as found this thing for £30 https://www.amazon.co.uk/HDD-USB-RAID-En...bay+raid+1
It might be a bit mweh but it could be fit for purpose if its just SoHo

I am thinking of getting one just to play and see as prices are sort of getting to a point where maybe its not RAID but AIR (Array of Inexpensive RAID) or with me more likely just hot air.
AuFS could do just pure JAA (Just Add Another) where the multiple spindles of some pretty god damn awful drives of low cost just build up into a volume that does the job.
OverlayFS is more like a cache where the copy up to a fast 'work' drive could still closely mirror what we do with storage and periodically aged files get placed in the lower file system.

Maybe its a shame that the Rock64 didn't ship with just 2 independent USB 3.0 ports that be it network or storage you can just cluster via adaptors.

As long as you've got just one hard drive/SSD, the Rock64 would make a very good NAS. As has been mentioned before, the performance of the USB 3.0 controller will come close to saturating the SATA3 interface of modern disks.

However, when you add more drives, regardless of whatever method you use (AuFS, ZFS, you name it) you will be bottlenecked by that single USB connection. Not to mention that USB is not exactly a reliable protocol. It will be the single point of failure which could compromise uptime at minimum and completely corrupt your data at worst.

My suggestion if you want multiple disks? Find another board to use, or cluster multiple Rock64s.

Also, the reason that the board didn't ship with more than one USB 3.0 port is because the RK3328 SoC doesn't have any more USB3 controllers.

My whole point is that its not the USB 3.0 controller that is the bottleneck but the 1Gig Ethernet controller.
But to be honest confused as you seem to say the Rock64 would be a good NAS and then say the mechanisms for doing so are not. "Not to mention that USB is not exactly a reliable protocol"

AuFS or OverlayFS are not blk level file systems but purely ways to concatenate filesystems ZFS, EXT4... and RAID can run under AuFS or OverlayFS as they work at a file level but have a single mount point.
Each raid unit or disk isn't part of a volume or span the drivers just make it look that way but you do get a performance hit.

I have no idea why you have any preference to a single disk as why a single usb-> single port sata adapter is any better or worse than a usb -> multiple port sata raid has me bemused? 
Or a single drive in a usb hub is any better than multiple?

If you have a raw 5gbps USB port and a collection of relatively slow HDD drives why would you partition them into clusters.

Clusters are a good idea but until you need them.

I know its a shame about the RK3328 SoC it was just a thought about SoCs in general where embedded functionality dictates employment.
CPU + GPU + USB + mPCIe maybe but that was just a wishlist.

I am pretty sure the Rock64 will make a great NAS unit and multiple drives will be used for greater storage size but not all accessed at the same time.