05-12-2016, 03:41 AM
(05-11-2016, 12:40 PM)rahlquist Wrote: Making the argument that say I needed a small samba based NAS, say 4tb and say we use the same drive and headless config between an X86 and SBC, the savings, is likely going to be maybe $50-75 after you build comparably reliable systems.
To be honest: For valuable data you want to use filesystems that can ensure data integrity (btrfs or ZFS) and then you need also ECC RAM. So you end up with a HP Microserver as most affordable variant anyway since currently you won't find any ARM design with ECC support for a lower price.
I was talking about a small NAS for unimportant/redundant data and there choosing the right SBC might make a huge difference. See for example https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/...r-6-hours/
GBit capable small board with native SATA and a battery that is also able to work as an UPS for both board and disk powered by a simple 5V/2A PSU. As a local randomly used NAS with correctly configured disk spindown you end up with an idle consumption of just 1.5W and average consumption below 5W.
For anything larger I would already check whether one of the more modern NAS boxes that make use of btrfs and snapshots is the better alternative (AFAIK currently only available from Netgear).
BTW: One of the key criteria for me for NAS useage is the ability to query drive health data (S.M.A.R.T.) so if external USB disks and a cheap GbE capable SBC is already lying around and the disk enclosure's USB bridge is SAT capable and S.M.A.R.T. works then why not trying it to use as el cheapo NAS? With Pine64/A64 the count of real USB host ports is an issue but apart from that it will work with the aforementioned performance limitations (you currently won't exceed 30MB/s and will see a slight improvement when mainline kernel's ready and your USB enclosure is UASP capable).
SMART, SAT and UASP and all the other basics explained in detail here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi_devices_as_NAS
