Anyone know of a NAS box that can...

[guyinva]

Anyone heard of a NAS that would run two 1TB disks in RAID0, with a third 2TB disk to do periodic backups of the RAID0 via rsync (or similar)? Is there a term for this configuration already?

I could build it myself, but I'd like to keep power and size to a minimum.

 

[coelo]

Anyone heard of a NAS that would run two 1TB disks in RAID0, with a third 2TB disk to do periodic backups of the RAID0 via rsync (or similar)? Is there a term for this configuration already?

I could build it myself, but I'd like to keep power and size to a minimum.

I'd ask thelostswede

And, I'd expect him to say Synology

 

[thelostswede]

Well, Synology appears to support it http://www.synology.com/tutorials/how_to_Backup_DiskStation_to_another_server.php?lang=us
But I would guess so would Qnap and Thecus.

That said, this seems easier to me http://docs.qnap.com/nas/en/index.html?remote_replication.htm one touch backup. Again, I'd expect Synology and Thecus to offer the same feature.

Synology has a live demo of their DSM software you can play with here http://www.synology.com/products/dsm_livedemo.php to get an idea of how it works. Qnap has one here http://web.qnap.com/liveDemo.asp and Thecus have one here ​http://www.thecus.com/sp_livedemo.php

Judging by the live demos (I couldn't get into Synology's backup options) Qnap appears to be the best solution for you, as you can simply plug in a USB drive in the front port, push the button and the NAS backs up to the external drive. I'd suggest getting a model with a front USB 3.0 port and a USB 3.0 drive for though though, as this should in theory cut the backup time by at least a third or a quarter depending on how fast a drive you've got in the USB enclosure.

 

[guyinva]

Thanks, lostswede. What I was thinking of (hoping for) was to have everything in the same box. A three or four bay NAS, with two disks in RAID0, and a third, unrelated disk as the backup. Not two separate enclosures.

The Synology demo had some interesting features (Asterisk support!?), but the demo locked down features I thought would be helpful.

I knew it was a long shot, but I thought maybe something like this existed.

 

[thelostswede]

You'd have to contact the manufacturers, but I doubt it as a NAS was never intended to used that way. It's possible that you might be able to add it yourself, if you can figure out how to hack their custom Linux builds.

 

[guyinva]

That's what I thought. Thanks anyway.

I doubt it as a NAS was never intended to used that way.

I'm thinking of this as I look through plugins for running Wordpress and a Mono environment.

 

[blink999]

Anyone heard of a NAS that would run two 1TB disks in RAID0, with a third 2TB disk to do periodic backups of the RAID0 via rsync (or similar)? Is there a term for this configuration already?

When I started hitting the wall of what the prepackaged NAS solutions could muster (as it sounds like you have), I dropped a couple of bills on a "new in sealed box" HP Proliant N36L (replaced by the N40L) and setup CentOS on a cheap-but-fast flash drive on the internal USB port. You could easily do what you're trying to do using Linux software RAID and rsync (or even 'tar' -- copy over every file with an mtime more recent than the last backup).

But my first question would be -- why? The speed advantages of a RAID-0 stripe are going to be lost in a NAS setting (the GigE interface is going to be your bottleneck; factoring in network overhead and assuming end-to-end everything's optimized (matching MTUs, jumbo frames, high speed GigE switch, etc), you're realistically going to max out around 110MB/sec on GigE copper.

Any recent SATA drive, even a 'green' spinner, will exceed that. You could saturate the pipe with just a single non-striped disk.

If it's capacity you're after, what about setting up RAID-5?

 

[lore]

Got the N40L too, installed Oracle Solaris 11 + Napp-It running headless.
Autoexpandible raidz with 3x 2TB greens; set up with several separate file systems, time machine, clone of the disk with CCC over network, and a purchased windows media server 2011 running itunes media server on virtualbox for my apple TV.

I had to study a bit to get there but it's totally worth it.
Napp-it have it's own webserver for setting things up, Solaris can be used via the usual terminal tools or ChickenVNC. I access the windows machine with the VNC tool included in windows media server 2011 or with teamviewer when I'm out of my cabled network.

 

[thelostswede]

If you're getting one of those HP boxes, you might almost as well build a mini-ITX system, albeit it's hard to beat the HP pricing even on a DIY build with an Atom or AMD board, mostly due to the cost of a good chassis and PSU.

Btw, review link to the original model http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1193-page1.html although that review is mostly focusing on noise

 

[lore]

As far as I know, the HP box is just the best you can get for that price.

The only drawback is: it doesn't support fully hardware virtualization. I've learnt it the hard way, once I tried to set my LSI megaraid SAS controller in pass-through under ESXi.
If you can live with that, just use Solaris as host OS; Virtualbox is made by Oracle and works well.. just let solaris deal with the disks/raid. Nothing beat raidz.