Armbian file server, need hardware advice

[nematocyst]

I'm looking to update my current Armbian File server (orange pi plus).  The main reason is to gain USB3 for faster file serving, particularly rsync. I have little need for most of the features available (bluetooth,wifi,gpio,audio,hdmi), just a stable, low-cost, box that has usb3/gigabit ethernet and doesn't need a fan.  I was thinking of an orange pi 3 lts for this purpose-- it seems to run armbian, and it won't break the bank at 54usd shipped with case + power supply.

 

Do you see any problems with this choice or have alternative choices?

[Werner]

Maybe something built around the RK3399 SoC? It's support, while not being perfect, is well matured. The Nanopi R4S is such a workhorse without unneeded stuff, just dual LAN and dual USB3. That's it.

 

I tried using it as NAS by myself a while ago but unfortunately I could not manage to run stable for a longer time.

 

ATM I am using the Station P1 for that purpose which is kind a not what the board is designed for but it runs stable for long now. One Lan and one USB3 only but you can attach a NVMe.

The board inside is a T-Firefly ROC RK3399 PC PLUS.

 

Also a great board that has GBe and USB3 in a very small form factor is the Nanopi Neo 3. I used to have one but I managed to break it.

[nematocyst]

I went ahead with the Orange PI 3 LTS soln.  Been running it a few days, major kick in the backup speed compared to my previous server.

 

I notice it does get a little hot... 78C during a backup last night, but usually around 58-62C.  I haven't put a H/S on it yet, not sure how much that'll help.

 

Also, the eth0 uses polling instead of an IRQ.  is this something that might change someday with OS updates?  The box won't go under 1.00 load because of that.  I wonder how much of the power->heat comes from that.  It would be nice, also, to disable HDMI, the GPU, and unused USB systems.  I don't know if that's possible or not; it could be done on my old server, to pretty nice reduction in power.

[ning]

I think many of us want to use arm sbc as NAS, but remember, your data is expensive, but you put it on cheep server...

at least you need an arm device designed for NAS, not any SBC.

 

 

[TRS-80]

More thoughts on this topic: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19978-so-you-want-to-run-a-file-server/