Camilo Martin Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 Since I was looking up which boards would make a proper NAS and home automation hub, I figured I might as well summarize the options in a post. Requirements for a proper NAS: Gigabit Ethernet SATA that is not a crappy USB->SATA chip Armbian-supported That last one is because otherwise the options are much more numerous and scattered, and the previous requirements become vague (e.g., you could even just take out a netbook's motherboard and run it standalone). Also, you could use an A80 board (USB 3.0) but I believe none are supported by Armbian, same goes for R40 (has SATA), so this leaves us with these A20 boards that also have GbE: _____________________________________________________ Banana Pi _____________________________________________________ Banana Pi+ _____________________________________________________ Cubietruck _____________________________________________________ Lamobo R1 _____________________________________________________ Olimex Lime 2 _____________________________________________________ Olimex Lime 2 eMMC _____________________________________________________ Orange Pi _____________________________________________________ Orange Pi mini _____________________________________________________ pcDuino3 nano _____________________________________________________ Clearfog Base _____________________________________________________ Clearfog Pro _____________________________________________________ CuBox-i _____________________________________________________ HummingBoard (Pro & Edge) _____________________________________________________ Udoo Quad _____________________________________________________ The prices and availability for these boards is as follows: Banana Pi (~$33) Banana Pi+ ($40) Cubietruck (~$95 - ~$106 as a kit) Lamobo R1 (out of stock / discontinued) Olimex Lime 2 (€45) Olimex Lime 2 eMMC (€55) Orange Pi (renamed? / out of stock / discontinued) Orange Pi mini (renamed? / out of stock / discontinued) pcDuino3 nano (~$49) Clearfog Base ($110) Clearfog Pro ($180) CuBox-i (from $120 to $180 - the cheaper ($90+) boards seem to have no SATA) HummingBoard (Pro $84, Edge $100) Udoo Quad ($135) According solely to the above, and disregarding other board differences/features, for a simple LAN-connected NAS hard drive that occasionally pulls a few GPIO pins high or low for automation, the Banana Pi looks like a good option. Maybe I'm overlooking things, and maybe any of those prices are wrong; since this is a forum anyone is free to correct me and I'll try to update this OP in case the thread grows (and I remember to check back down the road). Edit: a great read is this wiki article, some considerations: clock speed and CPU governor matters a lot more than in x86 (doing other stuff during transfers might be a no-no) and Gigabit Ethernet might mean "USB 2.0 speeds, but in a RJ45". Side note: it would be nice to have a list of boards somewhere with feature matrices and prices/links, not sure if such a thing exists. Edit: added Clearfog Base/Pro, CuBox-i, HummingBoard Pro/Edge and Udoo Quad as per suggestion) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 You missed Marvell and i.MX6 devices that also feature a 'true' SATA port and GBit Ethernet (though the latter somewhat limited with i.MX6). Also ODROID-XU4 is quite capable since equipped with USB3 (for performance numbers with UAS enabled enclosures check 2nd link below). And in my personal opinion H3/H5 boards also make up for a nice NAS when combined with mainline kernel and an UAS capable USB-to-SATA bridge (still hoping for Xunlong giving us a GBit Ethernet equipped H5 Zero board that can be combined with their NAS Expansion board) Additional ressources: Basic considerations when it's about NAS and SBC: http://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi_devices_as_NAS Performance measurements (USB, SATA, eMMC) of some boards: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1925-some-storage-benchmarks-on-sbcs/ A20 SATA performance compared to A64/H5 USB performance: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1917-armbian-running-on-pine64-and-other-a64h5-devices/?p=20316 Some more USB NAS considerations: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1440-h3-devices-as-nas/?p=11030 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camilo Martin Posted February 21, 2017 Author Share Posted February 21, 2017 Thanks, edited the OP And in my personal opinion H3/H5 boards also make up for a nice NAS when combined with mainline kernel and an UAS capable USB-to-SATA bridge (still hoping for Xunlong giving us a GBit Ethernet equipped H5 Zero board that can be combined with their NAS Expansion board) So maybe we could wait a bit more until more boards start coming out with H5 chip? I ended up here because I found their NAS expansion board and thought "wait a minute, is their Zero board up to the task?" From the info I gathered it really feels like NAS is maybe not the sort of thing I should be using SBCs for just yet. "Soon" (read an year or two) the good features from all those boards will become the norm rather than the exception (at least GbE and USB 3.0+), and there will probably be more choices, leading to lower prices overall and consistent quality (same that happened with 3D printers "recently"). For this reason, I wouldn't spend $150+ on a NAS board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 "Soon" (read an year or two) the good features from all those boards will become the norm rather than the exception (at least GbE and USB 3.0+) Well, the majority of people does this sort of el cheapo NAS with an old 2.5" disk lying around. If we get back to the basics (see post #10 and especially #11 from my 2nd link above) we see that random IO with HDDs is crap anyway and that sequential throughput is also limited especially if the disk will be filled to its whole capacity (ZBR -- zone bit recording is responsible for empty HDDs being almost twice as fast as full HDDs) For this use case Gigabit Ethernet and USB2.0 attached storage is already sufficient, if we've seen how A64 with an UASP connected SSD outperforms A20 with the same SSD connected through SATA when it's about random IO (3rd link above) then it's obvious that 'SATA' is not an own value but it depends on the SATA implementation in question (again: 2nd link above). So regarding el cheapo NAS an OPi PC2 combined with good USB enclosures is already sufficient. Gets even better if Xunlong will make such a NAS Zero with H5 and GBit Ethernet. Regarding performant NAS attempts in SBC form factor please be aware that there's ESPRESSOBin and maybe other Marvell designs will follow. Edit: One of the real advantages of SATA regardless of performance is that you have better control over HDD/SSD features (checking drive health with SMART, setting disk sleep parameters, being able to make use of TRIM). This is stuff that does not work automatically with USB but it always depends on the bridge chip used in the enclosure (and that's why I love Xunlong's decision to put 2 of the best available USB-to-SATA bridges on their NAS Expansion board, now only the appropriate H5 board missing ) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnets Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 On the ultra low end you can get a pogoplug v4, and if you get the pink version it has 2xUSB 3.0, 1xUSB2, SD slot, gigabit ethernet and a sata slot. They also come with a 12v/2A power supply and you don't have to buy a case. They have pretty crappy performance compared to the newer boards and do run hot. https://linuxengineering.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/performance-tuning-with-pogoplug-v4/ You can pick them up on ebay for next to nothing, especially in the US 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camilo Martin Posted February 21, 2017 Author Share Posted February 21, 2017 Edit: One of the real advantages of SATA regardless of performance is that you have better control over HDD/SSD features (checking drive health with SMART, setting disk sleep parameters, being able to make use of TRIM). This is stuff that does not work automatically with USB but it always depends on the bridge chip used in the enclosure (and that's why I love Xunlong's decision to put 2 of the best available USB-to-SATA bridges on their NAS Expansion board, now only the appropriate H5 board missing ) Wait, their USB bridge on that expansion board does TRIM and reports SMART? This is as good as SATA if over USB3 speeds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted February 21, 2017 Share Posted February 21, 2017 Wait, their USB bridge on that expansion board does TRIM and reports SMART? Fortunately most more recent USB-to-SATA bridges support SMART these days, you just have to try out the different smartctl modes: https://github.com/igorpecovnik/lib/blob/f43622e34a83123b789352b49825cda89a147a69/scripts/armbianmonitor/armbianmonitor#L60-L62 Regarding this NAS Expansion board information is available at the appropriate thread (and IMO discussion should remain there too): https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/3317-orange-pi-zero-nas-expansion-board-with-sata-msata/?p=23774 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdel Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 it may be a little off topic but i have to mention that with those boards, you will get nas without (very) fast vpn. i will assume that some of us think of "NAS" as "with my p2p client", and when you mention p2p some of us have to also mention vpn (openvpn), and that's when thing get hairy with those arm socs. So far the fastest (by far) soc i have tested is the amlogic s905 (s912 gives the same performance) which can achieve 90-100 Mbps max (aes-128-cbc), with one core at 100%, openvpn being single threaded. H5/A64 is much slower, and 32bit socs tend to be slower as well unless they have a very high clock speed (2GHz).. I will mention that there's some work done on a H5 crypto engine driver but couldn't get it to work or show any performance improvement compared to non accelerated crypto. All my tests are done with armbian (vanilla or legacy kernels depending on the soc). So if you plan on using that nas to do some high speed p2p through a vpn link, you have to expect speeds (well) below 100 Mbps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camilo Martin Posted February 24, 2017 Author Share Posted February 24, 2017 @mdel I'm not sure what you're talking about, NAS = Network Attached Storage (e.g., a hard drive in your LAN exposed as a SMB share, calling it P2P is a stretch of the term) VPN = Virtual Private Network (e.g., a server in the US so someone from UK or Germany can watch government-banned content) P2P = Peer to Peer, (so client to client, as opposed to server to client. I don't think a NAS can be called a "peer" on the network) Moreover if you're going to access a NAS from far away over non-fiber connections why not use something more vintage like FTP? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zador.blood.stained Posted February 24, 2017 Share Posted February 24, 2017 It's possible that @mdel talks about a specific use case - NAS as a file storage running a torrent client and a VPN client, so all the torrent traffic goes through the VPN connection in case this type of traffic is shaped (throttled) by the ISP or can cause legal issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camilo Martin Posted February 25, 2017 Author Share Posted February 25, 2017 NAS as a file storage running a torrent client and a VPN client Not trying to discourage anyone from tinkering, but Deluge + $<5/month VPS works great for this and your home connection doesn't get used at all (which is good on countryside, ADSL-only areas with crappy upload rates). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdel Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 It's possible that @mdel talks about a specific use case - NAS as a file storage running a torrent client and a VPN client, so all the torrent traffic goes through the VPN connection in case this type of traffic is shaped (throttled) by the ISP or can cause legal issues. well i'd go as far as saying that my special use case should be anyone's when it comes to dev boards, meaning use it to its full potential. Moreover if you're talking about "NAS", i expect you to know about QNAP, Synology and such, which by default invite you to install a large variety of "apps" on your "NAS", including vpn, p2p, ownclound, plex, and so on.. Bandwidth wise i do agree my use case (fast vpn) can be seen as specific but fiber finally getting on here, we get multiple hundreds of Mbps of bandwidth at home. That's when you learn that your most powerful 4K HEVC arm soc can't really do anything decent with single threaded encryption. I should also add that p2p clients can use quite a lot of memory (deluge in particular) so you should be careful about that as well. Anyways on the cheap side i would assume that tkaiser has pretty much covered the subject on his NAS thread, with his choice being the opi pc2 (i think), gigabit and multiple usb hosts. My preferred choice would be a more powerful s905 soc for "fast" openvpn and i'm actually using some ultra cheap android tv box (a95x) running armbian. You could actually add "many android tv boxes" to your list, because they aren't very different from most of those "basic" boards (hdmi, usb, 100/1000Mbps). As long as you can find a distro running on your box, you're good to go. For faster vpn and better I/O (sata / usb3) i'm using a laptop motherboard with an i5 560M, still quite cheap (around 80e), but then that's really off topic.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandit Posted June 15, 2017 Share Posted June 15, 2017 Hello I'm new here, I found this site by accident and is interesting so I created an account. I'm running a home server with a Athlon CPU for more then 7 years, with a lot of disks. The CPU is almost continently sleeping, so I want to make new server with an energy friendly ARM CPU. I was inspired by an article here (http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-power-ARM-based-file-server-using-up-to-5-desk/) from a guy who create a NAS with a PcDuino3 Nano board and a sata splitter. Although this board have a native SATA interface, It has not the fasted ARM CPU. The banana PI M3 for instance has a much faster CPU, but no native SATA :-( I'm wandering which board Camilo Martin choosed. or my question is wat the best board is for a home server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted June 15, 2017 Share Posted June 15, 2017 48 minutes ago, Pandit said: I was inspired by an article here (http://www.instructables.com/id/Low-power-ARM-based-file-server-using-up-to-5-desk/) from a guy who create a NAS with a PcDuino3 Nano board and a sata splitter. Don't do that, just don't do that, using those crappy Port Multipliers especially combined with a dog slow A20 is always wrong. If you need 5 disks with ARM you need the Clearfog Pro (and 2 ASM1061/ASM1062) with 4 disks the Helios4 is for you (if it gets funded, only 4 days left). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted June 15, 2017 Share Posted June 15, 2017 1 hour ago, Pandit said: The banana PI M3 for instance has a much faster CPU, but no native SATA :-( Oops, overread it totally. The BPi M3 is most probably the worst choice for a Gigabit Ethernet equipped board with NAS use case in mind since featuring the broken/slow GL830 USB-to-SATA bridge which has to share bandwidth with all the USB2 receptacles since the 'famous' board maker ignored that the A83T SoC has 2 USB ports but they use only one to connect both GL830 and the internal USB hub where the other USB ports are connected to. http://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi_devices_as_NAS#Requirements_.2F_which_device_to_choose http://linux-sunxi.org/Banana_Pi_M3#USB_2.0_Hosts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandit Posted June 15, 2017 Share Posted June 15, 2017 2 hours ago, tkaiser said: Don't do that, just don't do that, using those crappy Port Multipliers especially combined with a dog slow A20 is always wrong. If you need 5 disks with ARM you need the Clearfog Pro (and 2 ASM1061/ASM1062) with 4 disks the Helios4 is for you (if it gets funded, only 4 days left). Thanks for your quick reply , I read about the Helios4. But I don't have any experience with kickstarter. for this project they need e$ 150.000. What will happen if they don't reach this amount? Second For this price there are x86 board available like the ASRock H110M-HDV & Intel Celeron G1820 & some RAM. What are the benefits of this ARM board over a small x86 board? More energyfriendly maybe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkaiser Posted June 15, 2017 Share Posted June 15, 2017 5 minutes ago, Pandit said: I don't have any experience with kickstarter. for this project they need e$ 150.000. What will happen if they don't reach this amount? It's written there. The links I provided were also meant to be read and not ignored. And here's another one: https://forum.openmediavault.org/index.php/Thread/18597-Helios4-community-developed-ARM-4-bay-NAS-device-received-important-upgrade/ (take your time ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pandit Posted June 16, 2017 Share Posted June 16, 2017 Thanks for the information. One question. If I want to make a simple NAS with only one SATA disk, which card can you recommend ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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