Looking for board for nas

[deb2016]

Hello,

 

I am looking for one board in order to build one NAS.

 

I already have one bananapi pro, I am happy with it, the hardware used to be quite better than raspi boards, but it does not seem to still be marketed.

 

It is just a matter of plugging a 2.5" hard drive on it (usb or sata).

 

So the board would require :

- be cheap

- credit card format

- not interested in video performances

- the usb and ethernet not built on the same bus (this is why I say bananapi pro is way better than raspi boards)

- can be cooled silently

- one sata port

- good support from armbian (not talking about video)

 

Which board should I select now to build a simple nas ?

 

Thanks in advance for your attention

 

Regards

 

deb2016

[chwe]

 

[tkaiser]

https://www.armbian.com/search_gcse/ <-- 'NAS SATA' (if SATA is important for you. For me not any more given how crappy some 'native SATA' implementations on ARM boards are)

[deb2016]

20 hours ago, tkaiser said:

https://www.armbian.com/search_gcse/ <-- 'NAS SATA' (if SATA is important for you. For me not any more given how crappy some 'native SATA' implementations on ARM boards are)

 

Thanks for all these useful links.

 

I began to investigate them.

 

In the same time, I was curious about the performance native SATA you do not seem to trust.

 

With the command :

 

sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda

 

I get :

 

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads: 208 MB in  3.00 seconds =  69.32 MB/sec

 

WIth the bananapipro, I experienced that the ethernet is the bottleneck. Raw data transfer goes up to 20 Mo/s.

This becomes less if I use encrypted transfer (ssh, scp) because in this case, I noticed that the CPU rises up to 50/60 %.

 

I will continue reading the links you provided, nevertheless in your experience, do you think about one solution as competitive as this one (and still cheap) ?

 

Thanks again for your help.

 

Regards

 

[zador.blood.stained]

It would be helpful if you stated why do you want to change or upgrade your current setup (i.e. are you looking for better performance or not) and what is "cheap" for you.

Also don't know why are you looking for a credit card format board because it will limit your options.

 

I would recommend looking at least at these 3 options:

• NanoPi NEO + NAS kit v1.2
• Odroid HC1
• Rock64 + any good USB3-SATA adapter

[tkaiser]

1 hour ago, deb2016 said:

I was curious about the performance native SATA you do not seem to trust

 

Trust? I don't need to trust since I'm able to measure (NOT using hdparm or dd for 'benchmarks' since these tools are always used wrongly and not able to measure correctly anyway). For local storage performance better use iozone (then you'll realize how crappy Allwinner SATA is since write performance is not able to exceed 45 MB/s and with normal settings it's even slightly lower than USB2 since less than 40MB/s!).

 

Just have a look. The upper benchmark score (through a Gigabit Ethernet network measuring overall single thread NAS performance) is 'native SATA', the lower one USB(3). I think there's no discussion needed which to prefer?

(done with ODROID HC1). You find a lot of such numbers also here and there. Especially the last link concentrates on storage performance of different boards and you'll see that there are 'native SATA' choices that do not suck (all based on Marvell chips currently but since we'll see more and more boards featuring mPCIe adding an el cheapo ASM1061 or ASM1062 controller or even 4-port SATA cards is always an option)

 

[deb2016]

2 hours ago, zador.blood.stained said:

It would be helpful if you stated why do you want to change or upgrade your current setup (i.e. are you looking for better performance or not) and what is "cheap" for you.

Also don't know why are you looking for a credit card format board because it will limit your options.

 

I would recommend looking at least at these 3 options:

• NanoPi NEO + NAS kit v1.2
• Odroid HC1
• Rock64 + any good USB3-SATA adapter

 

Hi,

 

Sorry for making myself not clear enough.

 

Your suggestions, along with tkaiser makes me point towards the Odroid HC1.

[deb2016]

Hi,

 

I finally turned on the NanoPi Neo which is the cheapest.

 

In its specs from friendlyelec, it says usb2.0 x 3, but I only see one usb port.

 

Does is mean I can plug an usb hub ?

 

This is what I plan to do, I want to plug this usb hub : https://www.yepkit.com/products/ykush

[Lion Wang]

BPI-M1, BPI-M1+, BPI-M2 Berry ,BPI-M2 Ultra  with sata interface ,maybe can support you .  even BPI-R2 also can support , but cost is higher.

 

 

[tkaiser]

1 hour ago, deb2016 said:

I finally turned on the NanoPi Neo which is the cheapest.

 

The NEO is Fast Ethernet only. You need the NEO2 at least (FriendlyELEC's NAS Bay is compatible with both NEO and NEO2). Both have 2 USB2 ports on pin headers, one connects to the SATA bridge on the NAS bay, the other is exposed as an additional type A receptacle.

 

But you won't get better 'NAS performance' compared to the Banana you already use. For this other variants (either using USB3 or relying on fast and not slow Allwinner 'native SATA') are needed. BTW: I just checked Pine's 'USB to SATA cable' containing a good JMS578 bridge and featuring the ability to attach a 12V PSU to be combined with 3.5" disks. Fits very tightly so could even cure ODROID-XU4's USB3 receptacle problems with 

[deb2016]

Hi,

 

 Thanks for your answeer.

 

Is the NEO2 supported by armbian ? It has a H5 cpu and I do not see one page for it on the armbian download page.

 

I agree that with such hardware, I will not get better performance than my bananapro.

 

Nevertheless, I am not that hungry with performances.

 

Here is what I would like to do : plug a usb hub on the type A usb receptacle of the NEO /NEO2.

 

Then, plug two or three 2.5" usb disks on the hub.

 

The hub (yepkit/ykush see link in earlier post) is self powered with a 5V/3A power supply and can support three 2.5" disks in the same time. Disks are wd blue, assumed to have low consumption.

I tested this yesterday, all disks runs well.

 

This installation is designed to backup the bananapro installation. I just want to pay attention that the usb to sata link is able to pass hdparm commands like hdparm -B, hdparm -y so that I can put disks

in standby mode, for as a backup I do not need them to be running all the time.

 

Thanks for your help

 

Regards

 

 

 

10 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

The NEO is Fast Ethernet only. You need the NEO2 at least (FriendlyELEC's NAS Bay is compatible with both NEO and NEO2). Both have 2 USB2 ports on pin headers, one connects to the SATA bridge on the NAS bay, the other is exposed as an additional type A receptacle.

 

But you won't get better 'NAS performance' compared to the Banana you already use. For this other variants (either using USB3 or relying on fast and not slow Allwinner 'native SATA') are needed. BTW: I just checked Pine's 'USB to SATA cable' containing a good JMS578 bridge and featuring the ability to attach a 12V PSU to be combined with 3.5" disks. Fits very tightly so could even cure ODROID-XU4's USB3 receptacle problems with 

 

 

 

[deb2016]

Hi,

 

I saw that the armbian support for NanoPi NEO2 is still experimental.

 

But do you think I can already use it for command line and simple tasks through remote ssh access ?

 

Regards

[tkaiser]

5 hours ago, deb2016 said:

I saw that the armbian support for NanoPi NEO2 is still experimental.

 

As with all H5 boards. On the other hand the FriendlyELEC OS images try very hard to be an Armbian copy anyway (they use an outdated version of our motd display stuff, include our monitoring work partially but for whatever reasons do not include some important performance tweaks applied by /etc/init.d/armhwinfo -- maybe we need to change the name to /etc/init.d/armhwtuning )

 

If you want to use it as a NAS then I would start with their OMV images (said to contain almost all performance tweaks we developed over there) and switch over to Armbian later if we're ready and you're not satisfied with FriendlyELEC's software offerings (I'm somewhat puzzled that they're still on kernel 4.11.2)

[Jens Bauer]

I've seen that Armbian support for ExpressoBIN is on its way.

The CPU on this board is made by Marvell, who are experts in high-performance CPUs and buses (SATA, PCIe, ...)

Personally I expect this board to be a great choice for a NAS, but as this board has the exact same problem as Lamobo-R1 (the 'LAN' and 'WAN' Gbit ports are bridged), it's not a good choice for a router+firewall unless you add a WAN port on the MiniPCIe and keep the 3 bridged switch-ports on the LAN side.

[Lion Wang]

51 minutes ago, Jens Bauer said:

I've seen that Armbian support for ExpressoBIN is on its way.

The CPU on this board is made by Marvell, who are experts in high-performance CPUs and buses (SATA, PCIe, ...)

Personally I expect this board to be a great choice for a NAS, but as this board has the exact same problem as Lamobo-R1 (the 'LAN' and 'WAN' Gbit ports are bridged), it's not a good choice for a router+firewall unless you add a WAN port on the MiniPCIe and keep the 3 bridged switch-ports on the LAN side.

 

so are you like BPI-R2 ???

 

[martinayotte]

@Lion Wang maybe sending some free board to Armbian Devs will help getting our support ...

 

[Lion Wang]

5 minutes ago, martinayotte said:

@Lion Wang maybe sending some free board to Armbian Devs will help getting our support ...

 

no problem , can you give me a list ?? we will send out it 

[Jens Bauer]

Sorry to say this: No, it has the same problem as the Lamobo-R1: The WAN and LAN ports are bridged until the network is initialized; this allows attackers to reach inside your LAN and spread spam-bots or other bot-nets in your LAN if you use the R1 or R2 as a firewall+router.

Purchasing the R1 was a mistake.

I've spent so much time trying to get it to do at least something, but no luck.

It's in a different location from where I am located right now; packed down in a box somewhere.

-Perhaps I can use the power supply for something, but that's all. I've given up on it.

[tkaiser]

6 hours ago, Jens Bauer said:

unless you add a WAN port on the MiniPCIe

 

USB is an option too. RTL8153 for example works surprisingly well with more recent driver/kernel. Even a fully saturated 1Gbps uplink is not a problem. But why would anyone in this world combine a router/firewall thingie with storage anyway? It's either a router or a NAS but not both at the same time.

 

BTW: Of course an USB attached NIC can not make use of Marvell's packet processor. That's why the people not so happy with ESPRESSOBin design will love the R-1 instead: https://www.netgate.com/blog/lord-vader-your-firewall-is-ready.html

[Jens Bauer]

49 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

USB is an option too. {...snip...} Even a fully saturated 1Gbps uplink is not a problem.

Of course it is. I guess the reason I don't think about doing that is the "messy cables".

 

49 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

 

But why would anyone in this world combine a router/firewall thingie with storage anyway? It's either a router or a NAS but not both at the same time.

 

Actually I was thinking about after "retiring from the one job", it can be "used for the other".

-But to tell the truth, I will be combining a router+firewall and nas on my private network at home. The reason for this is that I usually don't have a lot of disk-access while I'm having a lot of network traffic. I will also be using the same box as a build-master (controlling a bunch of slaves). -Again this will be the primary reason for getting the MacchiatoBIN I'm talking about here. The "router+firewall" and "NAS" will just be the board's "relaxation jobs".

 

49 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

BTW: Of course an USB attached NIC can not make use of Marvell's packet processor. That's why the people not so happy with ESPRESSOBin design will love the R-1 instead: https://www.netgate.com/blog/lord-vader-your-firewall-is-ready.html

That indeed looks promising!

-When I saw the title, I first expected a joke, but was positively disappointed.

Such a board / box running pfSense would be a small killer-board (as long as they make sure it works, but it seems they do have both development and testing skills).

 

I particularly like the line: "We also believe everyone should be able to afford it."

[tkaiser]

22 minutes ago, Jens Bauer said:

I particularly like the line: "We also believe everyone should be able to afford it."

 

So you never bought Netgate products before?  For example https://www.netgate.com/products/sg-1000.html (the TI SoC has an internal 3 port GbE switch that is used here)

[Jens Bauer]

28 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

So you never bought Netgate products before?  For example https://www.netgate.com/products/sg-1000.html (the TI SoC has an internal 3 port GbE switch that is used here)

No, unfortunately I haven't gotten any of their products (yet), but that could certainly change.

-But I've known about pfSense for a long time - and I plan on installing it on the MacchiatoBIN once I purchase it. (I even believe that many "gamers" know pfSense, since it has excellent performance). Actually I think I've seen the SG-1000 a while ago.

 

-Unfortunately for me, I live outside the US, which means purchasing from there can be a problem.

1: If you're out of luck that day, the item is returned straight to the sender. One reason can be that you're not registered with the government for import.

2: If you're lucky, the purchased item gets through customs and you're billed an additional 0.25 * (item-price + shipping price). If that price exceeds $175, then it's multiplied further by a number between 1.00 and 1.25 (usually 1.05, but it depends on what kind of item you've purchased).

 

The item is held until you pay, but the web-site which handles the payments is only compatible with very few Web-browsers.

[tkaiser]

12 minutes ago, Jens Bauer said:

I've known about pfSense for a long time - and I plan on installing it on the MacchiatoBIN once I purchase it

 

Well, then good luck since you need FreeBSD support for the SoC family first (and there's not even basic one yet and especially with such feature-packed SoCs like those Armadas you want more than basic support  ). Please check the link wrt pfSense on ARM: http://espressobin.net/forums/topic/pfsense/#post-879 

 

Given that a few *BSD devs are pretty active with sunxi hardware I would suppose pfSense support for an OrangePi R1 exists earlier than for those more suitable 64-bit Marvell platforms. Well, we're really off-topic in a NAS thread now  

 

Back to 'low power NAS' use cases: x64 designs are becoming attractive in this area again especially when using Intel's QuickAssist technology (QAT). I try to get my hands soon on a Denverton mainboard like GIGABYTE's MA10-ST0 to see what's possible with ZoL in the meantime (see the performance section in 0.7 release notes). If time allows I test this out on Clearfog Pro in the meantime to get an idea about raidz2 performance on such an ARM platform too.

 

 

[reverend_t]

14 hours ago, Jens Bauer said:

I've seen that Armbian support for ExpressoBIN is on its way.

The CPU on this board is made by Marvell, who are experts in high-performance CPUs and buses (SATA, PCIe, ...)

Personally I expect this board to be a great choice for a NAS, but as this board has the exact same problem as Lamobo-R1 (the 'LAN' and 'WAN' Gbit ports are bridged), it's not a good choice for a router+firewall unless you add a WAN port on the MiniPCIe and keep the 3 bridged switch-ports on the LAN side.

 

That's not correct at all. Many purpose built routers (Edgerouter X, Mikrotik Hex Gr3) have the same design. The question is whether the switch is brought up in bridged or isolated mode before the appropriate VLANs can be established. The design mistake with the Lamobo R1 was to bring up the switch in the wrong mode, but it could be corrected by the addition of a resistor on the board. I'm actually looking forward to the R2 (hoping that BPi will learn from the R1).

[tkaiser]

26 minutes ago, reverend_t said:

The design mistake with the Lamobo R1 was to bring up the switch in the wrong mode, but it could be corrected by the addition of a resistor on the board.

 

Has this ever been confirmed by a human being soldering the necessary resistor and checking whether R1 in bricked state is a dumb switch or separates WAN and LAN ports?

 

26 minutes ago, reverend_t said:

I'm actually looking forward to the R2 (hoping that BPi will learn from the R1).

 

Well: http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/question-about-lan-wan-isolation/3822/9 -- besides that I still fail to understand the design concept and both BPi 'development focus' and 'customer care'. Instead of answering user questions how to get the R2 to boot after a power failure (well, ahem, this thing is advertised as being a router, isn't it? Wouldn't it be great if it could boot after a power failure without someone standing next to it and pressing a button for 10 seconds?) they instead answer that playing 720p video is possible software decoded on their 'router'.

 

Also they claim the ASM1062 on their router/NAS combo being the only SATA device in the universe implementing a mythical (and non-existant) '4 TB barrier' preventing normal SATA disks of any size able to work with this device (seriously: SATA is 48-bit LBA by design, this R2 is not running an outdated BIOS or a really old Windows release. And if there would be a TB limit then it would be 2TB and not 4TB -- if 4TB are working then the next possible limitation is 144PB)

 

And the super secret battery connector is another issue (why the hell aren't they able to tell their customers how to use their boards with their proprietary 6-pin battery connector? Or at least sell such batteries which they also refuse to do)

[reverend_t]

Good points tkaiser. I didn't get the board (it was overpriced by a factor of at least two for me, I don't need Wi-Fi, crappy 'SATA' or many of the other confusing bells and whistles - just give me a VLAN capable switch under the control of a reasonably powerful CPU which I will turn into a router). However, the ports isolated/bridged boot state is simply a pin property of the the BCM switch and is in the datasheet. I see no reason why it wouldn't work and be secure: if you lost the CPU then there's nothing to change the initial (pin controlled) state. If you lost the switch then there's nothing to worry about  Put it this way, I use the Ubiquiti Edgerouter X (MT7621 processor with a 5 port gigabit switch with a WAN port created through VLANs) in production with 100% confidence.

 

I'm really hoping that someone (maybe Orange Pi, their R1 is a promising move) will introduce the boards I need:

• H5 + Broadcom DSA capable switch + 3 gigabit ethernet ports for $30 (the espressobin is OK but pretty power inefficient, the processor's relatively weedy if not using the whizz bang hardware offload)
• (insert weedy processor here) + swconfig capable switch + 3 gigabit ethernet ports for $20 (to act as a simple linux controlled VLAN capable switch)

[reverend_t]

Actually these could be excellent daughter boards for the NanoPi Duo or Core. C'mon Friendly Elec!

[Jens Bauer]

9 hours ago, tkaiser said:

 

Well, then good luck since you need FreeBSD support for the SoC family first (and there's not even basic one yet and especially with such feature-packed SoCs like those Armadas you want more than basic support  ). Please check the link wrt pfSense on ARM: http://espressobin.net/forums/topic/pfsense/#post-879 

 

Since pfSense is about to be supported on the Armada 385, the foot is already in the door.

While the 385 is not the 3700 nor the 8040, there will be similarities in how the hardware is made (since a company does not change hardware design "overnight"); this will give driver implementation on those platforms a little further help. I'm not saying it will be easy, just that once pfSense runs on one Armada based system, the next Armada based system suddenly seem a whole lot closer.

Marvell seem to understand that communities are important. The fact that they even link to SolidRun from their Web-site is a sign that they're not as "closed" as they used to be.

If the Armbian and MacchiatoBIN+ExpressoBIN+WaderBIN communities can convince Marvell that they need to release some information on how to use their hardware, I think Marvell would consider it.

 

9 hours ago, tkaiser said:

Given that a few *BSD devs are pretty active with sunxi hardware I would suppose pfSense support for an OrangePi R1 exists earlier than for those more suitable 64-bit Marvell platforms. Well, we're really off-topic in a NAS thread now  

That happens ... I'll try not to go further off-topic, though.

 

9 hours ago, tkaiser said:

Back to 'low power NAS' use cases: x64 designs are becoming attractive in this area again especially when using Intel's QuickAssist technology (QAT). I try to get my hands soon on a Denverton mainboard like GIGABYTE's MA10-ST0 to see what's possible with ZoL in the meantime (see the performance section in 0.7 release notes). If time allows I test this out on Clearfog Pro in the meantime to get an idea about raidz2 performance on such an ARM platform too.

I'm looking forward to reading your posts on the subject.

[Jens Bauer]

6 hours ago, reverend_t said:

 

That's not correct at all. Many purpose built routers (Edgerouter X, Mikrotik Hex Gr3) have the same design. The question is whether the switch is brought up in bridged or isolated mode before the appropriate VLANs can be established. The design mistake with the Lamobo R1 was to bring up the switch in the wrong mode, but it could be corrected by the addition of a resistor on the board. I'm actually looking forward to the R2 (hoping that BPi will learn from the R1).

I explicitly asked GlobalScale and they replied that it was bridged by default.

Please correct me if the ExpressoBIN is indeed not bridged by default as this is a very important piece of information.

-But even if the switch is bridged by default, it's still possible to add an extra Ethernet port, without board modification, so the ExpressoBIN can be used as firewall+router.

But what you're saying is that if the ExpressoBIN (or any other router) is using a Topaz switch, the error can be fixed by (maybe cutting a trace and) adding a resistor ?

-That would also mean that if I can get my R1 to boot Armbian, I would be able to use it as a router by fixing that problem ... I value the information you've provided me with very much; thank you.

[reverend_t]

3 hours ago, Jens Bauer said:

I explicitly asked GlobalScale and they replied that it was bridged by default.

Please correct me if the ExpressoBIN is indeed not bridged by default as this is a very important piece of information.

-But even if the switch is bridged by default, it's still possible to add an extra Ethernet port, without board modification, so the ExpressoBIN can be used as firewall+router.

But what you're saying is that if the ExpressoBIN (or any other router) is using a Topaz switch, the error can be fixed by (maybe cutting a trace and) adding a resistor ?

-That would also mean that if I can get my R1 to boot Armbian, I would be able to use it as a router by fixing that problem ... I value the information you've provided me with very much; thank you.

 

Here you go: https://github.com/armbian/build/issues/511#issuecomment-258647387 The option to change mode on the R1 appears to be pretty sensibly exported. A simple resistor soldering.

 

Really? The much hyped Espressobin also boots up with all ports bridged? I hope Globalscale have made it as easy as Lamobo to physically change this setting