Looking for board for nas

[tkaiser]

9 hours ago, Jens Bauer said:

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

 

Not really, same with Marvell/Globalscale and 'community' (they seem to be only interested in big Linux distros and *BSD support is essentially only there for 32-bit Armada 38x). You might visit again http://espressobin.net/forums/topic/pfsense/#post-879 (keep in mind that @gonzopancho is Jim Thompson) and check there the pfsense forum link.

 

5 hours ago, reverend_t said:

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.

 

No one on this earth ever tried, right? Since all R1 users fear the 'might need additional care by the driver' and 'haven’t looked at the driver sources whether it can handle the unconfigured switch properly' bits this hardware operation is accompanied with. At least all the people I asked so far whether it works magically disappeared from the forum.

[deb2016]

Hi,

 

I come back to my original post as I would like to settle a home nas/router.

 

As for home application, I speak about plugging one or two 2.5" hard drives and settling a wifi access point.

 

I have read with interest this post : https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/590-quick-review-of-solidruns-clearfog/ about the clearfog pro.
 

It has two m-sata slots on which you can plug sata ports and a wifi card.

 

However, I would probably not need all the GbE ports on the clearfog pro. at the moment I just need two of them : one for the wan, another for the lan.

The clearfog base seems closer to my need in this respect, but I do not know if I can plug 2.5" hard drives with sata  and if you can add wifi,

there is a mPCIe slot I do not know if it can be useful, also what is a sfp port for ?

 

[zador.blood.stained]

10 minutes ago, deb2016 said:

The clearfog base seems closer to my need in this respect, but I do not know if I can plug 2.5" hard drives with sata  and if you can add wifi,

there is a mPCIe slot I do not know if it can be useful, also what is a sfp port for ?

You can use a mPCIe to 2xSATA adapter to connect 2 HDDs and use an M.2 miniPCIe compatible wireless card if you get a new revision of the board: https://github.com/SolidRun/u-boot-armada38x/commit/395a60a9795770e5047fbda7decdc2cb22d06e54

Of course you'll have to reliably provide power to your HDDs because there is no onboard HDD powering solution, the board was designed more for 1xM.2 SSD + 1xmPCIe wireless card use case.

SFP can be used to connect fiber optic transceivers (mostly), but it has to be noted that mainline kernel doesn't have full support for all SFP related functionality.

[deb2016]

About power supply, solid-run sells one for clearfog base/pro, it is 12V 1.5A (18W), is it enough if I make use of both slots (M.2 and mPICe) ? even with adding one hdd to the usb3 port ?

 

Also, how can you power 2.5" hard drives independently of the board ?

 

EDIT : for my second question, an usb to sata power cable should do it I guess, like this one :

[tkaiser]

23 minutes ago, deb2016 said:

Also, how can you power 2.5" hard drives independently of the board ?

 

By providing power to them

 

Seriously, the Clearfog boards use the common 5.5/2.1mm barrel connector (centre positive) you find tons of 12V PSUs for everywhere. A nice solution to power board and external disks can be a dual-voltage PSU with screw terminals as can be seen here: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/3953-preview-generate-omv-images-for-sbc-with-armbian/&do=findComment&comment=29574

 

PSU ratings are 5V/2A / 12V/2.5A (I simply followed Igor buying one and chose the same) and it can handle powering a Clearfog Pro and a 3.5" disk spinning up (the Barracuda I use needs nearly 2A on the 12V rail when spinning up). Or you combine a 12V PSU with step-down converter to generate to 5V for 2.5" disks. But if you don't want to solder screw terminals are the easiest choice.

 

BTW: mSATA/mPCIe share the same mechanical connector, on Clearfog boards with default settings u-boot is configured to drive them as mPCIe and patches are needed to transform them into true mSATA slots (you can then use with mechanical mSATA-SATA adapters). And the same is now true with the M.2 on most recent Clearfog Base where the M.2 slot is SATA by default and has to be transformed into PCIe also by a u-boot patch.

 

In other words: if you want hassle free operation stay with the defaults, use the mPCIe slot for Wi-Fi, use the M.2 for SATA and use the USB3 port to connect another disk if needed (you won't notice any performance differences with HDDs anyway, I found it pretty hard to measure lower performance even if a good USB3 hub is in between)

 

[deb2016]

Quote

By providing power to them

 

Right

 

I got your point, if I want to use the clearfog base without hacking too much, I can plug this wifi card on mPCIe http://www.ebay.fr/itm/Atheros-AR5BXB112-AR9380-Dual-Band-mini-PCI-E-450Mbps-Airport-Wireless-Wifi-Card-/261435388514

(this is the one Igor seems to use in its quick review) and this M.2 toward sata adapter https://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00205582.html, for this later I have no idea about quality, I do not know if it is good quality, maybe you know better ?

 

As for the PSU, it is currently sold out with the link you gave me, but it is a good solution, I am just not fond of manipulating naked power cable like this ... with a baby girl rummaging around in everywhere

 

Just one question, with the hard drive externally powered like this, will standby command (hdparm -s ) still work ? I do no think this command cut power, I would just like to be sure.

 

Regards

[tkaiser]

19 minutes ago, deb2016 said:

As for the PSU, it is currently sold out with the link you gave me, but it is a good solution, I am just not fond of manipulating naked power cable like this

 

You need to 'build' an enclosure of course (can be a used box and at least I prefer to have electronics invisible so this stuff is just sitting somewhere in a drawer with some ventilation -- an example). With a direct SATA connection hdparm is always fully working (and for disks that still ignore hdparm settings there are scripts available that do a spin-down manually, see discussion/links here)

 

Wrt components:

• M.2 SATA adapter is just a few interconnections between two sockets. This is an item with a more realistic price.
• I bought for less than $10 an '450Mbps Apple Atheros AR5BXB112 AR9380 Dual Band' card on eBay coming from Hongkong (simply search for this or parts of the name)
• Same for PSU, simply search for 'psu 5v 12v' or something like that or better check local sellers to be sure PSU follows regulations

[deb2016]

12 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

• I bought for less than $10 an '450Mbps Apple Atheros AR5BXB112 AR9380 Dual Band' card on eBay coming from Hongkong (simply search for this or parts of the name)

 

Dit it come with its antennas ? Can this wifi board act as an access point ?

[tkaiser]

9 minutes ago, deb2016 said:

Dit it come with its antennas ? Can this wifi board act as an access point ?

 

Of course not, you won't get an AR9380 with antennas for less than 10 bucks. These cards are said to work well as AP but I never tried it with mine since with antennas it's the same as with mSATA-to-SATA adapters. I ordered them multiple times in China and receive weeks later something different not worth a return/refund (only one mSATA adapter arrived ever). In other words: I'm also one of the 'buy cheap, buy twice' guys I'm always laughing at 

 

I want 3 antennas since I've 2 client devices capable of 3x3 MIMO.

[zador.blood.stained]

14 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

These cards are said to work well as AP but I never tried it with mine since with antennas it's the same as with mSATA-to-SATA adapters. I ordered them multiple times in China and receive weeks later something different not worth a return/refund (only one mSATA adapter arrived ever).

Did you have a problem buying antennas or mSATA-SATA adapters (or both)? At least I bough a similar Atheros based card with pigtails (u.FL to SMA) and antennas and got a descent quality stuff (~ half a year ago). Don't remember the price, but I definitely wasn't searching for the cheapest option.

[deb2016]

24 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

 

Of course not, you won't get an AR9380 with antennas for less than 10 bucks. These cards are said to work well as AP but I never tried it with mine since with antennas it's the same as with mSATA-to-SATA adapters. I ordered them multiple times in China and receive weeks later something different not worth a return/refund (only one mSATA adapter arrived ever). In other words: I'm also one of the 'buy cheap, buy twice' guys I'm always laughing at 

 

I want 3 antennas since I've 2 client devices capable of 3x3 MIMO.

 

Are you saying that buying from China is like trying to win at the lottery ? Some people around I already ordered from aliexpress, as an example, they were not disappointed until now.

However, they did not ordered electronic stuff.

[tkaiser]

1 minute ago, zador.blood.stained said:

Did you have a problem buying antennas or mSATA-SATA adapters (or both)?

 

Both. Ordered on Aliexpress, then some stuff arrived I've not ordered (electronics I've not the slightest idea what they do) and weeks later I realized that adapters/antenna will never arrive since they obviously sent wrong stuff. So ordered again. Very low priority task since Feb 2016: testing Clearfog Pro with 3 native SATA SSDs -- still not managed to do this.

 

Same with 3 antennas with u.FL to SMA cables. First order canceled by seller, 2nd never received, then got distracted somehow  

[tkaiser]

5 minutes ago, deb2016 said:

Are you saying that buying from China is like trying to win at the lottery ?

 

No, just unlucky for whatever reasons when trying to order these two items. No hassles so far with all the other stuff I ordered there. But to be honest: If I order stuff for $2 from the other end of the world I do not really expect that everything works flawlessly or at all. There's also a lot of curiosity involved why I try Aliexpress again and again  

[Jens Bauer]

19 hours ago, reverend_t said:

 

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 

If the switch is really bridged by default, then I ofcourse hope they made a strapping-option too.

-But if they haven't made an option, it should still be possible to expose a few traces and make a 'green-wiring' using the 2K2 resistor. It would definitely be worth it.

The only reason I didn't already purchase the ExpressoBIN is that a mPCIe 1Gbit Ethernet card would cost just as much as the device itself. But if I can get the ExpressoBIN with 2GB RAM and modify the default setting of the switch so it's not bridged at startup, then I'll certainly do it. I wonder if it can match my D-Link DIR-655 (which I bought used) in performance!

 

-Having the switch bridged is an advantage if you use the ExpressoBIN as NAS, though. Connect all 3 ports to your switch and you may be able to gain some speed if your NAS is accessed by multiple clients at the same time. Link Aggregation probably won't give you any extra speed, though, since all the ports are connected to a single 1Gbit Ethernet port on the CPU, but you'd have to try it and compare the results with having only a single port connected.

[Jens Bauer]

14 hours ago, tkaiser said:

 

Not really, same with Marvell/Globalscale and 'community' (they seem to be only interested in big Linux distros and *BSD support is essentially only there for 32-bit Armada 38x). You might visit again http://espressobin.net/forums/topic/pfsense/#post-879 (keep in mind that @gonzopancho is Jim Thompson) and check there the pfsense forum link.

Putting myself in Jin's shoes, I think I would probably not be able to make support for pfSense. Fortunately for me, Jim is more experienced than I am, so while it might be difficult or even very unlikely, it's still not impossible.

-OK, I will not get my hopes up. OpenWRT is not bad router firmware either. -But know this: If pfSense ever becomes available for ARM-based devices, I will make the switch (pun intended).

 

14 hours ago, tkaiser said:

No one on this earth ever tried, right? Since all R1 users fear the 'might need additional care by the driver' and 'haven’t looked at the driver sources whether it can handle the unconfigured switch properly' bits this hardware operation is accompanied with. At least all the people I asked so far whether it works magically disappeared from the forum.

 

I was about to say: "Then I will do it!". But if it means I'll magically disappear, I don't know anymore.

-I have nothing to lose by trying. At the moment, my R1 is packed down in some cardboard box somewhere 200 km from where I live, because I didn't even succeed in getting it to boot Armbian from the MicroSD card.

I certainly have several 0603 resistors of value 2K2 (and I believe other values would do as well; perhaps all the way up to 10K, but let's just keep it at 2K2).

-If it can outperform my DIR-655 (which I do not expect), then I will use it as firewall+router and make it possible for software running on other devices to blacklist IP-addresses automatically (by using attack-traps).

[reverend_t]

12 hours ago, Jens Bauer said:

Putting myself in Jin's shoes, I think I would probably not be able to make support for pfSense. Fortunately for me, Jim is more experienced than I am, so while it might be difficult or even very unlikely, it's still not impossible.

-OK, I will not get my hopes up. OpenWRT is not bad router firmware either. -But know this: If pfSense ever becomes available for ARM-based devices, I will make the switch (pun intended).

 

 

I was about to say: "Then I will do it!". But if it means I'll magically disappear, I don't know anymore.

-I have nothing to lose by trying. At the moment, my R1 is packed down in some cardboard box somewhere 200 km from where I live, because I didn't even succeed in getting it to boot Armbian from the MicroSD card.

I certainly have several 0603 resistors of value 2K2 (and I believe other values would do as well; perhaps all the way up to 10K, but let's just keep it at 2K2).

-If it can outperform my DIR-655 (which I do not expect), then I will use it as firewall+router and make it possible for software running on other devices to blacklist IP-addresses automatically (by using attack-traps).

 

Excellent. Look forward to your results. Stay safe, please don't disappear from the Banana 2k2 resistor curse

[Igor]

On 15. 9. 2017 at 11:34 AM, deb2016 said:

Also, how can you power 2.5" hard drives independently of the board ?

 

There is a 5V on the clickboard header. IMHO it should be enough to power SSD drive. Double check specs if it's safe. I did it once for testing and the board survived  

[Jens Bauer]

1 hour ago, reverend_t said:

 

Excellent. Look forward to your results. Stay safe, please don't disappear from the Banana 2k2 resistor curse

It will take a while before I can try it (perhaps more than 6 months before I can go to the place where the R1 is), so you'll need to be patient.

My "disappearance" has been there already when my Mac died. For a month I've had to suffer from using an old 3GHz dual core P4 with 1GB RAM (not much fun when waiting half a minute to several minutes for the screen to redraw after moving a window - that's just one of the many 'too-slow' problems - even a CubieBoard2 can do better).

[deb2016]

Do the clearfog base/pro still suffer from emmc issues ?

[tkaiser]

On 15.9.2017 at 11:01 PM, Jens Bauer said:

I have nothing to lose by trying. At the moment, my R1 is packed down in some cardboard box somewhere 200 km from where I live, because I didn't even succeed in getting it to boot Armbian from the MicroSD card.

 

Please give it a try once you get back to your R1. BTW: this is how R1 should've done it from the beginning (since even A20 already features two Ethernet ports): https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux-sunxi/sDXfamLUodw  (Stefan is an Olimex employee)

 

 

[Jens Bauer]

8 hours ago, tkaiser said:

 

Please give it a try once you get back to your R1. BTW: this is how R1 should've done it from the beginning (since even A20 already features two Ethernet ports): https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux-sunxi/sDXfamLUodw  (Stefan is an Olimex employee)

I can't agree more.

I'll definitely try this and report back. If this small problem can be fixed, then there's suddenly good use for it.

[deb2016]

Hi,

 

I finally ordered a clearfog pro to make a NAS/router behind my ISP modem. I also bought a mPCIe sata controller (ASM1061) with two sata ports and a mPCIe wifi card (Compex WLE600VX).

 

I would like to install armbian on a M.2 SSD (it is not the emmc version). I guess I have to

boot primarily on a SD card, then what do I have to do in order to boot on the M.2 SSD ?

 

To help debugging, I can make use of the serial console on the micro usb port, is that right ?

 

Regards

[zador.blood.stained]

1 hour ago, deb2016 said:

I would like to install armbian on a M.2 SSD (it is not the emmc version). I guess I have to

boot primarily on a SD card, then what do I have to do in order to boot on the M.2 SSD ?

You'll have to flash the SATA specific u-boot binary to the SSD and set the boot switches for SATA boot: https://github.com/nightseas/arm_applications/blob/master/doc/getting_started_with_clearfog_base.md

 

1 hour ago, deb2016 said:

To help debugging, I can make use of the serial console on the micro usb port, is that right ?

Yes

[xorinox]

I found this thread very interesting. I am experimenting myself with several different NAS options.

 

Today I connected a Cubie HDD RAID sub-board to a Rock64 and two HGST travelstar 7.2k 1TB each.  I copied over some 100GB using the samba server that just comes along with Rocks Linux rock64 4.4.77-rockchip-ayufan-118

 

For large files peeks were at 112MB/s when I copied over from a Win PC through 1GE, but kept a constant rate over 100MB/s. The Cubie sub board uses RAID 1 per default. I tried the copy process again and disconnected one of the disks. Just took it off. Active copy process died. I had the RAID volume mounted as /dev/sda1, but /dev/sda disappeared. That was not expected behavior.

 

I rebooted the Rock64 and was able to mount my volume now only supported by one disk. I started my 100GB copy job again. At first it kept the rate of at least 100MB/s. Then I reconnected the second disk. The rate went down to about 60MB/s.  I would think the decrease is due to re-syncing of the volume. I think it's ok to still have 60MB/s while it's doing that.

 

I like this sub board, but I didn't like it disliked removing one disk at run time. I like it gives through USB3 enough IO to max out the 1GE of the Rock64. I don't like I need to solder in order to change the RAID mode. I would rather just have two targets e.g. /dev/sda & /dev/sdb

 

Any other tests I should be doing?

 

 

 

Edited November 27, 2017 by xorinox
forgot a paragraph

[tkaiser]

9 hours ago, xorinox said:

I connected a Cubie HDD RAID sub-board ... uses RAID 1 per default

 

This is a useless product targeting RAID/NAS novices that don't know what they do 

 

RAID-1 was somewhat useful last century when we couldn't do better. On servers. That need 100% availability. It's useless at home, just an insane waste of disk capacity. Protection level is bizarrely low, it allows neither for data protection nor data integrity, you should really instantly try to test whether you can access your RAID-1 without this board (since it's a single point of failure and the board or the RAID controller on it can fail as well) and check data integrity (since those ICs are prone to overheating under load).

 

Everything I wrote here about mdraid RAID-1 applies to those external USB-RAID controllers too: https://forum.openmediavault.org/index.php/Thread/18637-Home-NAS-build-FS-info/?postID=146935#post146935

 

9 hours ago, xorinox said:

Any other tests I should be doing?

 

As written above: Don't trust this thing. Check for data integrity (use btrfs and scrub your data after you let a large resync run), check how the board signals that one disk has a problem (you bet on redundancy here and the goal is to be protected from one failing disk -- what if this thing doesn't tell you when one disk is failing, you lost your redundancy and then soon after the 2nd disk dies?).

 

Stop playing RAID, do backup instead (by using modern filesystems and their features, eg. snapshots sent to another disk or even host regularly, this can be done pretty efficiently). RAID is not backup, you have no data protection with this approach since it's only about availability.

[xorinox]

On 11/28/2017 at 2:08 AM, tkaiser said:

 

This is a useless product targeting RAID/NAS novices that don't know what they do 

 

RAID-1 was somewhat useful last century when we couldn't do better. On servers. That need 100% availability. It's useless at home, just an insane waste of disk capacity. Protection level is bizarrely low, it allows neither for data protection nor data integrity, you should really instantly try to test whether you can access your RAID-1 without this board (since it's a single point of failure and the board or the RAID controller on it can fail as well) and check data integrity (since those ICs are prone to overheating under load).

 

Everything I wrote here about mdraid RAID-1 applies to those external USB-RAID controllers too: https://forum.openmediavault.org/index.php/Thread/18637-Home-NAS-build-FS-info/?postID=146935#post146935

 

 

As written above: Don't trust this thing. Check for data integrity (use btrfs and scrub your data after you let a large resync run), check how the board signals that one disk has a problem (you bet on redundancy here and the goal is to be protected from one failing disk -- what if this thing doesn't tell you when one disk is failing, you lost your redundancy and then soon after the 2nd disk dies?).

 

Stop playing RAID, do backup instead (by using modern filesystems and their features, eg. snapshots sent to another disk or even host regularly, this can be done pretty efficiently). RAID is not backup, you have no data protection with this approach since it's only about availability.

Thanks for your feedback. I wasn't looking for a "backup" solution rather interested to find out how many disks can I operate permanently using that one USB3 port of the ROCK64. I only figured I I had to solder in order to use the board to just address two disks instead of using RAID, when I had in my hands already. I was expecting some kind of switch or jumper.. Well I should have read the manual. Since RAID1 is the default, and I didnt find anything about this board here, I shared. The board already made it into the trash. I am waiting for these cheap usb3-sata pcb boards.. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N5J63RT that is going to be my next test. Btw, somewhere here I read about the rock64 power cable assemblies,  I am running my boards with these: https://www.arrow.com/en/products/10-01072/tensility-international connected to that https://www.arrow.com/en/products/lrs-150f-5/mean-well-enterprises

Back to several disks per usb3, I am not considering SSDs (trying to keep the cost low), I am going to try http://www.oricostore.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=399_405&product_id=6655   I am interested to see if I can get 200mb/s out of two disks and utilizing the second 1GE over usb3.

[tkaiser]

13 hours ago, xorinox said:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N5J63RT

 

13 hours ago, xorinox said:

 http://www.oricostore.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=399_405&product_id=6655

Well, I never buy 'brands' but chipsets instead. If it's about USB-to-SATA I only buy (and search for) these and maybe ASM1351 soon. With USB3 hubs I only buy VIA812 (rev B or newer) and with Gigabit Ethernet only RTL8153 (I own one such combined thing also from ORICO but again I searched for the ICs used to ensure I get exactly the good ones).

 

Please be aware that some USB3 capable SATA bridges start to fail miserably with more recent kernels and you need to adjust some values to stop storage problems (and further decrease performance at the same time)