ODROID XU4/HC1 or ESPRESSOBin for a NAS configuration?

[Elia Mazzuoli]

Hi,

 

After days and days of research and some mistakes (I have buy Orange Pi plus 2 for the sata connector )  I have selected two board for build my NAS configuration. I want share with this community my considerations and read some other opinions about it.

 

For both solutions i want to use a board like that for manage more than one HDD (and maybe some raid configurations): SATA Replicator on Amazon

 

ODROID (both XU4 and HC1) Pros:

1. The processor seems very powerful and this leave open my option for experimenting with various Cloud software and other (dlna servers, ftp, mini simple site server, transmission and so on).
2. The documentation seems very good and the community active, the board is well known and not big surprise I expect from the quality of product.
3. Last kernel version available.

Cons:

1. Not native support to SATA but necessity of USB3 -> SATA (this is not a very cons dou the fact that USB3 speed is very GOOD for many purpose).
2. When you have use a USB3 for sata and the USB2 for a wifi dongle you are finish the USB connectivity (yes you can buy a hub).

Bubt:

1. The USB3 -> SATA converter can be connected to the SATA replicator board without problem?
2. I have read that some users have problem to load rootfs from HDD at the moment (I think this is necessary for a durable configuration).

 

ESPESSOBin Pros:

1. The board born with some little nas oriented features.
2. The SATA support is native on SoC.
3. There is a PCIe that eventually can be connected to a board like this: SATA 3.0 PCIe adapter
4. Last kernel version is available.
5. Some USB port remain available after connecting the sata.

Cons:

1. The CPU is not very powerful this can be a problem for some not perfectly optimized but interesting nas software.
2. The version with 2GB is very expensive!
3.  The board is very young and maybe leak some experience and user support.

Dubt:

1. PCIe is a very powerful PCIe or there are some not well documented limitation? I have seen that this is supported directly from SoC but I don't have found any SATA replicator test.
   On site technical description seems that the purpose is reserved for Wireless/BLE periphereals.
2. With native support for SATA is possible to boot directly from this bypassing completely the sd-card?

 

[Igor]

1 hour ago, Elia Mazzuoli said:

I have read that some users have problem to load rootfs from HDD at the moment (I think this is necessary for a durable configuration).

Fixed upstream, images are in the process of updating at this moment.

 

Quote

With native support for SATA is possible to boot directly from this bypassing completely the sd-card?

Yes, it's possible.

 

 

[tkaiser]

1 hour ago, Elia Mazzuoli said:

For both solutions i want to use a board like that for manage more than one HDD (and maybe some raid configurations): SATA Replicator on Amazon

 

Better forget about these SATA port multipliers. While those from Marvell are 'good' (FIS based switching which is essential for good performance when accessing few disks in parallel) obviously all ports have to share bandwidth and latencies of the upstream SATA port and these Marvell PM work only well behind Marvell SATA ports. But if you've a Marvell SATA port you always have at least one Marvell PCIe port too so using a mPCIe SATA controller with 88SE9215 is the better idea.

 

Wrt your RAID idea: I would forget about this since you most probably only fool yourself (wasting disks for redundancy for no reason). Correctly implementing a multi drive RAID requires testing, testing, testing and... testing. Home/SOHO RAID enthusiasts never do this and that's one of the reasons why we (OMV community) have every other day a new 'Oops, my RAID array has gone. Where's my data? I've no backup of course!!1!' threads in the forum (where you could also find a lot of rants of mine and others wrt RAID at home)

[tkaiser]

1 hour ago, Elia Mazzuoli said:

Not native support to SATA but necessity of USB3 -> SATA (this is not a very cons dou the fact that USB3 speed is very GOOD for many purpose).

 

I disagree. 'USB for storage' in general is a technology best described as 'cheap consumer crap'. The USB3-A receptacle is IMO a bad joke and responsible for a lot of USB3 interconnection hassles (still looking forward to get USB-C everywhere since this connector is not such a brain-dead fail) and especially ODROID-XU4 is plagued by this (due to mechanical tolerances I guess).

 

My personal learning from this was to try to avoid USB3-A where possible so if the device has not USB-C then an USB3-to-SATA bridge should be interconnected with the SoC directly on the PCB as it's done on ODROID-HC1 now or as it will be soon done on Cloudmedia's 'Transformer' (a stackable ROCK64 with JMS578 in metal enclosure somewhat similar to HC1 -- no infos known yet since Pine people prefer to share this only with their 'elite moderator club' at https://forum.pine64.org). But still then the usual underpowering issues are possible on devices that for whatever reasons prefer a 5V DC-IN input instead of 12V to provide stable 5V to connected disks. Me as an electrics noob found 'Nominal Animal's explanations here interesting.

[Elia Mazzuoli]

Thank you for your responses! What I have understand is that ESPRESSOBin from the two board is the best for a NAS purpose! What about the CPU capabilities? The ESPRESSOBin CPU seems a little under undersized for running more program that samba, ftp server and not much more... only with OpenMediaVault I think alla resources will be saturated..

[tkaiser]

31 minutes ago, Elia Mazzuoli said:

The ESPRESSOBin CPU seems a little under undersized for running more program that samba, ftp server and not much more... only with OpenMediaVault I think alla resources will be saturated.

Why?

 

Check https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/4583-rock64/&do=findComment&comment=37829 for example to get a clue which advantages the more modern CPU might have if you need AES encryption (still needs real-world tests of course, the numbers there are just a comparison at 'proof of concept' level). Then these Marvell things are made for NAS and router purposes unlike tablet, phone and TV box SoCs on other SBC. CPU utilization for IO and network related tasks is often less compared to other platforms due to better internal design.

 

But if CPU horsepower is really sufficient depends on the types of applications of course. If the box should do video transcoding or also build kernels the HC1 will outperform Espressobin of course. That's one of the reasons I still look forward to more RK3328 variants since quad-core and most probably video transcoding possible HW accelerated using Rockchip's video engine. But still lack of IO possibilities of course.

 

[Elia Mazzuoli]

Wow... very unexpected result. Seems that the difference of number of core and CPU don't affect this heavy test:

ODROID-HC1 / Samsung Exynos 5244 @ (A15 core @ 2000 MHz):
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc      78690.05k    89287.85k    94056.79k    95104.34k    95638.87k
aes-192-cbc      69102.10k    77545.47k    81156.61k    81964.71k    82351.45k
aes-256-cbc      61715.85k    68172.80k    71120.73k    71710.72k    72040.45k

Espressobin / Marvell Armada 3720 @ 1000 MHz:
type             16 bytes    64 bytes     256 bytes    1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-128-cbc      68509.24k   216097.11k   453277.35k   649243.99k   741862.06k
aes-192-cbc      65462.17k   194529.30k   375030.70k   503817.22k   559303.34k
aes-256-cbc      63905.67k   181436.03k   328664.06k   423431.51k   462012.42k

 yes... the idea for the NAS purpose is not so different from that one can expect from classic synology like commercial solutions! OpenMediaVault, transmission, miniDLNA and not much more from my side! Sure more freedom on respect to a close system is welcome. Whit infos that you are share with me seems that ESPRESSOBin was the best SBC for my purpose. The elios4 seems so good but I don't have found information on it's availability on the market and seems very affordable!