Most painfree NAS platform for running?

[bjp]

Hey, I really like syncthing, hoping to get some recommendations for the most painfree NAS target to purchase for planned syncing? Brand, model or otherwise architecture? I don’t mind building from source or hacking around but prefer to get a HW platform that will see easy continued future support / updates.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[calmh (Jakob Borg)]

I’d suggest a normal PC with FreeNAS. Normal PCs will be supported for the foreseeable future and FreeNAS is a fine NAS software.

[wweich]

I installed Syncthing manually on a Synology DS214 (ARM based). Apart from it being somewhat slow, it is working well, but not really used much at the moment.

Depending on how much data you want to sync, you should consider getting one with a more powerful (maybe x86) chip.

How to install Syncthing (arm release) on Synology?

I don't know any tutorial but I did install syncthing on a DS214 like this: create user st and add to admin group to get access to all files and folders login to ssh as root switch to user st with su -s /bin/ash st go to home dir with cd (which should bring you to /volume1/homes/st/ download and extract syncthing arm version; and move syncthing binary from sub folder to home folder start syncthing, let it create certs and config, then kill it edit config to change web ui from 127.0.0.1 to 0…

[bjp]

Thanks, x86 it is

[emosuka]

It’s worth pointing out that a “normal PC” isn’t necessarily suited for FreeNAS.

Some of the stuff that ZFS likes to do (like scrubbing) really screws you over in case of memory corruption, which is why it’s not recommended to run ZFS without ECC RAM. This in turn limits the range of CPUs and motherboards you can use to basically the “server” category. Also worth noting is that ZFS really likes memory. There are still some cheap options, though, it’s just not advised that you simply repurpose an old gaming PC unless you know what sort of surprises you might be in for.

All that said, FreeNAS is fantastic and far and away the best choice for a NAS server 99% of the time. It keeps your data safe like nothing else, it’s fast and flexible, and Syncthing is really easy to set up as it’s one of the standard plugin modules.

[calmh (Jakob Borg)]

Some of the stuff that ZFS likes to do (like scrubbing) really screws you over in case of memory corruption, which is why it’s not recommended to run ZFS without ECC RAM.

This is a very tangential discussion to the original point, but anyway… ZFS is for people who dislike data corruption, as as such you should of course have ECC memory as well. Sure. That said, there’s nothing about ZFS that will trash your data worse than any other filesystem if you have bad memory. The “scrub of death” scenario that you’re alluding to doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as ZFS doesn’t write out data that it’s decided is corrupt. Worst case it’ll “repair” a couple of blocks that didn’t need repairing. You’d be worse of doing a scrub on a Linux MD mirror for example, which essentially just compares data and doesn’t have checksums to verify against to.

[emosuka]

I’m aware that the FreeNAS/ZFS community has a tendency towards paranoia, yes. And I agree that the scrub of death scenario seems implausible. But if nothing else you’ll have an easier time getting support if you don’t challenge conventional wisdom.

Slightly more on-topic, I find the Asrock C2750D4I is an excellent motherboard for running FreeNAS and Syncthing. I have one syncing about 300,000 files and it doesn’t seem especially slow.