I’m looking at getting my first NAS setup. Looking at HL8 with WD drives. With or without TrueNAS because I have yet to look at 45’s software (Houston UI?)
Also, I thought about a rack mount server, but I feel like that would be more expensive since I would look at a more modern case/board, nothing gold from eBay. Although I don’t want to use a Mid tower/rack server for a NAS solution for space reasons.
Here to gain insight on setups and what would be the best approach. Thanks in advance for any input.
Side question. I came across Synology’s NAS Selector, which has you choose 3 applications you will be using the NAS for, File sever & synconization, data backup, productivity, and multimedia server. I will be doing all of that, so is that possible for TrueNAS users or 45’s software?
The HL8 seems like it will be a good alternative for people who want to run standard hardware/software and not be locked into a particular vendor’s non-upgradable mobos and their somewhat proprietary OSs. One advantage Synology has though, that you can also do with Unraid, is that you can use mixed capacity drives, which you can’t really do with ZFS. With ZFS you’re best to populate all drives up front for the pool, or add drives in groups of about 8 at a time for larger systems. And they all have to be the same size. So there is an additional up-front cost for all the drives rather than just buying the base platform and then adding one drive at a time as your data grows. Synology and Unraid have configurations where you can add drives of different sizes and they will ensure the files have the correct number of replicas desire not having strict parity and striping.
The Synology NAS Selector seemed useless. It comes back with pretty much the same results no matter what you select, and those results are anything from their lowest-end 2-bay to their 24-bay. The 45HL machines will do all the tasks you listed. TrueNAS as the OS will probably be friendlier for productivity and multimedia containers and VMs than the Houston UI.
I’m not sure if you talked yourself out of the HL15 or are still considering it. It would depend on how much data you plan to store. The HL15 comes with feet and can be put in portrait orientation like a tower case, it doesn’t need to go in a rack. If it is going to be in a room with you working/living/sleeping, you would want to get the Noctua upgrade or do your own fan mod. The base CPU (Xeon 3204) for the full build though does not have Intel QuickSync, so isn’t great for Plex transcoding.
From what has been released so far for the HL8, I have some concerns about airflow through the case and over the drives. I’m not really a fan of hat clear front.
Also remember that RAID is not a backup, so you also need to plan for a 3-2-1 backup strategy for anything that would be devastating to lose (family photos, work product if you’re self employed, etc.)
How many users will there be?
How much Raw data do you have and how much do you expect it to grow?
Anything more specific about how the system will be used than “File sever & synchronization, data backup, productivity, and multimedia server”?
Do you need 10G or faster networking, or is 1G or 2.5G sufficient?
I have a custom build HL15 with an AMD CPU running TrueNAS Scale with some containers and VMs