FreeNas not for me? Then what should I use?

[dhysk]

First I'd like to thank this excellent community for all your input and saving me from making mistakes that would have cost time money and a whole lot of issues that having a backup device is supposed to mitigate. Not only have you all posted the what to do but most importantly the why. I post this here because I don't know where else to ask and if I do it looks like I'll get the just turn it into a FreeNAS response. So thank you all and especially cyberjock for his excellent posting and explanation on ECC vs non-ECC here.

I have been looking into a backup solution that doesn't involve burning DVDs. I also wanted something that could serve my music files to my Sonos system(currently using my pc for both). Searched around FreeNas seemed to be the answer from every forum, blog, video I encountered. It seams to be the flavor of the week when it comes to all things NAS.

So I read the documentation snooped around on the forum and after putting together a purpose built machine on pcpartpicker I decided my money, limited at the moment, would be better spent updating my current 7 yr old PC. For about $600 I can double my processing power for Machine learning tasks and triple my gaming capacity. Then when I do get the money in 1-2 yrs for the PC i really need($1500-$2000) then this interim solution can be put to use as a file server/backup. The issue is it will not work as a freeNAS or a ZFS box at all due to lack of ECC memory because right now speed on the cheap is the most important thing and a good freeNAS wont make a good everyday PC. At some point this I'll build a FreeNAS box and this will be regulated as a backup only.

So the question is if not FreeNAS then what is the best solution? Ubuntu server RAID1, maybe a hardware raid controller to prevent write holes?

Requirements:
Be able to auto backup PC(Windows 10) over the network
File server for music available for Sonos(if windows can find the folder on the network so can Sonos)
Have a backup system of its own, something like crashplan

Would be Great if:
Could be used as a Plex server(like 3 streams a week during F1 season)
remote manageable torrent app to download files during F1 season(dont have a TV)
Serve as a personal cloud.
RStudio server(any Debian based linux) to of load some computations.

 

[jgreco]

The write hole thing is basically a lot of whoop about an edge case. Wouldn't worry horribly much about it. Ubuntu with software RAID is still a fine choice.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

+1

webmin makes remote management of Ubuntu Server a lot easier.

 

[dhysk]

Thank you. So software raid using Ubuntu server then?

Webmin never used it but I used Ubuntu as my main OS for about 3 years, then I started playing games again and they came out with unity.... managed it via ssh while in Iraq for the better part of a year.
without a true backup in place is the raid1 (mirror right?) The safest option. I know it's not a backup but I just want to use what resources I do have most efficiently.

 

[anodos]

Thank you. So software raid using Ubuntu server then?

Webmin never used it but I used Ubuntu as my main OS for about 3 years, then I started playing games again and they came out with unity.... managed it via ssh while in Iraq for the better part of a year.
without a true backup in place is the raid1 (mirror right?) The safest option. I know it's not a backup but I just want to use what resources I do have most efficiently.

Personally, when I use Linux I mostly stick with Centos 6. It's good, stable, and doesn't have a weird-sounding name. :D Software RAID1 is fine. The Crashplan Linux app is very good and can provide a backup for your NAS data at minimal up-front cost.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

is the raid1 (mirror right?) The safest option

With only 2 drives, a mirror is the only option that offers redundancy.

With 3 drives, a 3-way mirror, if it's an option, is safer than RAID5, but you only get the storage of 1 drive.

With 4 or more drives, RAID6 would be the safest, but RAID10 would offer higher performance.

 

[anodos]

With only 2 drives, a mirror is the only option that offers redundancy.

With 3 drives, a 3-way mirror, if it's an option, is safer than RAID5, but you only get the storage of 1 drive.

With 4 or more drives, RAID6 would be the safest, but RAID10 would offer higher performance.

I think Linux only supports having /boot on a softraid raid1 volume.

 

[dhysk]

I got a board with 6 SATA 6Gbs/s ports so I could basically do 3 mirrored drives, if thats possible. At first I would probably only do 2 x 4 TB drives and then upgrade as I needed by buying 2 drives at a time and install them. Since I'm starting with 2 i figured mirror, but not sure how it works after that when adding more drives.

Also has a M.2 connector so maybe I can boot on that if linux cant boot on any of the other RAID setups. I may end up with an M.2 drive while its still in its desktop/workstation role. It would be nice to be able to shuttle GBs worth of info from a drive to ram to video card for cuda processing, but that's a topic for another day.

This is the system I put together for those interested.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/PwnvXL

 

[AliceWonderMiscreations]

I think Linux only supports having /boot on a softraid raid1 volume.

I might be mis-remembering but I believe all you need with linux is a /boot partition with an appropriate initrd on it - and the rest of the filesystem can be on whatever.

100 MB is plenty for /boot and a USB thumb drive should work for that.

EDIT

Sorry, I didn't see the /boot in what I quoted - I saw it as /

So my answer is redundant to what I quoted.