Options for NAS storage

Mostly thinking out loud for various NAS options. I am looking to replace an aging (bordering on antique) HP N40L server. It is currently running well, however it is serving as both storage and running arguably ill-advised number of services.

Main problems are:

• Jellyfin runs perfectly, until a device requires the media to be transcoded
• The Photoprism photo browser (or potentially Immich now development seems to have settled down a bit) has a bunch of ML based image tagging etc
• Transfer speeds are okay on gigabit network but it would be nice to upgrade to some combination of 2.5G and 10G

Plan is to split the storage and services to separate hardware - currently everything is on the N40L, would be more convenient if the NAS was just a NAS, and separate hardware for running services. I have a set of 3x Dell 7050 Micro nodes in a 3D-printed rack mount for part of this, with 2.5G ethernet adapters, so just storage and switch left to investigate.

Requirements

• Increase the current ~12TiB usable space, either greatly, or with room to expand
• Greater-than 1gig networking
• Improve current power-draw, or at least avoid increasing it - currently the N40L with 2 HDDs and 2 SSDs draws something vaguely around 50-60w at idle. The Dell 7050's draw about 10w, and the plan is to run either 2 or 3 of these, leaving about 20w idle for the storage.
• Ideally something which would fit nicely into a networking rack.
  • This is quite a compromise, as "Synology style" vertical ~4 bay NAS form factors are drastically more common
  • Further limiting the rack depth reduces options even further
• Ideally, something based around ZFS - and even better if it's based around some open platform - to make it easier to move the drives around in future, and avoid the hardware becoming EOL purely due to the manufacturer stopping providing updates.

Asus Flashstor 12

This is most likely the solution.

Initially I was only looking at 3.5inch HDD based options, mainly due to cost-per-GB - however:

• Spinning drives use a reasonable chunk of power alone
• M.2 NVME drives prices are becoming fairly reasonable, particularly 2TB and 4TB drives currently
• Having a bunch of smaller drives leaves a bit more room for future expansion

Specifically, of two options:

1. 2x 20TB SATA HDD would be about $1300 AUD currently, and give vaguely around 20TB of storage
2. 4x 4TB M.2 NVME drives would be about the same price, and give 12TB

While the HDD's are a better option in terms of total space, it is a lot trickier choice compared to last time I looked at this maybe 4 years ago:

• Having 12 bays makes incremental upgrades a lot appealing. With 4 bays in current setup, I used 2 for a mirrored large HDD for large media storage, and 2 for a mirrored smaller SSD for smaller documents etc - so practically the only upgrade path is to replace both pairs. With 12 bays, adding lots of extra 4TB drives, or adding second pool of 8TB drives (or whatever makes sense at the time) becomes feasible, and makes migrating data between them much easier etc
• The multiple NVME drives and only using 1 or 2 for redundancy involves less "wasted" space compared to the smaller number of large drives (e.g option 1 uses an entire 20TB drive for backup, versus option two which uses 4TB out of 16TB)
• Using all solid-state drives avoiding the SATA drives becoming a bottleneck - not a concern on gigabit network, but the drives will become a bottleneck beyond that ("probably" on 2.5G, and "definitely" on 10G)
• The extra space from HDD's isn't really necessary - current ~12TB of space is borderline "enough".
  • My previous storage upgrade was partially because HD media was increasingly common and a meaningful upgrade from SD, but from HD to 4K isn't something I have much desire to upgrade, plus H.265 encoding does an impressive job.

In general the Flashstor device seems fairly suitable,

• It has 10GB networking
• The RAM can be upgraded
• Other operating systems are permitted (e.g this guide on installing TrueNAS Scale), which is a reasonable alternative to actively supporting other operating systems
• Although not rack-mounted, it should fit well on a 1U shelf

Other options

I looked into a bunch of rack-mount, 3.5inch bay NAS units - mainly 4 drive ones:

Synology RackStation RS422+

• Short-depth 1U rack mount unit (327mm), with built-in power supply
• Has good idle power draw (supposedly about 15w idle, with 35-45w under load)

However it has a few fairly major downsides:

• Mainly, lock-in to Synology OS and its filesystem format
• Most expensive option - around $1500AUD plus about $200AUD for a 10G network card (otherwise only 1G)
• No M.2 slots for a caching drive, RAM cannot be upgraded

Summary: A good option but I don't like the drives being "stuck" in Synology's custom RAID format

Terramaster U4-423

• Somewhat short-depth 1U rack-mount (360mm), although it is quite a bit longer than the Synology - it seems to waste a lot of space internally compared, and also requires an external power brick
• Can run basically any OS, basically just a standard Intel-based computer - although a bit unclear if the lack of HDMI port makes this difficult
• Price-wise it's fairly decent - about $1100 AUD
• Has dual 2.5G networking, RAM can be upgraded, has one M.2 slot for caching
• Has good idle power usage, supposedly about the same 15w idle, 35w active

Summary: Barring the slight inconvenience of the longer unit plus external power brick, this would be a good option (with a bit more research to confirm the OS can be replaced)

QNAP TS-431XeU

• Short-depth rack (291mm), with integrated PSU
• Best value for the price-to-features, $1000 AUD
• Has excessive networking options (dual 10G and dual 2.5G), upgradable RAM, 2x M.2 slots
• Biggest downside is QNAP's OS has a bad reputation - earned mostly due to ransomware attack on its internet-connected portion.
• The OS also can't trivially be replaced - it's similar to the Synology. In theory could run some ARM-supporting OS, but in practice there is very little information on doing this
• The OS isn't a huge concern, if it's being used purely as dumb storage it could be firewalled off from internet connections - but it's a bit more hassle to manage.

Summary: Best option hardware-wise, would probably be my choice ignoring the Flashstor 12

UniFi UNAS Pro

• Expensive at maybe about $1300, and new/not currently released at least in Australia.
• Supposedly quite high power draw, about 60w?
• However it does have 7 drive bays, in 2U - no M.2 slots for caching
• While it should work fine as a standalone, it is very likely an afterthought, given the UniFi hardware generally has a very strong incentive to push users into fully buying into UniFi hardware.

Summary: Quite interesting hardware, but very new

Asustor 4RS

• Not really suitable for my needs
• Most expensive ($1700AUD), doesn't really count as short-depth (515mm)