Cheap Pre-built NAS or Budget NAS?

[copache]

Hello everyone, I'm completely new to FreeNAS so excuse me if this a dumb question. I am considering building a NAS server to use mainly to serve media to XBMC on my Raspberry Pi. I also want to do time machine backups, set up a shared iTunes library between my mac and pc, and set up ownCloud.

My question is, if I want to set up a 4TB FreeNAS server on the cheap, can I use a low-end pre-built nas like this Shuttle 2-bay NAS or a Synology 2 bay NAS and boot into FreeNAS? Is this effective or am I better off building my own machine? I basically want to know what is the cheapest way to set up a low-capacity server that is relatively quiet and has low power consumption.

Thanks for helping out a noob

 

[Whattteva]

They both only have 256 MB of RAM, so that's pretty much immediate no.
I can also tell you that building yourself a proper FreeNAS system will cost you much more than the price listed on those two links.

Looking at your question tells me immediately that you did not even bother to read the stickies for noobs.
Please do take a bit of your time to read through those posts. A lot of your questions that you otherwise would ask (like this one) will be answered there.

 

[L]

Have you seen this one?

View: http://www.amazon.com/FreeNAS-Mini-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B00EQJ3PS0/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1407422836&sr=8-9&keywords=freenas


Also I did this video awhile back on how easy it is to setup time machine on freenas. Less than 10 minutes. View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2pyYeANGKc

 

[Whattteva]

Have you seen this one?

View: http://www.amazon.com/FreeNAS-Mini-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B00EQJ3PS0/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1407422836&sr=8-9&keywords=freenas

If you had actually checked out his links, you will realize that his definition of "cheap, budget" build is around $100.00-$200.00 (diskless), which totally makes the FreeNAS (over $1000.00) mini way out of his budget.
Even after adding 4x WD RED 1TB (that the FreeNAS mini includes) the total of the system in his link + the drives would still not exceed $500.00. Hence, why I didn't even bother to suggest any solution (FreeNAS mini or homebrew) because either way will just totally exceed his budget by way too much, at least for a proper system.

It appears to me that he is best served just going with those pre-made systems and just go with whatever OS it already has instead of trying to hack FreeNAS into some system that it's clearly not meant for. I've actually heard some good things about Synology in the budget market (I've used one briefly at work also). I believe they run a custom version of Linux under the hood.

 

[L]

My hacked together system uses a broken laptop and usd drives and still more than $300. It's only 2 TB too, but is a year+ old now. Hobbling together parts to me is the great part of freenas.

 

[Whattteva]

And that, is a huge source of users complaining about losing their precious data because they cobbled up a system without reading any of the stickies cautioning them against doing such things.
Yes, it can be done like you said, but that kind of kludgey setup is just asking for trouble if you plan on doing this as a production-level system (not for testing purposes).
The problem with doing it that way is that, it works great until something fails and you lose all your data (there is no ZFS recovery tool, btw).

Anyways, I'll stop there as I'm sure Cyberjock or jgreco can probably give better advice on this than I can (if they have the patience to post here... *hint* read the stickies people, they're there for a reason).

 

[L]

There is a saying, that you can't have performance and cheap and reliable. You have to decide what you want. You can't have all 3. You can go with cheap, but you trade performance and reliability. Performance usually has to trade reliability and cheap. Reliable, trade cheap and perf. To have all three, is a balancing act, but mostly impossible.

 

[Whattteva]

There is a saying, that you can't have performance and cheap and reliable. You have to decide what you want. You can't have all 3. You can go with cheap, but you trade performance and reliability. Performance usually has to trade reliability and cheap. Reliable, trade cheap and perf. To have all three, is a balancing act, but mostly impossible.

Ah yes, I think you're referring to the so-called "trade-off triangle". Basically, you have a triangle with each side representing balance cost, quality, and speed/performance/scalability.
The point of the triangle is to illustrate that you can typically only maximize two values and are forced to sacrifice the third.