[SCAM ALERT] Storaxa

[golfox2]

Hi TrueNassers,
I presently have at home an old PC tower with 2 different HDDs of 4tb, running TrueNAS-12.0-U8. 1 HDD is used for my nextcloud sync (auto camera roll upload from phone, files, videos clips for editing, ...) and 1 HDD is used as a Plex server for movies to watch on my TV and laptop. I bought some PCIe adapters to get 2 more SATA ports + power supply so I can have 3x4tb in RAID Z1 (so 8tb storage + 4tb backup) and the plex server I don't really mind if it's a single HDD pool, data is not super important on this one.

My question is, is it actually worth upgrading to the kickstarter tower project "Storaxa" ? It's much more compact than my actual setup, cleaner and has 5 HDD slots + an array of 4x SSDs. So I'm thinking either :
A) 3x4tb in RAID Z1 for nextcloud as above + 1x4tb for Plex movies
B) 4x2tb SSD for nextcloud, backed up by a 8tb HDD, + 1x4tb for Plex movies

is it worth spending the money to get the Storaxa tower (400$ total with upgraded RAM to 32gb instead of my fixed 16gb now, + included SSDs) ?
I'm very indecise and am looking for external advice. It's not that I can't spend 400$, but is it really worth it knowing that I have a working system already ?

 

[Etorix]

Just looking at the Storaxa project page, the combination of "TrueNAS", "over 100 TB" and "RAID5" does not invite to trust the project with one's money, and even less with one's data. Case closed. Just connect your regular NAS to an access point.

(In case it's not obvious: There's no such thing as "RAID5" with ZFS. And raidz1 is strongly advised against with the 20+ TB drives that would be necessary to store over 100 TB in a 5-bay enclosure.)

 

[winnielinnie]

Storaxa is a combination of a NAS (Network Attached Storage) and WiFi router. It features over 100TB of massive storage capacity, available in RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, and an incredible speed of 2.5GbE & WiFi 6 home network. It is fully customizable and open source, powered by TrueNAS-SCALE and OpenWRT, so you are in full control of how your data is stored.

Why? What need does this fulfill?

Small (likely "hot") form factor that houses a WiFi router and NAS hardware?

Why would someone think: "I could buy a WiFi router, but I wish a NAS was fused with it as well!"

 

[Redcoat]

"I could buy a WiFi router, but I wish a NAS was fused with it as well!"

"fused" being the operative?

 

[winnielinnie]

"fused" being the operative?

According to their own kickstarter page, it's a WiFi-6 router and NAS, as a single unit. It's not like they include a separate WiFi router as an added bonus. It's all merged into a single form factor. The NAS hardware is powered by TrueNAS, while the router hardware is powered by OpenWRT.

EDIT: Oh please don't tell me that it's actually OpenWRT as a container? Meaning if something happens to your NAS, you lose your entire network? They don't really elaborate on this.

Looks like it's a Proxmox virtualized instance of TrueNAS SCALE and OpenWRT. (See below for @Samuel Tai's post).

Personally, I don't like it. WiFi Router + TrueNAS + virtualized + small box as a single unit.

WiFi radios produce heat on their own, and to localize it to the same small space with your drives and CPU?

 

[Redcoat]

My "fused" was in the thermal sense...

 

[winnielinnie]

In a sense, "fused"... in both ways!

 

[Samuel Tai]

According to the project specs

Both TrueNAS Scale and OpenWRT are running as VMs on Proxmox. I can only see a use case for this with typical tightly-compact Asian apartments where physical space is at a premium. This approach doesn't really bode well for the overall system reliability.

 

[Samuel Tai]

The system also only has 16 GB of RAM, which means the TrueNAS VM will probably get 10 GB, Proxmox 4 GB, and OpenWRT 2 GB. More worrying, this doesn't seem to include an HBA, so they're probably trying to expose the SSDs and spinners as virtual disks from Proxmox to TrueNAS. That will likely end in tears.

 

[golfox2]

Hi guys,

ok thanks for your reviews and comments, I didn't know it was a VM hosting the TrueNAS environment. That might not be good I agree.
One can upgrade the specs to better CPU, more RAM etc so the 16 gb RAM is not immoveable.

But I'll stick with my homemade NAS tower then, thanks a lot everyone =)

 

[sretalla]

I guess there may be some value in attempting to oust proxmox and run SCALE as the host OS, then have a VM in SCALE to run the router...

Generally speaking it seems a bit of a risk, but if you're doing it, SCALE as the host would be the only way to avoid ZFS disaster.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

That's kind of a mess given the amount of data it's purporting to store. I see "impending loss of all data imminent" baked into the design.

 

[Etorix]

By passing through the SATA controller it could be made to work—though short on RAM for virtualised TrueNAS and large arrays.
But there's no ZFS way to mirror a large HDD with a stripe of four NVMe (QLC, for good measure?); so they must be doing that by presenting virtual disks—ZFS on mdadm RAID.
And thanks to the prominent TrueNAS branding iXSystem will be held morally responsible for the resulting data loss in place of Storaxa. Brillant!

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I am completely baffled - neither seems there to be any copyright boilerplate in the individual source files nor a central copyright statement file in the respective repositories.

Does someone know the TrueNAS source repo structure better than I do and could provide a link?

If there really isn't any - iX, what are you guys smoking?


This investigation started because I was looking for a non-advertisement clause as in the original BSD license.

@morganL any insight?

 

[Ericloewe]

Is this the same thing that crossed my field of view recently and was quickly dismissed as a scam, since there was no way in hell they could even manufacture the claimed hardware at the offered price, much less pay down the required development effort?

 

[Ericloewe]

My question is, is it actually worth upgrading to the kickstarter tower project "Storaxa" ?

Do not give these guys a single cent. At best they are delusional (Submit a design to an OEM and ship final units in two months? You can't even get parts in two months!), most likely they are scammers.

 

[winnielinnie]

no way in hell they could even manufacture the claimed hardware at the offered price, much less pay down the required development effort?

How'd you find the original Kickstarter slogan?

 

[Ericloewe]

Here we go, I knew I'd seen this:

Storaxa kickstarter - an interesting small NAS

The motherboard of the below kickstarter project looks like the CWWK board mentioned in this thread: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/storaxa/fully-customizable-home-cloud-storage-with-remote-access-nas?ref=recommendation-projectpage-footer-4 @newabc originally posted this in the long...

forums.servethehome.com

 

[Ericloewe]

How'd you find the original Kickstarter slogan?

When the time came to choose what to do with my life, I said marketing. I was promptly informed that I was too honest for that, so that ruled out law, management, clown college, and marketing. Since I didn't want to memorize things (says the guy who knows a bunch of stupid model numbers by heart), I had to settle for engineering.

 

[winnielinnie]

most likely they are scammers.

Why would you call them scammers when they offer a best-in-class NAS solution that has the "Linux OS" with integrated WiFi-6 antenna, and is "available in RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10", powered by TrueNAS (ZFS)?