Not sure why this doesn’t exist. I don’t need 12TB of storage. When I had a Google account I never even crossed 15GB. 1TB should be plenty for myself and my family. I want to use NVMe since it is quieter and smaller. 2230 drives would be ideal. But I want 1 boot drive and 2 x storage drives in RAID. I guess I could potentially just have 2xNVMe and have the boot partition in RAID also? Bonus points if I can use it as a wireless router also.
Didn’t LTT just release a video covering this exact topic?
Haha. Yeah I did see that. It’s an interesting product but ARM-based. Meaning it would be excellent for a NAS but not so good for a home server.
Any specific reason why you’d want to go with NVMEs for your storage, and not just 2.5 SSDs?
If it’s performance you’re concerned about. I have 3 SSDs in RAID (external USB 3.2 JBOD enclosure), and they perform way better than a single NVME.
For minipcs, have a look at aliexpress. They tend to have the branded options much cheaper than amazon. Trigkey, minisforum, Beelink, etc.
For minipcs, have a look at aliexpress. They tend to have the branded options much cheaper than amazon. Trigkey, minisforum, Beelink, etc.
The OP would be better serve with a second hand mini computer from HP or Dell than that crap. AliExpress brands (including Minisforum) are all fun an games until you run into some UEFI bug that will never get a fix and won’t you boot some system or have some feature, or your board doesn’t have proper ESD protection and randomly fries when a USB device is inserted.
I run a trigkey (AMD 5700u) as my NAS (unraid) and homelab, and a CW p-5 (N305) as my router (opnsense), and have no problems at all. So they for sure boot Linux and FreeBSD, which is 90% the case.
Unlike some old second hand, new hardware is more powerful and energy efficient.
Unlike some old second hand, new hardware is more powerful and energy efficient.
So… if I compare an N305 with an 8th gen i3 CPU it is about 2$/year in savings when it comes to power. Since a brand new N305-based machine will sell for at least 150$ more than a second hand HP Mini i3-8300T that means you’ve to run your N305 for 75 years to actually reach break even.
Look, I like the N305 but I would never get a cheap ass board when I can get a reliable machine with an older CPU like that i3 for a lot less money, it just doesn’t make sense. Power consumption is a nice metric to throw around, but once you run the math…
Besides, just google “minis forums uefi bug” and you’ll see. Those machines are about luck, you may have good results a few times but you’ll eventually get burned by some board with software or design issues.
CW p-5 (N305) as my router (opnsense)
Frankly, do you really need opnsense? If you were to remove that and just grab any decent router, even old hardware, like the R7800, and load it with OpenWrt you would be spending a lot less on power. Go ahead, name a opnsense feature that OpenWrt doesn’t have. :)
name a feature…
No need to, they both have their place for sure… I don’t know their features, and I probably don’t even use most of them. but openwrt is solid enough for potato hardware, whereas opnsense is not. Also, my point was to show that both operating systems run on the aliexpress hardware, counteracting your claim that some systems don’t boot.
openwrt is solid enough for potato hardware, whereas opnsense is not
OpenWrt is rock solid for every hardware out there, it has a x86 version as well and there are people running that for more serious stuff.
both operating systems run on the aliexpress hardware, counteracting your claim that some systems don’t boot.
Yes, they may run right now in your specific boards but it is a hit or miss. You’ve zero guarantee a future update update to your OS or UEFI won’t break things and that there will be fixes. There are plenty of online reports of people unable to boot on those cheap boards due to due to UEFI shenanigans, even on minisforum machines.
I haven’t updated bios on my main pc ever since I built it… so I think the concerns you’re talking about are more hit than miss.
That’s because you had the luck of not hitting a BIOS with some bug or limitation. For instance on AMD it is common to see things like:
To run the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X on an Asus Prime B450M-A II motherboard, you will need to update the BIOS to the latest version available that supports the processor.
Because while electrically / socket compatible, when the board was originally released the CPU didn’t exist.
All of those HP minis have 2 NVMe slots. If you’re looking for more bays maybe a QNAP TBS-h574TX (Core i3-1320PE) will bit your needs better. Or the Asustor Flashstor 6 FS6706T.
But I want 1 boot drive and 2 x storage drives in RAID
One other possible approach to this is to go with the 800 G4 or the 800 G6 as they also SATA port you can use for your boot drive.
You can also boot from a fast USB 3 flash drive, since it’s your boot drive it won’t be as bad as you think. Consider some servers boot from SD Cards and other low performance media with almost static images.
I work with real servers. SD card boot media is generally a bad idea. VMware officially semi-deprecated it a while back. Unless you tune your install to redirect typical I/O to the durable drives (which is going to be a pain, having to find and reconfigure all those services), typical logging to disk and various temp files are going to wear it out pretty quickly.
I would just use two drives and not separate the OS. That way, you also don’t have to worry about the OS drive failing and taking down the server.
Just be careful if you reinstall. I’d suggest deleting the OS partitions first, then reinstalling to the empty space, instead of trusting the installer to do it properly.
Any more information on doing a redirect of the typical I/O in a server booted from microSD?
Edit: Nevermind asked the “AI” and found some answers online.
