He also switched because of the noise of the previous setup. I feel like your suggestion doesn't cover that at all.
Except higher performance (which doesn't seems to be a requirement for him considering his QNAP gave much worse performance and it was still not an argument for new gear), what would he get from your 3x cost?
I first ran FreeNAS, but eventually moved it to Ubuntu 18.04 so that I could run some containerized services on it (file sharing, Plex, and a remote virtual desktop).
16gb RAM is about right for running ZFS. 8gb worked OK, but I'd notice slowdowns from time to time.
If this machine ever decides to pack it in, I'll get a gen10.
That's only if you feel like tinkering, though; Ubuntu's a great choice as well.
I just use an old desktop with a pretty efficient CPU.
All of the always on parts of my home network are built out of compact low power parts that are faster than the rock64 and, no surprise it's expensive. I used a nano-itx celeron that's much faster than a rock64 and gives me 2 gbe links to bond. It would have cost him 10 dollars more and would use 2-5x the power.
This shit gets really tricky
Just needed to rent, sorry, but why the heck do people frequently don't know there is a difference between lowercase b(it) and uppercase B(yte)...
"I was averaging 60-113mbps depending on the size of files being moved. This was a successful build in my mind! After selling my QNAP NAS, I came out ahead on my expenses for the build."
113Mbps is considered "high performing"?
"on a shoestring budget with the Rock64 SBC"
"TOTAL: $172.39 CAD before tax"
This is without the cost of the hard drives, doesn't seem ot include the cost of an enclosure, and results in:
* 1 Quad-core A53
* 2GB ram (the 4GB version is $45 USD without shipping, so it couldn't have been this one), which you can't ever change
* 0 SATA ports
* 1 USB 3 port
* 2 USB 2 ports
* 1x GbE
I would probably rather consider an HP Micro Server (e.g. https://www.amazon.com//dp/B079MFYDSL ), which for $282 provides:
* 1.6GHz dual-core Opteron
* 2 DIMM slots, 8GB DDR4 provided
* 5x SATA ports (4x in the disk bays, 1 in the optical bay)
* 4 USB3 ports, 2 USB2 ports, internal USB port
* 2x GbE
* 2x PCIe slots
* Hardware RAID support (I wouldn't use it, but it's available).
It would meet all of these requirements the poster had:
* Shoestring budget, under $300 preferred
* Scalable, not locked into a certain number of drive bays
* Gigabit ethernet
* USB 3.0 (for fast backups to my backup drives)
Preferred: compatibility with open source NAS offerings (OpenMediaVault, FreeNAS, etc.)
Low power usage (I don’t have high computing requirements for this system, so it doesn’t need to be driving up my electricity bill to run every month)
(I guess the Rock64 may have lower power consumption, but I don't think vastly lower).
I have a much older Microserver G7 (or NL54), which was much cheaper (I paid about $100), and it's great.
Edit: formatting