discussion Budget NAS or DAS discussion - educate me please

[Izerous]

UNAS 2 was announced today.... might be an interesting thought

UNAS 2 - Ubiquiti Store

UniFi Network Attached Storage with (2) 3.5" HDD bays, 2.5 GbE networking, USB-C connectivity, and an included PoE++ adapter, all in a compact footprint.

ca.store.ui.com

Cool that it's powered by PoE++ as well.

There is 4 they announced
2
4
4 Pro
8 pro

2 Bay nas basically means mirror or 0 redundancy so I usually suggest staying away from them due to lack of capacity/redundancy options.

 

[JD]

2 Bay nas basically means mirror or 0 redundancy so I usually suggest staying away from them due to lack of capacity/redundancy options.

For sure, but price was Bond007's main concern and anything beyond 2 bays is pricey

 

[Bond007]

Thanks for keeping in the loop on this. For now I have shelved the idea.

As several people have suggested, to do this "right" I would need to get a larger NAS and more drives, which is going to raise the cost higher than I am currently willing to go. As of now I will stick with my low tech external drive in a firebox backup...and maybe grab another that I keep offsite and intermittently "update" to capture recent additions. Lower cost option until I come up with a proper long term plan.

 

[Izerous]

More drives really means flexability and the ability to use more but cheaper drives...

Using these new Ubiquti units as an example

NAS-2: ~280 CAD (no official CAD pricing yet just using currency conversion)
2 x 8TB Reds in RAID1 = 2x250 = 500
Only way to break past 8TB is to replace both drives
2x12TB drives = 2x350
Your now at $980 not accounting for the 2x8TBs, and 1480 if your accounting for the cost of the 8TB's you had to remove

NAS-4: ~523 CAD (no official CAD pricing yet just using currency conversion)
3x4TB Reds in RAID5 = 3x140 = 420
$943 which is obviously more expensive but to jump to 12TB storage is only +140 for a total of 1083

So this kind of thing really comes down to your goals, how much storage you need/want. What kind of deals you can get a hold of. How sensitive are you to power draw. I loaded up my server with a bunch of 1-3TB I had laying around and posted the results here somewhere but near 20 or so drives powered on but idle was like 150W of power draw (account for near 5W each).

But these kind of prices are why I went used for the NAS and why so many people DIY with TrueNAS, UnRAID etc and whatever hardware they have laying around. Also why used Synology/QNAP units usually sell of pretty quick if priced right.

Might find a used 4U server with a couple dozen drive bays and have a pile of green 3TB drives laying around. Then your only in it 200-300 for the server for example with lots of RAID6 storage.

 

[JD]

no official CAD pricing yet just using currency conversion

They are listed on the CA store: https://ca.store.ui.com/ca/en/category/network-storage; $285 and $545. Doesn't change your math by much though

 

[Izerous]

They are listed on the CA store: https://ca.store.ui.com/ca/en/category/network-storage; $285 and $545. Doesn't change your math by much though

They were not there when I looked yesterday so didn't bother to look again today. I'm glad they didn't just round up to 299 and 549 and suck close-ish to the actual conversion.

 

[gingerbee]

If you're using a storage device now plugged into a PC that is always on, you could just grab a 4-8 disk USB-C station, use DrivePool/Storage Spaces to create a pool, then just create a network share of the pooled drives. Not really a NAS as we think about them, but pretty much the same thing.