Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

As early as last June, I saw the 2.5in SSD of a single 15.36TB in bilibili UP: a ruthless review boss, and at that time I sprouted the seed of building a NAS with full SSD-14 months later, I really assembled an all-flash NAS with enterprise SSD!

(BV:BV1i64y1t7Rj) * the real all-flash NAS is used in the high-end industry, and the price often starts with millions. It is true that ET DIY is full SSD NAS this time, but borrowing the term "all-flash memory" is just a small title party, and please don't laugh at the industry bosses.

The introduction is probably in mid-late August, when the Western SN640 7.68TB dropped to about 3000 yuan. According to the product details of the flagship store, this is an enterprise-class SSD that supports NVMe 1.3, uses 96 layers of 3D TLC NAND flash memory particles, and has high read-write performance and durability. Close to the 8TB is only about 3000 yuan, which is cheaper than 4 consumer-grade 2TB TLC SSD! The only thing that hinders people from buying is that it uses the rare U.2 interface.

Even so, my heart is still restless, and easily Amway @ Feiwei teacher.

If the solution wants to use U.2 SSD on the finished NAS, the best choice at present is WeiUnicom TS-h973AX. It provides five 3.5in positions, two U.2 / SATA positions and two 2.5inch positions. The processor is AMD V1500B based on ZEN architecture, which can use QuTS Hero system. It is equipped with 2 10GbE ports and 2 2.5GbE ports as standard. It is fully qualified for the current material and long-term storage needs of a small video team, with an official price of about 7000 yuan.

But I am not satisfied with this: on the one hand, the two U.2 can only group RAID1, and the space utilization is only 50%, which reduces the capacity / price ratio. On the other hand, the performance of the V1500B processor is not good enough to support me to do more extra operations on this NAS. Of course, there are higher-end products than TS-h973AX: such as the TS-h1290FX with 12 U.2 bits, or the TS-h987XU-RP with 4 3.5-inch disks and 5 U.2 bits-they all use server-grade processors, and you don't have to ask that the price must be exaggerated.

So, if I want to use 3 or more U.2 SSD at the same time, I have no choice but to assemble it myself.

The core point is how to support multi-block U.2 SSD. There are three main ways:

-Server / workstation motherboard with U.2 interface. The advantage is that it is designed for a long time, stable and reliable, and the disadvantage is that the price is high. And I haven't touched it, and I'm not sure if there will be additional problems in the assembly process.

-ordinary motherboard + expansion card that supports PCIe channel split. The U.2 SSD also goes through the PCIe channel, and if you want to use multiple SSD at the same time, you usually need to divide the x16 slot on the motherboard into four x4. Most Intel motherboards do not support this split mode, so an expansion card with a split chip is required. Without the array function of the expansion card, the price is not outrageous (4 mouth 580 yuan, not brand new), but also need to match the connection cable, it is said that the line is not very good.

-Motherboard + ordinary expansion card that supports PCIe channel split. A few motherboards support split function, so that you can use multiple SSD with cheap ordinary expansion cards. And this expansion card supports plug-in, as long as the chassis can be put down, you can avoid the problem of line adjustment.

Coincidentally, the Asustek TUF B450M-PRO S motherboard purchased by ET during computer repairs in June this year supports PCIe split. This motherboard is bought for less than 500 yuan, while the ordinary expansion card is only 300 yuan, the cost is completely controllable!

* I also considered the operating system at the conceptual stage, but I left this part for later.

After the assembly decided on the solution, there was a small problem: my motherboard provided 1 PCIe x16, 1 PCIe x4, and 1 PCIe x1. X16 is used to install expansion cards and 4 SSD,x4 are used to install 10 Gigabit network cards, so there is no slot to install graphics cards-although NAS does not require graphics performance, it cannot be booted without graphics cards.

The solution is to buy an X1 interface video card, or cut the X1 slot on the motherboard into open (or install X16 video card). I chose the former. On the one hand, I am afraid that my hand will break something, and on the other hand, I don't want to waste a normal graphics card on it.

* Why not replace it with an integrated graphics card processor such as 5600G? Looking at the motherboard instructions for using the integrated graphics card CPU, the X16 slot seems to have only X8 bandwidth, so you can't use 4 U.2 SSD-I'm not 100% sure about 5600G, so I'm afraid to buy a new CPU.

Although a lot of thinking and verification has been done, including confirming the BIOS, instructions, and installing the NAS system on the existing host. But in the execution, I still choose to operate one by one: first buy the graphics card, then buy the expansion card, confirm the installation and power supply and other details, and finally buy the SSD. Although this slows down the progress, it can stop the loss at any time-when you receive the hard drive, you can also install one expansion card to confirm that the expansion card will work, and then install two channels to confirm that the split is normal. Finally, plug in all three pieces-although @ Beijing hard disk Home is easy to talk about, but I don't want to bother him to return it (after all, the machine is powered on).

* originally wanted to buy 4 SN640 in one go, hesitate to pay: 3 7.68TB group RAID5 or RAID Z, the available capacity is also about 14TB, which is enough for the material of our small studio (and later opened the compression, the utilization rate has been improved by another level).

In fact, there is a plan to change the chassis and power supply, and then take a good picture. However, after debugging the system, it should feel appropriate so far and can be used. So the installation process did not take pictures with the camera, but made a simple record with the mobile phone.

Configuration list R7-3700X processor (original)

Asustek TUF B450M motherboard (original)

16GB DDR4 memory * 2 (original)

PCIe x1 bright card (RMB120)

PCIe x16 to 4 U.2 expansion cards (RMB299)

Samsung 240GB SSD makes system disk (original)

AQC107 10 Gigabit Network Card (original)

Chassis, Power supply, CPU Radiator (original)

2 12cm mute fans (about 80 yuan)

The value of accessories other than hard drives is about 3000 yuan. When choosing, please pay attention to the length of the chassis: can insert 4 U.2 expansion cards, taking into account the power plug is 314mm, the chassis will not be put in short, I this TT S3 can be Ding Ke Mao.

The hardware assembly of the system is only half a success, and the system must be installed before it can be put into normal operation. I was initially thinking about TrueNAS (that is, the follow-up to FreeNAS). The installation process was smooth and the virtual machine was completed, but it soon found that the system relied too much on the command line: the USB mobile hard drive hanging from EXFAT needed the command line, the backup of internal storage to the external hard disk needed the command line, the command line needed to empty the Recycle Bin with one click, and the command line needed to regularly empty the Recycle Bin. Coupled with the addition of a lot of English on the page, I will soon learn to abandon the pit.

Then I tried Windows 10 Pro, the professional version of Win10. The reason for choosing it is that there are more soft RAID features than the home version (more than 3 parity mode, similar to RAID5 but the details may not be the same), and then more management tools such as group policy. This graphical interface is familiar and easy to use, but the problem is that Windows does not support the Recycle Bin function on SMB sharing-it is easy to mistakenly delete pictures and video materials, so the "Recycle Bin" is my rigid requirement.

* by the way: Windows's soft RAID performance has suffered a lot, which is the only performance of my 3-disk array. Of course, it is still very rich to deal with 10 Gigabit network transmission.

Before, many people thought that the system of WeiUnicom was difficult to use and difficult to use. But after all this trouble, I found out how mature, easy to use and humanized the brand system is. So this article is only a record of ET's own practice, not a dissuasion post, but is likely to become an exhortation post.

Here, some people may say, why not try "Hei Qunhui"? I think I can use the genuine copy as much as possible. If I can't afford it, I also choose open source software (the price of Win10 Professional Edition is acceptable, and it can continue to be used without activation). So after giving up TrueNAS and Windows, I chose another open source NAS system: OpenMediaVault (OMV). This time, things are getting better at last!

OMV6OMV is an open source NAS system based on Debian Linux. The hardware compatibility is very good and can be run on a lot of hardware, including raspberry pie. I installed the latest OMV6. There are two considerations in the installation process: ① should choose English when choosing a language, because selecting Chinese will encounter garbled code when operating on the command line, and then change it to Chinese when you enter the web management interface. ② is the source of software updates recommended for Tsinghua University.

The OMV system itself is relatively simple and deeply depends on the OMV-Extras plug-in extension package. There are many tutorials online, the installation for the old version is no longer available, and the script execution may not work properly due to network problems. I finally found the address of OMV-Extra on the open source software mirror of Tsinghua University, and then tapped in one by one to perform the installation-certainly not so troublesome, but if you encounter a situation where OMV-Extras cannot be installed, I am sure I can solve it.

* if you also need to enter the address manually, you can enter this directory to confirm the latest version number.

Https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/OpenMediaVault/openmediavault-plugin-developers/pool/main/o/openmediavault-omvextrasorg/

OMV-Extra not only provides Docker, but also brings a lot of additional plug-ins, which can implement ZFS, virtual machine, USB backup, automatic shutdown and so on. In short, almost all the functions I want can be met. Although the interface is not as easy to operate as the brand system, at least the "plug-in" is like Tencent App Center, and the Chinese culture of the interface is also very high.

Finally, I used three pieces of SN640 to form a RAID Z1 storage pool (similar to RAID5), using LZ4 compression to improve space utilization (considerable compression ratio for photo files). SSD itself greatly improves the speed of system response and file information viewing, and the actual measurement can easily run over 10 gigabytes of bandwidth (there is also the relationship that the ZFS system uses memory for caching).

The setting of the Recycle Bin in OMV is also simple, and it is more flexible to set automatic emptying time for each folder.

In order not to waste processor performance, I installed a WIN10 virtual machine on it. Log in to the camera notes and overflow technology's release account on this virtual machine, and the studio partner will no longer have to ask me for the CAPTCHA code.

Summary because the old NAS is still in service, there is no time to take the network area offline again, so this time it will not be on the environment map. Then the 16GB memory will burst when running the virtual machine (8GB) and reading and writing large files (ZFS eats too much memory). After adjusting the studio computer on Singles' Day, the memory will be added to 32GB.

This time, I mainly want to satisfy myself for a while. You say how much efficiency our studio can be improved by using this "all-flash NAS". It can only be said that it is really quiet after working without a mechanical hard disk.

In fact, I know very well that whether it's batch RAW conversion or 4K video clips, one or two computers accessing NAS at the same time will not put much pressure on hard disk reading and writing and network bandwidth-- or your computer will get stuck before you fill your hard drive and network. (playing four 4K tracks on Mac Studio with Leonardo da Vinci, network requirements are also within the 2.5GbE range). I pursue full SSD and 10 Gigabit networks. I just want to run a little faster than everyone else, so that I can tell you what is just right and more cost-effective after the test.

Finally, attach the names of some tools and software used.

Rufus: write the ISO to a USB disk to make an installation disk.

FileZilla: upload files to NAS via SFTP, such as the installation image for the virtual machine.

Tightvnc: get the running interface of the virtual machine. Neither OMV nor OMV-Extra provides this feature, while TrueNAS comes with a web version of VNC.

Todesk: more stable, faster and easier to use than through VNC (in Chinese). But you must use tightvnc to complete the system installation before you can install Todesk.

Putty:SSH tools, without such tools, can only connect the keyboard and mouse to NAS and then type their own commands.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: camera Notes (ID:xjbiji), by Teng Fei et

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