best enclosures for raid setup

[charlituna]

i've done some searching around the forum but all the posts seem a bit old. so i'm curious about folks current thoughts on the best enclosures out there for setting up a new raid. i'm mostly concerned with storage capacity and stability, direct attach is fine but thunderbolt is preferred over USB (I need those ports for other things). i already know I need at least 50TB for the project that is invoking this query but I might need more so something that can support larger drives like 8-12TB is preferred. also something that if needed I can attach additional enclosures would be awesome.

i'd also be curious about thoughts on drive brands and software as from what I've been reading for stability and data safety I'd want to do a raid 5, 6 or maybe 10 setup and it looks like disk utility doesn't support those. is SoftRaid still the software of choice or is there something better. right now i'm still on Mojave and due to some app issues likely to stay there for a while so a lack of Catalina support isn't a big deal

thanks

 

[Stephen.R]

Raid 5 is likely to bite you in the ass. Often while the array rebuilds a replaced disk (particularly if they’re big ones and if the issue was a fault in a batch) one of the other drives will go cactus due to the sustained workload.

Raid 6 is slightly better because it’ll sustain two drives failing but the same logic is possible.

Disk Utility will actually make a RAID10 array but you have to do it in steps and the GUI feedback about its status isn’t great (diskutil command shows them fine though).

Essentially you create a series (at least 2) of RAID1 arrays, and then go back and create a single RAID0 array, and instead of picking physical disks you pick the previously created RAID1 arrays.

Note that for anything involving RAID1 you need do double the disks to achieve your required storage space. So if you need 50TB and planned to use 10 or 12 TB drives - you’ll need 10 of them not 5.

I haven’t tried it but SoftRAID may indeed offer more options for a software based array - OWC include it with some of their ThunderBay enclosures.

Another option I’ve been considering lately is trying ZFS via https://openzfsonosx.org/

 

[satcomer]

Just use the Synology DS918+ and use their default raid to have the best results!

 

[Stephen.R]

use their default raid to have the best results

What is the default? I can't find it documented anywhere.

 

[satcomer]

What is the default? I can't find it documented anywhere.

BTRS - Synology version of Raid that allow drives of different sizes to be installed!

 

[mmomega]

I moved away from Synology at home and am using a QNAP 9-bay with built-in 10Gb and 1Gb.
It has 5 Hard Drive bays and 4 SSD bays that can be for storage itself or read/write cache to speed up transfers.

QNAP TVS-951X-2G-US 5+4 Bay NAS Intel Celeron Dual-Core 1.8 GHz, 2GB DDR4 1 X 10GbE Nbase-T LAN, 1 X GbE LAN, 1 x HDMI

QNAP TVS-951X-2G-US 5+4 Bay NAS Intel Celeron Dual-Core 1.8 GHz, 2GB DDR4 1 X 10GbE Nbase-T LAN, 1 X GbE LAN, 1 x HDMI

www.amazon.com

That particular model has either AMD or Intel variants.

For drive brands I am almost 100% Samsung SSD's for any computer and IronWolf or IronWolf Pro Hard drives.

 

[Stephen.R]

BTRS - Synology version of Raid that allow drives of different sizes to be installed!

Ummm no.

They use BTRFS, which is a modern filesystem with snapshots copy-on-weird etc, similar to APFS.

The “raid” like system you’re referring to is in fact called SHR. https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/What_is_Synology_Hybrid_RAID_SHR

It might be ok for home use but IMO it’s not suitable for anything where you want to increase performance as well as durability, because you can’t guarantee how many slices the data is spread over.

 

[charlituna]

Just use the Synology DS918+ and use their default raid to have the best results!

I'll look into that.

 

[bernuli]

mmomega, may I ask why you moved away from Synology?

Thx

I moved away from Synology at home and am using a QNAP 9-bay with built-in 10Gb and 1Gb.
It has 5 Hard Drive bays and 4 SSD bays that can be for storage itself or read/write cache to speed up transfers.

QNAP TVS-951X-2G-US 5+4 Bay NAS Intel Celeron Dual-Core 1.8 GHz, 2GB DDR4 1 X 10GbE Nbase-T LAN, 1 X GbE LAN, 1 x HDMI

QNAP TVS-951X-2G-US 5+4 Bay NAS Intel Celeron Dual-Core 1.8 GHz, 2GB DDR4 1 X 10GbE Nbase-T LAN, 1 X GbE LAN, 1 x HDMI

www.amazon.com

That particular model has either AMD or Intel variants.

For drive brands I am almost 100% Samsung SSD's for any computer and IronWolf or IronWolf Pro Hard drives.

 

[jeyf]

i use a QNAP but looked at Synology for home. Both are good.
seems qnap has several different sub models so dont get confused. Both companies are based far off shore China and rely on 3rd party english language product representation. The qnap basic setup is complex and really should not be. Its not like just plug in the drives and go.

companies like qnap have a list of supported drives, use a drive off their list but most anything will work

I would not direct connect. Physically place the new qnap box next to what ever router you are going to use. A NAS box is not the type of thing you will be adjusting every day. An ethernet interface is the way to go. You can double up ethernet cables for additional bandwidth if your router will handle it. The down side of this is apple's implementation of SMB coupled with Finder's limitations is a little weak even for a home network.


Just my paranoia but a reasonable assumption the qnap firmware calls home to China more than it should.

smallNetBuilder dot com

if the op's decimal point is correct but 50TB is a huge amount of raid storage and you need to implement a commercial situation.

 

[mmomega]

mmomega, may I ask why you moved away from Synology?

Thx

Simply wanting different options.
I still use Synology as well as FreeNAS and UnRaid at work. I was just looking for a different option for personal use and have been interested in QNAP for a little while. I sold my personal Synology and picked up the QNAP.
I was wanting 10GbE to use as well as SSD caching and then I came across this 9 bay enclosure and thought it looked nice as well as giving me lots of storage. It pretty much checked all of the boxes I had for an off the shelf NAS.
It has a nice community for apps and 3rd party app development.

I am one that enjoys the researching and working with different solutions to better understand them and make a better decision moving forward.
The problem has become, I like several of them. Hence I actively use FreeNAS, Synology, QNAP and UnRaid.

If I had to choose only one I would lean towards UnRaid after having used all of the above.
Which this particular QNAP box will run UnRaid natively, the only issue at the time was I could not adjust the fan speed on that particular UnRaid build.
I haven't tried newer releases on it in the last 8 months to see if it better controls the cooling.


And ethernet bonding does not work like, 4 ethernet ports bonded don't equal 4 Gb of bandwidth back and forth.
It can equal 4Gb TOTAL from multiple devices to a single IP address but you can not send more than 1Gb worth of data per client.
You will have to move up to 10Gb ethernet or a direct connection if available.

Even if your NAS has multiple ethernet ports, the switch you connect to will also have to have the ability to aggregate or bond those connected ports together to use a single IP address.
It isn't a RAID0 type solution, it only gives the ability to use multiple 1 gigabit connections to one address.