5 ms·

I'm sure people have reasons for taking these things as far as they do with ZFS, and everything else that goes into what is commonly considered a "NAS." But I'v

by ocd 2mo ago

I'm sure people have reasons for taking these things as far as they do with ZFS, and everything else that goes into what is commonly considered a "NAS." But I've found great convenience in a tight NFSv3 config running from a single high capacity HDD with ext4 on a Linux machine (primary system that's always on anyway while I'm around/awake) making things available to my other devices for the electricity and overhead cost of one machine instead of multiple. I try to keep my network configuration restrictive by default, so I'm not too concerned about possible security arguments running it from my main machine. I've probably committed some great sin here, but is plain NFSv3 and secondarily Samba (for compatibility) really not enough?

dannyw 2mo ago
First: Do you have backups of your single high-capacity HDD? That's my biggest worry. What's your plan for when that HDD fails one day, as it will? The main reasons people go for ZFS and a "NAS" is checksums and data integrity protection, as well as maybe not wanting to keep their primary machine awake all the time (I personally don't). Then there are useful features like snapshots, which means I don't have to worry as much about accidentally deleting, or over-writing a file and losing data. I don't see anything wrong with using a main machine that's up 7x24 as a NAS, don't buy things for the sake of something, but I'm worried about your reliability and bitrot protection. (Yes, it happens, I've seen it first-hand thanks to ZFS).
- ocd 2mo ago
  I have external parity for everything with rsync. I don't have any storage that isn't matched with external backups. Fortunately I've never seen any bitrot or had a drive fail on me since I tend to replace them before they do. And yeah, I could add in some extra HDDs for RAID, but this is more a personal choice because of how much I hate SATA. Filesystems like ext4 are because I value boring and rock solid stability over semi-experimental status of modern filesystems with all the features.
  - bobmcnamara 2mo ago
    What do you dislike about SATA?
    - ocd 2mo ago
      The cables and how they have to be managed/positioned in a case. I've had panics over a drive failing when it was just the cable after I'd already replaced the drive, restored data, and ran tests on the old drive that turned out to be fine each time.
      - CTDOCodebases 2mo ago
        I have multiple home servers running ZFS and the first thing to check when encountering errors is the SATA cables. Those blue foil fan-out types are the worst from my experience.
  - ngetchell 2mo ago
    How do you know you haven't seen bitrot? What rsync arguments do you use to error out when an old, untouched file suddenly changes?
    - ocd 2mo ago
      I suppose I couldn't guarantee I haven't, but I keep a total backup, and other backups based on file lists. I keep a record of every file of importance that I've ever written/modified/interacted with, and those lists themselves are also git managed. I compulsively look at the rsync backup running to see what's going to transfer, and typically do a dry-run first. That's no perfect solution, but it works for me. If I see something odd I don't quite remember, I check the hashes between both drives, and every time it turns out it was just a path change since I try to keep my data as organized as possible. rsync arguments are just the plain `--archive --acls --xattrs --verbose` and depending on which backup I'm doing, `--recursive`, `--delete`, `--files-from=`. Nothing other than vanilla at all.
  - CTDOCodebases 2mo ago
CTDOCodebases 2mo ago
It's more the single drive storage layout that is an issue in your case. No resilience to a single disk failing and you are risking all your data if your hardware starts silently corrupting data. This is assuming all your backups are done using the data on the single hard drive. If you want to keep your setup simple I would consider the following: - Keep a list of file hashes and check your files against this list periodically. - Use some type of backup program that supports snapshots. Restic is a good choice. - Get a hard drive the same size as the one you have and use SnapRAID to manage file integrity or set up a two disk mirror using btrfs.
zymhan 2mo ago
Once you add multiple machines reading and writing simultaneously, you'll hit a limit. But that's fine, build what you need now, no need to over-optimize.

by ocd 2mo ago

dannyw 2mo ago

First: Do you have backups of your single high-capacity HDD? That's my biggest worry. What's your plan for when that HDD fails one day, as it will? The main reasons people go for ZFS and a "NAS" is checksums and data integrity protection, as well as maybe not wanting to keep their primary machine awake all the time (I personally don't). Then there are useful features like snapshots, which means I don't have to worry as much about accidentally deleting, or over-writing a file and losing data. I don't see anything wrong with using a main machine that's up 7x24 as a NAS, don't buy things for the sake of something, but I'm worried about your reliability and bitrot protection. (Yes, it happens, I've seen it first-hand thanks to ZFS).

ocd 2mo ago
I have external parity for everything with rsync. I don't have any storage that isn't matched with external backups. Fortunately I've never seen any bitrot or had a drive fail on me since I tend to replace them before they do. And yeah, I could add in some extra HDDs for RAID, but this is more a personal choice because of how much I hate SATA. Filesystems like ext4 are because I value boring and rock solid stability over semi-experimental status of modern filesystems with all the features.
- bobmcnamara 2mo ago
  What do you dislike about SATA?
  - ocd 2mo ago
    The cables and how they have to be managed/positioned in a case. I've had panics over a drive failing when it was just the cable after I'd already replaced the drive, restored data, and ran tests on the old drive that turned out to be fine each time.
    - CTDOCodebases 2mo ago
      I have multiple home servers running ZFS and the first thing to check when encountering errors is the SATA cables. Those blue foil fan-out types are the worst from my experience.
- ngetchell 2mo ago
  How do you know you haven't seen bitrot? What rsync arguments do you use to error out when an old, untouched file suddenly changes?
  - ocd 2mo ago
    I suppose I couldn't guarantee I haven't, but I keep a total backup, and other backups based on file lists. I keep a record of every file of importance that I've ever written/modified/interacted with, and those lists themselves are also git managed. I compulsively look at the rsync backup running to see what's going to transfer, and typically do a dry-run first. That's no perfect solution, but it works for me. If I see something odd I don't quite remember, I check the hashes between both drives, and every time it turns out it was just a path change since I try to keep my data as organized as possible. rsync arguments are just the plain `--archive --acls --xattrs --verbose` and depending on which backup I'm doing, `--recursive`, `--delete`, `--files-from=`. Nothing other than vanilla at all.
- CTDOCodebases 2mo ago

CTDOCodebases 2mo ago

It's more the single drive storage layout that is an issue in your case. No resilience to a single disk failing and you are risking all your data if your hardware starts silently corrupting data. This is assuming all your backups are done using the data on the single hard drive. If you want to keep your setup simple I would consider the following: - Keep a list of file hashes and check your files against this list periodically. - Use some type of backup program that supports snapshots. Restic is a good choice. - Get a hard drive the same size as the one you have and use SnapRAID to manage file integrity or set up a two disk mirror using btrfs.

zymhan 2mo ago

Once you add multiple machines reading and writing simultaneously, you'll hit a limit. But that's fine, build what you need now, no need to over-optimize.