I'd guess that AFEPPL SSD DAS would be connected using USB 3 or Thunderbolt. I'm using FW800 because the drive housings predate those standards. If I were starting from scratch, I'd certainly not use it what with even Apple dropping it. In any case my Mac mini server has never seemed to be a bottleneck.
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NAS or Mac Mini Server.....
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I'd guess that AFEPPL SSD DAS would be connected using USB 3 or Thunderbolt. I'm using FW800 because the drive housings predate those standards. If I were starting from scratch, I'd certainly not use it what with even Apple dropping it. In any case my Mac mini server has never seemed to be a bottleneck.
A NAS with 10GbE connection would also give great performance. Of course, that would also require a substantial investment in other hardware...
Source: NAS 10GbE Performance
For reference, here's what I am getting in my DIY NAS build. Currently, only a single gigabit connection being used.
Source: NAS 10GbE Performance
For reference, here's what I am getting in my DIY NAS build. Currently, only a single gigabit connection being used.
I moved from a Synology DS1511 NAS to a 2012 Mini Server with 8GB ram earlier this year and have been very pleased with the performance since. A few months back I swapped out the lower HDD for an SSD and am running OS X from the SSD using the upper HDD for file storage. Connecting to the server SSD drive from my rMBP via gigabit ethernet I am getting 108 mb/s write and 105 mb/s read. Connecting to the upper HDD I am getting 95 mb/s write and 102 mb/s read. So from the perspective of access files over the network, performance is just about the same for me.
The down side to the single drives are a lack of redundancy for when the hard drive fails and we all know that in the case of hard drives, it's not whether or not it will fail but when.
Also, with regards to speeds, as mentioned earlier, speeds of a NAS can be improved with link aggregation (aka bonding) quite easily.
Also, with regards to speeds, as mentioned earlier, speeds of a NAS can be improved with link aggregation (aka bonding) quite easily.
Which is why I have automated backups that run every night, plus continuous (well, hourly or so) cloud backups. i've had drives fail but have yet to lose any data.
I have been using a Mac Mini for years as my storage server for last year I got a Synology NAS and have been slowly transitioning over and am about ready to make the full switch as the Mini just sits and does nothing anymore.
My issue was I started with the Mini then added a 1TB HDD...this was a few years ago before the multi TB drives were coming out. So then it was a Thunderbolt external...then another...before I knew it I have 2 Thunderbolt externals and 4 USB externals connected and I'm buying these crazy long power strips just so I can plug in those power plug warts than come with external drives.
I bought a 10 port strip but could only use 6 due to the ports being so close together and the adapters being so large...back to the store for another strip. It was getting a little out of hand because I needed an actual space just for multiple power strips and this was only for the mini and the drives. I still don't have my iMac, 2 external monitors, speakers or UPS plugged in....back to get another power strip.
Finally, I ended up with a DS1515+, 16GB RAM, 20TB, 4 Gigabit Ports bonded NAS.
One power plug, it sits neatly out of the way. It runs my UniFi WAP controller software, runs Plex Media Server, Time Machine back ups, file sharing and asks for more. I never notice a hiccup.
Also I found out that if I need to add more storage Synology makes a DX513, essentially looks the same as my NAS but adds another 5 HDD over eSata, I can add 2 of these or 10 more HDD plus the (4) USB 3 connections on the NAS.
The 2012 I have is an i7, 16GB RAM, 1.25TB Fusion'ed Samsung 840Pro+ Samsung 1TB stock drive which may be getting sold or moved elsewhere to get put back to work.
My issue was I started with the Mini then added a 1TB HDD...this was a few years ago before the multi TB drives were coming out. So then it was a Thunderbolt external...then another...before I knew it I have 2 Thunderbolt externals and 4 USB externals connected and I'm buying these crazy long power strips just so I can plug in those power plug warts than come with external drives.
I bought a 10 port strip but could only use 6 due to the ports being so close together and the adapters being so large...back to the store for another strip. It was getting a little out of hand because I needed an actual space just for multiple power strips and this was only for the mini and the drives. I still don't have my iMac, 2 external monitors, speakers or UPS plugged in....back to get another power strip.
Finally, I ended up with a DS1515+, 16GB RAM, 20TB, 4 Gigabit Ports bonded NAS.
One power plug, it sits neatly out of the way. It runs my UniFi WAP controller software, runs Plex Media Server, Time Machine back ups, file sharing and asks for more. I never notice a hiccup.
Also I found out that if I need to add more storage Synology makes a DX513, essentially looks the same as my NAS but adds another 5 HDD over eSata, I can add 2 of these or 10 more HDD plus the (4) USB 3 connections on the NAS.
The 2012 I have is an i7, 16GB RAM, 1.25TB Fusion'ed Samsung 840Pro+ Samsung 1TB stock drive which may be getting sold or moved elsewhere to get put back to work.
This is fine if you only have one hard drive worth of data. But as mmomega described it begins to get messy as you acquire more data. But it sounds like you've already made up your mind so there's no need to debate on the merits of NASes.
Not sure why we jumped to 10Gbe I'm not aware of an adapter for the Mini is there that runs at this speed? But it does show you an order of magnitude. 40GBe is pretty common for the high end stuff I'm working with now, and it looking like 25GBe might be making an appearance too (which is faster in some cases than 40Gbe for somethings workloads due to the way it works. 40Gbe is 4 lanes of 10GBe, where as 25Gbe is one big super highway).
Be careful with the benchmarks, it's very easy to get carried away and think you are getting something you are not.
The tools are sequential IO, hence why the SSDs and HDDs are not that far away from each other (i.e. a large single file, aka a 1080 film). Also i bet if you changed the block size you would start to see a huge difference (I'm guessing the tool runs with a block size of 512K, or even bigger) Also some people will be looking at the numbers and thinking wth, with Wifi for example you'd be lucked to get 30% of those numbers even if your Mini or NAS devices is plugged into ethernet - your only as fast as the smallest bottleneck. So lots of variables to take into account. And for sure the issue of caching (more so on the mini - depending on RAM size) for multiple runs is true, hence why it's better to do clean runs or different files each time if you want to get accurate results. Unless you server the same file all the time, at which point its a bonus..
Be careful with the benchmarks, it's very easy to get carried away and think you are getting something you are not.
The tools are sequential IO, hence why the SSDs and HDDs are not that far away from each other (i.e. a large single file, aka a 1080 film). Also i bet if you changed the block size you would start to see a huge difference (I'm guessing the tool runs with a block size of 512K, or even bigger) Also some people will be looking at the numbers and thinking wth, with Wifi for example you'd be lucked to get 30% of those numbers even if your Mini or NAS devices is plugged into ethernet - your only as fast as the smallest bottleneck. So lots of variables to take into account. And for sure the issue of caching (more so on the mini - depending on RAM size) for multiple runs is true, hence why it's better to do clean runs or different files each time if you want to get accurate results. Unless you server the same file all the time, at which point its a bonus..
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Off topic, but the solution to this problem are these short extension cords. http://www.amazon.com/1-Foot-Extens..._UL160_SR160,160_&refRID=0RVVMWFNB1GED6AF2ACN
Even with a NAS (presumably running RAID) you still need backups, so I don't see how they are any less messy.
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A TB multibay enclosures was probably a better and certainly much less money method of getting 20TB of storage in one enclosure. Need another 20TB, add another enclosure, no single enclosure point failure. Mac mini down, any mac can read and write to the drives, with synology usually only the original enclosure. What kinds or drives are in that synology box, desktops that have a one year life? Hope you have good luck with those time machine backups, synology used to corrupt mine once a month or so... sometime without me knowing it until I wanted to recover a file.
One can rationalize any decision based on a limited use case, but NAS devices perform poorly except for the limited file sharing case..... although some NAS fan boys will argue that until blue in the face. One can easily shoot holes in any one of their points, which were valid maybe 5 years ago..
Now if you are talking enterprise level services and throughput performance, I use enterprise level computers. One rarely sees NAS devices in that environment. One often sees muliti minis in a shelf, however, operating as a high capacity server farm.... .
PS my mini serves files with 10 times the data rate of my consumer level synology NAS... but that usually only becomes a factor when 10 users are trying to download a file at the same time.
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Yep, you need backups but some NAS devices have inbuilt cloud backups or sync to external capabilities.
RAID only protects against physical hardware loss, and logical corruption - assumption is you are using a RAID version with parity!! However a delete is a delete...! Which is why i have all deletes into a recycle folder..
RAID only protects against physical hardware loss, and logical corruption - assumption is you are using a RAID version with parity!! However a delete is a delete...! Which is why i have all deletes into a recycle folder..
Post up your config running black magic over Wifi to your mini, lets see the numbers.
The TB multibay costs the same as a NAS device (in the range of £400), the drives are the drives, you fill both offerings with either consumer or enterprise grade disks as you see fit.
Strange claim you make but it certainly given ones perspective on what your experience is around storage and networking. Even at Apple they don't have minis running file services. Well there is actually at least one under a deck in StockyPark. I worked on a project thats in the gunnies book of world records for a data lake that was feeding in memory computing for big data workloads, it had NAS devices in... You are aware NAS do well over a million IOPs?
Applestore runs on NAS devices... enterprise, granted..
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Its one person, the mini is just a device not unlike a NAS box. its ability to serve IOPs is less, but a mini has flexibility on its side. A fanboy wont see there's actually more than a single option here... I use both devices, but for throughput, NAS provides more and without overhead.
Cost is neutral if you are going for a TB enclosure..
Pick your poison..
Cost is neutral if you are going for a TB enclosure..
Pick your poison..
Well I've kept the Mini around since I bought the Synology and putting the NAS through it's paces and slowly began giving the NAS more and more "responsibility".
I was for a few months doing dual Time Machine backups and format and redo computers so often so I would use the NAS backups to restore with and "so far" after about 6 full restores they have been flawless.
I did look into multibay Thunderbolt enclosures but those were even more than the synology. I bought it empty then put in my own drives. But then I have the Mini headless, so the Thunderbolt connection was only fast from the enclosure to the Mini and then it goes back to a single gigabit back to the network so in my mind I thought the speed of Thunderbolt was wasted just for this fact.
I am using (5) 4TB HGST NAS drives. I had done a little research and it seemed HGST drives failed less often than some other drives but with HDD's it's a flip of the coin. I've a cheap WD drive USB2 that's still kicking after 8 years and a 5 month old drive kicked the bucket not long ago.
I had also read that if the Synology box died that almost any Linux box could read the array and rebuild if neccessary. I also have 2 more of these same boxes at my office, so I'm thinking worst case it should be able to help. I also back up the NAS offsite to an Amazon cloud server so another worst case I could redownload all the info. It also sync to one of the boxes at my office and it sync to mine so at any given time there are 2 exact copies in 2 seperate locations.
There, one of the NAS is an exact setup of what I have at home and it is now the main file server for 30 of my workstations and some over VPN to our other office. I did this secretly and simply remapped the shared drives from the server to the NAS, all the workstations replaced the old map drives with the new ones after login and it was 4 months before I told them I changed. I was wanting to see if anyone noticed delays or speed differences. I'd ask ever so often if things were going fine and it didn't seem like the NAS slowed anything down.
But again like I mentioned I was also a little hesitant at first, but over 12 months now, the NAS has been taking over more and more and is doing great at it. I guess time will tell right?
And I'm totally with you on your points to... just for me personally, right or wrong, I wanted to give a NAS a try and so far I am really liking it.
Now whether or not I actually give up the Mini, I'll have to make that decision later but it's looking like it may go on to serve another purpose.
Hi Talmy,
As the original poster I thank you for getting the thread back on track.
For everyone that has replied, I have for the moment decided to go the Mac Mini route (1.4 GHz/4 GB). It seem to me the this had more computing power than any of the reasonably priced NAS boxes (think QNAP TS-453 Pro or DS415+). One of the factors that was important to me was that I would like to continue to use Logitech Media Server as I could run it on Mini but not on any of the NAS boxes I was considering.
This brings me to a storage solution. Currently, I have hooked up a Western Digital Duo for my Time Machine files. From a noise point of view, the Mini and Duo are terrific in that they are quiet compared to the HP Media Smart Server.
I could buy another Duo for the rest of my files, but I not certain I trust them. I am considering either a Thunderbay (or Akita) box but by the time I purchase SoftRAID it would be almost as expensive as the NAS.
Quiet is more important to me than speed. I know that Thunderbay will be faster than a NAS but have read that it is noisy. Based on everyone's experience, which is going to be quieter, the Thunderbay or one of he NAS boxes I have previously mentioned. Other suggestions for a quiet system are also welcome.
Cheers,
Don Barar
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If you want low noise, populate with SSDs, most of the noise is from the drives spinning. The thunder bay fan from memory cant be controlled and isn't loud, but noticeable for sure.
The thunderbay will not "quicker" its only quicker between it and the Mini (over thunderbolt), any other client is ethernet from the mini which is slower that NAS way - which may not be important.
The thunderbay will not "quicker" its only quicker between it and the Mini (over thunderbolt), any other client is ethernet from the mini which is slower that NAS way - which may not be important.
You will need a backup solution. RAID is not a backup solution -- its only purpose is to minimize downtime in the event of a disk failure (think banks and other retail businesses for which downtime can be catastrophic). For home use at least either a set of backup drives, kept "offsite" or a cloud service, and best to have both. Nothing like extra redundancy.
As far as sound level, fans are the main culprits. I've got four external drives, but rather than putting them in a housing that has a fan I use a bunch of OWC Mercury Elite Pro housings which are fan-less. Yes it makes for a mess of cables but you can't hear them. SSDs would eliminate even more noise, but 12TB of SSDs is way beyond my budget!
Hi W,
I have done some research on using 4 Bay USB vs a 4 Bay Thunderbolt enclosure with SoftRAID. SoftRAID reports the following when i asked about compatibility of their software with USB drives:
worse. USB 3 has performance issues and not as robust as
Thunderbolt drives. It can also cause weird problems at times.
So if there is any choice, choose Thundebrolt.
Based on this, it appears if you want to use a multi-bay DAS it must be Thunderbolt.
Donald Barar
