Just got all the hardware set up and working today, super stoked!
In the pic:
- Raspberry Pi 5
- Radxa Penta SATA hat for Pi
- 5x WD Blue 8TB HDD
- Noctua 140mm fan
- 12V -> 5V buck convertor
- 12V (red), 5V (white), and GND (black) distribution blocks
I went with the Raspberry Pi to save some money and keep my power consumption low. I’m planning to use the NAS for streaming TV shows and movies (probably with Jellyfin), replacing my google photos account (probably with Immich), and maybe steaming music (not sure what I might use for that yet). The Pi is running Raspberry Pi Desktop OS, might switch to the server version. I’ve got all 5 drives set up and I’ve tested out streaming some stuff locally including some 4K movies, so far so good!
For those wondering, I added the 5V buck convertor because some people online said the SATA hat doesn’t do a great job of supplying power to the Pi if you’re only providing 12V to the barrel jack, so I’m going to run a USB C cable to the Pi. Also using it to send 5V to the PWM pin on the fan. Might add some LEDs too, fuck it.
Next steps:
- Set up
RAID 5ZFS RAIDz1? - 3D print an enclosure with panel mount connectors
Any tips/suggestions are welcome! Will post again once I get the enclosure set up.
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- That power situation looks suspicious. You better know what you’re doing so you don’t run into undercurrent events under load.
- Use ZFS RAIDz1 instead of RAID 5.
Ultimately I would love to use ZFS but I read that it’s difficult to expand/upgrade. Not familiar with ZFS RAIDz1 though, I’ll look into it. Thanks!
I build robots for a living, the power is fine, at least for a rough draft. I’ll clean everything up once the enclosure is set up.
Z1 is just single parity.
AFAIK expanding a ZFS pool is a new feature. Its used in Proxmox but their version hasn’t been updated yet, so I don’t have the ability to try it out yet. It t should be available to you otherwise.
Sweet build! I have all these parts laying around so this would be a fun project. Please share your enclosure design if you’d like!
Basically the equivalent of RAID 5 in terms of redundancy.
You don’t even need to do RAIDz expansion, although that feature could save some space. You can just add another redundant set of disks to the existing one. E.g. have a 5-disk RAIDz1 which gives you the space of 4 disks. Then maybe slap on a 2-disk mirror which gives you the space of 1 additional disk. Or another RAIDz1 with however many disks you like. Or a RAIDz2, etc. As long as the newly added space has adequate redundancy of its own, it can be seamlessly added to the existing one, “magically” increasing the available storage space. No fuss.
Doesn’t losing a vdev cause the entire pool to be lost? I guess to your point with sufficient redundancy for new vdev 1 drive redundancy whether 3 disks or 5 is essentially the same risk. If a vdev is added without redundancy that would increase risk of losing the entire pool.
Awesome. It’s my understanding that ZFS can help prevent bit rot, so would ZFS RAIDz1 also do this?
I found this, it seems to show all the steps I would need to take to install RAIDz1: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/htgwa-create-zfs-raidz1-zpool-on-raspberry-pi
Easier to expand than a typical raid 5 array
This. Also it’s not difficult to expand at all. There are multiple ways. Just ask here. You could also ask for hypothetical scenarios now if you like.
Could also google it lol
ZRAID expansion is now better than ever before!
In the beginning of this year (with ZFS 2.3.0) they added zero-downtime expansion along with some other things like enhanced deduplication.
ZFS, specifically RaidZx, can be expanded like and raid 5/6 these days, assuming support from the distro (works with TrueNAS for example). The patches for this have been merged years ago now. Expanding any other array (like a striped mirror) is even simpler and is done by adding VDevs.
Yeah, raid 5 in 2025 for a nas? A big no no
I’m new to this topic and only recently learned about RAID levels. Why is it a big no no?
I’m in the same boat. Based on the things I’ve learned in the last hour or two, ZFS RAIDz1 is just newer and better. Someone told me that ZFS will help prevent bit rot, which is a concern for me, so I’m assuming ZFS RAIDz1 also does this, though I haven’t confirmed it yet. I’m designing my enclosure now and haven’t looked into that yet.
My understanding is that the only issues were the write hole on power loss for raid 5/6 and rebuild failures due to un-seen damage to surviving drives.
Issues with single drive rebuild failures should be largely mitigated by regular drive surface checks and scrubbing if the filesystem supports it. This should ensure that any single drive errors that might have been masked by raid are removed and all drives contain the correct data.
The write hole itself could be entirely mitigated since the OP is building their own system. What I mean by that is that they could include a “mini UPS” to keep 12v/5v up long enough to shut down gracefully in a power loss scenario (use a GPIO for “power good” signal). Now, back in the day we had raid controllers with battery backup to hold the cache memory contents and flush it to disk on regaining power. But, those became super rare quite some time ago now. Also, hardware raid was always a problem with getting a compatible replacement if the actual controller died.
Is there another issue with raid 5/6 that I’m not aware of?
they could include a “mini UPS” to keep 12v/5v up long enough to shut down gracefully in a power loss scenario
That’s a fuckin great idea.
TIL. Looking into ZFS RAIDz1.
so I’m going to run a USB C cable to the Pi
Isn’t that already the case in the photo? It looks like the converter including all that cabling is only there to get 5v for the fan, but it’s difficult to see where the usb-c comes from
Good catch. I don’t have my USB-C cable coming from the buck convertor set up yet, waiting on some parts to arrive tomorrow. The USB-C power is currently coming from a separate power supply in this set up. Ultimately, there will be a single 12V barrel jack port to power the whole system.
Nice I love it!!
I also have a “messy” setup like this, looking forward to 3D printing a case and then creating a cooling solution for it
This might be of interest to you, he also has his files up on maker world
That’s a super clean build, too bad he didn’t make a 5 drive version.
Dude seems super responsive to input and requests, legit might do one if you hit him up. Also some how missed you are running 5 drives, and not 4! My bad
