I am really interested in seeing how far we can take these cheap, low-power devices. With a typical 11W idle, they really appeal to me as a foundation to build upon.
Wanted to ask you all whether there are any technical reasons why we cant have a NAS Killer using the intel HP 290 or ProDesk 400 G4?
Some issues I see with (an attempt at) building a NAS Killer using the intel HP 290 or ProDesk 400 G4:
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space? because these come in small cases, there’s barely space for drives for storage - something we need a LOT of in a NAS.
The hack I propose to address this, is to use:
i. expansion cards like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SZDK6CZ
ii. mount the additional drives externally in a DIY enclosure. This is not the most compact nor aesthetically, pleasing, but unless I’m missing something, completely functional -
limited stock RAM? - the HP 290 comes with 4GB stock while the ProDesk 400 G4 comes with 8GB stock. Ideally, we would (possibly?) like to have 2x8GB = 16GB instead to handle the file buffers. Thankfully, both support that expansion.
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PSU might be underpowered? - these come with a 290W peak stock SMPS. I am likely worrying unnecessarily here, because even if I connect 6 external 2TB HDDs, each drawing 5W, that’s 30W, plus a 20W idle (likely far less)/40W peak for the system itself, for a total less than 100W, which is 1/3rd of the PSU’s ability.
My use cases:
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Build a “NAS” that’s a JBOD using Proxmox, SnapRAID (parity), MergerFS (pool), openmediavault/OMV. I am thinking of using EXT4 FS as the underlying FS for now but if any of you suggest something else, like ZFS, let me know
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While either of the intel HP 290 or ProDesk 400 G4 are QuickSync enabled and can do transcoding, I really intend to stream documents/text files/PDF and audio (music, audiobooks) out of the drives - the whole point is to get these drives on the network so 3 computers and 5 phones on the network can access them. Hence, these boxes really will just be serving content off the drives
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If there’s some capacity available, I would like to run a OpenWRT/r00ter container on this
Power is pretty expensive (50c/kWh) where I live: every additional watt costs me $5/year. A 10-20W idle, that’s realistic on both these cheap, low power devices, would cost me ~$80/year. Both the low initial amount (~$100) and the ongoing utility expenses (~$80/year) are what attracts me to these machines.
More powerful machines will probably double this budget?
So what do you all think?
Doable or insane/poorly thought out/unrealistic?