So I have some space on my server rack, but not a lot of money lying around.
What I’m trying to achieve is a nas setup for my security camera system. It has 30 cameras, and 4 drives fill up in 3 months. 3X3TB drives.
Looking on eBay for a second hand rack mounted NaS is pretty expensive. Could I build one? From a jbod or something? I’ve got a nice big space in my rack doing nothing.
(I know I could buy bigger drives, but I kinda like the idea of experimenting with something g different) ✌️💛
Void Linux + mdadm in RAID5 + BTRFS with snapshots enabled. Trust me, you won’t regret it 😉. I have a working storage like this, but with 6 drives (scrap 2TB ones in RAID5) and BTRFS with zstd set at 10. Compression on MPEG2 content is… more than I ever hoped for to be honest, like 30, 40% compression. MPEG4, not as much, but you can shim about 5 to 10%.
MPEG2 is, by today’s standards, horribly inefficient, so that is to be expected. Transcoding, in that case, will gain a lot more. But if your mp4 files still compress significantly with a standard lossless compression algorithm, something is wrong with your encoder settings. Even xz, which, even at the default Level 6 is often better than zstd at 19, will generally do less than 1%, typically 0.2%, even at level 9 (the highest).
Do not do this setup if your data is critical. btrfs raid 5 isn’t stable
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Great tip on the rails!
I second the call out on these Rosewill cases. For the price they’re pretty solid.
Also, you’re right about the Rosewill rails, they’re terrible (source: I bought them and regret it).
+1 on the Rosewill cases. I bought the IstarUSA rails and managed to mangle the bearings on one side. It’s still generally functional though.
Definitely. I just built one by throwing an old mb/CPU into one of those cheap rosewill rack cases and tossed some old 2TB drives i had in. Works like a charm with trueNAS as a VM in proxmox
Like @octobob said, don’t go with the rosewill rails if you can help it. I made that mistake and they’re a big pain
As to filling up the drives so fast, have you considered transcoding it to a smaller format (such as HEVC/H.265) in real time? I know that would require quite some CPU power. Even H.264 is likely to improve on camera native formats, as those often need to encode the videos with embedded/low-power CPUs. Do you need to retain the footage beyond 3 months?
I’ll check it out.
There’s no set period I need to retain. It’s just been handy, got myself out of trouble a few times in compliance complaints. a couple times I have wished I was able to go back further. That’s all.
