
GnuBee Personal Cloud 1 – A NAS specifically engineered to run FLOSS - mati
https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-1
======
slau
I'm in the market for a new NAS, but I don't think this would have enough
oomph to be very useful.

I understand that it's by design, and that I'm probably not the target
demographic, as others have pointed out, the 512MB of RAM, lackluster CPU and
2.5" drives are all pretty disappointing.

This is estimated to cost $168. For $250, you can get an HPE ProLiant
MicroServer Gen8 Entry, which comes with 4GB of ECC RAM, a 2.3Ghz dual core
x86-64 CPU, dual gigabit that supports line-speed link aggregation, and takes
4 3.5" HDDs. It's upgradable to an i3 or Xeon CPU, 16GB of RAM, and can be
modded to take another 2 or 3 2.5" drives.

I appreciate that it's fully open, which is definitely a massive appeal, but
if I need to run another machine (with blobs) next to it to actually operate
on the data, what's the point?

~~~
spitfire
Where are you finding the micro server's for $250? The lowest I can find them
for is $379 at Amazon. Not exactly a deal.

I'm deciding between drobo (plug'n'play) and a DIY freeNAS right now. If the
price is right I'll do the DIY freeNAS.

~~~
slau
I checked quickly on Amazon, which defaults to the UK one [1].

In Denmark, where I live, they go for 1700 DKK[2], which is $242. Want me to
ship one for you?

[1]: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-Enterprise-ProLiant-
MicroServer-...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-Enterprise-ProLiant-MicroServer-
Servers/dp/B013UBCHVU?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duc08-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B013UBCHVU)

[2]: [https://www.computersalg.dk/i/1211353/hpe-proliant-
microserv...](https://www.computersalg.dk/i/1211353/hpe-proliant-microserver-
gen8-entry?utm_source=PriceRunner&utm_medium=PriceRunnerLINK&utm_campaign=PriceRunner)

~~~
spitfire
Thanks but FX conversions and duties would kill any benefit there. I
appreciate the thought though.

------
Ao7bei3s
Nice. I've been looking for a low-power "bring-your-own Linux" board for a
while. Classic DIY NAS builds consume _outrageous_ amounts of power (35W to
>100W) compared to commercial NAS (~10W), and existing single board computers
lack GigE and/or >=2 SATA ports.

I just wish they'd have gone for a standard uATX form factor for compatibility
with a professional case (and 3.5" disks). It's ironical that the "open
hardware" project has to come up with a proprietary form factor :/

I also wish they had ECC RAM and enough of it for ZFS, but I know that is
technically impossible with the price and power constraints.

~~~
dom0
> Classic DIY NAS builds consume outrageous amounts of power (35W to >100W)
> compared to commercial NAS (~10W)

??

Commercial NAS (like non-RM Synology & friends) are not magic. They save a bit
of power due to higher system integration, yes, but most power is saved simply
by using low-end hardware.

Most x86 DIY NAS use either desktop hardware or low-end server hardware
(usually same thing, different labels) -- most of these have far more compute
power than the small Atom C2000 or similar found in a x86 NAS.

If you want something similar to a commercial NAS, then use low end Mini-ITX
boards (<10 W TDP, usually four SATA ports and perhaps one PCIe) or a
PCEngine.

ARM boards on the other hand are all rather weak in all regards: poor I/O,
little memory, weak CPU cores (even if there are four of them), quite some of
these boards also have stability issues. None have ECC.

~~~
Ao7bei3s
Who said anything about magic - a) they don't use x86, b) they use boards with
few unnecessary peripherals, and c) their vendors are perfectly fine with
proprietary drivers (-> can't easily reuse their HW).

Good luck doing a build with an overall 10W consumption target with x86 and
what is essentially desktop HW, especially if it should be affordable
(relative to a ~250€ commercial solution) and maintainable (no, no custom
kernels with weird patchsets that rot away in 6 months, and having to
recompile the world).

We have used PCEngine boards. They're fine as network appliances. But even the
latest ones only have 1 SATA port (fine, 2 if you count the mSATA port).

~~~
dom0
I ran an E-350 (20 W TDP) based board for many years and without the idling
drives (each about 0.5 W; only system SSD connected) it consumed about 7 W
idle. That's well within your 10 W figure - and boards with lower TDPs are
available as well (though a lower TDP does not generally imply lower idle
power).

The replacement system (Sandy Bridge i3) pulls about 25 W in the same
scenario, which is fine by me.

\---

Now you're saying that 10 W with desktop hardware is not possible, and yeah,
that'll be difficult. But it's a false dichotomy: the "10 W commercial NAS"
doesn't have anywhere near that capable hardware. You can absolutely achieve
these power consumption levels _with similarly spec 'd hardware_.

------
mschuster91
The big question: what's the actual throughput? 2x1 GBit/s should be 250MB/s
(or, after SMB overhead, 200 MB/s) - but even on a beefy QNAP TS-1635 I could
get out only 80MB/s despite having a RAID5 of 10x WD RED disks.

This tiny thing will not go very far in terms of bandwidth. If you want
bandwidth you will need a HW RAID controller.

~~~
jlgaddis
You realize that (due to load-balancing algorithms) you probably won't see
that (theoretical max) 250 MBps to a single device, yes? From one device to
the QNAP you'll still see at most 1 Gbps (usually -- there are some
exceptions).

~~~
mschuster91
Of course I do, in my case the QNAP is connected to the switch using port
bonding. Each port gets ~40 MB/s, with multiple clients or with a single
client.

------
mwill
I would be 100% in on this if I could slot my existing 3.5" drives in.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
Agreed. Only accomodating 2.5" drives makes this significantly less useful as
a NAS. I get that their target comparison is the ds416slim, but imo the
current sweet target would have been the ds416play or even the ds916+. :\

They say that they plan to do a 3.5" version nebulously in the future, but, my
god, that's such a backwards decision. There is much more market for the
larger model.

------
simplehuman
Great idea. One of the points made in the post is "What kind of security is
protecting your data? How can you audit that security?"

Yet, many people would say that they rather trust their data with
Google/Facebook than self-host or use some random provider or host it at home.
Is this a common shared sentiment? Just wondering if this opinion is shared
among a more technical HN crowd (most of them use gmail even on HN).

~~~
jacobush
Not shared by me

------
chubs
This doesn't seem powerful enough for media centers that transcode-as-you-
watch like plex/kodi, but would work fantastically well with the ahead-of-
time-transcoding media server I created: splinter.com.au/gondola ha -
shameless plug

Edit: No, it wouldn't run Gondola - not enough RAM, unfortunately.

------
goombastic
In the same vein, any one know of a cheap (around 30-50$) dual NIC SOC?

~~~
tyingq
Banana PI BPI-R1. It's $60 + shipping, but has 4 LAN ports + 1 WAN port, all
GB. There's a newer R2 model, but I can't find it for sale anywhere.

[http://www.banana-pi.org/r1.html](http://www.banana-pi.org/r1.html)

[https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Newest-arrive-
BPI-R...](https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Newest-arrive-
BPI-R1-Opensource-Router-Original-Banana-
pi/302756_2045261784.html?spm=2114.12010612.0.0.LYXrl8)

If you can get by without a powerful CPU, lots of memory, etc, there's lots of
cheap multi-NIC routers that will run openwrt/LEDE.

------
vincentkriek
I like the idea of an open source NAS but I don't think this is the way to go.
I would like to see a low power linux boards with two sata connections. This
way you can have dual disks in a mirror situation. With multiple disks, you
could easily add a new linux board as well. Something like the BananaPi comes
close, although I doubt their QA deppartment.

------
ulber
Interesting project for low cost NAS. However, why is it open to air? It seems
to me that it would gather quite a bit of dust and be susceptible to damage.
Is this required for fanless operation?

~~~
bingofuel
As far as fanless micro computers go, they usually tend to go with an enclosed
design with the unit itself acting as a giant heat sink. However, with this
many disks, maybe it needs an open design? Possibly only for cost.

------
snvzz
Though it doesn't run FreeNAS?

Or at least something with ZFS.

~~~
floatboth
I don't think FreeNAS has an ARM version at all.

Seems like MediaTek MT7621A is supported in FreeBSD… except… without SATA :D
Shouldn't be too hard to add SATA support though…

 _UPD_ : oh, they use the ASM1061 PCI SATA controller, that one is supported!

