Looking for open HW to built a home NAS

General Privacy & Security
1

Hello everyone,

Being a new and happy librem 13 users, I would like to extend the freedom into my home by migrating away from my Synology nas onto a new box I would build myself.

I’v few requirements and I’m looking for HW that could support this:

  • Must be x86 architecture
  • Must be able to run with Coreboot
  • HW musts: 4cores+ , 8G RAM +, wired lan, virtualisation capable
  • Must be able to run Debian
  • Must support M2 SSD drives (x2) and SATA drives (x2), could be done via extension card
  • Should fit mini-itx motherboard format so that I could put it in a rack

Would anyone have some kind of recommendations around HW I could buy to support these requirements?

Many thanks in advance for guidance :slight_smile:

Nicolas

2

While not fitting all those specs, I bought the Turris Omnia as a router, which can run Nextcloud and use attached drives to serve as a NAS.

It doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re looking for, but I figured I’d mention it

3

this one will probably do once I will be replacing my router but indeed, so far it does not meet all the requirements. Note that I’m not sure that what I’m looking for exists at all, I just hope so :slight_smile:

4

Nice. If it had a bit more power I could use it as firewall…

5

I have a NUC (Skull Canyon) that has two ethernet ports and could make a very fine router. It runs an 8th generation i7 and has AMD graphics. I’m running Clear Linux as the base OS but boot into PureOS. It has USB C, m2 connectors, 8 cores, 32 G DDR4 RAM, and Intel virtualization extensions. I’m not running Coreboot but I imagine that should work. I don’t know about SATA connectivity but it does have Thunderbolt so I don’t think you’d need SATA connectors, lots of USB ports too. It is not mini-itx of course but it has a Vesa connection and is quite small and fairly quiet. A bit over-dimensioned for a router / NAS but a pretty awesome desktop / server. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

Can you explain why x86 is a requirement? For the virtualisation capabilities?
It seems to me, pretty much the only component that you could possibly get as openHW here is the board, and even that possibly does not exist :wink:

Anyway, I thought I’d mention that its not unlikely Purism will announce a NAS in February.
https://forums.puri.sm/t/tease-me-whats-to-be-announced-game/4152

7

@Caliga yes, mainly for virtualisation purposes. A powerful enough ARM system could probably do as well but I would restrict some potential future usage. Thanks for the links :wink:

If you have some suggestion that would fit but that are ARM based, please share as well, I’m still interested. Main goal, for now, is docker containers, so if all the ones I’m targeting provide images under ARM that’s a good start.

8

The Talos blackbird is up for pre-order.

It’s a power9 system, but is largely supported under debian, it’s not x86, but it’s a beast. (4c, 16t) with (8c/32t) availible. Also server-grade x86 is pretty hard unless you want to go way back to opteron boards.

Not mini-itx, but micro-atx and should fit in a 3u case.

Supports virtualization, has a full IOMMU, open firmware and BMC

Supports 2x LR-DIMM’s DDR4 in dual channel up to however big you can buy the modules at the moment.

1 Like
9

There was Librem desktop that used a mobile CPU. Ran Coreboot, no blobs, completely open hardware, etc.

https://libretrend.com/

I like it, but don’t like the mobile CPU.

10

Thanks for the suggestion @worblux, I’ll definitively have a look at that one

11

May these boards will do the job https://siliconkit.com/oc3/index.php?route=product/category&path=27_70
You may use this enclosure if you want to unclude a disk : https://siliconkit.com/oc3/index.php?route=product/product&path=27_84&product_id=63
I hope it helps