Decided to buy a proper router

When I got my internet connection with Belong, I received a free Wireless ADSL/Modem router as I signed up for one year.

While I do not have any complaints to make with respect to the modem potion of it, the router was using ancient technology. No Gigabit Ethernet, no dual band Wi-Fi support and no 802.11ac support. Streaming performance from the NAS to my MacBook Air was terrible. The situation would not improve with my desktop PC, despite having dual band 802.11ac support, because the router was not capable of it. And, the 100Mbps Ethernet ports were, quite slow for 2016.

The telephone point in the apartment that I am renting, is located in the kitchen. (I don't know what the architect was smoking! Perhaps at the time the apartment was built, the Internet was unheard of.) The kitchen is attached to the living room. My desktop PC will be kept either in the living room (until we buy a TV) or in the 2nd bedroom. It was impossible to draw an Ethernet cable or a RJ11 cable from the kitchen to either of these locations unless I drew it on the floor. But I wanted it out of reach of my kid. I could not draw it along the wall because I would have to fit some hooks or nails on the wall to lift the cable up, which would mean damaging the property.

I did not want to keep the router in the kitchen as well. My wife would definitely spill water on it. The ideal location was the top of the fridge. From there, the PC would get direct line of site from the router if it was kept in the living room. My wife has no immediate plan to buy a TV, so the PC will most probably stay in the living room for a long time.

And I could move the NAS to the top of the fridge as well. Then it could be connected to the router via Ethernet.

Now all I needed was a good router.

Got my HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8

In my previous post, I mentioned that I ordered the HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 to use it as a NAS. It arrived quite quickly from the retailer but as I was not at home when the delivery man arrived at my place, I had to go and collect it from a nearby distribution point.

The server came in a box that was much larger than I expected. When I took it out, it still looked larger than my desktop PC which was using a Silverstone SG13 case. Volume wise the MicroServer was only 1.5 litres larger, but the cube shape of it made it taller and appear bigger than the specifications suggested.

The server was very well packaged. This is an enterprise product so HP will not skimp on it.

Packaging

Accessories

I quickly opened the 120GB SanDisk SSD which I ordered with it and put it in one of the drive bays. I could not install it onto a drive caddy because they do not have support for SSDs, but I could simply plug the SSD into the SATA ports and slide the caddy in. The caddy did not touch the SSD and the SATA port was the only thing holding the SSD.  The SSD will eventually be installed in the slim optical drive bay but since I only have two hard drives at the moment, I do not have to move it there just yet.

Decided not to build a NAS... well sort of

Image courtesy Buffalotech

Does it mean that I am going to buy an off-the-shelf NAS unit?
No. It just does not work for me.

Does it mean that I have given up on a NAS?
Not that either.

Then what?

To be honest, after checking the prices of the components that would go into a custom NAS build, I almost gave up the idea of setting up a NAS: building or buying. A decent NAS that would satisfy all of my requirements would cost about $550-600. And that too, is with the lowest prices I could find.

At one time, I even thought of getting a bigger case like the Fractal Design Core 500 (19.5 litres) or Define Nano S (26.8 litres!) or the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv Mini (34 litres!!). But I still cannot keep the main PC running 24/7 as it would eat up a lot of electricity with the overclocked Core i7 4790K CPU and the GTX 970. I have heard that the electricity bills are pretty crazy in Australia.

If you want me to remind you why am not a fan of off-the-shelf NAS units, that is because I do not like their use of proprietary file systems. This means two things. One, I would not be able to access my data if something happens to the NAS. Two, I would not be able to use my existing drives as is which means that I would have to format them to use them. I can format one drive first, transfer the data on the other drive using the HDD enclosure plugged into the laptop, then format the other drive, copy back the data. But that means, even for a few hours (I don't think it will really be few. It will take a whole weekend at least), I will not be having a backup of my data. Things will go wrong when you least expect that to happen (Murphy’s law anyone?), and this moment is the ideal time for mother nature to show her wrath. I do not want to take that risk. My data is so precious.

So as we stand, off-the-shelf NAS units are no go. Building a NAS is also a no go. Buying a case to house at least two 3.5" drives and an SSD seems to be the only option.

Or, is it?