Lecture Notes: Affordable NAS Solutions & Viral Trends

Viral Trend: Snatch and Smash

• Viral trend breaking rules, potentially damaging phones
• TikTok clip: Eldery man smashes a girl's phone
• Suspicions of the clip being fake news:
  • Same man in different hats
  • Reverse AI search: contracts with Google and Apple
  • Stunt to promote iCloud and Google One

Affordable Data Backup: Tech Tip Minute

NAS Devices

• Introduction
  • Affordable NAS solutions for data backup
  • Example shown: Friendly Elec CM3588 NAS Kit
• Advantages of NAS
  • Cost: About the same as two terabytes of cloud storage/year
  • ARM-based processor (Rockchip) superior to $700 NAS CPUs
  • Power Efficient: Powered by 2 amp 12 volt input
  • Modular and Upgradable

Friendly Elec CM3588 NAS Kit

• Specifications
  • Price: $35 standalone or in NAS Kit
  • Features: Two and a half gig ethernet, 3 HDMI ports, USB 3, USB-C, micro SD slot
  • Focus: 4 full-sized M.2 PCIe Gen 3 slots for storage
• Installation
  • Modular for potential future upgrades
  • Compute board with 4GB DDR4X memory, no onboard storage
  • Options to upgrade: 8 or 16 GB RAM versions with 64GB eMMC storage

Storage Options and Installation

• Drive Installation
  • PCIe Gen 3x1 slots limiting bandwidth but flexibilizing options
  • Chosen drives: 4TB MP34 drives from Team Group ($165 each)
• Practical Considerations
  • Options for different drive capacities or mirrored redundancy
  • Advantages over external hard drives:
    • Sharing data over network, minimizing risks from malware or malfunction
  • Recommended backup practice: 3-2-1 rule (3 copies on 2 types of media, one off-site)

Software

• Open Media Vault (OMV)
  • Chosen due to board being ARM-based
  • 25-minute installation process
  • Configured with RAID 5: resulted in 11.2 terabytes capacity
  • Enabled SMB for Windows-based computers
• Performance
  • Saturated two-and-a-half gig network interface
  • Efficient, silent operation with minor CPU usage increase
  • AI-powered photo sync (Photoprism, PhotoSync)
• Potential Tinkering Needed
  • Running Plex in docker container for streaming
  • Video editing capabilities tested

Economic Consideration

• Cost-Effectiveness
  • Substantial savings compared to cloud storage services
  • Example: 10TB from Google at $600/year, less than 1.5 years to pay off the NAS
  • Full configuration of small NAS matches value of LTT screwdriver

Additional Notes

• Alternate Operating Systems supported: Ubuntu, Android, and more
• Example alternatives for higher-end use cases: x86 processors with TrueNAS/Unraid
• Sponsors: Supermicro’s petascale storage servers for AI and machine learning workloads

Conclusion

• Strong recommendations for small NAS setup
• Emphasis on modularity, upgradability, and cost efficiency.