In an effort to separate Roon Core from the shackles of my laptop, I’ve just this week built up a new Skylake NUC (NUC6i5SYK with 16GB Kingston HyperX RAM, 256GB Samsung 950PRO M.2 nvme ssd). I also decided to rethink my storage (Synology NAS) and have gone for an external USB3 caddy attached to the NUC with a 6TB WD Red drive, backing up to the Synology over the network.
Bearing in mind my previous Roon server is far more powerful cpu-wise laptop (ASUS G751 core i7 with 16GB RAM), I’m extremely chuffed with the performance increase on the new system. Roon GUI response is super snappy, rescan of new music is way quicker than the laptop/NAS solution.
The differences I’m sure will be down to the 3x improvement in throughput using local storage, plus lower latency and perhaps the fact that the Roon database is on a crazy fast nvme SSD.
For a relatively inexpensive and low power solution, I’m chuffed to bits and definitely won’t be going back to a server/NAS solution.
…and as a bonus, using local storage appears to have fixed the issues I was previously getting with Roon not watching the NAS folder very well (generally I had to force a rescan to pick up new albums, but no longer).
This is pretty much the exact the same setup I’m running (on Ubuntu Server) with the same results: silent, low-energy but wicked fast (everything instant or near-instant).
Yep, last year we had a big discussion when I mentioned in a thread that I thought my next setup would be post NAS, with all music storage at the local Roon server and to use the NAS as a backup device. Still think this is the most stable setup. With the coming advent of USB 3.1 Type C giving external drives 40GB transfer rates I think that NUC and local internal or external storage is the one of the best options.
Real-time watch on USB drives works really well vs NAS watch. When doing a ton of edits and ID matching it makes a massive difference. I’m very tempted to put a USB unit on the back ok my NUC too just for this reason.
Still on topic for the thread …are any favourites for 4 bay USB units ?
Hmmm…about 14TB when I last looked. SSD has a long way to go before I make the switch from HDD. Noise isn’t an issue as NUC and NAS(s) are all in my office/study and everything is dusty !!! Nothing lives near the living/listening rooms.
I currently use two twin drive Icybox units with 2x6TB in Raid0 as off-line back up and a big 8 bay synology for the online store. 2 older NAS provide additional online back up via freefilesync.
Using local storage is definitely the way to go for Roon Server. My i5 mini-its handles 12TB 5900rpm storage with ease … database is stored on a dedicated SSD. ODROID C2 running Roon Bridge in listening room. Rescanning ~500k files on the i5 takes less than 30 secs.
I too have moved from Mac + UnRaid NAS to Mac + Drobo (USB connected disk pack). With this configuration I get almost as efficient disk usage as UnRaid, plus I can use Backblaze for cloud backup.
Personally I like to backup direct attached storage to another room (at least), which means NAS (or cloud). For an off-the-shelf solution Synology and Qnap are decent…I think Qnap have the lead at the moment as their new NAS boxes have far better processors than the Synology equivalents. I’m also tempted to try setting up another NUC on the network and use it as a FreeNAS box with USB3 drives attached.
My RoonServer setup has local storage and I use my NAS as backup (doing that manually at present, haven’t made it automatic yet).
Interesting point re backup. I’m a bit suspicious of the cloud though, especially “free” options and doubt the efficiency of storing 2-4 TB worth of high res music.
What do you use for that type of backup?
I also use Synology’s apps to great use, especially DS Audio to get my music that TIDAL doesn’t have on my iPhone. Haven’t found a suitable replacement for that yet. And DS Cloud is a nice dropbox alternative (see trust issues above re cloud services).