Help specifying a NUC for ROCK

If you’re still looking for memory I used G.SKILL F4-240016D-16GRS with my NUC8I7BEH build. 2 8gb sticks in a factory kit and tested to work together. More than required but works well and was not expensive.

Yes - but in my view that would be a waste of the NAS which is capable of very much more than a simple backup role. One or more relatively cheap USB drives would be much more appropriate for taking simple regular backups.

On my own set up, I operate two Synology NAS drives (a 216+ for my local music store and a 216 as my home movie/photo store). I backup both NAS drives to USB backup devices which I store externally with a relative for complete backup security.

My NUC8i5BEH with 8Gb RAM and 256 Gb M.2 SATA drive (128 Gb would be more than enough) and Synology NAS give me flawless performance with both local and external streaming (from Tidal).

Why would it be a waste? This is about the easiest thing a NAS can be asked to do, and it’s usually doing it at 2am when it’s less likely other tasks are being done. I back up my music files at one interval and my database at another (daily, staggered). Synology NAS and a NUC 9with internal storage). I back up my primary Synology NAS (SHR) which does lots of other stuff to my old Synology NAS (JBOD).
But as you note, there are lots of options here to choose from.

I would go with two (2) 4GB memory sticks instead, one on each slot. For some reason it is generally recommended.

– because the NAS is capable of so much more than just a simple backup device.

Admittedly, if you have complex backup requirements then the expense of a good NAS such as the Synology 216+ may be justified. However, now that I stream more and more from Tidal, I purchase less and my requirement for a backup of my music store is less and less complex. I certainly don’t require an incremental daily backup. I backup simply on an ad-hoc basis to one or more of my USB drives, and then store a copy of these drives externally.

My Synology 216+ NAS is much better suited to its primary use as a very efficient Music store, or (as in the case of my media NAS) as a photo and movie store.

Well, the OP already has a NAS. So the point is how to use it. Sure, if you don’t, that’s a waste of money just for a backup.

As I thought about this, backing up music from the NUC to the Synology may be a moot point. I do this with ActiveBackup. But I understand some older or under-powered Synology machines don’t support ActiveBackup.
One may be able to do that with rsync, but that’s beyond my skill level.

Yes, just leave the library on the NAS, it’s what it does best ‘Network Attached Storage’, and used a ROCK NUC as the Roon Core, easier all round.

These are great suggestions.
Ill return the internal SSD drive and keep the NAS for music file storage (at least for the meantime). This also saves the hassle of copying all of the files over (Was ntt quite sure how i was going to do that)
I run the NUC purely as the Roon core

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That is dreadful advice. Here’s what @brian, Roon’s CTO, had to say about the matter. A follow up, about running Roon ON NAS devices, is right here.

Unless you’re already running a fanless setup, you don’t need an SSD for music storage. If you do run a fanless setup, and you find a spinner to be audible, try insulating it first, and if that fails, then get an SSD.

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But I wasn’t suggesting continuing to run Roon on the NAS - I was saying move Roon to a ROCK based NUC, but leave the Library on the NAS, with the ‘Media Folders’ pointing back at the NAS, instead of copying the Library to an internal SSD/HDD on the ROCK server.
This separates the functions - the ROCK server, indexes the Library on the NAS, builds its database of metadata etc. and the serves it to the Roon Endpoints.
The NAS just stores the data - and if the OP is using RAID1, it is stored on duplicate drives, or maybe he is running RAID5, where there is a level of redundancy on the HDD array.

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Yes, that is precisely what I’m calling dreadful advice, based on Brian’s post :wink: . It works, but it’s a bad idea (including energy conservation, if you care about that: you can either have the power draw of a single 2,5", or have the power draw of a bunch of 3,5", all of which, outside of rather specific topologies like UnRaid, need to be spinning at all times). Check his post out if you haven’t already for an explanation why.
A DAS is another matter as well, of course (for those who don’t know, that’s Direct Attached Storage, so a NAS but attached over, say, USB instead of your network. You get the advantages of a NAS, like a modicum of data safety and massive storage sizes, without the network latency, but with all the other disadvantages, which include astronomical energy consumption compared to a single drive and often, noisy fans).

Where we’ll certainly agree is that it’d be nice to have a way to periodically back the music library up from ROCK that does not involve piloting the process from an external computer (be it a NAS or a desktop).

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Excellent decision!

Simon’s post is spot on as far as I am concerned. Not sure if your post is meant to be ironic or sarcastic or if you really mean it - so apologies if I have misinterpreted it.

Edit: I have just read Brian’s post, and now understand your post a little better. However, I would still recommend using the NAS for the OP’s music store. In particular, in the event that the OP spends most of his time listening to Tidal there will likely only be relatively infrequent additions to his local store. In any case, the NUC he is proposing to install will be more than powerful enough to accommodate any Roon requirements (or inefficiencies) with respect to the NAS.

Just rescan when necessary.

I was (certainly) blunt, and maybe uncouth, but not ironic (at least not this time). There are setups where NASs are fantastic. I’ve been using a converged appliances to store my stuff for the past 10+ years, and I’m very happy with that. I get multiple parity protecting tens of Tb of storage, 16 cores of awesomeness when I need a bit of oomph, a whole bunch of CUDA cores to make sophomoric stuff with, 10gb networking, a per-appliance power draw I probably couldn’t get elsewhere, stuff like that, all from a single unit in a sound-dampened closet far enough away that I don’t hear it. And it runs RoonServer just fine, and it even mirrors my stuff off-site, all by itself. I also wouldn’t begin to suggest it’d be a good idea outside of really specific use cases.

I’m not sure what disk access looks like running Tidal, but my point on energy consumption (and heat, and with it, noise) probably remains: you generally don’t want a NAS if you can help it. Just setting them up can be tricky, the next thing you know, you’re dealing with “why is my music not appearing right away”, then with God knows what else.
The whole point of ROCK is to keep things simple and appliance-like, hence the not-so gentle reminder that NASs are not a good idea for that usage.

Im going to be a good test case;

  1. Ill start off with the Roon Core running on the NUC with my current NAS spooling files . If i notice lag and weird behavior i will
  2. Shift the music files over to an internal SSD drive

Similarly to Xekomi i love the idea of a single rock solid appliance that stores music files AND handles the Roon service .

Speaking of migrating files (if i eventually chose to do this). How does one go about finding the storage strive on the NUC running roon on my network?

oh i think i found the article: https://kb.roonlabs.com/ROCK:_Importing_Music

Ok - setting up NASs can be a little tricky depending upon what you want to do with them. However, the OP already has his music collection ripped to his NAS. If he is worried about energy consumption he can simply switch off the NAS when it’s not being used.

If newly added music does not appear immediately, then a simple rescan should resolve the problem, - and as for “God knows what else”, I don’t recall ever having a problem that wasn’t resolved by a rescan with any of my NAS devices.

The OP (or any other potential user) may also wish to play his or her music on devices that are not Roon end points, in which case a USB drive attached to a Roon Rock NUC or for that matter an internal SSD drive in the NUC won’t easily fulfil that requirement, whereas a Network Attached Device is designed for such a requirement.

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Energy = heat = (fan) noise, and obviously the noise is what I’d be concerned with.

In terms of setup, my concern was more with networking (should’ve specified that).

USB: plug the thing in, it’ll work.

NAS: plug the thing into the network, pray it shows up, which it should, and usually does. Unless it’s that case where it doesn’t.

Oh, you mean that remote sharing over SMB in order to play files off a remote machine won’t be easy ? Because that kinda sounds like in your example, ROCK would be acting as a… NAS.

All kidding aside, even assuming the NAS is set up to mirroring and not RAID0, having two copies on two separate devices can’t hurt, especially given the relatively small size of the library in this case. Please don’t forget that RAID isn’t a backup, folks…

I agree - which is why I back-up to USB drives which I store off-site.

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yes the NAS is setup for mirroring and does hold some ‘household’ files so i was probably going to keep it up and running anyway.
It really comes down to if i notice any lag when selecting music files of the NAS. If i do ill seriously consider moving all music files over to an internal hard drive