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Hardware

Building a NAS Device w/ Embedded OS? 27

Posted by Cliff from the when-off-the-shelf-just-isn't-good-enough dept.
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I've been thinking about building a NAS device similar to the Quantum Snap Server Has anyone come across anyone else working on a similar project? One that at the very least uses a small integrated board and some sort of embedded OS? Ive seen several systems that run a full Linux OS and separate boot hard drives, but this solution seems a bit too bulky for whats really required. Something that features a FTP/HTTP/SMB interface would be pretty slick!"
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Building a NAS Device w/ Embedded OS? More

Building a NAS Device w/ Embedded OS?

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  • Microware (Score:4, Informative)

    by gerardrj ( 207690 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @06:49PM (#3562102) Journal
    Microware's OS-9 [radisys.com] is an ideal solution for such a project. The OS will run in a few K of RAM and has complete network stacks as I recall.
    THe OS runs on most chips from 6809(68K now) onward.

    • Heh.. I was just reading my old RAINBOW magazines and reminiscing about my CoCo3.

      That baby ran OS-9 on a ROM pack. (-;

      S
      • While OS-9 is easily ROMable, the OS was only ever distributed on 5 1/4" floppy for the CoCo. To use it you did need to plug a floppy controller in to the expansion slot though.
        But to really experience the OS you needed to run it from either a RAM disk with one of the 2MB memory kits, or from a hard disk from a company like Owlware.
        • Hmm.. I distinctly remember running OS-9 on the CoCo, but you're right, come to think of it, the ROM pack contained the controller, and the OS was probably on the floppy.. needed it to run certain games, IIRC (Cave Walker.. ? (-: )

          S

  • How about Linux on a snap server (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bihoy ( 100694 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @06:52PM (#3562130)
    I am actually interested to know if one could run linux on a NAS device. I would love to be able use use one as an Automated Backup Appliance. Preferably by running a pared down version of Linux with Samba and some scripts to automatically mount disks and backup their data to the disks on the NAS device.

    At present I use old PC's and throw a couple of 80Gb disks in them. Unfortunately this is a bulky solution that you can't just plop on somebodys desk.
    • Have you heard of Raidzone (http://www.raidzone.com/)? They have 2U or 4U rackmountable systems, and cubes, with capacities ranging from a couple hundred GB to a few TB. It runs a variant of RedHat linux. Features redundant boot partitions, NFS/SMB/Appletalk, hotswapple drives, temp/voltage monitoring, journaling filesystems, Gigabit ethernet, GUI-based remote administration, snapshotting, and more, at very competitive prices...check it out!

      [disclaimer: I work for this company]
  • On the high end there are many of these systems running 20-400 Terabyte arrays using Fibre Channel disk arrays attached to switches running VxWorks, pSOS, or Nucleus available, and I am aware of at least six start-ups doing work on this as well as many major players (Adaptech, Network Appliances, ...).

    The only low-end box I am aware of was available from a company called Promise Technology, called the Connectstore 2. Nobody wanted to buy it so I think they dropped the product line. (P233, 64Mb, 160GB HDD, 10baseT network, embedded Linux, no idea about the price.) Disclaimer: I used to work for Promise when they released it.

    For the low-end stuff it's simply too cheap and easy to get a Wal-mart special, stuff it into the telephone closet, load Linux onto it, connect it up to the LAN, and have cron do what it needs to do. Why pay more for special purpose hardware if the Wal-mart special will do the job?

    I wish you luck on your search!

    -C
  • read about a company that thinks its bandwidth
    for data transfer rewritable storage will someday
    allow it to replace all memory with a single device wanting to create a pocket pc.

    www.colossalstorage.net
  • If bulk is your thing, I'm sure you could find a small board that Linux (or certainly netbsd) will run on (example: embsd.org's board [embsd.org]), and fitting a full-featured install of either of the above OSen onto a CompactFlash device from SanDisk (ide adaptors are available for not much, media is pretty cheap) isn't hard... Heck using the PCMCIA slot on that board, you could have (up to) a gig to play with via IBM's microdrive for the system "disk". This means that you'd be using an operating system with a much larger user community that whatever proprietary thing you went with, and not to be neglected, the free OSen would be, well, uh... free. ;-) SAMBA, netatalk, ftp, nfs, afs, coda, etc. all pretty much guarantee that your little *nix machine could talk to pretty much anything with a power cable. The embsd board has a PCI slot, so you could easily stick a raid adaptor on it, and with 3 10/100 interfaces you probably don't have to worry about network I/O... All in all, a pretty cheap solution: $255 for the board, $0 for the OS and software, maybe $300 for an ata100 pci board and a couple of big ass IDE drives... This would scale up to N many scsi drives / raid, blah blah... all while taking up way less space and pwr than a desktop (the embsd board also has a bios that allows serial-console-only admin of everything, a la the PC WEASEL).

  • not really nas (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @08:01PM (#3562538)
    but it's small enough to fit on a desk. you can boot the os from the DoC and use a hdd for storage. thinking of getting one myself for a tivo-ish type thing

    http://www.gctglobal.com/Products/Set_Top_Box/se t_ top_box_0.html

    oh, and it runs linux (/me wishes fbsd, but oh well <g>)

    --m

  • Your options: (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @08:06PM (#3562566)
    • Linux / BSD. These are better choices the days than they were three months ago, because modern Linux NAS devices can handle Active Directory using Samba 3 code. This is a chief concern for a lot of Windows shops. Quantum, who employ Andrew Tridgell, now have a 1.4TB enterprise NAS box based on Samba 3 code, which apparently already stable enough to do this kind of thing. Obviously, SMB, LDAP, NFS (and NIS if you're into that sort of thing) are all possible. There's already existing web based UIs you can modify for your needs.

      Your main issue is that the permission system used on most Linux distributions is pathetically non granular and can prove annoying in even the most basic of office situations. Real OSs use ACLs, and no other distro than Mandrake supports these by default (and Mandrake, IMHO, in a not a choice for embedded Linux). With XFS, Samba 2.2 or greater, Linux can have ACL support, and Windows users can modify these ACLs from their client machines.

    • Windows 2000 SAK. Microsoft's solution for the NAS market is not an embedded OS but rather a 2GB default install of Windows 2000 with Services for Unix, and Mac / Netware interoperabiltiy installed by default. You can do most things though the web based GUI but you require a direct login to the device to perform certain tasks on many devices that used this (more a fault of the manufacturers tho - MS does provide them with the ability to add to the web based GUI). 2GB of software to run means 2GB of software to potentially go wrong, and 2GB to update. People will tell you `look it does Active Directory!'. You in turn can tell them `yes, so does my Linux box'. OTOH, Win2000 SAK has to compete with Linux and BSD devices, so there's no per client access licenses.

  • Why not?? (Score:3, Informative)

    by jkidd ( 552837 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @09:21PM (#3562901)
    I also have a couple P-200's laying around with 40 to 80 gb drives in them. If you need something for production that is also small, why wouldn't this work with some case mods maybe. http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/computing/59ef.shtm l You could cover all the ports you don't need with a plate or something. Use some of those fancy screws like you Nintendo. Load Linux and setup some remote admin stuff. Plus your helping a /. sponsor. Just my $0.02

  • What's Wrong with Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nathanh ( 1214 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @10:11PM (#3563112) Homepage

    I don't understand your aversion to Linux. Single floppy Linux distros (eg, Tom's Root Boot) + nfs-server + samba would do what you want.

    If you're worried about using a second hard disk as the boot device, then you're in luck. Use a CompactFlash card and an IDE-CompactFlash convertor. A 16MB flash is cheap. Install the single floppy Linux distro onto the flash and use a ramdisk for the root filesystem. Log everything remotely and Bob's your uncle.

    If you're worried about the size of the Linux box itself (power supply, motherboard) then spend some money and get a small PC. There are plenty of options available.

  • check freshmeat.net out. they have some useful servers that you can boot from a cd.
  • Disclaimer: I used to work with these guys.

    That said, it's a solid product, and they could use the support

    netzerver.com [netzerver.com]

    is an embedded linux on a single board system, capable of SCSI or IDE.

    I have one here in the home office. Speaks Apple, Netware, SMB, HTTP, etc. easy config, real reliable, real cheap.

    Quick and (not so) dirty, it works.
  • 20 gig & 40 gig. Single board computer with Red Hat on the HD, an ethernet port, and a printer port. We use one as a fileserver on a small LAN on a construction site.

    It doesn't seem to be listed on there site a s a current product, though.
  • Shuttle [shuttle.com] has several small form factor barebones systems that might do the trick. Put 1 small hd for the os mounted read only and then a larger hd for storage and you should have no problems. You could probably go as far as to put alot of ram in it, get one of the micro distros of linux that will run on a floppy, write a script that will create a ram drive and load the os into it on start-up, and run with that. Todd

  • Even though you'll need spinning media for the storage itself, LinuxBIOS [linuxbios.org] booting Linux either from Disc on Chip, or CF is worth considering. With that, even if a disc fails, at least you'll get a decent diagnostic, and the other discs in the system (if any) will still be usable. The 3 second boot (power on to init running) is also useful in an embedded box.

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