What is the Ideal Low-end NAS Solution? 45
Mark asks: "As demand for storage continues to grow and prices continue to drop, network attached storage (NAS) devices are popping up everywhere...from large enterprises to restaurants to small offices and homes. Several vendors are now offering low-end NAS solutions targeted at SOHO users, with varying results. Most of them are just standard PC components and standard IDE hard drives running Linux, but the price tag on these often far oustrips what one would expect to pay for the parts. Hence, people all over the world (myself included) are building their own NAS machines at home at a fraction of the cost. Beyond support for RAID, CIFS, NFS, HTTP, and FTP, what would the ideal home NAS operating system include? And more importantly, what should it leave out to avoid conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and instability? Are there any Linux/*BSD/other distributions out there optimized specifically for NAS applications? What does the ideal NAS distribution look like to you?"
Why complicate matters? (Score:5, Informative)
A NAS is little more than a box of hard drives with a NIC attached. They get a nifty web-based interface or somesuch to make it real simple to setup and they often come in small packages, but is that worth the premium? You could buy a small-ish desktop/tower case and probably build your own very cheaply. Setting up Samba on Linux with simple "everyone can write" access is braindead simple.
Do you need a web-based interface? Do you need hot-swappable drives with auto-rebuild? Do you need a 2U rackmount or other small-ish case? (Remember, need is a very strong word.) If you can't answer yes then save yourself a few grand and do it yourself.
On the flip side, if you DO need that stuff, I've been very pleased with Fastora [fastora.com]. Good interface, easy setup and lots of options. We got a 1.337TB unit (8x250GB hard drives in RAID5, one drive as a hot spare) with 2x100Mb NIC and 1x1Gb NIC for around $7,000.
1.337TB? (Score:3, Funny)
We got a 1.337TB unit
1.337TB? Wow - 1337.
Re:1.337TB? (Score:1)
Re:I've spent 3 years making NAS (Score:2)
Re:Why complicate matters? (Score:2)
include support for WebDAV (Score:3, Insightful)
On my NAS, I have also included support for WebDAV [xml-dev.com] protocol. It comes in handy when your users are publishing Web Content.
Re:include support for WebDAV (Score:2)
What I think it should have (Score:2, Insightful)
To me the ideal disto would probably fit in under 100 MB, just need the servers, network support files, and a way to get in and edit files. If the machine has a monitor that can be used, perhaps you don't need SSH or any other remote method of getting i
Network limitations (Score:2, Interesting)
RAID 0 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Network limitations (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Network limitations (Score:3, Interesting)
When one of those 200GB drives dies, you might think a little differently.
Distributions... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Distributions... (Score:2)
Re:Distributions... (Score:2)
Here's another vote for Mitel SME Server. Download an iso from here [e-smith.org] and off you go. *Really* simple web interface, DHCP, NAT gateway, Email server, DNS, print server, samba server, web server, appletalk server, VPN server... etc all ready to go. Easy backups, easy administration. I'd
Two ideas (Score:4, Insightful)
I would consider two OS's for a low-end home NAS.
First OS:
Debian GNU/Linux
Why? 1) Easy to update. 2) Wide selection of packages. 3) Possible to do a minimal install and have a pretty bare-bones OS.
Second OS:
OpenBSD
Why? 1) Security. 2) Security. 3) Security.
Re:Two ideas (Score:1)
For anybody reading this and wanting to use his custom NAS for backup: you want http://rsnapshot.org/ [rsnapshot.org]. Period.
Build your own (Score:2, Insightful)
There are plenty of recipies out there utilizing LVM, MD, Samba, NFS, etc. You could make a MythTV ser
Re:Build your own (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're using the unit for home, it can make sense to also use the box for your internal audio/video streaming, home directories, web, and mail, and backup for other workstations. This is what's going on over here.
-Vlad
Most work (Score:2, Informative)
NAS boxes are pretty cheap and easy to build these days, just make sure if you're going to do RAID that you buy a REAL raid controller, with hardw
Re:Most work (Score:4, Informative)
After a few days of disbelief and frantic googling, I decided to make the switch to ext3. Now if I can only get approval to purchase UPS's for the servers.
As for which distribution to use, we tested Slackware 10, Fedora Core 2, and finally chose CentOS.
My dream! (Score:3, Funny)
The last element of security is a thermite detonator with a separate trigger circuit and antenna frequency. Ship the product with a 'kill button' that transmits the detonator signal when you activate it.
When you build it, I will come! I plan to bury one in my backyard and make the most secure file server evar. The USA PATRIOTS will never read my data!
Re:My dream! (Score:1)
Not wireless (Score:2)
seriously, what FBI agent on premises is going to know that siemens 5424 router is pulling in stuff from your back yard, in the DIRT? when it's not using radio waves..
+ you get a good 14mb connection, as opposed to the 1-5.5 with 802.11b..
I have a powerline setup to transmit all over my house.. Love the speed, love the fact that it doesn't give my neighbor wifi...
Who needs a real home NAS? (Score:2)
Somebody needs to think smaller (Score:2)
For my small business customers, a slightly larger box that can hold multiple drives. Dual 1G NICs, one for the users and 1 VLANed to other NAS and backup devices. Build boxes that support 2 and 4 drives in pullout chassis. I'm not overly concerned about RAID, but RAID 0 could be useful at times. IDE is OK, speed isn't a huge factor because we're going to be bottlene
Why not build our own? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why not build our own? (Score:2, Informative)
Most of my "TV episode" DiVX collection is in the general area of about 350 megabytes for a 45 minute show. Now about a minute with Octave will show that 350 / (45*60) * 8 is about a megabit per second.
That sounds reasonable considering the bandwidth of real digital TV mpeg streams.
So we will assume you need about a megabit a second.
I guess that would rule out ArcNET or a 9600 baud SLIP but everything newer than say, 10 meg HDX thinnet, will work. You're asking if a net
Re:Why not build our own? (Score:4, Informative)
Just for anyone else reading who gets similar ideas, he's got some big errors.
This is incorrect. The reason you only put 1 device per channel is because with IDE, only one device on a channel can be active at once. It has nothing to do with the likelihood of failure. Even if that weren't true, his assumption is silly - a single drive is much more likely to break than a single channel on a controller.
This erroneous assumption carries through his entire implementation and has crippled it's performance (as seen in the benchmarks - 36MB/s ? That's pathetic for an 6 disk RAID0 array - effectively what is is for disk reads). Using the "hardware" RAID on the card is another mistake, tying the array forever to that particular brand and model of disk controller.
Folks, if you're setting up honkin' great big RAID arrays at home and don't want to pay for decent RAID controllers like 3wares, *use software RAID*. The CPU overhead is insignificant and the bonus of being able to move the array between arbitrary machines and not having to worry about a disk controller failure permanently making your data inaccessible is more than worth it.
Re:Why not build our own? (Score:1)
I'd love to, but the guy whose Web page I first cited said a purely software RAID-based didn't work for him for an array his size. Ideas on what happpened?
Re:Why not build our own? (Score:2)
Hard to say without more details, but I'd guess either the motherboard (VIA chipset = buggy & unreliable), cheap & shitty/buggy IDE controllers (he doesn't say what he tried the first time) or buggy drivers (in descending order of likelihood). Amazingly, he actually goes on to recommend an even cheaper, dodger, almost certainly buggier motherboa
Re:Why not build our own? (Score:2)
However: Having MythTV on the same box is, in the general case, SLOWER than having it on a NAS with at all similar hardware. Moving data over ethernet _may_ be more latent than moving it to your HDD controller, but you're going to blow throught the 32 or so MB of HDD cache fairly qui
Another question... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Another question... (Score:1)
Linksys NSLU2 (Score:1)
Like this Linksys box [linksys.com]. It is silent and cheap and has Linux inside [batbox.org].
WOW. (Score:1)
Re:Linksys NSLU2 (Score:2)
I'm looking at the data sheet and don't see any mention of it anywhere. But maybe I'm just skimming over it too fast.
NASLite (Score:2, Interesting)
Openfiler? (Score:2)
Netgear model 624 AP/router (Score:2)
I set one up for a customer. With a 160GB USB 2.0 hard disk, it's just spiffy for everything he needed that volume of storage for.
Bottlenecks (Score:1)