OT - OT - Homemade NAS Question - OT - OT

I'd really like the brainiac's response from the Toughbook crowd here on this question...

I want to build a NAS from scratch. It will most likely use OpenFiler or FreeNAS as the OS. I'd like to have (Ideally) 5 hot swappable ports in the front of a stand alone NAS. I'd like to have all the drives (or at least four of them) accessible from the front.

I have looked at every DIY project on the 'net and am a little frustrated as I only see a few that are "sponge worthy!"

I know a few of you have built your own.. I PMed with Rob a few times about this but would really like to go the route I have chosen.

Anyone have anything similar?

 

Sorry dewed - cain't help yer. I took the cheap way out & threw a couple extra HDDs in my print server...

mnem

 

before you buy hardware please consider Solaris (Open Solaris) for its ZFS support..

look up ZFS on wiki and be amazed, let me summerize:

zRaid: raid only better, you can add drives of different sizes to the raid pool and still have all raid levels, including redundancies..
furthermore if enough of your hdds get corrupted, say ur useing single redundancy then in a normal RAID redundency setup ALL your data will be gone... if zRaid lost too much information to rebuild the lost information well then you only lost what you lost not the entire array.
ErrorCorroction: bits deteriorate, thats a fact... ZFS caches those bad bits and fixed them : ) no more looseing data due to being old.
oh Snapshots: ZFS can take snapshots, which is basically a complete backup of your system. it can also take this incredibly fast if you want to (several times per second)... then if you go about fudging up your data lets say you exidently wiped of the pictures of your honeymoon and your wife is about to kill you, you go to a snapshot and restore them all is well and you should live.

aside from that ZFS really is the best filesystem that you can ever imagine. again read about it on wiki it blows my mind everyday.

since only Solaris supports ZFS (oh and open BSD has a port I belive, but solaris is native) and the obvious benifit of solaris being a server OS you should really consider it for you NAS... maybe do more then just NAS... use it as your router, filter, watcher, streamer..

really nas is so.. crippeled, why do it? build a nice desktop that you can watch movies on, play music from, work on do w/e and that doubles as a NAS, a fileserver (access your data from china), if you are adventurous you'll set it up to be your router (that way you can use a switch instead of a router and more then likely you will double your network throughput as compared to going over a standard router that didn't cost you a grand).

Please let me know how your thinking goes, and shoot any questions my way.

Dominik Gothe

 

Well... The NAS will most likely serve as the PC for my movie room... But I won't be storing movies on the PC... Just music, pictures, programs, drivers, back-ups... Etc. I use the PC in the media room about every 6 months. That was where I intended to store it.

I have enough "Nice desktops" and laptops already... I'd like a more dedicated server/NAS.

 

the solaris argument remains, especially for dedicated servers. Furthermore I would make sure I have a fast network (gigabit) in place before considering NAS... I find it painfully slow to backup my computer over, lets say wireless b..

 

I personally have a buffalo terastation (1TB one) (4 x 250GB)... nowadays you can pick up a 2TB model for about $400... it's raid 5 (1.5TB usable space minus the 7% formatting) and they are DAMN RELIABLE...

Mine is ATA and non-hotswap, but the new ones are all SATA 300mbps HOT SWAP through the front...

I back up most of the datacenter to just one of these (have less than 700GB of data these days )

 

Yeah... I saw that but was looking at something more like this THIS!

Not so much the exact hardware or software for that matter... Just the overall. I got a buddy who swears by openfiler... So it would be a Linux flavor... I just want expandability for the future.... And not have to take the case all apart to dig out the drives. I can't seem to find a good backplane though... All reviews are crap...

 

I'd suggest using any regular 4+2 or 6+2 tower case you have lying around with SATA Hot-Swap HDD caddies for 5 1/4 bays; they cost about $16 each at NewEgg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998041

You can use pretty much ANY MB that support PCI-E; it'll be fast enough. Use the PCI-E for your SATA controller, of course - then use any old PCI video card (or the built-in video) and DO BUY a Gigabit ethernet card NOW - they're cheap, and it'll niggle at you until you upgrade your switch/router.

Buy/set aside spares NOW for mission critical components; P/S, SATA controller, NIC, RAM & at least one HDD. The "spare" Power Supply will also be a good "Known Good Power Supply" for your testing jig, so it won't feel like such a waste...

Use the biggest fans you can to minimize noise, and get a GOOD name brand P/S with 120MM fan; I prefer StatPower, Tripplite or Antec. Choose your own poison as there are as many opinions about Power Supplies as there are shades of blue; just pick one you wouldn't worry about if you forgot it was running for a year... because you WILL. And of course, look into a UPS; the same applies to them as well.

If you need more drives, SuperMicro makes this handy-dandy unit that will put 5 drives in the space of 3 5 1/4" bays:

http://alrightdeals.com/Item.htm?Id=S1_Cases_Accessories___22009

Shop around; I'm pretty sure it can be had cheaper.

Good Luck, and let us know how it flies!

mnem
A little red wine would go well with that...

 

My original Media Room PC (That I RARELY use) is in an older version of THIS case. It has a 3.4GHz P4 processor with 2GB of RAM...

I'll probably redo this one the way I want... It has a fairly modern mobo...

 

Nice... Yeah, forget about building your own... the pre-made ones are soooooo much easier lol... I've gotten outta my "build everything custom the way you want it" stage about 5 years ago lol.

but - to each of their own... *cheers*

 

Dewd - Using that machine as a backup server is like hooking a Ferrari to an Oxcart... it's overkill squared.

The nature of what you want to do with this machine... seems opposite purposes to me. You want your Media Center PC to be high performance processor with top 10% level graphics; you want your NAS to be a mule processor that will run stable and cool for months on end, and you don't even NEED graphics on it...

mnem<~~~ CORNFUZZLED ~~~<<<

 

Yeah... My thought is... I spent roughly $2k on the media room PC that I never use... I'd never be able to sell it for close to that to get my money out.. SO why not put it to good use.

My wife has gotten use to all the Toughbooks coming and going... She never says ANYTHING about that anymore. However... EVERY time we watch a movie in the media room... I hear, "When are you going to sell that?"

Interested?

 

Rick

A couple of questions since this is off topic please

Inquiring minds want to know

What laptop did your mother/mother in law finally purchase,you asked about that months ago

Did you purchase a welder yet, and if so what did you buy

I have to ask these things as you start threads to ask our advice and I wonder if you ever take it
Alex

 

You NEVER USE IT?

I retired my old DVD Transcoding workstation to use as a Media Center PC; upgraded the video card for HD & switched to a 750GB SATA from my old IDE array. I feel like an IDIOT for not doing it a year ago when I first had the idea! I'm always logging on to Hulu or listening to satellite radio on it; when I miss my Eureka or Chuck THAT'S where I get caught up! And... it's where we go when we want to see our favorite "legacy programming"; we just got done with ALL of Babylon 5.

I'm afraid I have an excess of computers myself... plus a '99 Saturn SC1 project that's currently sucking all discretionary cash.

I suppose if you underclock that BEAST you could keep it cool... and as long as there's no video involved in what you're doing, the video card shouldn't be heating things up. You'd have to reboot & turn up the processor, or try reconfiguring the ACPI power management to throttle back the SpeedStep unless you are in full-tilt movie mode.

mnem
*Sigh* Too many toys... I grok you, man...

 

My Father-Im-Law is MIS at a large University.... He gave me a Dell 620 (I think)... It works well for what she needs and keeps her from having to trudge up and down the stairs... Which is what I was worried about.

I have not bought the welder yet.. Cash is tight since sales are down. But what I want to get is the ESAB MIGMASTER 203 MIG WELDER (From the auction I was watching..)

So... To sooth your last remark.... Yes... Someone suggested the Dell and I asked The FIL... The welder was also suggested.. It's just a cash thing at this point.

<Ahhh... If only I could hit the lottery... I could finally change the skirting around the trailer!>

 

Yeah... I had it all tied into the X-Box (Which I've played 4 times) and my MS Flight Sim... Which I used to do all the time since I love to fly. But mainly I use it for tracing patterns for signwork. I hand letter signs also. (From years ago when I had a sign business with my bro-in-law of the time.) I also set it up with a BT link to my iPOd with 17K songs so when I played poker I could play songs... But havent had a game at teh poker table.

Geez... I lead a boring life!

 

Rick…. when you get around to do it

I recommend putting up brand new skirting

Now you are probably thinking, how can I afford new skirting

Well…. you can save on the labor costs, buy inviting all the forum members here over to a party

You provide the beer

After a while you just break out the tools , and start putting up skirting
It won’t be long before one of us tells you are doing it all wrong and shows you how they think it should be done

Well you get the picture here don’t you , everyone will be working doing the job
And heck it probably wouldn’t look too bad , as there is four different sides
Very different sides


Alex

 

Hahaha OMG... THAT was entertaining!!! The funniest part is how true it is/would be!!!

Ahhhhh.. I love you guys!!! It really is the highlight of my day to stop by the forum and visit with the 'toughbook bunch' (not sure if that is a sad commentary in and of its self!! )

Just remember... If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy!

Beau K1SFD

 

Ah-HAH! Another GREENE-ie!

mnem
It is TOO easy being green... it so TOTALLY is...

 

Well... Actually I don't live in a trailer... It was a joke a buddy of mine used to say...

But Tomcat is right... Thy would all be different.

 

I picked up two Dull Optiplex GX620s from my Father-In-Law this morning. One is still under warranty! Anyway... From the Tag# it looks like one is a 2.8GHz and the other is a 3.2GHz. Both have two DVD R/W drives. One has an 80GB SATA drive while the other one has two 160GB SATA drives. He also gave me 5GB of RAM to split between the two. (Two 1GB sticks and sic 512MB sticks.) He said he was giving me two so I could at least make one good machine. From the looks of things... I'll easily be able to build two of them. I may go ahead and build one up for my Mom to replace her 1.4GHz Dull... Then I can fix up her old one and give it to my sister... Anyway... I have a 1TB hard drive on the way for my storage. I'll most likely use one of the 160GB drives as the primary drive for now... And the 1TB as the storage. But I am having a heck of a time deciding on what OS to run on it. MY first thought was that this was going to be a "Server ONLY" build... Now I am thinking about maybe replacing my way overbuilt media room PC as I never use it. It is a 3.4 GHz monster that I spent entirely too much money on. I could probably sell it to recoup some of the money... wouldn't even know what to ask... Maybe I'll post the specs on it at some point and you guys could tell me.

I digress... I was looking into OpenFiler as an OS... Then started thinking this would be a cool way to start using W7.. Then I started thinking about Server 2003... I just don't know... Any ideas? I'm too tired to try to make up my mind. My wife and I went to a wedding in VA yesterday and I haven't had much sleep in the past few days.

Anyone?

<Heads to bed>