NAS: Should I get one, and if so, which?

[Jay]

you have data duplication setup for things you don't want to lose I also have a backup set once a week to the extral drive.

[aidanjt]

If you have folder duplication working then a 'background copy' of the file will be made on another disk, it is, of course, *nowhere* near as robust as RAID, but it 'does the job' for home uses, and it can be more selective about redundancy than blind block duplication which RAID controllers do.

[Jay]

one issue is that if the boot drive fails your in a world of hurt.

[kmac]

Hey OP, I went for the FreeNAS option and its been good for my relatively wimple needs - I use Acronis to automatically backup my disk to another disk - 1Tb each as Acronis came free with my motherboard - an Intel ITX board.

Have a look here for some build pics:
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...-needed-3.html

[b0redom]

That's an interesting suggestion. Do you have many disks? I'm just curious because ZFS supposedly just deals with any bunch of disks, provides redundancy where necessary and puts stuff that needs it on the higher performance disks automatically. Plus it expands the filesystem when you add new disks.
If it as good as it sounds or it it like everything else in IT and not as good as the hype?

I've got 3x 5-in-3 Icydock hot swappable drive bays, one has a single disk in, one has 5x1.5TB ecogreen disks and one has 4x750gb drives in.

I boot off the single drive, and the other sets are configured as 2 bit RAID-Z partitions. I actually tried using OpenFiler for a bit, and FreeNAS, and Nexenta, and WHS. For various reasons OpenSolaris won out.

OpenSolaris worked out of the box with the hardware I had available (unlike Nexenta, and FreeNAS)

OpenSolaris was the only OS I could find which preserved the hardware paths (ie channel 0 on the SATA card I had came through as c0t0d0, channel 1 came through as c0t1d0) which is really important if a disk fails. This is where OpenFiler fell down for me.

None of the others offered any sort of virtualisation technology either. I wanted a simple install and go solution, but which offered me the ability to run a webserver etc on top. The easiest way to do this whilst keeping the underlying OS is a VM solution. I could have used another Linux solution, but that would involve fighting with the LVM.

WHS doesn't do virtualisation as a host.
FreeNAS doesn't do virtualistaion as a host.
Nexenta is out as it didn't work on the hardware I had.
OpenFiler could be hacked to get it working, but it was a bit ugly.
OpenSolaris supports VirtualBox, so it's dead simple to get up and running.

In order to create a zfs partition, you just do:

zpool create zfspartition raidz <disk1> <disk2> <disk3> ..... <diskn>

That's literally it.

If a disk blows up, you can remove it from the pool, replace the disk and add the new one. It begins resilvering immediately and you're back up and running. This was much simpler than with FreeNAS.

I didn't bother trying using ZFS with different sized disks. I understand that it works, but I want to keep things as plain as possible.

I keep planning on writing all the experiments up - I tried blowing away the root disk, reinstalling and reimporting the ZFS partition, and it found it and worked immediately for example. I tried pulling out a disk whilst the server was up, then replacing it, and it rebuilt etc.

I expect all this stuff to work on enterprise grade hardware, but my experience using it in software has been a bit more ropey prior to working with OpenSolaris.

Anyway enough rambling......

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Good thread. i was thinking of using a NAS box but found out i cant really run any server side applications i plan to develope for my own.

im guessing WHS can run any server side apps i make using .net or even java?

[abaxas]

If you have folder duplication working then a 'background copy' of the file will be made on another disk, it is, of course, *nowhere* near as robust as RAID, but it 'does the job' for home uses, and it can be more selective about redundancy than blind block duplication which RAID controllers do.

I'm going to disagree. Raid is all about redundancy, when copying your data elsewhere is all about backup.

In terms of nas, I would assume redundancy is of a lower priority than backup. Ie access to your data immideiatly is less important that the data existing.

[b0redom]

Good thread. i was thinking of using a NAS box but found out i cant really run any server side applications i plan to develope for my own.

im guessing WHS can run any server side apps i make using .net or even java?

I wouldn't personally. IIRC WHS is only available in 32bit. It's a home server rather than enterprise class OS.

[Singh400]

you have data duplication setup for things you don't want to lose I also have a backup set once a week to the extral drive.

OT: But one of my 1TB hard drives failed last night in my WHS box, I almost cried. It doesn't even show up in HD Tune. Hopefully a power cable has come loose, and it hasn't died.

Thank god everything important had file duplication turned on.

[watercooled]

I'm going to disagree. Raid is all about redundancy, when copying your data elsewhere is all about backup.

In terms of nas, I would assume redundancy is of a lower priority than backup. Ie access to your data immideiatly is less important that the data existing.

Yeah me too, like I said before RAID is NOT a substitute for backup. A backup to a separate NAS or something is actually better for redundancy because with RAID you're relying on the NAS controller. Again I really don't see any point in it for a home NAS setup, it just wastes disk space. Also have a look at this article on SNB: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/n...s-dont-do-raid

[j.o.s.h.1408]

I wouldn't personally. IIRC WHS is only available in 32bit. It's a home server rather than enterprise class OS.

So how are these plugins made then?

[MSIC]

On reflection, i'm confused again about what is suitable for me.
I probably do not need NAS, i just require backup of my files, however I would prefer to be able to serve all of my various media files over ethernet to my Western Dig Live media player... all whilst consuming little watts.

I understand about WHS being able to backup things selectively, however in my circumstance I want to back up 100% of my files. The photos are obviously irreplaceable and therefore paramount (i already do manual backup onto a small external hard drive), but the time spent in ripping my other media is not something i could concieve of doing again. It's taken me many years of effort so far, and to re-rip could take a similar period!

Sorry if this makes me sound stupid, but could someone explain to me about WHS - I understand that you can add hard drives to the mix, and that it intelligently absorbs it into the whole, but what happens in the event of a hard drive failure? For me, this is what this whole process is about - preventing data loss in event of hard drive failure.

[mycarsavw]

Good thread. i was thinking of using a NAS box but found out i cant really run any server side applications i plan to develope for my own.

Server side applications - as in?

[Jay]

WHS backup is its key feature for me, it will automate a backup to an external drive

eg

I have data double on my photos and every week I have the backup backup that folder to an external drive so if I lose a disk its ok as I have the data double + the external backup and if I lose the server its ok as I have the external backup and if I lose the backup drive its ok because I have the data double.

[kalniel]

On reflection, i'm confused again about what is suitable for me.
I probably do not need NAS, i just require backup of my files, however I would prefer to be able to serve all of my various media files over ethernet to my Western Dig Live media player... all whilst consuming little watts.

I understand about WHS being able to backup things selectively, however in my circumstance I want to back up 100% of my files. The photos are obviously irreplaceable and therefore paramount (i already do manual backup onto a small external hard drive), but the time spent in ripping my other media is not something i could concieve of doing again. It's taken me many years of effort so far, and to re-rip could take a similar period!

Sorry if this makes me sound stupid, but could someone explain to me about WHS - I understand that you can add hard drives to the mix, and that it intelligently absorbs it into the whole, but what happens in the event of a hard drive failure? For me, this is what this whole process is about - preventing data loss in event of hard drive failure.

What's wrong with setting up automatic backups with windows 7?

[MSIC]

What's wrong with setting up automatic backups with windows 7?

Because none of my data is currently within my Win7 machine - it's all on external hard drives, which are connected to my media player (under my TV).
Whenever I add media to it, there is a long laborious process of phsycially disconnecting USB leads, reconnecting them to a spare laptop which sits close by, transferring files, then disconnecting / reconnecting etc.... Its all not very cleanly done.

On further reflection again (and having read that SOHO RAID article), i think that I had been confusing NAS with NAS RAID. I think that i do want Network Attached Storage, but that RAID is not appropriate. Perhaps however I should be buying 2 NAS devices, with one for use and a mirror for redundancy?