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Thread: How would you build a NAS device ????

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    How would you build a NAS device ????

    After upgrading my two systems I have 8 Maxtor 6V320F0 320GB disk. I was thinking of creating a NAS device. The motherboard / CPU and memory do not have to be the fastest for this as it will be serving NFS and samba. I will boot Linux from a DVD or USB key and created an 8 disk array. Does anyone know of a MB that has 8 SATA slots ? or a good case ? What power supply size should I use ? Or should I sell the disks and buy an device ? Any ideas would be good.

    lxtwin

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    Just going to move this to the right forum for you...
    my Virtualisation Blog http://jfvi.co.uk Virtualisation Podcast http://vsoup.net

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    ahh thats better....

    right this should be pretty achievable.

    asoftware wise , try something like FreeNAS:

    FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home

    THe disk controllers seem to start off with something like this

    Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

    however thats only a software raid card really..

    you'll want a good beefy PSU for a start - I only run 4 drives + DVD in mine and I use a 550W unit.

    plenty of drive bays here....

    Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

    What do you want to achive with this NAS - do you want it to be quiet for a start..
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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    To be honest I would sell those discs as they're just tiny and start buying 1TB disks, £100 a pop from Samsung. With your current disks you'll need 3x the space and power.
    Any old hardware will do, a crappy old Athlon or whatever you have lying about, just add cheap 4-port Sil3114 PCI SATA cards (£12~ on eBay). If you want to use RAID5 which is recommended (Linux mdadm is good) then you would want a more powerful CPU, perhaps some old S754 or S939 kit. It's not really worth buying a brand new mobo and a E2xxx.
    That Sharkoon case deosn't seem like a bad deal for such a big case, I ight try one of these myself sometime.

    You don't need a powerful PSU, drives use around 30w at startup but after that the most they use is around 10w when in use. And if your controllers give you staggered startup then you need less of a PUS still. I've run 16 drive hardware RAID arrays on 350w PSU's (Seasonic mind).

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    rather that using freenas i would try ubuntu with lnux software raid. freenas is rather limited but with ubuntu you can make it very flexible. i followed directhex's
    Project remyth guide upto the myth tv bit.
    Quote Originally Posted by Jay View Post
    What kind of emergency would need Windows 95? I think you are already in a bad state of emergency when your backup plan is Windows 95.
    Beginners guide to raid Beginners guide to raid post edition Hexus.Social - FAQ

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    550 Watt for a NAS is well over powered. Assuming you are using basic parts (which is all thats needed), ie. no quad core and 9800GTX, then a 350Watt is more than enough.
    Hard drives have a tiny draw. Just make sure you have a good, reliable, branded PSU and you'll be fine
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    Quote Originally Posted by alsenior View Post
    rather that using freenas i would try ubuntu with lnux software raid. freenas is rather limited but with ubuntu you can make it very flexible. i followed directhex's
    Project remyth guide upto the myth tv bit.
    I found the software RAID a little bit of a challenge to set up on my IP35 Pro (and ubuntu64 install ) , but after a few hours head scratching it did eventually play

    However ubuntu runs all sorts of things that you dont really need - I rather like the idea of such a single purpose setup as freenas ( if thats what you want to achieve, you may well want the ability to add extra services , which would make a linux based system a no brainer )
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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    Quote Originally Posted by Agent View Post
    550 Watt for a NAS is well over powered. Assuming you are using basic parts (which is all thats needed), ie. no quad core and 9800GTX, then a 350Watt is more than enough.
    Hard drives have a tiny draw. Just make sure you have a good, reliable, branded PSU and you'll be fine
    Ah.. that was something I wasn't factoring - my test rig runs a quad core and an 8800GTS , that and I'm used to over specifying stuff for work
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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    Quote Originally Posted by Moby-Dick View Post
    Ah.. that was something I wasn't factoring - my test rig runs a quad core and an 8800GTS , that and I'm used to over specifying stuff for work
    Your "test rig" runs that? Are you serious?

    And here is me still using an Acorn for testing....
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    well it started off as a box to test server 2008 on , then I saw a nice quadcore bundle on todayonly... then I added another 4gb of RAM as I want to give Hyper-V a fair trial. Then I figured as i'd be playing with ubuntu 64 on it , and wanted to try some gaming , I'd better put a half decent GFX card in it
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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    What is the reliability of software raid 5 with FreeNAS? FreeNAS is still in a beta stage (and far from a final release), so it might be quite risky to rely on software raid 5. Also if I connect 3 disks with raid 5, can I easily add a fourth later without having to rebuild the array and backuping all the data?

    I am thinking it would be more secure to get a proper hardware raid 5 controller which is transparent to FreeNAS and more reliable.

    Regarding the FreeNAS vs Ubuntu... They are different things... FreeNAS will work well on very lower spec setups... and is made to make NAS easy without any mucking around...

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    Hardware RAID is much more preferable , although more expensive. I didn't know they were transparent to freenas though.
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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    Quote Originally Posted by Moby-Dick View Post
    Hardware RAID is much more preferable , although more expensive. I didn't know they were transparent to freenas though.
    I might be wrong, but I don't see why it wouldn't be transparent. By transparent I mean that FreeNAS will just see one "drive" which is the array.

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    True - I've probably just got my windows head on and thinking of installing drivers for HP Smartarray cards
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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    I have just read that FreeNAS (and linux in general) might not play very nicely with NTFS... so that kind of reduces the point in going hardware raid 5 a little... (Unless you use *nix/ext3 filesystem on other PC). I was thinking hardware raid would be good, because I can take all the drives (and data) over to windows if freenas started causing problems... I suppose you could try FreeNAS with ext3 and then migrate/dual boot to ubuntu if freenas causes any problem. That would work wouldn't it?

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    Re: How would you build a NAS device ????

    mdadm is miles better than FreeNAS and you get so much flexibility with a non NAS specific OS. No problem reading/writing from Windows.
    My preference is always for hardware RAID but upon a recommendation I've been testing mdadm lately and it really is good, especially for a NAS where you simply don't need such fast speeds. I've been playing with RAID-Z on ZFS in Solaris which is nice and avoids many flaws of RAID but you cannot expand your pools if you add new disks and I'm still new to Solaris.

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