DIY NAS Box

[PaperclipGod]

So, i'd like to build a NAS (network attached storage, just in case any fellow-newbs are reading this). I have about 2TB of data that i'd like to archive, and I'd also like something that can do frequent backups of all the devices on my network... everything from Win XP boxes hardwired to the network, to MacBook's connecting via an airport extreme (wifi). The more intuitive the interface, the better. I can deal with command line stuff only if i have my hand held. :/

I'm also not sure if I want something which allows me to easily expand the NAS capabilities/size (i.e. a big case with hot swap bays) or something rather small and purpose-built, like a glorified external HDD (or a Drobo). Any suggestions on which is the better path? I'm leaning towards the big box, but that might be overkill.

Also, I'm unsure of the hardware requirements for a system like this. For several drives, what size power supply am i looking at? How many watts does a 7200 RPM SATA2 drive use, anyway? What sort of performance would I see from a very basic system (external hdd), vs. something closer to a server (i.e. raid controller, gobs of ram, etc). Is relying on RAID 1 (et al) for my backups foolhardy, or acceptable considering i'm not in a "mission-critical" environment?

Finally - software. What would be best for my needs? I've been looking at freeNAS.org and a couple other similar projects, but I'm having trouble finding any real difference between the various solutions. I'm currently leaning towards Solaris with ZFS, but I'm concerned with the interface -- I'm useless when I have to actually remember commands and can't have a GUI lead me along.

I know that OS X Server 10.6 is going to include a pretty robust implementation of ZFS, but it's not out yet. Also, I'm not sure how well full-blown server software would integrate with the smaller, cheaper side of the solution (external hdd). And even if I went with the more expensive system, would such a relatively large OS impact NAS performance? i.e. require a beefier system, basically turning this into a server instead of a NAS box?

Sorry for the scattershot description, but as you can see, I'm not even sure where to begin. Any suggestions, advice, or even just a link to some relevant information would be very much appreciated!

 

[rasczak]

sounds more to me like you want to build a file server as a opposed to network attached storage. ubt i have to admit, my knowledge of NAS is lacking some. just throw on a linux distro, with samba service for windows sharing and youre good to go no?

 

[funkymatt]

Check out freenas if you want a linux based box.

WHS is prett nice since it will allow you to raid drives pretty easily. Plus you have a fancy gui

 

[rasczak]

Originally posted by: rasczak
sounds more to me like you want to build a file server as a opposed to network attached storage. ubt i have to admit, my knowledge of NAS is lacking some. just throw on a linux distro, with samba service for windows sharing and youre good to go no?

the one thing i do recommend is making sure your gigabit all the way through. otherwise no matter how robust the system is, youre gonna have bottlenecks when you try to transfer a large amount of data across your line (i.e backing up your devices via the network)

 

[themisfit610]

Windows Home Server is essentially made for you...

It will do automated backups, easy drive redundancy (software RAID), and online capacity expansion. It's stupid easy.

Buy one of the home servers from HP that have 4 empty SATA bays. It's WAY too easy.

If that's a bit pricey, just get a really basic Atom board (or salvage an old PC), add a SATA controller, and load up FreeNAS, along with a bunch of SATA drives. FreeNAS is easy too (try it in VMWare first), and has a nice web UI.

~MiSfit

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
If that's a bit pricey, just get a really basic Atom board (or salvage an old PC), add a SATA controller, and load up FreeNAS, along with a bunch of SATA drives. FreeNAS is easy too (try it in VMWare first), and has a nice web UI.

Of course, you can also buy the WHS software for $100 from Newegg.com and put it on that same box, so that's another low-cost-homebuilt option.

 

[PaperclipGod]

Thanks guys.

I was looking at WHS at your recommendation yesterday, and one thing I couldn't find was whether or not it was compatible with OS X systems. Is it? Also, what sort of interface does it use to do backups? Do I need to install a client on each machine I want backed up, or can WHS do it just using permissions or whatnot?

 

[JackMDS]

http://www.informit.com/articl...spx?p=1021022&seqNum=4 (Read the whole page).

As for RAID, http://www.ezlan.net/WHS.html

 

[jamesbond007]

WHS has a thin client it can distribute across the network (just access it with any remote PCs and install it) which allows WHS to monitor pretty much anything and everything about the computers, when they were last backed up, which Windows updates need to be installed, etc.

A roommate of mine has been tinkering with one of those 120-day trials from MS and he really likes it. It creates backups of all our computers (you can choose between incremental or full and which directories to skip or which ones to exclusively backup) and does so with a very easy GUI. The nice thing about it is you automatically get a free domain through Microsoft. I forget the URL at the moment but it's something along the lines of yourcustomusername.mshome.com or something easy like that.

Say you're at work and need a document on a desktop, but remote desktop is disabled. No problem - just go to the domain that goes to your box and you can remote desktop to any computer that's setup with the WHS box! Easy and very convenient...

In regards to Mac OSX, it does not communicate in any such fashion and doesn't do updates and jazz like that. As an OSX user, you can browse the files and storage devices on the WHS box, but you can't do the automated backups or remote desktop. That I know of...

As others have said, it is pretty much exactly what you're looking for. During the install, it looks and installs just like a Windows 2003 OS would go on...and I believe WHS is derived from the OS, too.

Good luck,
~Travis

EDIT: Hard drives take little to no power - back in the day, I had 12 disks hooked up to a 400W PSU (Enermax) that connected to an AMD Duron 800MHz and an ASUS board with a few Promise JBOD cards. I couldn't afford a fancy RAID card or a massively sweet server at the time, but it got the job done. When you order next online, I'd suggest getting some 4-pin molex to two SATA power Y-splitters.

In regards to which RAID card to get, software RAID should work just fine for your setup. You don't need to spend gobs of money on a hardware RAID card for a small system like that, so don't be fooled into otherwise.

 

[mcfeely]

If you can manage to get your hands on a Chenbro ES34069 case, and a Mini-ITX motherboard (like Intel's Atom 330-based one, but it only has 2 SATA ports on-board, so a PCI riser card and an add-on SATA controller will be needed if you want more than two SATA ports), you'll kind of be set. It comes in 120W and 180W variants. 120W one is easier to get, for some reason. But, you can also order spare parts direct from Chenbro, in case you want to get the 180W power adapter (120W should be fine, espcially if you go with low power hard drives like Samsung's EcoGreen line (something like 2.7w idle, and less than 5W read-write, if I remember correctly ... that's half the power usage of a regular 7200RPM drive.)

Edit: Case also has a bay for a Slim drive. If you prefer to use a mobo with an IDE port on it, that would be a perfect spot for the optical drive ... don't really need performance on an optical drive for a server, imo. Samsung has an IDE slim DVD writer, but I think it's being discontinued, so the sooner you decide on that, the better, and you might want to pick up two of them (in case one fails a couple/few years from now.) Lite-On has a slim IDE DVD writer as well. Also, the case comes with a Slim IDE-to-40pin IDE adapter that can be screwed onto the connector end of whichever slim drive goes in the case. So, you don't need to by one of those separately.

The case has 4 hot swap SATA drive bays, and a 2.5" internal spot to mount a laptop drive or an SSD drive (if price is no object.) Boot from a 2.5" drive. Put data on the drives in the hot swap bays.

If you go with WHS, keep in mind the system requirements for disk space for it. I believe (but don't quote me on this) that the MINIMUM requirement is 80GB. So, if you go with a 2.5" SSD drive, then you'll be paying for one of the more expensive ones ... over $400 for a 128GB Patriot model, I think ... could be less, though. Point is, they get really expensive past the 64GB mark, but it'll come down, if you don't mind waiting.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this stuff ... WHS, OpenSolaris 2008.11 with ZFS, FreeNAS, Openfiler, Ubuntu with Webmin, etc., etc., but for now, check out http://www.mini-itx.com.

It's a UK-Based site that has an online store as well, so you can check out pics and ballpark prices of the components they recommend to go along with the case. I wouldn't buy from them, though, unless you want to pay 3 figures for shipping costs. But, it's a place to start to see what's out there, so to speak.

A US-based online vendor that sells lots of mini-ITX stuff is http://logicsupply.com, but mini-itx.com has more techy review-type info that you can use for research, before you decide what to get.

Oh yeah, one thing to keep in mind with that Chenbro chassis: If you want to get the optional 4-in-1 media card reader, and/or the PCI riser card, most places I've seen don't have them in stock, but you "may" be able to order it directly from Chenbro as it's a "spare part". Worth a shot to ask them anyway. They should have a Sales info. email listed in their "Contact Us" or "About Us" section on their site. If you can get it from them, you might be able to save a few bucks.

 

[RebateMonger]

Here's a good discussion of Mac OS X compatibility with Windows Home Server.

I thought there'd be some sort of recent announcement of even better compatibility (maybe something about Time Machine?), but didn't find it in a quick search.

 

[RaGe420]

So with WHS can I add say 6 or more HDDs in it and have it RAID them and keep the data protected???

 

[Knavish]

Originally posted by: RaGe420
So with WHS can I add say 6 or more HDDs in it and have it RAID them and keep the data protected???

I'm also a bit confused about this -- I've tried to do a bit of reading on it. Maybe someone who is running WHS can confirm / deny / clarify these points:

- WHS does not use RAID.

- WHS does keep redundant copies of some of your data (the "Shares" folder). This means that if you lose a disk in your WHS, the server may die and require re-installation, but your redundant data will still exist on another disk.

- WHS doesn't keep redundant copies of ALL the files on your server. For example, it doesn't keep a redundant copy of your client computer backups. (Since these are already backups of other systems on your network, do you really need a redundant copy of a backup?) Like I said above, WHS doesn't keep a redundant copy of it's OS files.

-- WHS has some built-in backup utility that will copy ALL of your user files (Shares, backups, etc) to some external drive.

...Are those all correct?



More questions...

So does this mean that if I install 3x 1TB drives in a WHS box, the amount of useable disk space will vary depending on how much I use for system backups vs. how much I put in my redundant "Shares" directory?

If I was going to use *ALL* of my disk space for Shares, would it would just mirror all my files between my 3 disks leaving me with 1.5 TB of useable space??

 

[JackMDS]

WHS does not support RAID that is constructed of RAID's Mobo chipset.

However if you install a standalone RAID rack or use a PCI controller that does not need Drivers.

Windows Home server would use the RAID section just like it uses any other Drive.

In addition the need for RAID with WHS is questionable since it has its own software RAID like for redundancy.

Our for fathers learned how to forgo Horses and move to Cars, it is time that we should Forgo RAID too.

With the current speed/capacity and price of current top of the line Hard Drive, RAID is Not useful any more in about 90% of the tasks that it was used by End Users Enthusiasts in their systems.

 

[Knavish]

One question I was getting at is: does WHS do more than file mirroring? Meaning, if I use RAID5 with 4x 1TB drives, I'll get 3 TB of useable space. If I use WHS, will I only get 2 TB of space (like RAID1 mirroring)?? How does it work?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Knavish
One question I was getting at is: does WHS do more than file mirroring? Meaning, if I use RAID5 with 4x 1TB drives, I'll get 3 TB of useable space. If I use WHS, will I only get 2 TB of space (like RAID1 mirroring)?? How does it work?

WHS' Folder Redundancy function works like RAID 1 and duplicates entire folders. You'll get 1 TB of storage space from two redundant 1 TB drives. This also means that the ENTIRE files are present in their original form so that, worst case, you can grab them from a hard drive by conventional methods. It's not like RAID 5 where if something goes seriously wrong every single file in the array is lost.

Originally posted by: Knavish

- WHS does not use RAID. --- No. It uses "Drive Extender" technology.

- WHS does keep redundant copies of some of your data (the "Shares" folder). This means that if you lose a disk in your WHS, the server may die and require re-installation, but your redundant data will still exist on another disk. --- Yes.

- WHS doesn't keep redundant copies of ALL the files on your server. For example, it doesn't keep a redundant copy of your client computer backups. (Since these are already backups of other systems on your network, do you really need a redundant copy of a backup?) Like I said above, WHS doesn't keep a redundant copy of it's OS files. --- Yes.

-- WHS has some built-in backup utility that will copy ALL of your user files (Shares, backups, etc) to some external drive. --- WHS (with Power Pack 1 installed) will back up your shared data folders. There's a free third-party add-in (it takes five seconds to install) that will copy your backup database. Or, you can do the copy manually, first turning off the Backup Service and the Drive Lettering Service so that Windows will unlock your backup files.[/B

So does this mean that if I install 3x 1TB drives in a WHS box, the amount of useable disk space will vary depending on how much I use for system backups vs. how much I put in my redundant "Shares" directory? -- Yes. Don't forget that both backups and shares are "single instance storage". Files that are duplicated among serveral PCs (like Windows system files, MS Office, music, or whatever) are only stored once on the WHS.

If I was going to use *ALL* of my disk space for Shares, would it would just mirror all my files between my 3 disks leaving me with 1.5 TB of useable space?? --- Answered at the top of my post.

 

[RaGe420]

So then you are better off with RAID or a drobo if you are looking for more space

For me I have a drobo with 4x1tb drives and 3 external 1tb drives. That makes my total storage of 6tbs.

I would like to through 6 of those drives in a RAID and get it the 5tb space from it


Not sure what to do

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: RaGe420
So then you are better off with RAID or a drobo if you are looking for more space

For me I have a drobo with 4x1tb drives and 3 external 1tb drives. That makes my total storage of 6tbs.

I would like to through 6 of those drives in a RAID and get it the 5tb space from it

How/why did you pick 6 drives and 5 TB? Is it a number based on your knowledge of typical MB-based RAID, or do you just want to re-allocate your existing drives in this way?

Several considerations apply:

1. If you're already looking at 5 TB capacity, you should probably look ahead to more storage.
2. If you have that much data, you should have another array / drive for a full backup of at least the important, original and hard-to-replace data.
3. You can easily go up to an 8-drive storage controller which would handle (1) and typically, incremental capacity expansion up to 7 TB storage.
4. Bigger drives are already available, and might come down further in price in the near future.

 

[RaGe420]

I currently only have about ~4.5tb of data but that is growing

I would like to use the drives I have and be able to expand in the future or swap them out for larger drives.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: RaGe420
I would like to use the drives I have and be able to expand in the future or swap them out for larger drives.

Sorry, I don't have a solution for your data migration short of building another array with new drives, copying the data across, and then reconfiguring the existing drives into another array to be used as a backup.

 

[dmw16]

Thanks for posting this thread. I am looking to do something similar. Lots of good info.

 

[Knavish]

Thanks for the answers. Now I know....and knowing's half the battle!

 

[Penth]

I ran FreeNAS for a while before I switched to WHS. When I copied my files to the FreeNAS box I got about 11MB/s across gigabit. One of the drives in my RAID-5 went down (not a bad drive, just got messed up in the FreeNAS setup.) I was able to restore the files but from that point on I got about 2MB/s transfers to and from the server. It took 4 days to get my data transferred to another system.

Windows Home Server is the easiest server/backup system I've used. One namespace for all your storage (which you can do with DFS but you have to manage disk space) It backs up all my PCs every night, tells me if they haven't been backed up or if there's a problem with any of them, and I get 40MB/s transfer rates and faster. Forget Linux, FreeNAS, RAID-5 and all that other crap. If you have the money to spend on the big hard drives and you've got the data you need protected, just buy WHS, pay for an extra drive and be done with it. You'll never look back.

Oh yeah, and the remote access through yourname.homeserver.com is pretty awesome too.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
http://www.informit.com/articl...spx?p=1021022&seqNum=4 (Read the whole page).

As for RAID, http://www.ezlan.net/WHS.html

very nice.

 

[Knavish]

Originally posted by: Penth

Windows Home Server is the easiest server/backup system I've used. One namespace for all your storage (which you can do with DFS but you have to manage disk space) It backs up all my PCs every night, tells me if they haven't been backed up or if there's a problem with any of them, and I get 40MB/s transfer rates and faster. Forget Linux, FreeNAS, RAID-5 and all that other crap. If you have the money to spend on the big hard drives and you've got the data you need protected, just buy WHS, pay for an extra drive and be done with it. You'll never look back.

Oh yeah, and the remote access through yourname.homeserver.com is pretty awesome too.

BAH! where's the fun in that? If you have the desire to learn / expand your knowledge about linux, this is the perfect opportunity!