NAS appliance or home server
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From: Daniel James on 15 Aug 2008 11:54 I've been meaning, for some time, to provide some sort of storage server for the motley collection of computers -- some Windows and some linux based -- that lurk around here. The primary requirement is that it be able to run headless, and that it support both samba/cfs and NFS from a RAID-1 array (probably 2x750GB SATA), but it'd be nice to be able to do some other things with it too. I'm torn between opting for an easy off-the-shelf NAS solution that may not offer all the facilities that I'd like and setting up an actual server. An actual server has some attractions in that I'd like to run some sort of version control server (probably CVS or svn) on it, and possibly also use it as a distccd server to help with big builds on my linux development box. Neither of these is likely to be available as standard on any NAS appliance. So, I'm toying with four options. 1. A NAS appliance. There are some that support samba and NFS and would meet my minimum requirement. These things generally run low-power CPUs (often ARM or PPC) so run at quite low power, which is good for cost/greenness but makes it harder to customize them. I might possibly, at some later date, play around with running modified firmware (these things mostly run some sort of linux, with a web interface for admin and some sort of bundled backup application) but I don't want to get into trying to cross-compile unfamiliar distros and reflashing unfamiliar hardware (possibly irreversibly) at this stage ... so realistically the NAS appliance route offers me just the minimum requirement. 2. Small format PC -- new build, mini-ITX, or similar -- running either a standard Linux distro or (say) FreeNAS (I don't know of any support for NFS from Windows-based servers). I could easily set up the file server side, and would also be able to set up a VCS server. It wouldn't have the power to be much use as a distccd server, though. There's a nice intel ATOM 1.6GHz mini-ITX board for around �50 (including CPU) that I might use ... but a big problem is that there seems to be a dearth of small cases for this sort of setup -- and those that do exist are expensive. 3. An old PC running linux or FreeNAS (as above). This would give similar power to a SFF box (less than the ATOM -- they're 450MHz PIIIs) so I still wouldn't have much joy with distccd but it would be cheap to set up (I'd just need a SATA controller card and a couple of drives -- the motherboards have on-board SCSI but SCSI drives are nothing like as cost-effective as they used to be). Downside here is that the old boxes I have are big and noisy, and possibly not very economical to run. 4. New full-size PC. I'm thinking of something like a low-end EE AM2 A64X2 with everything on-board in a quiet case and an efficient PSU. This would run linux with samba/cifs and NFS networking and anything else I felt like -- there would be plenty of oomph for distccd. It could easily be quiet enough, but would be big (not as big as my spare PIII boxes) but would use more power -- I'm guessing about 80W idle whereas I'd hope a NAS appliance could manage 20-30W. On the side of the NAS box are: - Ease of setup and use - Small size - Low power consumption - Low noise On the side of a SFF box are: - Flexibility - Small size -- if I can find a small case - Low power consumption (but how low?) - Low noise (I hope) On the side of the old PC are: - Flexibility - Low cost On the side of the new PC build are: - Flexibility - Speed - Low noise TBH I'd really love to reuse one of the PIII boxes because I hate seeing kit that still has life in it lie idle, but they're huge and slow (though good enough for fileserving) and roar like a train ... The energy consumption is an unknown, too. Resolving this quandry would be easier if I knew more <sigh>. Does anyone have hands-on experience of any of the (2-drive) NAS appliances that might help? I know that the relatively cheap Icy-Box NAS4220 supports samba and NFS and RAID1, so that would be a possibility. The Qnap TS-209 Pro also does all this (and has Gbit net) but costs more than twice as much, is it worth it? Do any other 2-drive NAS appliances support NFS out of the box, and can they be recommended? How much power do these NAS boxes actually use? Anyone put a meter on one? I'm guessing about a bit more than 10W for the logic board plus around 7-10W per drive (when spinning). How noisy are they? Do NAS boxes spin their drives down when inactive? Does the delay when they spin back up again cause problems for network clients? The intel ATOM CPU is said to use no more than 4W ... but the spec for the ATOM mini-ITX board quotes power use up to 50+W -- I suppose the supporting circuitry is responsible for that. That seems a lot ... how does it compare with the VIA C7 boards from the likes of VIA and Jetway? The C7 can use IIRC around 7W, but the support circuitry might be more frugal. You can get a fanless 1.2GHz C7 board for not too much more than the ATOM board (which has a fan) ... would that save me power? I really do want to run this thing headless. I know that the NAS appliances come with web apps for setup/admin and can operate without a keyboard or screen (and, indeed, have no means to drive them) ... and I know that I can drive a standard linux distro via shhd once it is set up, but is there a distro that's designed to be installed and run on normal PC kit that has no keyboard or monitor connected? Something that will install from a LiveCD that boots with shhd support, perhaps? I've run out of ports on my KVM switch and I really don't want the hassle of disconnecting one of the other PCs to set this thing up (especially as I managed to break one of the PS/2 connectors last time I did that -- elderly cheap Belkin cable with deteriorating plastic). Sorry to ask so many questions in one post .... any thoughts or comments on any of the above will be gratefully received. Cheers, Daniel.
From: Bernard Peek on 15 Aug 2008 12:18 In message <VA.000014a7.1fa82938(a)nospam.aaisp.org>, Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> writes >2. Small format PC -- new build, mini-ITX, or similar -- running either >a standard Linux distro or (say) FreeNAS (I don't know of any support >for NFS from Windows-based servers). I could easily set up the file >server side, and would also be able to set up a VCS server. It wouldn't >have the power to be much use as a distccd server, though. There's a >nice intel ATOM 1.6GHz mini-ITX board for around �50 (including CPU) >that I might use ... but a big problem is that there seems to be a >dearth of small cases for this sort of setup -- and those that do exist >are expensive. I acquired a mini-ITX board and put it into an old ATX case. There's a lot of fresh air inside the case but that's no real problem. It's got a whisper-quite 170W PSU and with an old disk makes a usable web-server. > >3. An old PC running linux or FreeNAS (as above). This would give >similar power to a SFF box (less than the ATOM -- they're 450MHz PIIIs) >so I still wouldn't have much joy with distccd but it would be cheap to >set up (I'd just need a SATA controller card and a couple of drives -- >the motherboards have on-board SCSI but SCSI drives are nothing like as >cost-effective as they used to be). Downside here is that the old boxes >I have are big and noisy, and possibly not very economical to run. Have you considered recycling a laptop? -- Bernard Peek London, UK. DBA, Manager, Trainer & Author.
From: Bruce Stephens on 15 Aug 2008 12:52 Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> writes: [...] > Does anyone have hands-on experience of any of the (2-drive) NAS > appliances that might help? I know that the relatively cheap Icy-Box > NAS4220 supports samba and NFS and RAID1, so that would be a > possibility. The Qnap TS-209 Pro also does all this (and has Gbit > net) but costs more than twice as much, is it worth it? Do any other > 2-drive NAS appliances support NFS out of the box, and can they be > recommended? No, but I recently bought the 4-slot ReadyNAS NV+, and I believe that's basically like the 2-disk Duo, only more than twice as expensive (the workings of market segmentation, I presume). It feels reassuringly heavy and carefully engineered and (so far, at least) just works. It supports NFS and a bunch of streaming protocols for audio and video files (and images, probably). It's also Linux-based, so with enough fiddling you can probably get lots of things working on it. There's a HOWTO for running a subversion server on it, for example. Sure, it's expensive for what's basically a small wimpy special-purpose machine, but it does seem to do what it's supposed to, and did it straight out of the box. A possibly relevant factor is that many of these devices (even those based on Linux and supporting NFS) for some bizarre reason require a Windows or Mac to configure them. The ReadyNAS range seems to be an unusual exception. [...]
From: Daniel James on 15 Aug 2008 17:03 In article news:<fkyMbbaRxapIFwSK(a)shrdlu.com>, Bernard Peek wrote: > I acquired a mini-ITX board and put it into an old ATX case. There's a > lot of fresh air inside the case but that's no real problem. It's got a > whisper-quite 170W PSU and with an old disk makes a usable web-server. I've got a VIA EPIA M10000 board in a Morex Venus 6... er ... the one before the current 669 model. It was built as a MythTV box but it actually gets used as a spare linux desktop and occasional TV - I never found the time to set up MySQL and MythTV on it. Nor could I ever work out why a PVR application needs an industrial-strength RDBMS ... It certainly has the power to run a simple server apps ... but it really struggles to rebuild its Gentoo system from source when there's been a major upgrade. I think the initial build took about a week, and it can take a day or two to update now even with a 3GHz P4 machine helping with distcc. I don't think using a mini-ITX system as a distcc /server/ will make much impact on compile times on other machines. The Venus case is bigger than I'd want for a server/NAS box, and there's a good bit of fan noise -- from the PSU especially. If I go down the mini-ITX route for the fileserver I'd want to use a fanless CPU in a smaller case with one large slow fan ... and an external PSU brick. > Have you considered recycling a laptop? Yes ... but I don't know of a laptop that can take two 750GB drives ... Cheers, Daniel.
From: Bruce Stephens on 15 Aug 2008 17:36
Daniel James <wastebasket(a)nospam.aaisp.org> writes: > In article news:<87od3ui5kx.fsf(a)cenderis.demon.co.uk>, Bruce Stephens > wrote: >> I recently bought the 4-slot ReadyNAS NV+ > > Netgear? A friend had the earlier/cheaper SC101 and hated it ... The > ReadyNAS is apparently quite different from that, but his experience > makes me cautious. IIUC the ReadyNAS things were developed by Infrant which Netgear bought. So it's quite possible that the ReadyNAS things are entirely different to other storage things sold by Netgear. [...] |