[XCSSA] NAS the VIA EPIA way

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

Sounds like the makings for an interesting presentation Tim. :)
Some folks on SATLUG are curious in seeing a presentation on this too.

Just curious.. What hot swap backplane hardware are you using?
Any other hardware redundancy? (PSUs, UPS, NICs, etc)

Tweeks

On Wednesday 24 June 2009, X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio wrote:
> I thought I'd update everyone with the ongoing saga of my NAS project.
> I opted to go with a fanless VIA EPIA (SN10000EG) motherboard. The one
> I got, while a bit expensive, has 4 SATA ports, a CF slot, and a full-
> size PCIe slot (although I believe that is shared with the GigE port).
> It took some work, and in fact, I had to re-install Ubuntu (a few
> times), but I finally got everything up and running on a 4GB CF card.
> I'm a bit worried about writes to the CF and I plan on doing some
> initrd trickery but for now I just have certain key directories (such
> as /var/log and /tmp) mounted on a tmpfs.
>
> Anyhoo the important part is this:
>
> root at filedawg:~# cat /proc/mdstat
> Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5]
> [raid4] [raid10]
> md0 : active raid1 sdb1[2] sda1[0]
>        976759936 blocks [2/1] [U_]
>        [===>.................]  recovery = 19.2% (188427328/976759936)
> finish=185.7min speed=70732K/sec
>
> unused devices: <none>
>
> *MUCH* better than the 2MB/sec I was getting previously. The Seagate
> Barracuda LP drives are turning out to be pretty nice too. They are
> super quiet and, even with the RAID rebuild going on, are running at
> 28C (assuming 'smartctl' is reporting that correctly).
>
> Apart from the initrd stuff noted above, I still need to find a
> smaller PSU (for greater efficiency and lower noise - maybe even use a
> picoPSU), I need to figure out why the CPU scaling stuff isn't working
> as well, and re-setup all the shares along with mDNS etc.
>
> I'm pretty happy with the setup though. There's no doubt that using
> something more off the shelf (such as something from qNap, Buffalo,
> etc.) would have taken a lot less time, but would have also been less
> fun :)
>
> I can't remember who was looking for a hardware RAID controller, but
> it looks like I have no further use for mine. If anyone wants it
> lemmie know. I bought it for pretty cheap and I'm willing to part with
> it for cheaper so name your price. It's a bit older (LSI SATA-150) but
> it's a 6 port, and has a battery on board. I'll also have 2 or 3 extra
> 160GB drives if anyone wants those. I am going to use one of them more
> than likely for my Windows PC so I can setup a RAID1 on it as well (it
> already has a 160GB drive that I'm hoping is close enough that I can
> clone to one of the others).
>
> Werd,
>
> Tim S.
>
>
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