[XCSSA] NAS the VIA EPIA way

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

No backplane just yet, but that's my ultimate plan. That will probably  
happen after a new case. I'm running it in an Antec tower case at the  
moment and I'm deciding on if I want to keep that or move to something  
else. The thing is so big, and now mostly empty, that I'm not sure the  
airflow is really ideal. I will say that the ITX motherboard fit  
without issues - there were conflicting reports I found online about  
whether or not ITX is truly compatible with ATX. There's probably  
cases out there that won't house an ITX board, but this one worked  
without issue. Looks funky to see such a small board on the huge  
motherboard plate though :)

My thought also was to see how much power draw my DSL gateway, Linksys  
router, and GigE switch all consume. If it's 5 or 12V I may see if I  
can tap into the PSU on the machine since it's not even being close to  
taxed with all the new low power goods. I probably won't be able to do  
that if I go to a PicoPSU, though *shrug*

A UPS is hooked up to it, but mostly for the surge protection more  
than anything else. It's not the end of the world if the NAS goes down  
for a period of time, at least at the moment.

I'd be happy to give a presentation on it. When's the next meeting?  
Seems like I'm always busy on Mondays lately but I can do my best to  
make it this time around. Unfortunately, I don't have my synth  
finished yet but I'm hoping to put some work into it this weekend.

Tim




On Jun 24, 2009, at 1:13 PM, X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio  
wrote:

> 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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