[XCSSA] Recommendations for a SAMBA/NAS device?

Thu May 21 08:14:54 CDT 2009

If you're lazy and can afford it (as these are a bit pricey):

http://drobo.com/ (need the NAS add-on)
http://qnap.com/
http://www.buffalotech.com/home/

That first one blew my mind, though I think it's just RAID + LVM +  
cleverness + magic. I dunno though. Sure is convenient (watch the  
video if you want to have your mind blown). It's really pricey though  
with the NAS option.
That last one has an open source hack you can drop in (and I think has  
a generic version as well). Check Wikipedia for that. The top 2 both  
run a type of Linux. I think the stuff from QNap is even Debian Linux.

Now if you want to throw down on your own, check out logicsupply.com.  
They have tons low-power motherboards (mostly ITX), some with their  
own CF slot on-board. They also offer specialized cases, including for  
NAS use. I like these guys because of their VIA selection - they have  
plenty of passively cooled motherboards with plenty of SATA ports for  
RAID (in this case, software RAID is probably all you need, but don't  
forget to add on LVM - see below) also with CF Cards and Gigabit  
Ethernet. They aren't the cheapest but their select beats the crap out  
of NewEgg's for these type of boards.

Otherwise, I just have been making a list on NewEgg. NewEgg also has  
some off-the-shelf NAS units (such as the ones I mentioned above).

Now, to elaborate a bit on power, most of the off-the-shelf NAS units  
that run Linux are running ARM, which is very low power and reasonably  
performing. If you want to replicate all the features of a NAS (which  
could include basis web-browsing / web-development) then a VIA C3, C7,  
or Nano would be plenty. You can get an Intel Atom too but I think  
Intel is late to the party on these things (and I'm tired of their  
copy-cat like mentality and their general dominance). All of these  
chips run at around 1Ghz or so, which is plenty for a NAS even with  
web-services and/or a firewall. And we're talking 5-10W at full blast.  
In fact, Nano (and I think Atom) are 64-bit capable, though that seems  
a bit of overkill for a NAS - you won't need more than 1GB of RAM  
unless you plan on doing something else with it.

Now all these are x86 boards. I haven't found any ITX (or ATX, for  
that matter) motherboard with an ARM or MIPS chip that wouldn't cost  
me like $1000. *shrug* Kinda sucks but oh well.

As for RAID. I currently have an LSI MegaRAID and it's pretty hot, but  
I realized that for a home NAS, it's not really necessary. In fact,  
Linux software RAID is really awesome. Sure, you might loose some  
performance in certain cases, but if you don't have a battery on your  
RAID controller, you should be using write-through cache, and your  
write performance isn't boosted anyway. Plus, if we're talking about a  
RAID5, you shouldn't be expecting amazing speed anyway. And Linux  
Software RAID can be tied to, say, e-mail alerting, so you can get e- 
mails instead of annoying beeps when a drive dies.

In fact, I'm putting my money where my mouth is - when I build my NAS,  
I don't think I'm going to use the RAID card. In fact, if you are  
stuck on hardware RAID, I'd be happy to sell it to you for a  
reasonable price. That said, I haven't yet migrated my stuff off it  
yet and that is still probably a few months away.

You could use RAID5 and stop there because software RAID lets you  
extend that space. That's dangerous, yes, but it can be done online  
and I am much more comfortable with a command-line utility than a  
crazy RAID BIOS. Point is, you could pop in a drive, partition it, add  
it to the RAID5, and then grow your file-system (resize2fs if you are  
using ext3 - XFS has tools to do it as well - note in later versions  
of Linux this can also be done online).

But I wouldn't stop there. Instead, also consider LVM. When you aren't  
using it for snapshotting, the performance penalty of LVM is like 1%  
(that is a number with a real benchmark behind it, although it was  
MySQL-centric). The benefits are HUGE though. If you want to migrate  
to a bigger RAID5, but do not want to add drives to the existing  
RAID5, all you do is build the new one, plop LVM on it, and then tell  
LVM to stop using your current RAID5 and move everything to your new  
RAID5. Then resize your file-system. That's it. All while being  
totally online. No rsync's needed! Similarly, if you just want to add  
more space instead of replacing it, you can do that too.

Now is all this is super-new, my suggestion would be to find a Linux  
distro that has this baked in. I hate to say it, but I've been taking  
the RHCE and I have to admit that Red-Hat has this stuff fairly  
squared away. So consider CentOS. When I build mine, however, I'm  
going Ubuntu with a distant possibility of using FreeBSD. For now,  
though, my current box runs Gentoo.

I $&%^ing hate that distro. It's like being married to a super-model,  
thinking she loves you and being naive that she will never cheat on  
you. But then, BAM! There's her and your mailman knocking boots after  
you came home from work. Not even home early. Just home at your  
regular time. And like you're angry and sad and all torn up  
emotionality, but then you keep coming back because you're lame and  
she's a super-model.

That's Gentoo in a nutshell. Moving on ...

You could also look at NAS-centric stuff, like FreeNAS (Runs FreeBSD)  
or OpenFilter (runs Linux, dunno which flavor). They have, I believe,  
tools to help you manage things like RAID and LVM (though I have no  
idea how they do that on FreeBSD - I assume using ZFS).

If I can ever make it to a meeting again, I'd be happy to show off my  
new found RHCE (training, I don't have the cert yet :P) skills and  
bust a demo of this stuff in action. I should be able to use our  
current MySQL test box from work for this purpose - I don't think  
anyone would mind. I think I could even do it in a VM.

Wow. Well that make me so excited I'm not late for work :) Ooops :)

Tim S.

On May 20, 2009, at 10:32 PM, X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio  
wrote:

> Hello everyone.
>
> I'm trying to solve a major power issue at the house and am hoping
> that someone can shed some of their energy managment insight.
>
> I've been using Zeus (my main gaming rig) as my fileserver now for a
> while but am wantnig to see what I can do about cutting down on my
> power usage.  Zeus is an Athlon64 running at about 3GHz with a total
> of 7 drives in it and a handful of other peripherals. The problem is
> that four of those drives are SATA 750GB drives and are hanging off of
> a Promise FastTrack TX130 RAID controller and the array is about 2TB
> and has pretty much everything on it concerning projects, documents,
> code, apps, etc. and is very important to have always available.
>
> The problem I'm wanting to solve is how can I minimize power usage but
> still keep the array available?  I've pondered being able to seperate
> the drive array from the machine, but I'd have to have a machine to
> put it into and then I'd be back to the same problem again.
>
> My thinking is that a low-powered machine, like an embedded system
> would do it nicely, but I want to make every effort I can to insure
> that the machine is as low-power as possible, and that the data on the
> array is preserved. I am thinking something like the Linksys NSLU2,
> but with one PCI slot instead of two USB ports, running off of flash
> or a laptop HDD in a Linux environment.
>
> I've done some research into an embedded systems and was impressed
> with the Shuttle and VIA boards.  Something like that might prove
> ideal but I have never used one.  I have an Artigo pico-ITX board but
> it is very underpowered, I don't want to run into a similar situation
> with this project.
>
> With that in mind, I'm looking for suggestions both from a hardware
> level and from a software level.
>
> On the hardware side, I want a case that has three forward facing 5.25
> drives (the SATA drive cage I have occupies three bays) and some place
> to mount a laptop HDD (or if a flash drive is used, this requirement
> is mitigated).
>
> The hardware must haves:
> - 10/100 Ethernet wired.  (GigE is a Nice-to-have, but not required)
> - One PCI slot (PCI-64bit is not needed)
> - One IDE port or Flash disk capable of a 4GB microdrive or similar
> sized CF card.
> - Power Supply that won't crap out on me in a year that can be easily
> field-replaced and can drive all components. (No fifty thousand power
> bricks and don't want another "e-machines" power supply)
> - Processor that is not massively overpowered, but not horribly
> underpowered either. Want to be able to run LAMP and SAMBA and support
> multiple concurrent users without issue. (Believe it or not, Windows
> works without issue in it's current configuration.)
> - Must have adequate cooling but not sound like a jet engine.  (Don't
> want it louder than a Compaq DL380 :P )
>
> On the software side, must haves
> - Linux platform, with modular installation/removal. (Like apt-get,
> but recently got stung by Ubuntu so not too sure on software updates.)
> - SSH, Samba, Apache, NTP
> - Hardware support for the FastTrack TX430 is a _MUST_  I can't afford
> another RAID card and besides, where am I going to stash a TB of data
> for the conversion?
>
> Nice-to-haves (both hardware and software)
> - Really don't want another desktop or server case around the house,
> something smaller is nice
> - A Web-based administration console like the NSLU2 or similar.
>
> What do you guys recommend? What are your experiences with home-NAS
> solutions?  What issues did you encounter and what did you do to fix
> them?
>
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> FIRESTORM_v1
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