Building my own NAS

[lip]

Hi guys,
Looking for some recommendations for components to build by own NAS.
I'm a total newbie with this but have built pc's before. My issue is that the pre-built units seem to be priced extremely high for the performance you get.

I plan on having eventually 4 1TB drives.

I would also like some suggestions on the software to use. I don't like the windows nas solution. I'm thinking of a linux box or freenas but I'm not sure they are compatible with a newbie.

I have a desktop pc, htpc, several laptops...gigabit speed. I'm looking primarily to store all files, documents, mp3's, pics, movies on this unit and not on the various computers.

What I'm looking for is:
- small case (Chenbro type but reasonably priced)
- intel based system
- integrated graphics
- RAID build in
- relatively low cost
- software should allow remote web access and many of the features that most of the nas units have (linux solution?)

Thanks.
LIP

 

[lip]

Hi,
Would this be a good MB (AMD though):
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=30471

LIP

 

[Madwand]

Spend some time deciding on the OS and the motherboard. Check that the OS has support for the motherboard and chipset.

For Intel-specific builds, I suggest Q-series chipsets. E.g. the Q45 Asus P5Q-EM DO.

Note that for *nix builds, the on-board RAID is not important -- it's generally better to use OS RAID. The situation is reversed for Windows builds -- the OS RAID performs very poorly, so on-board or add-on RAID is the way to go.

 

[lip]

Hi,
The below is what I will go with I think with freenas. What do you think?

Thanks,
LIP

Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2 AMD740G mATX AM2+/AM3 1PCI-EX 2PCI SATA2 RAID VGA Sound GLAN DVI Motherboard
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=30471

AMD Processor 4850e
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=29852&vpn=ADH4850DOBOX&manufacture=AMD

PS-Sparkle 400W
http://forums.ncix.com/forums/index..._id=17076&msgcount=7&overclockid=0#msg1735755

Corsair memory-
Corsair VS1GSDS800D2 PC2-6400 1GB 1X1GB DDR2-800 200PIN SODIMM Memory
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=37151

Seagate HD (Not sure about this choice)
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php? ... omoid=1065

Antec mini-P180 Case
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=28613&vpn=Mini P180&manufacture=Antec

 

[lip]

Hi,
I pulled the trigger on the above except that the memory was the wrong type and I also went with WD green drives.
I'm going to try my hand with freenas (new beta version as the 0.69 doesn't support the integrated NIC on the giga motherboard).

LIP

 

[Jay_S]

I don't think FreeNAS will benefit from the extra power of the 4850E over the 4050E. In fact, I'm not sure how multi-threaded it is. As far as I know, you can't monitor CPU load on each core independantly - you just get a single CPU load figure/graph.

As you already know, the on-board Realtek 8111C gigabit NIC is *NOT* supported by default in the current stable release (0.69) of FreeNAS. You can add the driver, but it takes some work. See this thread on the FreeNAS forums for more detail:
http://apps.sourceforge.net/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=192

The nightly pre-release 0.7 versions DO support the 8111C. They also offer the option of using the ZFS file system, which is amazing. But, if you need services like SlimNAS (which I do) you can't use the 0.7 release. Or the 64-bit release. Sheesh.

I have the same motherboard on order right now (should arrive today!). If I can't get the on-board NIC working, I have an Intel gigabit PCI NIC that I can use in it.

I'm currently testing FreeNAS 0.69 on an 800MHz pentium 3 w/on-board 3com 100Mb NIC. I had it up and running in like 5 minutes - FreeNAS is incredibly easy to use. It was truly a breath of fresh air after fighting with solaris/opensolaris for a week. My test machine can't boot from USB, so I boot from CD. With a single Seagate 7200 rpm 200GB IDE drive & 512MB PC133 ram, it idles at 24W - that's awesome! While booting and reading from the CD-ROM, power consumption peaks around 60W. These are my target power figures for my new server, which will be based on the GA-MA74GM-S2 + AMD 4050E + several WD10EADS "green" drives.

In the end, I'll probably be forced to skip FreeNAS completely because I'll have to make too many compromises to use it. Yes, it is VERY easy to set up and administer. But its simplicity comes at the expense of flexibility. I'll probably end up back on Ubuntu server until FreeNAS 0.7 amd64 is stable and supports SlimNAS / SqueezeCenter.