[geeks] NAS storage opinions and bitching wanted

[Phil Brutsche]

Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> If I build my own server, is there any software like that I could get to
> run on it? ...preferrably for NetBSD or FreeBSD? If I can avoid the work
> of doing it myself, that would be nice. Not necessary, but very nice.

FreeNAS (http://www.freenas.org/)

OpenFiler (http://www.openfiler.com/)

I wasn't impressed with FreeNAS the last time I used it but that was
over a year ago, haven't played with OpenFiler.

> Here are the requirements:
> 
> 	- at least two internal drives with RAID 1
> 	- at least 500GB
> 	- the ability to serve files from two external USB drives
> 	- a print server would be a nice bonus
> 	- needs to serve NFS, SMB at a minimum, ftp, svn, rsync would
> 	  also be nice
> 	- would be nice if it could initiate rsync backups to client
> 	  machines, which implies ssh support and rsync
> 
> The last requirements almost makes it look like a PC server is a
> requirement, but I'm open to knowledge of NAS boxes that can have
> those features added.

The fifth and sixth bullet points will either require you to build it
yourself or buy a hackable unit, 99.9999% of the boxes in your price
range only support SMB/CIFS, FTP and HTTP.

When the manufacturer says "works with Linux and Mac" they *don't* mean
NFS or AFP ;)

> What I've found so far:
> 
> Iomega makes a 4-drive RAID5 box running Linux that appears to do what I
> want. I know zip about them. They also have units that run Windows 2003,
> and I want to avoid those.  Anyone run a 150D or anything like that?

The ones that run 2003 are outside of your price range and are just
glorified PCs anyways.

> D-Link DSC-323. Two drives, two USB ports, and seems to have a bit of a
> cult following with hacks to its Linux based system. Doesn't seem to be
> able to run cron jobs or rsnapshot. Only two USB ports.  

Did you mean the DNS-323?

If you don't mind a little extra work you can run Debian on it in a chroot:

http://wiki.dns323.info/howto:chroot_debian

> Hammer: this is another two-drive unit that supports more network
> filesystems out of the box than the D-Link.  I know one person who has
> one that likes it.

Haven't heard of those before, I'll have to keep those in mind; they
look like sweet boxes.

As sweet as they may be, if you can't hack it to provide subversion or
rsync...

> So far most of the rest that I see either doesn't meet my requirements,
> or they start getting really expensive.

It happens a lot to people who need a feature set well beyond what the
majority of low-end NAS users require, which is SMB/CIFS and FTP.

> Building the PC server would probably cost more, but would of course be
> more flexible.

It's either that or get a hackable system like the Dlink DNS-323...

-- 

Phil Brutsche
phil at tux.obix.com