Linux distro for making a NAS box?

paradigm · 20 Sep 2008 at 10:45

Hi guys, I'm looking to make myself a small NAS box out of some hardware I have lying around (looking to hold a few TB), and was wondering which distros to look at, and if there are any paticular RAID cards that anyone would recommend for such a task?

I've heard NASLite mentioned a few times around the interwebs, but is there anything better?

zetec452 · 20 Sep 2008 at 10:48

FreeNas is meant to be OK, but would be limited if you wanted to do anything else with the box.

paradigm · 20 Sep 2008 at 10:57

The box will be doing nothing else, and never will.

Really I'd like it to integrate with my Active Directory (users and security groups), but I realise that this is pretty unlikely.

zetec452 · 20 Sep 2008 at 10:59

FreeNAS has an active directory bit to it, may be worth trying.

http://www.freenas.org/

paradigm · 20 Sep 2008 at 11:11

Hmm, liking the look of openfiler now. Does anyone have experience of it?

dave-lew99 · 20 Sep 2008 at 12:30

Any OS would work - but i guess you want a nice easy to use webgui to configure.

Personally i use Solaris with a Supermicro 8 port SATAII raid card and then use Solaris' ZFS/Z-RAID - which does have a web gui, it is a bit more work to integrate into AD though.

DRZ · 22 Sep 2008 at 10:43

Dont use FreeNAS or openfiler, they are "fine" for average users but the second you need to do anything slightly outside the box you are completely screwed. Too many times have I seen boxes like that crap out and lead to hours of grief because they don't have the toolset to let you fix them.

CentOS + Cifs