NAS to proper SERVER?

meridimus

meridimus

meridimus

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Joined
11 Mar 2007
Posts
41
Hey guys!

My NAS 4220-B (ICY BOX) just died on me, the hard drives work fine, just somewhere along the line it's killed itself. I will send it to Germany RMA but in the mean time, I can either buy another NAS _OR_ spend equivalent money getting a server.

The server route is particularly attractive since I have a brand new Antec 380 Earth watts, core2duo (1.8ghz), Intel mATX mobo, 1gb ddr2 and a 40gb SataII drive to use for the OS just sitting here doing nothing.

All I really need is a case, a RAID card and a gigabit ethernet card?

My question is whether it's advisable to go down the server route? And if so, what will I need? — I'm thinking a linux flavour (Ubuntu?) that's going to let me run some ext3 shares (osx and vista compatible) in raid-mirror over the network. But I have no idea how to set this up, especially with user groups etc so would be nice to get some advice.

Another thing to note — It won't be public to the internet, it will sit behind a firewall and I think I will incrementally backup to a remote server every night with rSync.

Feel free to add to/answer any particular question or ask further questions.


Thanks guys!
 
I've been looking at home server software, and narrowed it down to freenas, ubuntu server and windows home server. I've decided to go with whs, looks worth the price tag
 
meridimus said:
All I really need is a case, a RAID card and a gigabit ethernet card?
Click to expand...

If that's all you need, build a server. It will be more expandable than a NAS and will be cheaper in the long run.

This thread has only been here 2.5 hours and also during the day when most people are at work/school/college etc. Have a little patience.
 
Thanks for that, I ended u ordering a small lian-li case, some thermal paste and surge protectors from OCers. Gigabit ethernet card off ebay, adaptec 4 x SATAII raid controller off ebay too because OC were out of stock.

Also, I've gone with the beta of ubuntu 9.04 (the final comes in 9 days, it's almost production ready with auto-update). I'll post in here what I decide to do and use for my LAMP environment and how to set-up RAID environment in Ubuntu once I work it out myself.
 
gah dont use auto update mate, how you going to trouble shoot if it auto updates and breaks?

I have also setup a home server last couple of weeks, tried Freenas, its awesome but obviously somewhat limited for software cos its a NAS.

Went with ubuntu server for now - using rtorrent over ssh with a watch folder & scheduled download limiter, sabnzbd with rss tv series support, samba, nfs and mediatomb for ps3 streaming. Also need to setup a print server at somepoint.

I also thikn ubuntu auto-detects raid, and/or gives you options to install software raid. I don't know much on this as I dont run raid. Risky I know but my mate has the same files as me so i can get them back if a hdd dies.
 
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Just built my server to replace my NAS, its also going to be a DHCP and DNS as well. If your just using it as a NAS check of FreeNAS for the OS!
 
If you have parts lying around it's usually cheaper to make your own server, plus it's so much more versatile.

As the OP noted, he only needed a raid card and a case, as the rest was salvageable from old kit. Now he has a server with all the functionality of a NAS, and the option to use it for other things too :-)
 
Is there a way to run a freeNAS type program within a folder within Windows maybe as a service? I must admit I have had a go of Ubuntu (you have to say it in the Big Bother Geordie voice) but was hard to get to terms with.
 
yup it has 4 ports and each port can control 4 drives, thus giving it 16 drives in total.

Think the same company do one that will allow up to 24 drives, so if you had one of the latest gigabyte motherboards, you could get up to 34 hard drives if you find a case big enough to take them

I have a 4 port sata card connected to motherboard, as that gives me 10 hard drives in total using 6 sata connections off motherboard,
 
no worries, I dont have the multi port solution, mine only has 4 ports for 4 devices, but I would guess from the description of the way it describes the connector as being "multi lane" that it will be either similar to the old fashioned IDE cables, and thus have 4 connectors on one cable, so one end connects to the port on the sata card, and then you have 4 connections to attach to hard drives. Thus with a 4 port muti-lane card you would then be able to attach 16 sata devices
 
07125605219l.jpg


Something like that matthewhotdude
 
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