Topic: Recommendations for Media Server / NAS

[tapeworm48]

Looking for recommendations for being able to backup my media at home.  My current setup and my requirements for the NAS or Media Server, etc.

Current:
- 2004 Dell Desktop (used to run Squeezebox and iTunes; dumping DAT transfers on here too)
- 2009 HP Desktop (day-to-day stuff)
- Dell Laptop (work)
- WD 500gb MyBook (hooked up to the Dell desktop - currently used for backup)

Requirements:
- mainly to backup all of my Masters and FLAC files
- single location for FLACs, iTunes files, pictures, documents
- remote access - mainly to play FLACs, sharing pictures, and organization
- simple to use/setup
- auto backup scheduling
- run squeezebox server, iTunes server, and mild torrenting (these are all nice-to-haves; can always continue to run off the dell)
- Plan to run all other programs locally

I'm guessing I need something with two drives, in case one of them fails.  Is this right?  Any better ideas?  As for budget, I'll see that I would like to keep it under $400 but I'm not married to that number. 

Here are some of the options that have been thrown at me:

Synology:  http://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS209/dp/B00275G0LO/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1289921391&sr=8-13

Iomega:  http://www.amazon.com/Iomega-Network-Attached-Storage-34337/dp/B001OC5JM2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1289923579&sr=8-3

HP MediaServer:  http://www.amazon.com/HP-Network-Attached-Storage-mv2120/dp/B0015313O8/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1289923614&sr=1-10

Open to other suggestions.  Thanks in advance.

[OFOTD]

Without doubt I would recommend one of HP's Windows Home Server products.

Here is the HP MediaSmart EX490 that you can get for < $450 shipped.   It comes with a 1TB drive and has two more expansion slots for future drives.  Because its running WHS it also allows to to introduce external USB and eSATA drives to add to your storage pool.   

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859105562&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Server+-+Systems-_-Hewlett-Packard-_-59105562

The box is headless (no monitor, keyboard or mouse needed).  As long as you have either a wired or wireless network you are good to go.  Stick the thing in a closet if you need to.   The box will back up any and all of your computers.  It allows you to access any of your content from the web.  It has hundreds of free plugins available to do a variety of functions like BitTorrent, media streaming, home automation, etc.

This post is obviously the very short plug for the product but I run WHS at home and absolutely love it.  www.wegotserved.com is a pretty good user created site with lots of info as well as lots and lots of plugins.

 

[OFOTD]

Newegg has an Acer Aspire Easystore WHS box on sale for $399 today.  Includes a 2TB drive and three additional drive bays.   Petty damn good deal.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859321014&cm_mmc=BlkNovLP_List-_-386-_-N82E16859321014&nm_mc=BlkNovLP_List

[tapeworm48]

Thanks man for the recommendations and links. 

Do you find WHS pretty stable and easy to use?  I'm no PC wiz so I'm hoping there aren't too many headaches.

Also, have you been able to setup and use the remote access feature?  I'd like to be able to playback FLACs and iTunes files on my work laptop in the office.

Thanks.

[OFOTD]

I have really had extremely positive experiences with WHS.   Extremely stable and really set it up once and forget about it.  Initial setup takes about 20 minutes from start to finish.

The remote access feature is something that I use almost daily.    One of the features that WHS provides is a direct web address for your WHS.  Something like insertnamehere.homeserver.com   Full access to your Server folders.  Additionally there are many add-ins to allow all sorts of streaming be it audio or video.

Here is a screen cap of the WHS interface of my server with the Shared Folders tab selected.  You can manually select which of these folders are accessible, by whom and how (local intranet or on the internet).


 
The folders with the greenish icons allow DLNA complaint devices access the content of those folders.   Many Blu-Ray players, gaming systems and the like allow DLNA streaming.   Cool shit!

[rePat]

If you don't want to pay the M$ tax with WHS, here is a great alternative.  Full disclosure: I am part of the core team of this Open Source Project, so of course I'm biased  .  I have used Amahi for 2+ years.  And did I mention, It's Free!

http://amahi.org   The Amahi Home Server is based on Fedora 12 , but don't let that scare you off if you are not a linux user.  Amahi comes with most things preconfigured (like shares for Music, Movies, etc), so you don't have to mess with all those config files (unless you want to).  Hardware requirements are reasonable, I run mine on an Atom 330 with 2GB RAM and 1TB HDD.  Amahi has one of the largest App stores of its kind, with all types of Open Source software packaged for One click Install.  I'll list just a few that are in your requirements:

CrashPlan for backing up all PC's on your network.
Coming soon: Redo Backup and Clonezilla for bare metal backups.

Amahitunes: an iTunes server based on the Firefly Media Server
Jinzora another media server
Squeezbox Server
OpenVPN: preconfigured out of the box, also an easy to use Windows client.
Transmission One click install for torrenting, web based interface
Torrentflux B4rt Another web based Torrent software
Edit:  forgot to mention DLNA

DLNA Server based on miniDLNA so you can stream media to XBox and other devices

I'm not much of an iTunes fan, so I just point Foobar 2000 on my Windows machine to the Share where my Flac's are and stream away right over the network.

I do the same with Movies, via XBMC on my HTPC.

For more info check out the site.  There is also an IRC channel on Freenode #amahi, or http://talk.amahi.org

Also feel free to PM me with any questions.

Good luck,

Pat

[OFOTD]

Where you see a/the Microsoft tax on a sub $400 server?

[Simp-Dawg]

i'm also looking for something similar...wondering what the microsoft "tax" might be in reference to as well...are you just saying that because by default, if you buy one of the WHS boxes, you're paying something for the m$ os?  or is there some sort of maintenance fee that would be required with that?  or just that m$ comes with a reputation and may not be the best choice for this purpose?

i'm inclined to side with open source as well, especially since i work in the industry, though for the low costs those WHS boxes are going for, it's somewhat tempting to go with a commercial solution.  granted, i'd expect there will be tweaking required for any setup, just that with m$ at least it's a little more familiar (to me) than a linux based system.

that said, i have heard of amahi before and think it's very cool that you're on the team!  big kudos for being part of the effort!

by the way, here's what i want to do, and i've been debating whether to buy, build, or cobble together something with a combination of something like a pogoplug and several hard drives...

backup of windows and mac machines
storage of lots of music
streaming capability (subsonic is what i would likely use with my android phone)
connectivity with xbox
vpn (maybe?)
central itunes library (this is pretty important, i'm sick of manually syncing up my libraries over the wonky itunes home sharing feature - it only works sometimes for me)

[OFOTD]

Here's yet another Acer WHS box on sale for CHEAP on newegg at $339.  Four bays and an included 2TB drive.     

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859321014

Seriously a steal of a deal for just the hardware alone.


Simp - All of the features you listed that you wanted are all easy to setup and maintain on WHS.  As far as the need to tweak there are no config files on the WHS box as everything is configurable via a simple GUI.   WHS is based on Server 2003 btw. 

[rePat]

i'm also looking for something similar...wondering what the microsoft "tax" might be in reference to as well...are you just saying that because by default, if you buy one of the WHS boxes, you're paying something for the m$ os?  or is there some sort of maintenance fee that would be required with that?  or just that m$ comes with a reputation and may not be the best choice for this purpose?

i'm inclined to side with open source as well, especially since i work in the industry, though for the low costs those WHS boxes are going for, it's somewhat tempting to go with a commercial solution.  granted, i'd expect there will be tweaking required for any setup, just that with m$ at least it's a little more familiar (to me) than a linux based system.

that said, i have heard of amahi before and think it's very cool that you're on the team!  big kudos for being part of the effort!

by the way, here's what i want to do, and i've been debating whether to buy, build, or cobble together something with a combination of something like a pogoplug and several hard drives...

backup of windows and mac machines
storage of lots of music
streaming capability (subsonic is what i would likely use with my android phone)
connectivity with xbox
vpn (maybe?)
central itunes library (this is pretty important, i'm sick of manually syncing up my libraries over the wonky itunes home sharing feature - it only works sometimes for me)

Thanks Simp Dawg, it is a pretty cool project and the people are great.  There is a Plug computer edition as well http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Amahi_Plug_Edition

I have it running on a Seagate Dockstar, but it is slow due to limited memory (128MB).  As far as the M$ tax, I was referring to the fact that M$ is not known for giving stuff away, so you are paying for it, even in a sub $400 server.  I guess at that price point it would be easy enough to try them both.   I used one of these cheap 1U Atom servers  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101262&cm_re=supermicro_atom-_-16-101-262-_-Product

Pat

[phanophish]

If you don't want to pay the M$ tax with WHS, here is a great alternative.  Full disclosure: I am part of the core team of this Open Source Project, so of course I'm biased  .  I have used Amahi for 2+ years.  And did I mention, It's Free!

http://amahi.org   The Amahi Home Server is based on Fedora 12 , but don't let that scare you off if you are not a linux user.  Amahi comes with most things preconfigured (like shares for Music, Movies, etc), so you don't have to mess with all those config files (unless you want to).  Hardware requirements are reasonable, I run mine on an Atom 330 with 2GB RAM and 1TB HDD.  Amahi has one of the largest App stores of its kind, with all types of Open Source software packaged for One click Install.  I'll list just a few that are in your requirements:

CrashPlan for backing up all PC's on your network.
Coming soon: Redo Backup and Clonezilla for bare metal backups.

Amahitunes: an iTunes server based on the Firefly Media Server
Jinzora another media server
Squeezbox Server
OpenVPN: preconfigured out of the box, also an easy to use Windows client.
Transmission One click install for torrenting, web based interface
Torrentflux B4rt Another web based Torrent software
Edit:  forgot to mention DLNA

DLNA Server based on miniDLNA so you can stream media to XBox and other devices

I'm not much of an iTunes fan, so I just point Foobar 2000 on my Windows machine to the Share where my Flac's are and stream away right over the network.

I do the same with Movies, via XBMC on my HTPC.

For more info check out the site.  There is also an IRC channel on Freenode #amahi, or http://talk.amahi.org

Also feel free to PM me with any questions.

Good luck,

Pat

Pat,  Checked out the site and it looks like a very cool project.

I had a few questions that I can't find answers to on the site...

How are storage volumes managed?  Is there RAID of some sort for the underlying data beyond manual management using Linux?  I'm really looking for a NAS type device that I can easily and dynamically add storage to while maintaining some form of redundancy to insulate me from a single drive failure.   I currently use a Drobo and am bumping up against the 2TB volume size limit.  Is this a good fit for Amahi?

 

[rePat]

Pat,  Checked out the site and it looks like a very cool project.

I had a few questions that I can't find answers to on the site...

How are storage volumes managed?  Is there RAID of some sort for the underlying data beyond manual management using Linux?  I'm really looking for a NAS type device that I can easily and dynamically add storage to while maintaining some form of redundancy to insulate me from a single drive failure.   I currently use a Drobo and am bumping up against the 2TB volume size limit.  Is this a good fit for Amahi?

Thanks for the interest phanophish.  Amahi does have a Storage Pooling feature called Greyhole, that allows you to replicate files.  It uses Samba in a JBOD type setup.  Here are two links with more detail.

http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php?title=Greyhole

http://code.google.com/p/greyhole/

Hope this helps, let me know if you have more questions.

Pat

[rjp]

Another NAS solution worth looking into: FreeNAS is a FreeBSD-based system that runs from a USB stick and has a web-based admin interface. Among other things, it supports the ZFS file system, which provides RAID functionality, better data integrity than traditional file systems, and snapshotting capability.

[phanophish]

Another NAS solution worth looking into: FreeNAS is a FreeBSD-based system that runs from a USB stick and has a web-based admin interface. Among other things, it supports the ZFS file system, which provides RAID functionality, better data integrity than traditional file systems, and snapshotting capability.

I love the idea of FreeNAS, but I guess I'm a little concerned with the questions surrounding the future of FreeBSD.  Seems like a lot is up in the air regarding the future.  Maybe I'm looking too far down the road.   

[Simp-Dawg]

anyone ever use something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101095&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3705318&SID=skim1043X499650 for their server?  thinking about getting one and putting amahi on it...

[rastasean]

wow that amahi looks really cool!

Recently I've been seeing all kinds of dell, HP, sun servers on craigs list for incredible prices. It would be cool to pick one of them up and install something like the amahi on it and/or some other server software. the shuttle is nice but it seems like a netbook without a monitor.

[phanophish]

anyone ever use something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101095&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3705318&SID=skim1043X499650 for their server?  thinking about getting one and putting amahi on it...

My concern with something like that would be expandability.  With the explosion in digital media I already have terrabytes of audio, photos and video is really starting to take off storage needs are ony going to increase.  I've been eyeing something like this with FreeNAS or Amahi....

http://cgi.ebay.com/3U-Supermicro-X5DPE-G2-Storage-Server-4GB-SATA-16Slot-j-/150536731628?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item230cb03bec

[rastasean]

^^

That's exactly what I'm thinking of too!

That is obviously meant for file serving and sharing so its dependable to be on for months at a time without rebooting.

[fobstl]

I've been following this thread and recently pulled the trigger on the parts to put together a Windows Home Server box over the holiday. I'm going the WHS route because of the ease of expandability, duplication of selected files across multiple drives, easy computer backup and the fact that the wife can easily go to a web portal to remotely access photos, etc.  Going the Raid route is a notch or 2 above my computer abilities so I wanted something more user friendly that I could set up and take care of myself.  Starting out with a 1tb OS drive plus 2 - 2tb storage drives and plan to add 2tb drives as I find deals on them. I'll report back after I get it up and running.

[illconditioned]

I bought a windows server box, ACER H320 I believe.  It is a small "cube" case with four SATA slots (on occupied), an ATOM processor and *no video*.

I immediately installed Ubuntu Linux on it and set it up as a "backup server".  The application is to back up my office machine.  The server sits in another office and I backup daily, a "cron" job using "rsync".

Aside from the lack of video (what were they thinking!) I love this little box.  It is compact, low power, and very well constructed.

  Richard

[OFOTD]

fobstl,  good to see you going the WHS route.  If you have any questions please PM me i'd be more that willing to help.   I'll PM you a few good websites for addons.

illconditioned, the reason why most of those boxes don't have video is that they are built to be run 'headless'.  All of what you need inside and nothing else.  As I said before they are the kind of boxes you could put in a closet and forget about.


Simp,  I run a similar box to the one you listed.  I have a Zotac ZBOX that I use as my HTPC running XBMC.  As rastasean alluded to in a previous post these boxes are really just nettop's with HDMI support.   Most rely on Nvidia ION graphics chips and either a Celeron or ATOM processor.  While I have no doubt you could run a server off of it you are limited as to external connection devices.  Pretty much USB only.  The Shuttle box you linked to is pretty much as bare bones as you get (lack of ION graphics, VGA only, only one RAM slot)

Take a look at the Zotac boxes.  Pretty sizable performance difference for the same price of the Shuttle you listed.  Plus there is a pretty healthy Zotac community on the net.  Here is an example:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856173011

[illconditioned]

illconditioned, the reason why most of those boxes don't have video is that they are built to be run 'headless'.  All of what you need inside and nothing else.  As I said before they

Yeah, I run it headless.  But any video, VGA console or whatever, would make install and setup easier.  Even getitng into the BIOS settings.  But, hey, they don't want you changing the OS, right?

  Richard

[OFOTD]

illconditioned, the reason why most of those boxes don't have video is that they are built to be run 'headless'.  All of what you need inside and nothing else.  As I said before they

Yeah, I run it headless.  But any video, VGA console or whatever, would make install and setup easier.  Even getitng into the BIOS settings.  But, hey, they don't want you changing the OS, right?

  Richard

No I think its more of just K.I.S.S. for most folks.  Those that like to tinker will always find a way around.  But again for folks with average computer knowledge these boxes are all pretty simple and straightforward.   Similar in thought to the new AppleTV, GoogleTV type boxes.  Made more for the average user than the more advanced user.   

[rePat]

anyone ever use something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101095&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3705318&SID=skim1043X499650 for their server?  thinking about getting one and putting amahi on it...

I use an Atom for my server, and it works well!  Don't expect to encode video very efficiently though, hehe.  I have an older version of this:  http://bit.ly/fS3NWA

There's been a lot of activity over at Amahi lately.  A lot of hardcore WHS users are jumping ship since they announced the discontinuation of the Drive Extender feature in the next release. 

I encourage everyone who is looking for a home server solution, to check out the new website http://amahi.org  It can be run in a VM, if you want to test drive it that way.

Happy Holidays,

Pat

[Simp-Dawg]

well, i bit the bullet last night and ordered one of those acer WHS boxes and a 3 more 2TB drives...8TB total!  wondering if i should throw them all in the server right away, or keep 4TB in there and use the other 4TB in an external enclosure as a backup of the server...maybe even keep it in a different room of the house...

[baustin]

well, i bit the bullet last night and ordered one of those acer WHS boxes and a 3 more 2TB drives...8TB total!  wondering if i should throw them all in the server right away, or keep 4TB in there and use the other 4TB in an external enclosure as a backup of the server...maybe even keep it in a different room of the house...

simp, let me know how this goes. i've been researching options for a while now.

can this acer system be set up in a RAID configuration?

[Simp-Dawg]

just did some research, it does not support raid...though honestly, with my recent experience with a wd external drive raid controller going bad, i'm not all that into it anyway!  i'd be happy just having a separate backup drive, which i may do...

another possible downside is that it doesn't support Time Machine backups so i may need to figure out a workaround...not a huge deal and they say there may be third party software available.

they just dropped the price another $50 on this thing though, i wonder if newegg will give me the better price?  thinking i should probably get a UPS for this sucker too...

[phanophish]

just did some research, it does not support raid...though honestly, with my recent experience with a wd external drive raid controller going bad, i'm not all that into it anyway!  i'd be happy just having a separate backup drive, which i may do...

another possible downside is that it doesn't support Time Machine backups so i may need to figure out a workaround...not a huge deal and they say there may be third party software available.

they just dropped the price another $50 on this thing though, i wonder if newegg will give me the better price?  thinking i should probably get a UPS for this sucker too...

A few things to note.

RAID 0 actually makes a given volume MORE likely to fail as it becomes susceptible to the failure of either of the 2 drives.  Most other versions of RAID (1,5,6,10) add redundancy which reduces the likelihood of failure. 

The Acer Windows home Server boxes do have a form of data redundancy called Drive Extender, although it has received mixed reviews.  It had a few bugs initially that caused data corruption.  Those have been fixed, but Microsoft elected to discontinue the feature in the upcoming new version of WHS.  Supposedly the solution worked very well and presented a much easier recover from a failure than traditional RAID.  The limitation seemed to be performance under heavier loads.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/24/windows-home-server-vail-drops-drive-extender-support-ms-sugg/

[rePat]

Yeah, there's been a lot of static about #vail #fail.  Here is an alternative, available stand alone, if you want to roll your own Linux server, or built in to the Amahi Home Server http://amahi.org

Greyhole http://code.google.com/p/greyhole/

Cheers,

Pat

[Simp-Dawg]

so i got this thing all set up and running over the weekend, after a few updates thing seem to be running smoothly.  the box has a nice form factor and it is really quiet.  haven't done much customization or actual setup for streaming and all that, but will soon.

this version has the drive extender feature working, i may use that so i have redundancy in the box, so instead of 8tb i'll have 4tb, but i'm still waiting on the drives to arrive before i can install them and make that decision.

[Gordon]

99% sure I'm building a setup.  here's what I'm looking at so far

MSI 760GM-P33 AM3 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green 380W PSU
AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor
Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333

and of course a case to put it in.  also adding a 2 TB drive to it in addition to the 2 1tb I have now and maybe a 500gig for the os (WHS).  I have backups of everything and do not need any real redundancy from the server.  just the ability to copy anything new from the server back to my backup drives, and vice versa (preferably via explorer or teracopy).

that leads me to some questions about Windows Home Server.  so here's what I want out of the server.  a few tb's of music for my squeezebox or to play directly to my pc.  and to play tv/movies via my western digital tv live plus.  the live plus works using windows shares on my window 7 box.  obviously I need all my computers in the house to be able to access the server (xp pro, vista and 7 ultimate).

so reading up on WHS a bit it looks like you have to format every drive you include?  I already have 2 nearly full  tb drives that I planned to add!  of course I could format and then move the data back from my backups but that is a pain in the ass!  when they ditch the drive extender will this be possible??

also does the install really take 70 gigs?  I seem to think I read that the os drive can only be used for os?  I generally do that but if I use the extra 500 gig drive I have I want to be able to use at least some of the extra space. 

thanks for any info on WHS.  I pretty much got the build part down but the WHS stuff started to confuse me. 

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

I don't use WHS. I use Windows Server 2008 so YMMV.

I have no problem adding full drives to Server 2008. I don't see why WHS would be any different. Just as long a the drive is formatted as NTFS you should be good to go.

I'm not sure, but I don't think Server 2008 takes more than 20GB to install. WHS might take a little extra for the bells and whistles. Personally I would install only the OS on one drive and use it for that...and maybe for temp files you don't care about losing. I will keep a copy of the audio files I'm working on the OS drive (I keep the masters on one of the secondary drives while I work on a copy of the master on the OS drive). I just find it's easier to nuke the OS and start over without having to worry about deleting files on the OS that I still want.

[Gordon]

thanks!  I'll look into server 2008 as well.  does it have the ability to torrent (utorrent preferred) from it on a headless machine? 

everything I've found for WHS says you have to format to add the drives to the pool.  it says you can add them without adding to the pool but then the data can't be used on the server.  maybe I'm missing something

as far as WHS goes is the utorrent add-in pretty straight forward and easy to use?  what about drivers (chipset, lan, & sata) for a fresh install?  my mobo only shows xp, vista, & 7 (32 & 64) drivers.  one review of the board said he had no issue installing WHS so I know it will work.

is there a way to run peer block on the WHS machine?  if it's a torrent box something like this is a must for me.  a quick google search talks of people using it but no instructions on how.  I thought you couldn't actually install programs just add-ins?

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

I wouldn't get Server 2008 if I were you. I like the features of WHS much better. One thing I really like about WHS vs. Server 2008 is the ability to run Security Essentials on WHS. Anti-virus for Server 2008 is expensive. You can hack SE to run on Server 2008 but I've never tried it.

I only have Server 2008 because I get it for free. If I got WHS for free I'd be running it, and I'm considering buying it.

If WHS is like Server 2008 or Windows 7 drivers shouldn't be an issue.

Like I said I haven't run WHS so I don't know everything about it. Looks like I should do some reading myself.

From what I see you're trying to do  you may be able to do it all with regular Windows 7, but again I'm not 100% sure. I don't know anything about the Squeezebox. It's pretty easy to set up a folder to be shared on the network with Win 7 though.

[rePat]

If you are adventurous enough to try a Linux solution, there are a few alternatives.  In addition to the previously mentioned Amahi http://amahi.org/ , I recently ran across VortexBox http://vortexbox.org/   Both are based on Fedora and have some great features, both are Open Source and free, although Amahi charges a convenience fee for some of the One Click Install apps.

Good Luck with your server,

Pat

[Gordon]

should have mentioned that I'm not completely opposed to a linux solution.  that said by only limited experience with linix is using ubuntu from a live disc to get files off a corrupted windows install.

main reason I'm wanting to go WHS is ease of use from the get go and since it's headless a GUI I'm comfortable with.  I want my wife to be able to access the server from her laptop,  and know what she's doing since it's windows GUI   I need to know for a fact it'll work with my western digital live.  seems the linux solutions will but I don't think it's as straight forward as using windows shares to access the files.  I could be wrong though.

[OFOTD]

Sorry i'm late for the party.

Couple of quick things before I re-read all of the questions.

1. WHS is basically Windows Server 2003.  Most XP drivers should work.   
2. If you add a drive it will not be formatted UNTIL you add it to the storage pool.   It will function as a regular external drive.
3. Once you do add a drive to the storage pool it will format it.   If you have mostly external drives is it a bit time consuming but remember you only have to do it one time.
4. The utorrent plugin works fine and there is still active discussion on it.
5. Yes you can install 3rd party programs (i.e. AV software).  They don't have to be WHS plug-ins to function on the server.  But if you want to manage them from the WHS control panel you have to use a WHS plug-in.

I'll be back with a few more answers in a bit.

[Gordon]

2. If you add a drive it will not be formatted UNTIL you add it to the storage pool.   It will function as a regular external drive.
3. Once you do add a drive to the storage pool it will format it.   If you have mostly external drives is it a bit time consuming but remember you only have to do it one time.

thanks!  these will not be external drives but internals in my build.  do you mean they will simply show as external in WHS?  as I said redundancy is not an issue for me as I have many backups of everything.  just hate to have to format and re-copy two tb's worth of data if I don't have to ,)

just need to be able to point the squeezebox to multiple drives (shortcuts) like I do now and share my video files for the western digital live.

edit: if I'm correct about it seeing the internal drives as external does SMART monitoring monitor those as well?  and what are the options for SMART monitoring in WHS?  is it built in?  I use and love HD tune pro now.

[dnsacks]

Gordon:

I remotely access my windows 7 box all the time using windows remote desktop -- windows 7 works fine as a headless OS in this regard.  I currently have a bunch of terabytes, including a 6tb esata raid5 array, served out of it to other devices as well -- not sure what advantages windows home server brings to the table for you -- and whether these advantages would warrant dealing with reformatting and transferring terabytes of data . . .

[OFOTD]

Okay back for a bit.  A few more answers in random order.

1. In my WHS box I have a 500GB drive that is my OS drive.  The OS partitioned the drive in two parts.  One for the OS and the other for the remaining storage space to be used in the storage pool.   So its something like 100GB for the OS and 400GB for the pool.

2. S.M.A.R.T. - Go here: http://www.homeserverland.com/2011/02/add-in-home-server-smart-v1-6-10-28-with-usb-support-beta/    Problem solved.

3. Here is the latest beta (7.5.5) for Squeezebox for WHS:  http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/7.5/sc/32385/SqueezeboxServer-7.5.5-32385-whs.msi

4. PeerBlock does work.

5. To install non-WHS plugins you will need to have a monitor connected to your build.   Otherwise everything that is controlled by WHS is accessible from the WHS Connector.

[Gordon]

bit the bullet!! 


 

    AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor SDX145HBGMBOX

    MSI 760GM-P33 AM3 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

    APEX TX-381-C Black Steel Micro ATX Tower Computer Case

    NETGEAR FS105 10/100Mbps Desktop Switch

    XIGMATEK ACXTNRP-PC402 400W ATX12V Ver.2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

    ENCORE ENHWI-2AN34D IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wireless N300 Router / Repeater / Access Point: 3-in-1, 4dBi

    Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3/2GR

    Rosewill RFA-120-RL 120mm 4 Red LEDs LED Case Fan

    Microsoft Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 (new version) - OEM
   


4.5tb's of drives I already have.  total was $350 and that was with buying a new router, switch, & windows home server!  so without those it would have been barely over $200!

[rePat]

Ah, you should have went gigabit while you were at it!

Pat

bit the bullet!! 


 

    AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Desktop Processor SDX145HBGMBOX

    MSI 760GM-P33 AM3 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

    APEX TX-381-C Black Steel Micro ATX Tower Computer Case

    NETGEAR FS105 10/100Mbps Desktop Switch

    XIGMATEK ACXTNRP-PC402 400W ATX12V Ver.2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

    ENCORE ENHWI-2AN34D IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wireless N300 Router / Repeater / Access Point: 3-in-1, 4dBi

    Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model KVR1333D3/2GR

    Rosewill RFA-120-RL 120mm 4 Red LEDs LED Case Fan

    Microsoft Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 (new version) - OEM
   


4.5tb's of drives I already have.  total was $350 and that was with buying a new router, switch, & windows home server!  so without those it would have been barely over $200!

[Gordon]

yea well going from my 54mbps router to a n 300mbps is good enough for now (even if I don't get that much speed)   the slower switch (100mbps) is only gonna have the direct tv thing (for multi room dvr) plugged into it.  oh and the squeezebox which does fine on the 54 router now.  actually everything runs fine hardwired to the router I have, I just wanted a faster one for the server.  the wdtv and server will be in the router for sure.

edit:  I guess the hardwired stuff now runs at 100mbps and the 54 is only wireless?  so with a N 300mps can I expect to see a dramatic increase over the home network?

[Gordon]

damn I think the router lan speed is only 100mbs so no advantage there.  may not need it after all.

edit:  ok is all I need a gigabit switch?   hooking that to the router lan and then all the network stuff (server, wdtv, and squeezbox) to the switch?  wouldn't that still only give me 100mbps since it's hooked to the router?

[Gordon]

ok triple post melt

looks like both the squeezebox and wdltv only have a 100Mbps ethernet port.  so the only only advantage to a gigabite switch would be going form my desktop to the server.  my drives are capable of speeds over 100mbps but not a whole lot more (120 maybe?).  so any huge advantage to gigabite since the sb and wdtvl don't support it?

[OFOTD]

so any huge advantage to gigabite since the sb and wdtvl don't support it?

No advantage.  100MB is more pipe that you'd need for the biggest 1080 files or audio files.  The only time you'll see that difference are in large files transfers. 

[Gordon]

oops!  either you edited or I didn't keep reading

wouldn't I see dramatically faster transfers from pc to server?  both have gigabit lan.  when I was thinking about hard drive speed I wasn't realizing that the drive speed is MBps not mbps.  so it seems it would be way faster on the network to use gigabit. 


edit:  so looks like a gigabit switch is all I need.    found this info online

Just plug your router to the last port on the switch and you're good to go ... Don't plug any devices to the router, only the switch.

If you plug all clients into the gigabit switch, then all clients will communicate, and transmit data between each other at gigabit speeds.

This assumes you have gigabit NIC's in each client.

Of course when you go to access the internet, you will be reduced to the speed of your internet connection because it's slower. (as stated above, you're reduced to the slowest connection speed).

[spyder9]

I just bought and configured the QNAP TS-112.  Single bay is all I need.  Connect via eSata to my USB drive for 1 button backup.  USB drive then goes offsite.  Too easy. 

$179.00 at newegg.

http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=191

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

I just bought and configured the QNAP TS-112. 

Are you using the native UPNP server or did you install the twonkeymedia server (or is the native twonkey)?

[spyder9]

I just bought and configured the QNAP TS-112. 

Are you using the native UPNP server or did you install the twonkeymedia server (or is the native twonkey)?

Yes.  UPNP.  I'm a newbie for this stuff.  I'll eventually have it setup for wireless access around the house and web streaming from work.  Cat's ass!   

QNAP (ethernet) >  Lynksys wireless router (ethernet) > PC Win7 > J River Media Center 15 > HT Omega Claro > Benchmark DAC1 > KRK VXT4

Use WASAPI Event Style output on J River.  Win7 configured @ 24/192 output. 

Best sounding system I've ever had.  J. River makes it complete.  Big upgrade over Foobar2000.  FB2K sounds tinny compared to J. River.

[Gordon]

started building last night!  doa power supply     newegg is doing an advanced rma but still a pain in the ass!  I would have had it up and running today.  oh well I guess I'll do yard work instead. 

[rastasean]

freenas did pretty well in this list:
http://lifehacker.com/5162026/best-home-server-software

...extremely minimal distribution of FreeBSD. How minimal, you ask? You can run FreeNAS off a 32MB flash drive. Designed to be an absolutely skeletal operating system to maximize the resources devoted to storage FreeNAS is great for when you want a simple operating system that leaves every hard drive bay and disk platter wide open for file storage goodness.
FreeNAS's scant 96MB of RAM requirements.

Anyone use this as a server? I know rjp recommended/linked to it but not certain if he used it.

[rjp]

I tested FreeNAS out for a while, and, while it's great if you're using the box strictly for NAS purposes, I wanted something more general-purpose, even if that meant using a couple of drive slots for the OS instead of a USB stick. So, I installed OpenSolaris on the system. However, after Oracle took over Sun, they basically froze OpenSolaris in favor of the commercial Solaris product.

However, as Oracle was freezing OpenSolaris without telling anyone, some developers decided to continue work on the open code, and the Illumos and OpenIndiana projects have picked up the pieces. Upgrading from OpenSolaris to OI was seamless for me.

However, OpenSolaris and OI are extremely picky about hardware. Unless you're either a) running Sun hardware (or HP hardware known to be supported by Solaris), or b) willing to spend the time figuring out what motherboards/disk controllers/etc. work best, FreeBSD is more likely to support your hardware, if you want a ZFS-based file server.

Note also that even if you're a longtime Linux user, Solaris can be quite a culture shock. There's a lot to be said for a prepackaged appliance like FreeNAS.

My hardware setup:

• Asus M4A785-M motherboard
• AMD Athlon II X4 630 processor
• 4 GB unbuffered ECC RAM
• Intel SASUC8I eight-port PCIe X8 SAS/SATA controller
• SIIG 2-port PCIe X1 SATA controller
• lots of hard drives, and one SSD for cache

Between the six onboard SATA ports and the add-in cards, there are 16 SATA ports. All drives except the SSD are in Supermicro 5-slot hot-swap drive racks. The onboard ATI video isn't well-supported (you're limited to the VESA video driver), but since I use this as a server rather than a desktop, that's no big deal.

[rastasean]

I can always count on you for v e r y detailed reports on opensource information! Thanks so much, rjp.
From the little research I did do today, it sounded like the machine would be dedicated for freeNAS and I took it to mean that's why a lot of people used the CF cards to have freeNAS reside and not an entire hdd.
here's a comparison between 7 and 8: http://www.freenas.org/item/freenas-comparison-chart-2
The jump from 7 to 8 as far as requirements are unbelievable.

Thanks for the info on OI and Oracle. I do have a sun server sunfire x4100 with about 6 gigs of ram but the server is VERY noisy in addition to the other machines that are already on. I suppose installing OI may not be a bad idea, plus this x4100 has SAS drives.

The mobo you're using is the one my primary desktop has. I have had this mobo since February of last year and its been great. I like the fact that it has so many sata ports...only thee of mine are in use.
This machine you mentioned, is it also what asterisk runs on?

If I don't decide to go the freeNAS/OI way, do you have any other advice for a home NAS? On the link I sent, ubuntu server was the next highest and that's certainly a worthwhile possibility. Have you ever used the aforementioned Amahi?

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

I think I may have mentioned this previously but I'm still fiddling with it. Running my media server off of Server 2008 (overkill, but it was a free copy).

I just added this handy little program so I can stream all of my media to my PS3. Pretty easy to set up. Only issue I ran into was having to open up port 5001 to UDP and TCP traffic. Once I figured that out everything worked fine. Also took a minute to figure out that you have to play video files under "video" and audio files under "audio" on the PS3

http://www.ps3mediaserver.org/

Figured some of you might like it as well.

[rjp]

here's a comparison between 7 and 8: http://www.freenas.org/item/freenas-comparison-chart-2
The jump from 7 to 8 as far as requirements are unbelievable.

That's ZFS's fault. ZFS is very memory-hungry, especially so if you turn on deduplication.

Thanks for the info on OI and Oracle. I do have a sun server sunfire x4100 with about 6 gigs of ram but the server is VERY noisy in addition to the other machines that are already on. I suppose installing OI may not be a bad idea, plus this x4100 has SAS drives.

The mobo you're using is the one my primary desktop has. I have had this mobo since February of last year and its been great. I like the fact that it has so many sata ports...only thee of mine are in use.
This machine you mentioned, is it also what asterisk runs on?

Asterisk is running on an Intel Atom box with CentOS 5.

If I don't decide to go the freeNAS/OI way, do you have any other advice for a home NAS? On the link I sent, ubuntu server was the next highest and that's certainly a worthwhile possibility. Have you ever used the aforementioned Amahi?

I haven't tried Amahi. My OI server took the place of using my Ubuntu desktop in a server role.

[rastasean]

W-O-W, AMAZING.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGIwg6ye1gE&feature=related

I don't see why we tapers wouldn't want to implement this if you already have a raid system setup.

a linux alternative to zfs looks like btrfs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs

Fedora 16 (late this year) will use it exclusively. http://digitizor.com/2011/06/09/fedora-16-btrfs/
butter fs may not be as extensive as zfs but it looks like these two file systems are breaking some ground.

[rjp]

Yeah, ZFS is pretty sweet... but always remember that any type of RAID is no substitute for backups. Also, it's certainly possible to screw up a ZFS setup (example: a storage pool split across multiple controllers in such a way that one controller failure toasts the whole pool). Another thing, ECC RAM is very important in the overall scheme of ensuring data integrity. If a RAM chip has a bit flip, corrupted data could be written to disk and checksummed - and then the corrupted data will be accurately re-read as corrupted data later.

One thing to note - fancy RAID controllers are counterproductive with ZFS, as it's a software RAID setup. Fortunately, the Intel SASUC8I (really a rebadged LSI controller) by default presents the drives as individual units.

I've never cared for hardware RAID in any case - even on Linux I've used the built in software RAID rather than hardware-based controllers. Hardware RAID has problems with vendor lock-in; if a controller fails, you have to replace it with (at least) the same manufacturer's controller, and likely the same model. Modern CPUs have no problems keeping up with the calculations needed for RAID - especially so when they're multi-core.

By the way, you can download Solaris 11 Express from Oracle for free - but the terms only specifically allow evaluation or development use. Oracle hasn't said (and probably won't say) anything about whether or not a home server qualifies as "evaluation" or not. On the other hand, it isn't time-limited and doesn't require activation. That being said, just to be safe, I'm sticking with OpenIndiana... but either system is even less noob-friendly than Linux.

[phanophish]

here's a comparison between 7 and 8: http://www.freenas.org/item/freenas-comparison-chart-2
The jump from 7 to 8 as far as requirements are unbelievable.

That's ZFS's fault. ZFS is very memory-hungry, especially so if you turn on deduplication.

So question regarding FreeNAS 8....

Looks like ZFS provides for the fault tolerance and recovery, and I see they specifically now support thin provisioning.  What is the process for growing volumes?  Do I simply add in additional disk and the system absorbs them in to the thinly provisioned storage pool?  Or do I have to go through some process of building/incorporating them in to the existing LUNs?

[rjp]

So question regarding FreeNAS 8....

Looks like ZFS provides for the fault tolerance and recovery, and I see they specifically now support thin provisioning.  What is the process for growing volumes?  Do I simply add in additional disk and the system absorbs them in to the thinly provisioned storage pool?  Or do I have to go through some process of building/incorporating them in to the existing LUNs?

Thin provisioning applies to zvols (chunks of disk space that would typically be exported via iSCSI, Fiber Channel, or FCoE). In ZFS, they are created and managed by the "zfs" command, not the "zpool" command, since they need to be created on existing storage pools.

To add space to a ZFS pool, you would install the additional drives, then add them to your pool. Since redundancy is very important, it's best to add redundant groups of drives to the pool.

I'm not sure how the FreeNAS web interface does it right now. Here's a Solaris command-line example; in this case, let's pretend we have an eight-port SAS HBA, and we're going to create a pool using two sets of mirrored drives. The HBA has already been automatically configured as controller #4 (c4) in the Solaris device addressing scheme.

Code: [Select]

zpool create mypool mirror c4t0d0 c4t1d0 mirror c4t2d0 c4t3d0

Let's say we're getting more than 2/3 full, and we want to add two more mirrored pairs:

Code: [Select]

zpool add mypool mirror c4t4d0 c4t5d0 mirror c4t6d0 c4t7d0

A different way to grow the pool, if we didn't want to use up drive slots: assuming we have the original two sets of mirrors:

BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST

Code: [Select]

zpool set autoexpand=on mypool
zpool offline c4t0d0
(physically replace the c4t0d0 disk with a larger drive)
zpool replace -f c4t0d0
(wait for new disk to resilver)
zpool offline c4t1d0
(physically replace c4t1d0 disk with a larger drive)
zpool replace -f c4t1d0
(wait for new disk to resilver)
(optionally replace c4t2d0 and c4t3d0 in the same manner, one at a time)

As soon as the second disk in the mirror has finished resilvering, the pool will autoexpand with the additional space on the new drives.

Note that most SAS HBAs support hot swap out of the box. AHCI-compatible SATA ports can also do hot swap, but on a Solaris system, it's not enabled by default for some reason, and the line:

Code: [Select]

set sata:sata_auto_online=1

must be added to the /etc/system file (and then the system needs to be rebooted). Hot swap is wonderful for this sort of thing, as the system can keep going while you remove and replace drives.

Food for thought: If you have two hot swap drive cages, you want to arrange your mirrors so that each mirrored pair is split between the two cages. That way, if one cage goes out, the entire pool remains available via the other cage.

Always remember that RAID is not a substitute for backups.

[phanophish]

So question regarding FreeNAS 8....

Looks like ZFS provides for the fault tolerance and recovery, and I see they specifically now support thin provisioning.  What is the process for growing volumes?  Do I simply add in additional disk and the system absorbs them in to the thinly provisioned storage pool?  Or do I have to go through some process of building/incorporating them in to the existing LUNs?

Thin provisioning applies to zvols (chunks of disk space that would typically be exported via iSCSI, Fiber Channel, or FCoE). In ZFS, they are created and managed by the "zfs" command, not the "zpool" command, since they need to be created on existing storage pools.

To add space to a ZFS pool, you would install the additional drives, then add them to your pool. Since redundancy is very important, it's best to add redundant groups of drives to the pool.

I'm not sure how the FreeNAS web interface does it right now. Here's a Solaris command-line example; in this case, let's pretend we have an eight-port SAS HBA, and we're going to create a pool using two sets of mirrored drives. The HBA has already been automatically configured as controller #4 (c4) in the Solaris device addressing scheme.

Code: [Select]

zpool create mypool mirror c4t0d0 c4t1d0 mirror c4t2d0 c4t3d0

Let's say we're getting more than 2/3 full, and we want to add two more mirrored pairs:

Code: [Select]

zpool add mypool mirror c4t4d0 c4t5d0 mirror c4t6d0 c4t7d0

A different way to grow the pool, if we didn't want to use up drive slots: assuming we have the original two sets of mirrors:

BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST

Code: [Select]

zpool set autoexpand=on mypool
zpool offline c4t0d0
(physically replace the c4t0d0 disk with a larger drive)
zpool replace -f c4t0d0
(wait for new disk to resilver)
zpool offline c4t1d0
(physically replace c4t1d0 disk with a larger drive)
zpool replace -f c4t1d0
(wait for new disk to resilver)
(optionally replace c4t2d0 and c4t3d0 in the same manner, one at a time)

As soon as the second disk in the mirror has finished resilvering, the pool will autoexpand with the additional space on the new drives.

Note that most SAS HBAs support hot swap out of the box. AHCI-compatible SATA ports can also do hot swap, but on a Solaris system, it's not enabled by default for some reason, and the line:

Code: [Select]

set sata:sata_auto_online=1

must be added to the /etc/system file (and then the system needs to be rebooted). Hot swap is wonderful for this sort of thing, as the system can keep going while you remove and replace drives.

Food for thought: If you have two hot swap drive cages, you want to arrange your mirrors so that each mirrored pair is split between the two cages. That way, if one cage goes out, the entire pool remains available via the other cage.

Always remember that RAID is not a substitute for backups.

Awesome info.  What about redundancy schemes more along the lines of RAID 5?  In my dream world I'd like a RAID5/6 array that as it fills I simply need to add additional drives, permit the parity to rebuild, and then the overall storage becomes presented as a larger massive disk.  Imagine a initial 4x2TB array running RAID 5 yielding 6TB raw.  I want to add capacity, so drop in 2 more 2TB drives, I dream of a solution that simply finds the drives and begins to expand the overall array to one that is now 10TB raw.  It allows me to reduce the % of overall storage lost to parity while also making the management simple.

Is there a place I can go that has a concise document that details all these options? 

[sparkey]

So question regarding FreeNAS 8....

Looks like ZFS provides for the fault tolerance and recovery, and I see they specifically now support thin provisioning.  What is the process for growing volumes?  Do I simply add in additional disk and the system absorbs them in to the thinly provisioned storage pool?  Or do I have to go through some process of building/incorporating them in to the existing LUNs?

Thin provisioning applies to zvols (chunks of disk space that would typically be exported via iSCSI, Fiber Channel, or FCoE). In ZFS, they are created and managed by the "zfs" command, not the "zpool" command, since they need to be created on existing storage pools.

To add space to a ZFS pool, you would install the additional drives, then add them to your pool. Since redundancy is very important, it's best to add redundant groups of drives to the pool.

I'm not sure how the FreeNAS web interface does it right now. Here's a Solaris command-line example; in this case, let's pretend we have an eight-port SAS HBA, and we're going to create a pool using two sets of mirrored drives. The HBA has already been automatically configured as controller #4 (c4) in the Solaris device addressing scheme.

Code: [Select]

zpool create mypool mirror c4t0d0 c4t1d0 mirror c4t2d0 c4t3d0

Let's say we're getting more than 2/3 full, and we want to add two more mirrored pairs:

Code: [Select]

zpool add mypool mirror c4t4d0 c4t5d0 mirror c4t6d0 c4t7d0

A different way to grow the pool, if we didn't want to use up drive slots: assuming we have the original two sets of mirrors:

BACK UP YOUR DATA FIRST

Code: [Select]

zpool set autoexpand=on mypool
zpool offline c4t0d0
(physically replace the c4t0d0 disk with a larger drive)
zpool replace -f c4t0d0
(wait for new disk to resilver)
zpool offline c4t1d0
(physically replace c4t1d0 disk with a larger drive)
zpool replace -f c4t1d0
(wait for new disk to resilver)
(optionally replace c4t2d0 and c4t3d0 in the same manner, one at a time)

As soon as the second disk in the mirror has finished resilvering, the pool will autoexpand with the additional space on the new drives.

Note that most SAS HBAs support hot swap out of the box. AHCI-compatible SATA ports can also do hot swap, but on a Solaris system, it's not enabled by default for some reason, and the line:

Code: [Select]

set sata:sata_auto_online=1

must be added to the /etc/system file (and then the system needs to be rebooted). Hot swap is wonderful for this sort of thing, as the system can keep going while you remove and replace drives.

Food for thought: If you have two hot swap drive cages, you want to arrange your mirrors so that each mirrored pair is split between the two cages. That way, if one cage goes out, the entire pool remains available via the other cage.

Always remember that RAID is not a substitute for backups.

I dream of a solution that simply finds the drives and begins to expand the overall array to one that is now 10TB raw.

Until the volume corrupts...then....ouch.

[rastasean]

Even though raid is not a replacement for backups, you may want to consider raid 10 since you're using terabytes of data and it would be faster to replicate in the event you needed to replace a drive.
I believe you can have more than one drive fail in raid 10 but its also suggested to use 4 drives of the same size.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/entvideos/raid?c=us&l=en&s=gen



editing....
Want an off site backup but don't want the trouble of vising the site every time you need to update? DRBD could be a solution for that.
http://www.drbd.org/

mirrored networking raid 1. The nodes can be local, on different subnets, different vlans, or on a different continent (for example).

a simple setup would be having one machine at your place and dumping data onto it and the other machine at your friends/families place with it updating automatically.

In case a complete power outage takes both nodes down, DRBD will detect which of the nodes was down longer, and will do the resynchronization in the right direction.

[rjp]

What about redundancy schemes more along the lines of RAID 5?  In my dream world I'd like a RAID5/6 array that as it fills I simply need to add additional drives, permit the parity to rebuild, and then the overall storage becomes presented as a larger massive disk.  Imagine a initial 4x2TB array running RAID 5 yielding 6TB raw.  I want to add capacity, so drop in 2 more 2TB drives, I dream of a solution that simply finds the drives and begins to expand the overall array to one that is now 10TB raw.  It allows me to reduce the % of overall storage lost to parity while also making the management simple.

ZFS has a RAIDZ mode that provides one drive (RAID5), two drives (RAID6), or three drives (beyond RAID6) of redundancy. These are called RAIDZ, RAIDZ2, and RAIDZ3.

Example with four-drive RAIDZ

Code: [Select]

zpool create mypool raidz c4t0d0 c4t1d0 c4t2d0 c4t3d0

You could add another RAIDZ set later,if you have the ports available - no need to rebuild:

Code: [Select]

zpool add mypool raidz c4t4d0 c4t5d0 c4t6d0 c4t7d0

Or, if autoexpand is on, you could replace drives one at a time with bigger ones, letting each resilver, and once the last drive finishes resilvering, presto! More space!

Note that additional vdevs (drive sets, in ZFS terminology) added to an existing pool don't have to be the same configuration. You could add mirrored pairs or triplets, or add a RAIDZ2 set to an existing RAIDZ1 pool, etc.

A comprehensive guide to ZFS, though it's specific to Solaris (and OpenIndiana): http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/index.html

[phanophish]

ZFS has a RAIDZ mode that provides one drive (RAID5), two drives (RAID6), or three drives (beyond RAID6) of redundancy. These are called RAIDZ, RAIDZ2, and RAIDZ3.

Example with four-drive RAIDZ

Code: [Select]

zpool create mypool raidz c4t0d0 c4t1d0 c4t2d0 c4t3d0

You could add another RAIDZ set later,if you have the ports available - no need to rebuild:

Code: [Select]

zpool add mypool raidz c4t4d0 c4t5d0 c4t6d0 c4t7d0

Or, if autoexpand is on, you could replace drives one at a time with bigger ones, letting each resilver, and once the last drive finishes resilvering, presto! More space!

Note that additional vdevs (drive sets, in ZFS terminology) added to an existing pool don't have to be the same configuration. You could add mirrored pairs or triplets, or add a RAIDZ2 set to an existing RAIDZ1 pool, etc.

A comprehensive guide to ZFS, though it's specific to Solaris (and OpenIndiana): http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/index.html

Exactly what i was looking for.  Thanks!!!!

I work in IT so fully understand that RAID is not a backup.  I just want one simple to manage central repository for massive chunks of data.  Between my MP3 music collection, several TB of FLAC live shows, a couple more TB of RAW image files, and now a ever growing pool of HD video of the kiddo my storage needs are getting pretty ridiculous at home.  I keep a second copy on a external HD but managing the whole mess with multiple sources and targets gets to be a chore.  I'd love to build a couple of RAID systems, then simply setup RSYNCH to maintain the replication of data between the two. My critical stuff is off site either through archive.org, flickr, or youtube so while a house fire/break in might mean my source files go away, I'd at least have hi res JPEGS or HD Youtube videos of everything that really matters.   So I'm mainly looking for a nice tool to consolidate storage with easy growth and fairly robust redundancy at a reasonable cost. 

[rastasean]

Well I got freeNAS installed and running on a machine this past weekend. This was about the simplest install I've done but I'm confused about one thing and I'll talk about that in a second.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/
I downloaded the .7x (FreeNAS-i386-embedded-0.7.2.6694.img) embedded version since I'm installing it on a 2 gig CF card with cf to IDE adapter. Since the OS is on the CF card, I can have only 3 IDE HDDs on the motherboard I put on 1 120gig and two 80 gigs. The total space isn't that great but I knew that going into this already. Saturday night I found out the power supply fan wasn't spinning and upon taking it apart, it didn't have any bearings so I promptly replaced that as I don't want the system overheating.

Adding all three drives to the zfs pool was quite easy and just took a few clicks on the webgui, which was very fast and responsive. I turned on ftp and uploaded data at about 8-10MB a second and even created an NFS service for for linux computer. Mounted it without any issue and copied/deleted data just as fast (maybe even a little faster than ftp).

The thing I got hung up on was adding a new drive to an existing pool. I was able to format the drive to zfs and create a virtual disk but didn't figure out a way to add it to an existing pool. Anyone come across a how to on this?


So far my experience with freeNAS has been pretty good for something that's free. You can even configure fNAS to to SMART checks on the drives with a simple cronjob and email the report to you. I wouldn't say this is good enough for an entire corporate environment but for a section of a company, it could definitely be a very powerful solution. You can create users/groups; assign it to a domain controller or primary domain control (windows 2000 environment and earlier); use LDAP services, store flacs on it, etc.

[JasonSobel]

I have very little experience with FreeNAS, as I just got my server up and going yesterday. and I'm running FreeNAS 8.0 (the FreeNAS-8.0-RELEASE-i386.iso file from this link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/FreeNAS-8/).

That said, this is how the documentation says to add a new drive to an existing pool:

To combine two vdevs in the GUI, go to Storage -> Volumes -> Create Volume. In the Volume Name section, input the same name as an existing vdev, select the disk(s) you wish to add, choose ZFS as the filesystem, and click Add Volume.

let us know how that works for you.  I haven't yet added more drives to an existing pool, but I'm planning on doing just that several times over the next week or so.

[rastasean]

Thanks so much for this info.
I am going to re-configure the fNAS machine this week; I don't know why I didn't think of using a thumb drive for the OS instead of a CF. Using the thumb drive will free up one more chain for another IDE drive.

Good luck with your setup. What's the specs of your server you're going to have fNAS on?

[JasonSobel]

Thanks so much for this info.
I am going to re-configure the fNAS machine this week; I don't know why I didn't think of using a thumb drive for the OS instead of a CF. Using the thumb drive will free up one more chain for another IDE drive.

Good luck with your setup. What's the specs of your server you're going to have fNAS on?

I have my FreeNAS running from an 8gb usb flash drive - certainly way more space than needed to run the system, but it's what I had lying around ready to go.

For my hardware, I just put together a new computer to use as my primary machine (as discussed thoroughly in this thread: http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=146970.0).  Now that the new computer is up and running smoothly, I repurposed my old machine to run FreeNAS.  It's a Dell Dimension 4600 that I bought in 2003.  It's got a Pentium 4 (@3gHz), and 2.5 gb RAM.  Certainly not a powerful machine by today's standards, but my goals for the FreeNAS aren't to max out performance.  Rather, I just need a central storage server for my home.  and I needed it to be as cheap as possible, in my case, free, because I installed it on hardware that I already had

[rastasean]

Your system is certainly newer than the computer I picked up. The processor on my computer is about 1.7GHz and something like one and three quarters of gigs.

I know the freenas 8, if using zfs, needs a lot of RAM. I posted a comparison between 7 and 8 a couple pages back on this thread and right now I don't have a computer I want to setup with freenas version 8 so I'll try out 7.

Good luck with your setup!

[JasonSobel]

so far so good.

FYI, I had initially created a volume, with a single 2tb drive, and filled it up halfway.
just now, I added a new 1tb drive as a new vdev to the existing zpool, following the same procedure I quoted above.

To combine two vdevs in the GUI, go to Storage -> Volumes -> Create Volume. In the Volume Name section, input the same name as an existing vdev, select the disk(s) you wish to add, choose ZFS as the filesystem, and click Add Volume.

very quick and easy, and the zpool now shows a capacity of 3tb, and it is now just 1/3 full

[JasonSobel]

Your system is certainly newer than the computer I picked up. The processor on my computer is about 1.7GHz and something like one and three quarters of gigs.

I know the freenas 8, if using zfs, needs a lot of RAM. I posted a comparison between 7 and 8 a couple pages back on this thread and right now I don't have a computer I want to setup with freenas version 8 so I'll try out 7.

Good luck with your setup!

definitely true.  with only 2.5 gigs of RAM, I've had a couple of system crashes already, and my ZFS volume never made it past 5 TB.  So I've shut it down for now, until I can get a system with a lot more RAM 

[rastasean]

yikes! The good news is you can find some on ebay usually for a good price.

My system is so old is doesn't support usb booting so I'm resorting to only three drives and so far its been pretty good. I think I just inadverently resolved an issue with a reboot...from the command line I was not able to ping, it would resolve the name but not ping.

[phanophish]

I tried FreeNAS 8 as well had the same issue with Kernel panics.  Went through most of the troubleshooting steps on these threads. 

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=11421
http://freebsd.1045724.n5.nabble.com/kmem-map-too-small-with-ZFS-and-8-2-RELEASE-td4029979.html

Still had the issue....  One of the threads discussed a person having the crashes with 15GB of RAM.  Seems like a pretty big flaw.....