Creating Large, Safe, and Cheap Network Attached Servers?

davco9200 asks: "I am looking to create a large data server for all my digital media files. The usage is the 'pro-user' category, to use the media from multiple stations in my house and at work. I value space (150+ gb would be nice), accessible from multiple platforms (Win, Mac), but perhaps most of all, some security (e.g. RAID 0 doesn't cut it). Total write or read access isn't that high of a priority. I have looked at things like the Snap 4100 that offer 160 gb or 300 gb and good raid options but the price seems high ($2,700 and $4,500 respectively). Has anyone had any experience making their own low-end NAS? Has anyone looked at the Adaptec IDE RAID Controller? This seems like a reasonable way of getting data parity so if one drive goes down your entire collection isn't lost. I figured Slashdot readers would have some good solutions. Information on specific cases, drives, and other pertinent facts would be helpful."

Comments

Well...

[cmowire]

Well, if you don't care too much about performance, don't even bother with a 'real' IDE RAID card, just do software RAID. The reason why people use the hardware RAID cards like the higher end IDE RAID cards and the SCSI RAID cards is because it's faster.

So you can cut the cost of a good IDE raid card and just put an extra IDE controller card in your psuedo-NAS box so you can have 8 drives. Or you can put that off until later.

You should also consider getting a DAT drive and a bunch of DAT tapes, to back things up, just in case something massively bad happens to your system. RAID 5 is not perfect, and if your system catches on fire because of too much dust in the power supply, it'll be helpful.

Solution

[1101z]

I am working on a similar project but in the >1TB range same thing applys to http://staff.sdsc.edu/its/terafile/ On that page they have a link to another page with stuff about ide-raid. >http://www.research.att.com/~gjm/linux/ide-rai d.html The 3ware cards are the way to go as they do raid 0,1,5 in hardware, and support things like hot swap and hot spare. I priced out a system that was just over 1TB of raid 5 for around $5,000 while the prebuilt stuff is $20,000.

Homebrew Firewire NAS

[Vito]

One way to go might be an inexpensive, but not underpowered PC, with a PCI Firewir-- er, IEEE-1394 card.

Buy a bunch of cheap, identical IDE HDs, and put them in IEEE-1394 cases (~$150/ea.). Compile yourself some bleeding-edge Linux-1394 support, plug in your HDs, run XFS as the filesystem, and use software RAID. Because you said this is just for storage and media access, you probably don't need the currently limited FireWire hot-plug support and possibly still currently limited RAID hot-swap support.

For more on software RAID, IBM has a nice two-part article (1, 2) on it.

Homebrew Snapserver 4100

[il_seba]

This is my receipe for an "homebrew" Snap4100

1) Get:
- 1U 4bays rack mountable chassis from Sliger Designs
- 3WARE 6410 Escalade IDE controller (Choice of 0/1/0+1/5 Raid) on a 90 PCI riser card
- 4 x 75/100GB ATA100 drives (maybe DiamondMax)
- MicroATX mainboard with NIC and Video integrated on board (invest in RAM not in processing power - 750/850MHZ should be more than sufficient)
- Minimum Linux/*BSD OS booting from a read-only 16 to 64MB flash IDE device, loading kernel and a customised Ramdisk root filesystem, mounting Raid devices in R/W mode, starting SAMBA (and/or Netatalk).
A good starting point is Linux Bootdisk HOWTO

2) Choose 0+1 Raid and you get quick and completely redundant 150/200GB storage that can survive the full failure of one disk.

3) Want remote grafical managment from a standard web browser? Go for Webmin or SWAT.