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What is the Ideal Low-end NAS Solution?
Mark asks: "As demand for storage continues to grow and prices continue to drop, network attached storage (NAS) devices are popping up everywhere...from large enterprises to restaurants to small offices and homes. Several vendors are now offering low-end NAS solutions targeted at SOHO users, with varying results. Most of them are just standard PC components and standard IDE hard drives running Linux, but the price tag on these often far oustrips what one would expect to pay for the parts. Hence, people all over the world (myself included) are building their own NAS machines at home at a fraction of the cost. Beyond support for RAID, CIFS, NFS, HTTP, and FTP, what would the ideal home NAS operating system include? And more importantly, what should it leave out to avoid conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and instability? Are there any Linux/*BSD/other distributions out there optimized specifically for NAS applications? What does the ideal NAS distribution look like to you?"
A NAS is little more than a box of hard drives with a NIC attached. They get a nifty web-based interface or somesuch to make it real simple to setup and they often come in small packages, but is that worth the premium? You could buy a small-ish desktop/tower case and probably build your own very cheaply. Setting up Samba on Linux with simple "everyone can write" access is braindead simple.
Do you need a web-based interface? Do you need hot-swappable drives with auto-rebuild? Do you need a 2U rackmount or other small-ish case? (Remember, need is a very strong word.) If you can't answer yes then save yourself a few grand and do it yourself.
On the flip side, if you DO need that stuff, I've been very pleased with Fastora. Good interface, easy setup and lots of options. We got a 1.337TB unit (8x250GB hard drives in RAID5, one drive as a hot spare) with 2x100Mb NIC and 1x1Gb NIC for around $7,000.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
I don't know of any any distro optimized for creating a NAS. But I have used RedHat successfully to create a NAS.
On my NAS, I have also included support for WebDAV protocol. It comes in handy when your users are publishing Web Content.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
If it is just for NAS work, then only have the servers necessary to share the files, and perhaps a SSH server to modify configurations. Leave everything else out, the less stuff running on it, the less stuff to have to keep patched up for security reasons.
To me the ideal disto would probably fit in under 100 MB, just need the servers, network support files, and a way to get in and edit files. If the machine has a monitor that can be used, perhaps you don't need SSH or any other remote method of getting into the machine.
And the smaller the distro installed on it, the more space on the hard drives for the files. Perhaps the distro could be set to run off of CD, with only the config files on the hard drive.
It is much easier to create a NAS that far outperforms your needs. For example, how many users do you have accessing the hard drives at once? If your answer is less than 10, you probably will be able to get along fine with 7200 rpm drives. Also, if you are just setting this up attached to your home network, RAID is not necessary because the network can most likely only transfer data at 10/100 speeds. Right now, my NAS is a Slackware linux box with a 166 mhz pentium running four 200GB IDE drives. I get around 5 mb/s per user. The major factor seems to be the amount of ram in the NAS. I just upgraded to 1 GB because it is so cheap for PC 100 ram. Overall, make sure you know what is important and dont overspend for features you cant use.
Might have a look at Mitel (formerly e-smith) SME Server. I've been using it for my file server at home, email, and to host a few domains for a couple of years now. Good stuff, pretty secure, can also be your router/gateway. One ther I haven't looked at, but I intend to check out soon, is BlueQuartz. Not really a distro, but the results of Sun open-sourcing the Sobalt RaQ550 network appliance. There's a binary install kit for a basic Redhat/Fedora setup, source, and many howto's out there...
That is RAID 0 by the way. Obviously, RAID 1 would be useful if you needed the redundancy.
I would consider two OS's for a low-end home NAS.
First OS:
Debian GNU/Linux
Why? 1) Easy to update. 2) Wide selection of packages. 3) Possible to do a minimal install and have a pretty bare-bones OS.
Second OS:
OpenBSD
Why? 1) Security. 2) Security. 3) Security.
You might have answered your own question.. most of the products out there do use some form of Linux, and rarely do these vendors offer anything of value beyond a unified web based interface. You'll invest more time in the front end, but you'll gain much more in having the ability to upgade, use the machine for other tasks, etc. You'll get more for your money if you have even basic linux skills though.
There are plenty of recipies out there utilizing LVM, MD, Samba, NFS, etc. You could make a MythTV server too, you get the idea.
You can use smartmontools or most of the popular RAID controllers out there have linux configration apps and monitoring tools. Use 3ware if you have the cash, Promise can work depending on who you ask, Adaptec has some cards, others may have more to add here.
You could even just get a board that has lots of ports, and do Software RAID, although adding a drive to an array is experimental at this point, which scares me at least.
Samba 3 will fully integrate in AD if you have that need. Winbind has come a long way, you can even login to the linux box with your AD credentials if you were so inclined (now this might be flamebait fodder).
Anyways, with drive prices falling so rapidly, it would be a shame to spend $$ on a box that could be doubled in capacity 9 months down the road. So be very careful.
-Vlad
NAS boxes are pretty cheap and easy to build these days, just make sure if you're going to do RAID that you buy a REAL raid controller, with hardware raid support, not that crap that relys on software drivers for raid support. 3ware is wonderful solution as it's been included in the linux kernel for many, many moons.
Make it wireless, 40GB, the size of an ipod, with a good battery. Allow me to plug it into external power too (AC 110/solar panel/turbine/car battery/etc). Always encrypt files when storing and transferring. Also add some facility to signal the device to turn off its wireless signal quickly so that it cannot be found using signal-locating devices.
The last element of security is a thermite detonator with a separate trigger circuit and antenna frequency. Ship the product with a 'kill button' that transmits the detonator signal when you activate it.
When you build it, I will come! I plan to bury one in my backyard and make the most secure file server evar. The USA PATRIOTS will never read my data!
We got a 1.337TB unit
1.337TB? Wow - 1337.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
If you're looking for something really low end to use at home, check out NASLite