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Best Home Network NAS
jammerjam writes "My WD 120GB drive got its MBR scrambled so it no longer mounts in my W*ndoze box (I can recover the data so I know that's intact). But now that's made me realize I need to implement my data backup plan. Scouring the Internet I can't find a reliable resource for home NAS solutions. For every positive review I can find a negative that refutes it. My first choice from what I found starts at $1200...I've got $500. Anyone have a suggestion? I'm not looking for enterprise-level storage here — but I do want reliability."
I'd get one of those cheapo walmart linux boxes...stick it in a closet....then just use rsync or rdiffbackup....with a real box you'd have the luxury of being able to add additional storage easy...you can even setup a software raid for extra protection...
... you'll always need backups. Even the most reliable systems will eventually fail. Routine backing up is essential.
You don't need enterprise storage solutions: great. That means that you probably don't need to do nightly backups.
The lesson in you losing your data is not that you needed NAS, but you needed to make better backups.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Try and work out exactly what you're protecting against before you worry about solutions.
Do you want data to survive a hard disk failure? RAID. (Though I make no guarantee that any of these things have implemented RAID terribly well, particularly if a disk fails 2 years later and the replacement you plug in has totally different geometry).
Do you want data to survive your own mistakes? Then use the NAS as a backup for your own PC(s).
Do you want data to survive poor implementation in the firmware? For best results, you'll probably need two totally different devices and some means of keeping them synchronised. (Though a number of Buffallo's Linkstation products can support a separate external USB disk for backup of the NAS itself).
Do you want data to survive a house fire? If you've got immense quantities of data, you'll need a unit you can take offsite. If not, perhaps a subscription-based internet backup provider is the way to go.
It sounds like this guy is a noob. So how long will it take for the OSS to be setup and configured correctly. When the Windows software is probably point and click. Some of the $500 is going to hardware but I am sure some is also going to keeping his sanity when setting up and maintaining this system.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
But then I also prefer SCSI disks.
... just in case it works too well and you don't think about it for the next 6 years.
That is because I can get them hot-swappable and with lots of nice lights.
I have a new SATA server that has fakeRAID, and the drive lights are not supported and they aren't hot-swappable.
For a home environment where YOU know what you have and how it is configured, I'd say go with whatever you're comfortable with. Just make sure you document what is what and where
All for just under $700. If you really want to rock and roll, get some of the new 1TB drives!
I don't use the raid chip on the mobo, just Linux Software Raid all the way. For a home backup system, it's the way to go - I can always stick the drives in a new system and have it recognize and reconstruct the array. OTOH, I have had a hardware raid card go bad, and man, that's a world of hurt unless you have an exact duplicate card on hand. Not good for a file server! The performance of a software raid is more than adequate, given that the CPU has nothing else to do - it's a file server! The cost/risk/usefulness balance is very heavy in favor of software raid.
I divided the drives into 4 partitions each: a small one mirrored across all drives for the
The remaining partition on all four drives is used for the (raid 5) actual file storage, I put it on
For software, I see some turnkey systems that people are pushing around here, but I just went with a basic Ubuntu server 64 bit. That way I can install any number of packages from Ubuntu's massive package repository.
For backup solutions, I went with backupPC, though I am also experimenting with Bacula. Samba and Webmin round out the file services and maintenance.
The best part of the whole thing? Since I implemented this, I have had 2 complete system losses
"I can't imagine this taking more than half an hour to get working."
Jesus. The number of times I've said that and regretted it.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Skip the RAID. RAID is for availability-- you don't need high availability at home. What you want is a fast, easy backup procedure. RAID arrays increase your likelihood of failure-- you have more disks-- the difference being that failure no longer [necessarily] equals downtime. Done right, it is expensive. This is worth it if downtime costs you more than RAID does. If you're using RAID in a machine which requires you to power off and disassemble the machine to replace the disk-- you're wasting your money. That is, unless you're running RAID 0, in which case, you're not doing anything at all to make your data more reliable-- just faster.
Since you seem to want to go the NAS route, you should just set up a file server. Get into the habit of making backups. You can automate this process somewhat. If you go the Linux or BSD route, there are lots of good, free utilities out there to help you with this. On my fileserver, I use "dump", and I dump the whole disk to another one, and for certain data, I use rsync. On my Mac at home, I use SuperDuper. My girlfriend uses Acronis. I have multiple backup sets, since disks are cheap. At work, where backups are very important, we use tape-- but that's another thing like RAID. Tape is more reliable than disk, but slow and expensive. Do you really need it?
When your RAID card does die (2 years? 4 years?), what will you do? If that card isn't being made anymore, are you out of luck? Or can a different card read the disks? I don't think they can. I know a few people that ran into this.
With a software RAID, you do lose some performance, but any Linux distro will be able to read the disks. If the OS bugs out (an infrequent occurrence), you might lose a little data, but not a ton... I'm actually not convinced you'll have a good linux distro w/frequent kernel panics anyway. If you lose your card, will you lose it all?
Agile Artisans
Task Scheduler to copy files from client to a network share? Can't be all that complex to set up a basic data backup routine...
Ubuntu requires you to install Samba. WHS uses windows shares / web server interface.Samba has a pretty easy GUI setup, even in Ubuntu. It's also already installed, I believe.
Ubuntu requires raid hardware or software.Software RAID is already built-in. If you use Fedora instead of Ubuntu, you can use LVM's GUI tools to do all of the dynamic partition sizing goodness.
Ubuntu would not give you Remote Desktop access to your windows machines without configuring Wine, I think.Use the Package manager to install rdesktop, which allows remote desktop access to any Windows box. Done.
Ubuntu requires you to install CVS to get versioning of files, which requires you to actively commit files. WHS automatically saves changes between versions and allows you to step back, all through the nightly automatic backup.Ah, now there's one that you've gotten perfectly correct (IIRC), and why I use Bacula on my home network (which is admittedly not something for the casual user).
You'd have to write your own web service to access the machines from outside the network. You'd also have to configure the router yourself. WHS automatically configures routers (if supported) and has an IIS app that lets you access all machines and WHS content from the internet.I'm not so sure I'd want any un-hardened machine to be accessible from the Internet; esp. a Windows one that both streams media and holds all of my personal data in one easy-to-reach location. That's just begging for a first-class arse-pounding from the first script kiddie to see that you've done that.
This is just a handful. I thought this through, I run a small business (20 hours a week of development) and did my homework before making the decision to buy WHS.I'm sure you probably have... but I don't think you had all the facts at hand when you did. Now know that I'm not knocking your choice at all - if you use something as a beta and like it, and it works for you, cool... but I think that you haven't really looked all too deeply into the alternatives, you know?
Personally, I find that spending $169 for just the OS (when I can get at least an extra hard disk with change left over at that price) to be a bit much. There is also the headaches specific to Windows - the high probability of being targeted, the EULA that says I do it MSFT's way or no way at all, the 'phoning home', the DRM, the extra overhead (I stick with runlevel 3 on my home servers), and the fact that there really isn't much I can tweak on it (at least by comparison)... But then, I do the sysadmin thang for a living - so my needs, skillset, and priorities are a lot different from that of the average home user.
And so it goes... :)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
RAID is most definitely about reliability and recoverability as well as availability. It all depends on the level you choose. Your argument that multiple disks increases your likelihood of failure is trumped by one simple fact: how do you know that the single drive you buy for the job will be more reliable than the one next to it?
You can't, and that's why using at least something like RAID1 is a smart way to go. When one drive fails, your data doesn't all go with that one drive. I've seen drives from batches fail literally within a couple of days of each other. If you're smart and rebuild offline as soon as a failure occurs, your chances of losing all your data are very small. Reliability engineering is all about probabilities, and the mirroring and parity concepts of RAID facilitate this reliability. The only place where your argument holds sway is on RAID0, and that's a pretty specialized application to be sure.
If you want to swap drives without disassembling the machine, get case with enough 5.25" bays for the drives you need and buy some removable trays for $10 a piece. When one drive fails, you turn a key, pull the tray, swap the drive and back in it goes for a rebuild.
You might want to reconsider putting such a cheap PSU in that system. From everything I've seen in PSU benchmarks such as those posted at hardocp.com (including such budget PSUs), PSUs for less than $90 are quite likely to be a hazard to the rest of the system. Together with the mainboard, the PSU is one thing you really don't want to go cheap on. Don't forget to read benchmarks, though. Some manufacturers like to put some really horrible junk up for sale at really inflated prices.
;)
Buy responsible, buy informed
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I can't believe I have to mention this AGAIN, but every time there's a discussion of home-RAID systems, 90% of /. jumps to the wrong conclusion.
Let me state something VERY VERY CLEARLY here:
RAID is not backup.
NAS is not backup.
SAN is not backup.
Snapshotting is not backup.
Backup is backup.
A "backup" means A COMPLETE COPIES OF FILES STORED OFFLINE.
RAID is a way of providing data availability and reliability. It doesn't provide backups. SAN and NAS are various frameworks for presenting the data in a storage system (generally RAID, but not necessarily) to an environment. It doesn't provide backups either. Backups consist of making COMPLETE COPIES (and yes that includes incrementals--ultimately, with a base copy plus incrementals, you have a complete copy) of files, STORED OFFLINE. Snapshots provide copies of files (and the smart snapshot systems do provide complete copies), but they're still online copies of the data. They will let you recover files to a point-in-time, but if your storage array goes T.U. for some horrible reason, you're still screwed.
RAID is fantastic for keeping your online data from being destroyed or taken offline due to hardware failures. SAN/NAS is great for making data available to a networked environment. However, if you want backups of your files, then back up your files--don't use RAID (and SAN/NAS on top of it) as a backup scheme, because it ain't.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban