Slashdot Mirror
What NAS To Buy?
An anonymous reader writes "Currently, I'm running an old 4u Linux server for my private backup and storage needs. I could add new drives, but it's just way too bulky (and only IDE). For the sake of size and power efficiency I think about replacing it with a NAS solution, but cannot decide which one to get. The only requirements I have are capacity (>1.5TB) and RAID5. Samba/FTP/USB is enough. Since manufacturers always claim their system to be the best, I'd like to hear some suggestions from you Slashdot readers."
...which NAS to buy?
Advice: on VPS providers
yes... those are hundreths of a penny, so take it for what its worth - also that I deal with storage arrays daily.
So unless you are going to go with the magic number of disks (this varies but you'll need quite a few for a raid-5... around 8 or so) your performance is going to be less than stellar. Jump up to an 11 disk raid-5 (or preferrably 6) and you'll be screaming - depending on if you use SAS or SATA drives and your controller card of course.
If you are just wanting a tiny raid to stick in your tower, I would run a 3 drive raid-0, with each drive being around 300 gigs. Then, I would additionally have a 1 TB drive to back up that raid-0. That way, you have extremely fast disk speed via three drives and the redundancy on one drive.
If you want to talk about spending big bucks, Dell has a product called the MD1000 that can't be beat for price. You can stick SATA or SAS in there, you can daisy chain three together, and six if you use both channels (you have to use their PERC5 or PERC6e to be supported but other cards work if you play nice but I wouldn't). And each enclosure holds 15 drives. They will also have an offering for a 24 disk array that is only 2u as well that holds 2.5inch drives... sas only of course...
Cheap and dead good setup: ProLiant DL180 + 1TB disks w/ compatible trays + Linux + Zumastor
The HP ProLiant DL180 server is a 2U rack server with 12 SATA 3.5 slots starting at US $1299. You may also use the older DL320s but its processor is less powerful, it only admits 8GB RAM and the machine is more expensive.
Buy the server, then buy 12 empty trays at US $25. I've always bought them at SCSITray (you are looking for part number 373211-001
Now, but 2x80GB SATA disks for system in RAID-1 and 10x1TB SATA disks for data in RAID-5 (if you want RAID-6, you need a P400 controller with BBWC or a P800 controller with BBWC, the P600 won't work with > 2TB volumes).
For the software part, install Linux and Zumastor, which provides ZFS-like features on top of any Linux filesystem (I'm using it on top of ext3, some people prefer XFS). In case you want to have several replicated fileservers, Zumastor does replication automagically for you.
Yea, I guess you're right. I'm not into the Hollywood Ghetto Hip-Hop scene, so it went right straight over my head =)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
The fact that I was replying to a +5 Funny comment with a link to the Illmatic album should have clued you in. :P
Bah, it wasn't +Anything at the time. And based on yhe +5 Insightful on my reply, I wasn't the only one that missed the attempt at a joke.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I guarantee that you are, indeed, in good and numerous company on that one, although I'm pretty confident it was +Something Funny at the time that I posted my original reply to it. =)