[Herbal]

I advocate building a PC since that's what I know and love.

Here in the UK you can piece together a low spec (1.8GHz, integrated graphics, gigabit network, 1Gb RAM) for around $300 which comes with basic SATA RAID integrated into the motherboard (simple RAID such as striping and mirroring). Add to this whatever case takes your fancy and the amount of storage you need and you can build something that does what a NAS box does for a lot less with better future upgradability.

As I mentioned in my previous post, a Lian Li case could takes 10 drives as standard and could accept another 10 with use of drive bay mountings.


With a PC solution you've got everything covered. You can do whatever you want with a PC box but a NAS box is just that...a pretty simple box (unless you like voiding warranties and hack the heck outta it

)


I guess we should mention the downside of PC's in that in order to get a whisper quiet system you need to spend the cash and put the time and effort into it and they do ultimately use more electricity than a NAS box (although choose the right parts and it's pretty insignificant).

I suppose it's a question of how savvy you feel you are with a PC and customising it to what you want and need.

/EDIT - Just a quick note that RAID 5 can be performed on 3 drives although some NAS boxes may require 4 for some unknown reason.

 

[error401]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyrilix /img/forum/go_quote.gif Edit: In response to those that advocate building a system over building a NAS, it really depends. I just want a fileserver -- that's all. Why do I need the expandability of a brand new computer? Also, a NAS is small. An SFF system is also small, but not as small. A NAS is an integrated solution for reliability and storage needs. A computer is just another computer -- sure, you can do whatever you want with it, but only if you're actually going to do all that. All in all, building a relatively low power modern computer with a RAID card won't be any cheaper than a $600-750 NAS box + hard drives. If you skip the RAID, you save a lot, but you also miss out on a lot.

A NAS is a computer just like any other with a CPU, RAM and a NIC. The only difference is that the software is proprietary and you don't have any visibility into how it works. I'd say that's poor for reliability - firmware updates will stop when the model is out of date, whereas with a computer-turned-NAS the software you're using will be maintained for much longer since it's generic. Just don't run Windows on it and don't be tempted to poke around in it and use it for anything other than its purpose and it'll be fine...

Advantages include flexibility, performance, expandability and - possibly very important - the ability to plug the same drives in a different computer and get your data back. If your hardware NAS fails and you can't get an identical model to replace it, you're basically screwed (same goes for hardware RAID cards, so be sure you can get a replacement if you choose to go that route). And you can still definitely do it cheaper and faster - even the worst hardware at the store will be orders of magnitude faster than the integrated NAS. I can build a perfectly serviceable machine for under $250CAD, including case. That's a pretty big difference, especially when you get more rather than less.

The only real disadvantages are size, noise and power consumption. You can underclock your CPU and/or passively cool it to increase reliability and decrease noise. Most of the noise from either device will be from the drives though.

 

[Xiode]

Rosewill R6426-P BK ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail
-$5.00 Instant
$15.99

Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6L250R0 250GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA133 Hard Drive - OEM
-$10.00 Instant
$59.99

SONY Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model DDU1615/B2s - OEM
$17.99

Rosewill RV350 ATX 1.3 350W Power Supply - Retail
-$5.00 Instant
$20.99

Kingston ValueRAM 256MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 333 (PC 2700) System Memory Model KVR333X64C25/256 - Retail
$21.49

BIOSTAR K8NHA Grand Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

AMD Sempron 64 3000+ Palermo 1.8GHz Socket 754 Processor Model SDA3000BXBOX - Retail

CPU + Motherboard Combo Deal:
-$10.00 Combo
$66.99



Grand Total: $227.06 after shipping and handling

The motherboard includes a gigabit ethernet port and supports RAID 0 / 1. The only thing that I'm missing is a video card, since the motherboard doesn't include onboard video. I picked components that generally had good reviews and were low on price. Around half of them were on sale as well. I'd have to add in a gigabit switch into that price too, though.

Any comments, suggestions, or opinions?

 

[error401]

That's not a bad setup done on the cheap. It doesn't cost too much more to go up to higher quality components though, so you might thing about that. I've had some weird issues with servers on nVidia and VIA chipsets that I can't help but attribute to the boards since my 'real' servers are rock solid. As such I'd recommend going for an Intel chipset board, and obviously an Intel CPU as well (since Intel doesn't make chipsets that support AMD's CPUs). Also, beware of hardware that doesn't work in FreeBSD if you plan on using FreeNAS. I think that BIOSTAR should work, but its nVidia NIC is proprietary and while a reverse engineered driver exists on Linux, I'm not positive it's there in FreeBSD. You probably want to avoid installing the proprietary drivers on your FreeNAS install...most boards seem to use Marvell or Broadcom chips which should be supported under any OS.

I also don't like Maxtor hard drives. I've had more fail than all other manufacturers combined. I tend to avoid them, YMMV. My preferred brands are Seagate, Fujitsu or Samsung (also reputedly very quiet).

Here's what I'd change, and it'll only cost about $35 more:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250820AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
$67.99

Kingston ValueRAM 256MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) Desktop Memory Model KVR533D2N4/256 - OEM
$19.99

GIGABYTE GA-945GZM-S2 LGA 775 Intel 945GZ Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel Pentium D 805 Smithfield 2.66GHz LGA 775 Processor Model HH80551PE0672MN - OEM
$109.98 (combo deal)
[you could substitute the cheapie Celeron 336 and save yourself about $20 if you want]

You get a much faster, dual core CPU (though it won't matter much), solid well-supported chipset and onboard hardware, faster cheaper RAM, and a board from a reliable manufacturer (not to speak ill of BIOSTAR, but I've never used their gear and don't know their reputation). And if you ever have a need for it in your gaming rig, it might do a passable job .

Finally, I'd recommend avoiding using the onboard RAID (just use the SATA controllers and don't enable RAID) for the reasons above. It doesn't really offer you any advantage and has several disadvantages over software RAID, especially where you have ample CPU not doing anything else.

 

[error401]

Oh, and only one disk? Seems a bit wasteful, that...

 

[Xiode]

Well, right now I'm working with about $215 so I was trying to keep the cost low. My idea is that I could upgrade it over time as the need arises, perphaps adding a second drive and a RAID controller card.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll update my cart accordingly. Any suggestions for a switch as well?

 

[error401]

NETGEAR GS605 at $37.99 with $10.00 mail in rebate seems to be a good deal and NewEgg reviewers seem to like it. I'm running an 8 port 3Com workgroup switch that I got on eBay for like $10 and it works fine, but doesn't support jumbo frames. I have found that cheap desktop switches tend to saturate at maybe 85-90% capacity, but they're definitely better from a price/performance perspective, and for a light-use NAS like this I'm sure you'll never hit that limitation.

 

[Assorted]

This is what my colleague's configuration looks like. You don't even need a fully functional server.

 

[Xiode]

What kind of cables need to be used? Cat 5, 5E, 6.... straight, crossover? It's all confusing!

 

[error401]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xiode /img/forum/go_quote.gif What kind of cables need to be used? Cat 5, 5E, 6.... straight, crossover? It's all confusing!

Cat5e is sufficient for GigE. Most modern NICs and switches are auto MDI-X, so they'll cross over automatically if you fit the incorrect cable (this is also handy for doing PC->PC networks when you only have straight cables around). Normally you'd use straight through cables from PCs to switches. Crossover cables are used to connect two PCs or two switches.

 

[Nebby]

Auto MDI-X is actually part of the gigE spec, so if all pieces of your network are gigE, you don't have to worry about crossover cables at all.

 

[Xiode]

By the way, that Gigabyte motherboard you told me to upgrade to Error401 requires a 24-pin ATX connector. The power supply I had picked out is 350w and only has a 20-pin connector.

1) Is 350w enough? I added another hard drive to my cart, which brings the total up to x2 350GB SATA 3/GBs drives, in addition to the Smithfield 805.

2) Can I do without the 24-pin power connector? I'll only be using onboard video, and if I'm not mistaken, the extra 4 pins are just for modern video cards. If I need one, would an adapter work? I've heard tales of them not working too well.

 

[Xiode]

Oh, and I've been doing some research.... and what about hacking a Linksys NSLU2 and adding a USB 2.0 external HDD? Advantages, disadvantages, drawbacks... etc?

 

[error401]

I think you'd be okay with 350W for two drives. You likely will need the 24 pin ATX connector - I didn't even check that - I assumed anything new would be up to spec. Sorry about that. You should be able to get an equivalent supply with the 24 pin connector for about the same money though...

I don't really know a lot about hacking an NSLU2. I'd expect it to be a great way to do this as cheap as possible, but performance probably won't be as good, and you can't expand too far. I'm not too sure what the software situation is like, but it's probably no less flexible than a standard PC running Linux. If you're okay with the slow CPU, small amount of RAM and slow USB2 interface then it's probably the cheapest way to do this.

 

[Xiode]

I just put together a cart on NewEgg with a gigabit switch, NSLU2, 250GB external WD drive, and a couple 5ft CAT5E cables for around $150 cheaper than putting together a complete home-grown NAS. Apparently, people have been doing some pretty impressive things with these little boxes!

My original functionality desire was simply a server for streaming my Apple Lossless music files, but now that I'm reading about it, I would like to do more! Apache, FTP, LAMP, the possibilities are endless!

Would the quality of my music be limited in any way though? USB 2.0 isn't the limiting factor, it's the fact that the NSLU2 uses a 100MB ethernet interfact rather than gigabit. Is that fast enough to stream a lossless format?