gianluca4
June 7th, 2014, 08:03 PM
Hello,
I’m in the process of building a NAS box, which should serve as a file server, plus some light server applications (mostly streaming). I have evaluated a few options and I would like to share my conclusions and ask a few questions before committing to it and throw away time (and potentially data). I would appreciate your comments and suggestions if you are interested in reading further.
Relevant Hardware:
GA-E350N WIN8 (mini ITX, bit weak CPU, but quite cheap and with 4 sata ports. It should be fit for purpose)
2 x 3TB WD Red (I’m considering possible expansion in the future)
8GB DDR3 RAM
Considerations:
I think that the three most popular options for a project like this are:
A dedicated NAS solution (FreeNAS, NAS4Free, etc.)
Some form of Linux Server distro (Ubuntu Server)
Some form of Linux Desktop (Ubuntu)
After having done some reading and weighing the possibilities, I have decided for Ubuntu Desktop because:
NAS solutions seem to be quite complex to implement, maintain and to add functionalities on. Furthermore the various NAS forums managed to scare me away from ZFS: Pretty much every other post says “If you [add any small mistake or misunderstanding of procedures here], you will lose the whole pool, your computer won’t talk to you anymore and probably you’ll split up with your wife” (ok, I might have exaggerated a bit, but you get my point).
Ubuntu Server is probably the best solution, but I’m not fully conversant with the CLI and to be honest I quite like the idea that if my main desktop dies on me, I can use this box as a provisional machine to do basic stuff.
Disks configuration: I will go for Raid 1 (plus backups of course).
Questions:
Installation. I suppose that there are mainly three ways to install this system
Dedicate one extra disk as system disk. This obviously works, but it steals one precious SATA port
Install the system on a USB stick. It should work, but there might be performance issues (the board only supports USB 2.0).
Is there a way to push Ubuntu to have a priority in being retained in the RAM? This could help performance. Dedicated NAS system typically do this, but I have no idea of how to do it in Linux
Install the system in one of the data disks (it would therefore be mirrored to the other disk). I would be inclined to implement this solution, but:
Is there a tutorial to achieve this?
What should I do if I decide to expand the storage? I suspect that my only option is to add two disks and create a further mirror with them.
I would lose some space, because I will be mirroring the system too, but that’s not a problem and actually might come in handy if there’s a system failure.
If my system disk or one of the data disks fails and I can’t/don’t want to rebuild the system, can I just stick the other data disk in a USB casing, connect it to a Linux box and copy the files from there assuming I haven’t encrypted the disk?
I’m sure this is more than enough. Thanks a lot for making it through here.
Regards,
Gianluca.
I’m in the process of building a NAS box, which should serve as a file server, plus some light server applications (mostly streaming). I have evaluated a few options and I would like to share my conclusions and ask a few questions before committing to it and throw away time (and potentially data). I would appreciate your comments and suggestions if you are interested in reading further.
Relevant Hardware:
GA-E350N WIN8 (mini ITX, bit weak CPU, but quite cheap and with 4 sata ports. It should be fit for purpose)
2 x 3TB WD Red (I’m considering possible expansion in the future)
8GB DDR3 RAM
Considerations:
I think that the three most popular options for a project like this are:
A dedicated NAS solution (FreeNAS, NAS4Free, etc.)
Some form of Linux Server distro (Ubuntu Server)
Some form of Linux Desktop (Ubuntu)
After having done some reading and weighing the possibilities, I have decided for Ubuntu Desktop because:
NAS solutions seem to be quite complex to implement, maintain and to add functionalities on. Furthermore the various NAS forums managed to scare me away from ZFS: Pretty much every other post says “If you [add any small mistake or misunderstanding of procedures here], you will lose the whole pool, your computer won’t talk to you anymore and probably you’ll split up with your wife” (ok, I might have exaggerated a bit, but you get my point).
Ubuntu Server is probably the best solution, but I’m not fully conversant with the CLI and to be honest I quite like the idea that if my main desktop dies on me, I can use this box as a provisional machine to do basic stuff.
Disks configuration: I will go for Raid 1 (plus backups of course).
Questions:
Installation. I suppose that there are mainly three ways to install this system
Dedicate one extra disk as system disk. This obviously works, but it steals one precious SATA port
Install the system on a USB stick. It should work, but there might be performance issues (the board only supports USB 2.0).
Is there a way to push Ubuntu to have a priority in being retained in the RAM? This could help performance. Dedicated NAS system typically do this, but I have no idea of how to do it in Linux
Install the system in one of the data disks (it would therefore be mirrored to the other disk). I would be inclined to implement this solution, but:
Is there a tutorial to achieve this?
What should I do if I decide to expand the storage? I suspect that my only option is to add two disks and create a further mirror with them.
I would lose some space, because I will be mirroring the system too, but that’s not a problem and actually might come in handy if there’s a system failure.
If my system disk or one of the data disks fails and I can’t/don’t want to rebuild the system, can I just stick the other data disk in a USB casing, connect it to a Linux box and copy the files from there assuming I haven’t encrypted the disk?
I’m sure this is more than enough. Thanks a lot for making it through here.
Regards,
Gianluca.