An Admins life is hard enough » My very own NAS http://blog.rohrauer.at Meine Gedanken über IT und Technik Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:23:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Had some time to play… http://blog.rohrauer.at/had-some-time-to-play/ http://blog.rohrauer.at/had-some-time-to-play/#comments Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:48:13 +0000 Johannes http://blog.rohrauer.at/?p=549 Today I decided to move my board into a M350 enclosure. It just looks better, and makes me feel, this project will be finished somewhen.

I played around with FreeNAS 0.7.1 (499x), but after a short while I decided to tick it off my list. When I rescan my Disks, it always fails with a kernel panic. Maybe I will send an E-Mail with further information to the dev´s.

OpenFiler was my next try. I had to reinstall it, because I forgot my password. Locked myself out of my very own box. Great! Let´s see if I can post some information about the installation itself. Many people (including me) have had issues with the onboard NIC.

Let´s have some sleep now, it´s late again…

]]> http://blog.rohrauer.at/had-some-time-to-play/feed/ 0 Choosing the right OS http://blog.rohrauer.at/choosing_the_right_os/ http://blog.rohrauer.at/choosing_the_right_os/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:42:34 +0000 Johannes http://blog.rohrauer.at/?p=495 So, finally I´ve installed FreeNAS and OpenFiler, each on it´s own SSD. By accident I stumbled across unRAID (which is described here, here, here and here on the developers site). Hmm, not too good, having 4 options for my NAS/Fileserver. Acutaly I tend to use OpenFiler, but the other options are good-looking too. Not to mention CoreNAS (a FreeNAS fork based on Debian – w00t!). Altought it´s in an early development Stage, I´m really interested in it.

However, to make long things short, I´ll set up all systems with out-of-the-box configuration and let them share myRAID1. Afterwards I´ll compare the speed, as good as possible, to see which platform acts best in it´s defaults.

]]> http://blog.rohrauer.at/choosing_the_right_os/feed/ 0 My SSD´s have arrived! http://blog.rohrauer.at/my-ssd%c2%b4s-have-arrived/ http://blog.rohrauer.at/my-ssd%c2%b4s-have-arrived/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:20:11 +0000 Johannes http://blog.rohrauer.at/?p=481 Today my Transcend SSD´s have arrived. Earlier than I expected! The installation of Openfiler on my D945GSEJT went almost flawless. Just when it tried to access the SSD, I got numerous of this error:

Assertion ((C * heads + H) * sectors + S == A) at
disk_dos.c:586 in function probe_partition_for_geom() failed.

They can be ignored. After this part of the installation everything went fine. After the first reboot I started “conary update conary” and “conary updateall” to apply the newest patches. It took rather long, but I´m not shure if it´s te processing power of the board or the architecture of Openfiles itself. I will compare it to another installation, when I find some time.

Today´s delivery: my 3x Transcends Today´s delivery: my 3x Transcends ]]> http://blog.rohrauer.at/my-ssd%c2%b4s-have-arrived/feed/ 0 Motivation http://blog.rohrauer.at/project-my-very-own-nas/ http://blog.rohrauer.at/project-my-very-own-nas/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:15:57 +0000 Johannes http://blog.rohrauer.at/?p=214 Every free minute I do some research for my new Home-NAS. All available Makes and Models are somewhat shabby, or just too expensive. Most of the products share their drawbacks:

  • Volume: Most Systems are too loud to keep them outside the cellar.
  • Capacity: if one needs more than 1TB of (mirrored) spacem the range of products is even more limited.
  • Configuration: mostly shipped with proprietary firmware, without any chance to extend or modify, those systems aren´t even my third choice.

After looking for suitable parts for a long time, I finally ended up with the following:

  • Motherboard: Intel D945GSEJT. This cheap board has one big advantage compared to it´s competitors: it´s low footprint. With it´s height of about 20mm it´s equiped with basic interfaces and lacks bells and whistles (well, one COM-Port would be handy).
    Edit: I stumbled over this neat PCB. It spots an Intel Atom N330 (Dualcore with 2×1.6GHz) and 4 SATA Ports. May be worth a try…
  • Harddisk: I was lucky to get my hands on 2 Western Digital Harddisks (WD2002FYPS). They´re out of WD´s line of Enterprise Disks, and especially built for working in a Raid-Array.
  • Boot: My boot drive will be a 2GB SSD from Transcend (either a TS2GDOM44V or  a  TS2GDOM44H. I ordered both and will decide later). 2GB is plenty of room, even for a bulky NAS-Distribution or a whole OS like Ubuntu/Debian.
  • Memory: At the moment I´m using a Samsung 512MB PC2-5300 memory module. Later I will switch to a bigger one, but for now the 512MB are enough.
  • Misc. Stuff: I still have no case for my NAS. Maybe I will construct my personal one, we will see. Right now my lab feels fine on my desk.
  • Software: I will check the following Distributions: FreeNAS, OpenFiler, open-e and plain Ubuntu Server. Additionally, I will give Windows a try. Wich version isn´t yet decided.

As soon as I hold my SSD´s in my hands I will update this post with further information. Maybe I can help somebody making a good decision.

During my research I also found the Kontron KTUS15 Board:

Kontron KTUS15 Intel Atom Z530 Board

Kontron KTUS15 Intel Atom Z530 Board

Looks rather promising according to this article. The only drawback is the price (which is around € 300,- incl. VAT).

..to be continued…

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