

Can the HN community work to build out a nice homebrew NAS - biturd

For some time now I have wanted to hook up a NAS to my home network for storing my music, video, and data.<p>There are projects like FreeNas, Nexenta, and a handful of other OSS NAS software/hardware.  Of course, there are the off the shelf products like Drobo which I personally do not feel fits the bill at all.<p>I was hoping that as a collaborative effort, the HN community could come up with a spec sheet of hardware and software that could be put together to make a really nice NAS for the slightly above average home network hacker.<p>Off the top of my head, I would love to see it meet these criteria, though would also love to hear the pros and cons of these ideas.  Not to mention the valuable input everyone in this community can provide.<p>* What OS would it run?
* What motherboard would be ideal?
* Can it be kept it fanless?
* Would it be good to also try to shove in a full blown router and firewall, replacing two devices at once?
* Serial ATA specs.
* Minimum CPU that can be used.
* ZFS?  I certainly desire for it to be ZFS.
* What software would be best to control it, rather than writing our own, which would slow things down.  Ideally this would amount to putting parts together, not reinventing the wheel.
* This is home to Small/Med Business, do not even try to hit the enterprise.
* How many drives
* What is the best box/case for something like this?
* How low of a power consumer can we keep it?<p>And whatever else people can add.  I really would love to see this be a ZFS based system, with the ability to support Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux out of the box without any fiddling.  All over GB Ethernet. If it can act as a portable home directory destination for other OS's, support sparse images/bundles, Time Machine backups from Apple's kit, etc.  And all that, with the ability to pop in a new drive at any time and absorb that storage.  Not to mention knowing your data is safe by choosing the right ZFS RAID methodology.<p>To date, I have not seen this done without hitting costs that are far too much to put into home use.  The second you go enterprise, it is a noisy rack mount or a Drobo, both of which I am not a huge fan of.<p>If dialogue can be opened on this to get specs together, I think I can drum up the funds to make a first generation prototype, and find the time to write up the instructions on how to make it all come Together.<p>What do you think?
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jolan
> ZFS? I certainly desire for it to be ZFS.

NetApp seems to be threatening to sue people who ship devices based on ZFS and
suing Sun itself. Might want to stay away from that.

> What software would be best to control it, rather than writing our own,
> which would slow things down. Ideally this would amount to putting parts
> together, not reinventing the wheel.

Just need to create a web interface to the underlying tools.

> Time Machine backups from Apple's kit

Possible with Netatalk.

As far as hw specs and whatnot, you could do a basic 2 disk atom server if you
just want storage and minimal NFS/CIFS sharing over the network.

My preference would be a Core i5/i7 4 disk system so you could real-time
transcode HD video for streaming to UPNP media devices.

~~~
biturd
Yeah, the ZFS stuff is getting a little out of hand. However, I am not wanting
to get into the business of selling a hardware device, I only want to make the
plans for the community to solve all the issues surrounding it.

FreeNAS is almost there, and they do seem to support ZFS now that I was
looking into it more today. It looks like it is now just a matter of finding
the right hardware. I think I do need 5 disks, 4 for backup and one for
parity.

Hopefully it will support Time Machine right out of the box, since Time
Machine backs to a sparse bundle, which by nature, can handle all the Mac OS X
meta data.

Are you aware of anything that is 5-6 disks, GB, 5-6 SATA ports, or 2-3
multiplied, that is not huge, ugly, and massively expensive?

Thanks for the pointers, I will start looking into the core if/i7 stuff too.

~~~
jolan
> Are you aware of anything that is 5-6 disks, GB, 5-6 SATA ports, or 2-3
> multiplied, that is not huge, ugly, and massively expensive?

Nope but you might be able to find an eSATA card and enclosure. That would
give you more choice over the server.

Another reason why I mentioned Core i5/i7 is because the newer models have AES
instructions so you could do AES encrypted backups at gigabit wirespeed.

Maybe something like this on the low end:

\- Supermicro Atom D510 - $360

\- 4GB RAM - $40

\- PCI-E Riser - $20

\- eSATA card - $20

\- Areca ARC-5020 - $450

\- 5 x 1TB drives - $450

\- Total: $1340 USD

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101332&cm_re=supermicro_atom_d510-_-16-101-332-_-Product)

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151046&Tpk=areca%20esata)

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158093&cm_re=esata_card-_-15-158-093-_-Product)

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284&cm_re=western_digital_caviar_black_1tb-_-22-136-284-_-Product)

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Scott_MacGregor
Why bother with hardware, why not use the cloud? Hardware gets expensive, plus
some sever fans can sound extra loud in a home. Maybe someone can give you a
heads up on how to do it in Amazon or RackSpace.

~~~
biturd
I have tried ever one of the clouds I can get my hands on, Amazon, BackBlaze,
mozy, carbnonite, sugarsync, a few more I can't remember...

I am on OS X, and not one of them can handle the all the extended attributes,
resources, and other much you get with Mac OS X Files. Now, most are not
claiming to, most will not claim to give you a bootable backup at all. Some
do, and they are sorely mistaken.

DropBox is the only one making efforts to, but they are also not even trying
to be a backup solution.

Just pointing rsync with a patch on it for the attributes is not enough from
what I have tested. Not that I am even shooting for a system level backup.
This is more home NAS stuff, and I really don't want to stream a HD video down
from a remote store.

Thanks for the comment though.

