[SGVLUG] RAID5 or inexpensive NAS

[Claude Felizardo]

I recently started building a new file server at home to replace my
old P3-450 which is getting too sluggish for everything I have running
on it: file server for the various desktops in the house, weather
station software, web server, Slimdevices media server, TiVo
application server, etc.  Asterisk runs but it really needs more horse
power.  The old box has three 250 GB PATA drives with four software
RAID partitions: RAID-1 for OS and RAID-5 for home, shared (AV files)
and rsnapshots.  For the new box, I have three 500 GB SATA drives with
three RAID partitions: RAID-1 for /boot, RAID-1 for OS and RAID-5 for
LVM with like 860+ GB for home, shared and snapshots.  I do have
partitions for swap and actually a 3rd RAID1 partition for trying out
a new Linux installation in the future.  btw, the /boot is because I'm
booting LVM on RAID5 and I didn't want to deal with having to have a
custom initrd again like the last time I tried LVM on RAID on the
previous file server.

I got the basic system working and still need to install the extra
apps but I noticed that hddtemp was reporting the drives were running
around 45 C.  I dug around and found some old fans I had laying around
got the temp down to 40 but I'd still have to worry about summer when
everything goes up another 5.   So I held off copying files from the
old server until I listened to Dan's talk about zumastor last night.
I would have liked to have stayed to ask more questions but I had to
leave.  I really like the idea of the snapshots occurring at the file
system level instead of on top like how rsnapshot works but it sounded
like it wouldn't work for me since I wanted everything including the
OS and local home directories protected and it can't do that.

So Last night I rearranged the fans and removed the optical drive and
got the temp down to like 35-37 which is a few degrees warmer than the
drive in the old fileserver.  I'm using a Dell PowerEdge 400SC which
has a clam shell case and it just wasn't designed to be a server box.
Now it sounds like a vacuum cleaner so I'm thinking of going to the
Pomona computer show tomorrow to look for some quieter fans.  Either
that or a new case.

Now what i'd really want is a Netgear ReadyNAS using technology from
Infrant with their X-RAID technology which lets you reconfig drives on
the fly but I can't see myself spending $1K for something I can almost
build myself.

I mentioned this to a coworker at lunch and he mentioned he uses
USB/firewire external boxes.  I've never tried firewire but I don't
like USB boxes because you can't monitor drive temp, and overall drive
health.  Then I recalled that another friend was raving about a
Linksys 200NAS and he had sent me a jpg of a screenshot of his web
browser showing the about of running smartctl.  This box has an
ethernet jack, two 3.5" SATA drive bays and USB for expansion.  Prices
range from $100 to $140 which is kinda high but I all my big drives
are SATA not IDE/PATA.

Has anyone used one of these inexpensive SOHO NAS devices and were
they happy with it?  What file system formats do they support?  How
well do they do when transferring large files for extended period of
time like when trying to that first load?

I only need the file sharing part occasionally so why not put the big
drives in another box, possibly mirrored, that I can hopefully put to
sleep when not in use.  Something that will just work and if I need to
take the web/weather server offline for a few hours or days I can
still access my files.  If I still want my hourly snapshots when I'm
tweaking config files, I can still do that with a 2nd disk in the
server that I can put to sleep as well.

Comments/suggestions?

claude