All,

I am enbarking on a project to build up a home server for myself. The role of this server is to do nothing more than storage. The OS or OS drive does not matter, only the storage drives.

I have three requirements.
1. Must have some kind of redundancy (ie if one drive dies, just replace, no data loss)
2. Must be around about a terabyte of storage
3. Must keep the price to an absolute minimum without being silly.

The setup will not be turned on all the time, only when i feel like it. Speed is not a terribly important factor so i'm not excluding RAID5. I'm not limiting my ideas to a PC with a bunch of hard drives in it, i'm open to the idea of a pair of external drives perhaps, who knows.

How would you do it?

have you looked into getting a NAS at all?

not really.

yeh mate get a nas setep. my old man just got one with 4 x 1tb hdds in it.. can't remember which raid setup but it was the redundancy one... not for speed. tiny little box that just plugs str8 into his network & is configurable from any of his networked pcs. dunno how much it was but it's gotta be cheaper than a whole pc.

NAS ft mob dep? f*** yeah

OpenFiler is an opensource NAS product built up on Linux that might help you on the OS side of things.

For the hardware parts then you'd want to get RAID5 to fit your criteria and be reasonbly cheap (3x500Gb drives). Although it's common knowledge that mboard onboard RAID controllers aren't terribly great so you may need to invest in a controller if the budget allows it.

http://www.rocketfettscollection.com/swchpics/bossnass.jpg

Three words.

ZED
EFF
ESS

Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS, Samba 3, NFS, linux software RAID with LVM over the top

doob and demon - yeah, just had a look, those things seem pretty darn good. i'm gonna have to take a look at that

ticman - yeah - same sort of thing as freenas? i've played around with it a bit

trog - ZFS, is that like raid 5 on steriods?

ZFS does sound pretty sweet.

one of these?
more

freenas is pretty kick arse

get some 1tb samsung drives from mst - $159 each.
throw them in an old PC, raid5 + freenas
profit

I'm f***ing way over my home server, nothing but problems
I'm about to replace it infact

currently its a core 2 2.3ghz, geforce 9600gtx? i think
9 x HDD's and thermaltake 800w~ psu

basically my problem was I didn't plan far enough ahead, I thought hey (3x320) 800GB~ will be fine (this was a few years ago)
then I filled that up, so i added in another 3x500gb drives (raid 5 = 1TB), then i filled that up and added another few 500gb drives

so now its got 9 drives and its a PAIN IN THE ASS
on board raid for starters was a HUGE mistake, the asus pb5 is -ok- but its raid sucks donkeys nuts, go hardware raid

personally im going to srap it in favor of a small form factor core2 with all soldid state s*** and just buy a heap of the 1TB external western digitals (currently $199)


so I could have 5TB for like $800 instead of 3TB for like $2000+

the things been really giving me the s***s lately, randomly reboots and what not - cant be assed figuring it out anymore, i've replaced heaps of crap and its time to upgrade

end rant

edit: epic - whats MST ?

last edited by tequila at 22:15:05 17/Nov/08

teq: MSY? (t is next to y), which would be about right for their price range etc.

edit: epic - whats MST ?

Y is next to T

Edit: beaten :<

last edited by kos at 23:01:15 17/Nov/08

hey guys i think the y key is next to t

I have 2 1T nas drives for sale in my garage sale extravaganza!

gah I just had my largest HDD die.. wish I had some Boss Nas action

I gotta get on board with backup/redundancy.

Got a full 1tb drive, and I may just cry if i lost the data.
Got a redunant copy of my 200gig in music at least.

Wanna get 4x1tb drives and raid them up, but the case I have probably won't fit all the drives in it. Is there like a slim form case that'll fit 5 drives and a dvd drive? Use my media centre as a storage unit atm, don't really wanna have to get a separate computer for the job.

What's everyones experiences with hardware raid cards? Is it worth it? They are pretty exy though :S

speaking of hardware raid. say if the controller dies, do you have to get the exact same controller otherwise you're screwed?

there was an article on /. The other week discussing that raid5 is near end of life because the failure rate of large drives exceeds the rebuild time and for a single sector/page failure the whole drive is taken offline and rebuilt, so u r in a constant state of rebuild

I tried both openfiler and freenas on my server but ended up using windows, since I had a hardware problem with one drive and didn't know enough linux to work that out

I think hardware raid in a no support low churn environment like a home is very risky over software raid.

speaking of hardware raid. say if the controller dies, do you have to get the exact same controller otherwise you're screwed?

100% spot on unless you're a f***ing guru or loaded with the dollars to pay some data recovery specialists
I wouldn't like to be in that situation though

this is why you should always backup, even if your drives are raided

of course who's going to bother for a home setup, but meh

use raid6 if you're worried about that... can sustain 2 drive failures

there was an article on /. The other week discussing that raid5 is near end of life because the failure rate of large drives exceeds the rebuild time and for a single sector/page failure the whole drive is taken offline and rebuilt, so u r in a constant state of rebuild

Yeh that was a cool read.

this is why you should always backup, even if your drives are raided

Actually the Slashdot thread natslovr is talking about was full of people talking about how RAID isn't a backup solution at all and if you treat it like one you're almost certainly going to get f***ed at some point.

speaking of hardware raid. say if the controller dies, do you have to get the exact same controller otherwise you're screwed?

Yes. And sometimes it even has to have the same firmware. That's a show stopper right there, I wouldn't want to be in that situation either ... fingers crossed.

I'm experimenting with bare metal recovery software, which basically takes a snap shot of your HDD every x minutes (incrementally) and then do a full snap shot every week.

It's very fast and it's compatible with VMWare/MS Virtual machine so you can mount the snap shots as virtual machine and have your server up and running in a few minutes.

The software I'm trailing is ShadowProtect from http://www.storagecraft.com/products/ShadowProtectSBS/

Anyone tried this? I'm thinking about buying it.

I'm experimenting with bare metal recovery software, which basically takes a snap shot of your HDD every x minutes (incrementally) and then do a full snap shot every week.

Check out ZFS, one of its features is it can take snapshots almost immediately:

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/whatis/

I haven't had any personal experience with it but I'm dying to try it on my next home server project (when I find some time to do it). It sounds really, really awesome.

The only downside is it's not natively integrated into Linux. You'll have to either use OpenSolaris, or I think it's in the latest version of FreeBSD as well. There's a Linux project but it's not in at a low level so I think there are some performance issues.

This is an excellent, if a bit technical, overview of ZFS (PDF, sorry): www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/zfs_last.pdf

I know nothing about Linux.

My Thecus n5200 apparently uses MDADM to manage the RAID array. I take it this is software RAID. If it asplodes can I rebuild the array in a Linux box?

I already backup the critical stuff, I just have a lot of ISOs and recorded TV that would be a pain to re-acquire if the unit had a big spaz.

last edited by Hogfather at 11:20:01 18/Nov/08

hey Trog,

Have you got links to any good primers on setting up and using ZFS? I haven't played with it before, but have seen lots of good things, maybe it's time I checked it out.

Have you got links to any good primers on setting up and using ZFS? I haven't played with it before, but have seen lots of good things, maybe it's time I checked it out.

Nah sorry dude, I'm not up to that point myself - I just sit around annoying everyone talking about how great it is without actually ever having used it or read more than the high level features :)

personally i only backup files i create... so photos, work files, quake maps ;p, photoshop files, etc.. which usually isn't very large in size. i keep 'em all in the same location & backup that location regularly to both hdd & optical drive.

i can't see the point of backing up stuff i have the install disks for or that i downloaded... the internet is my backup! ;]

I've changed my views on my Thecus drive, since upgradeing to vista (and a whole new PC) it's been working brilliantly with out any troubles at all.

Thecus NAS boxes for the win, though i still can't get the media server on it to work /shrug.

But i used to be the same in that i'd run a PC as a home server, and i just got sick of all the fiddeling around that was involved. the NAS solution so far, runs cooler, is tiny so can sit up on top of the book shelf out of the way, with no problems, and in general requires little to no, maintenance at all.

I still think getting one of the Thecus 5*series is better than the 4*series.

Hogfather mdadm = "new" linux software raid. Yes you can rebuild it. You can get the info out from the individual drive block headers via a few mdadm parameters. This helps if you forget your raid configuration.

In some ways a software RAID could be better than a hardware RAID because of the driver/controller/firmware problem. It doesn't exist in a software RAID but then it carries with it a whole bunch of other problems.

Thanks dafugg, good to know!

Check out ZFS, one of its features is it can take snapshots almost immediately:

I would love to use ZFS except we're using MS SBS server (we're pretty much MS shop here so), ZFS option isn't available for us.

Check out ZFS, one of its features is it can take snapshots almost immediately:

I would love to use ZFS except we're using MS SBS server (we're pretty much MS shop here so), ZFS option isn't available for us.

You gotta break the MS habit some day :)

For a home server, DO NOT USE HARDWARE RAID - whether real or imaginary motherboard one.

Use your OS's software RAID, you can then move your drives to any system when your current one breaks.

The only reason to use real hardware raid is performance, and on a home server, you just dont need it.


ZFS is not available on Window or Linux, it may as well not exist.

Not trying to troll, though in a few months you could get a mac mini with ZFS (write support coming with next OS-X) with an array of external USB drives - looking at the tools for setting up ZFS now its fairly effortless. Then you can time machine the ZFS to a big external drive, and power protect it with a UPS.

Though NAS would definitely be the way to go for price/performance at the moment.

last edited by simul at 23:43:54 18/Nov/08

orly Nathan.
thanks for that, saves me dollars too.
At the moment i'm looking at a NAS and RAID-1. Seems the cheapest/most reliable way to go about it. Thanks all for your help.

does anyone here have much experience with opensolaris?

after some thinking and research on zfs, I'm thinking that maybe i should run opensolaris as a host os for the zfs file system, then run something like freenas or openfiler in a vm to serve up the files with extra bells & whistles.

god damn you trog for planting the zfs idea into my head!!!! *shakes fist*

openfiler is a waste of time, it's just a really poor frontend to fdisk and samba.

so, this thread has got me thinking;

whats a simple cheap backup system for windows?
something that will just automatically backup anything that lives in certain directories, something where i can set it up and forget about it forever?

Cobain Backup, its free and does the job

so does pathsynch and task scheduler, and then you have the brilliance that is pathsynch on your pc

whats a simple cheap backup system for windows?
something that will just automatically backup anything that lives in certain directories, something where i can set it up and forget about it forever?

I would've recommended iFolder but Novell came along and f***ed it up beyond all belief. Pre-Novell it was a simple server/client app. You setup the server (Linux) and then your client (OSX, Linux, Windows) would connect to the server. Any folder you designate as an 'iFolder' would be monitored and automatically sync'ed to the server.

The reason it was so awesome was that it was automatic and you could access your data from multiple clients. Good example was my Firefox profile. I had it iFolder'ed to my home PC, laptop and work PC (over HTTPS) so I could get the same bookmarks, settings, apps, etc from anywhere.

so does pathsynch and task scheduler, and then you have the brilliance that is pathsynch on your pc

Pathsync for the mothaf***in win. It is such a must-have tool.

god damn you trog for planting the zfs idea into my head!!!! *shakes fist*

Bwahaha!

I've heard mixed reports on OpenSolaris - I'm tempted to try FreeBSD for my ZFS experimentation.

freeBSD

http://www.freebsd.org/layout/images/logo-red.png

Oh yeh I forgot, FreeBSD has a Quick Start Guide to ZFS. I think if you're used to Linux you might find FreeBSD slightly easier to use than OpenSolaris (at least, based on a few comments I've read on Slashdot, YMMV).

Yeah FreeBSD is a lot better to use than (Open)S(low)laris heh. I'd be trying ZFS on FreeBSD, then VM Windows on it with SBS2003. But of course that's wishful thinking for the current setup, unless I want to ask the boss for a new server so I can f*** around with, I'm pretty sure he'll laugh at me...

Symantec backup exec system recovery. It's a neat product...one feature I love is that it lets you convert images into virtual machines for all the major vendors: vmware, virtual server, etc.

I just image my workstation with a weekly base and the incrementals are run daily with a new base image created on a weekly basis.

Does the trick for me, I don't think there's much real need for a server unless you want performance or to share the data out to a bunch of users.

Thumbs up on THECUS NAS device though. I've used a couple on a few sites and they work very well. They have some great hardware onboard for good performance.

Symantec backup exec system recovery. It's a neat product...one feature I love is that it lets you convert images into virtual machines for all the major vendors: vmware, virtual server, etc.

Yeah that ShadowCopy software does the same thing.

I've finally got opensolaris + zfs working. It all seems pretty sweet. 3tbs to store... erm.... linux isos...

But there're quite a few more things that i have to setup, but i think this might work. anyone here have much experience with opensolaris? I want to know what the best approach to set some things up are.

I'd personally go for an IBM XT 286 - pretty reasonable for $4000 ( http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=260 )

Sweet graphics, 640kB RAM (Bill told us it would be more than we would ever need) and a 6MHz CPU.

NAME PC XT 286
MANUFACTURER IBM
TYPE Professional Computer
ORIGIN U.S.A.
YEAR 1986
KEYBOARD Professional keyboard with function keys, numeric keypad and editing keys
CPU Intel 80286
SPEED 6 MHz
RAM 640 KB
VRAM Unknown
ROM 64 KB
TEXT MODES 80 x 24 / 40 x 24
GRAPHIC MODES CGA modes : 320 x 200 / 640 x 200
COLORS 16
SOUND bipper
SIZE / WEIGHT Unknown
I/O PORTS eight internal slots (six 16 bit ISA and two 8 bit ISA), RS232c, Centronics
BUILT IN MEDIA One 5.25'' disk-drive & 20 MB hard disk
OS MS DOS
POWER SUPPLY Built-in PSU
PRICE $4000 ?