[NTLUG:Discuss] NAS devices

[Preston Hagar]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 3:27 PM, Ralph <sfreader at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Preston,
>  That looks like a good set of hardware for a roll your own solution,
> particularly if you say it is reliable hardware.  I can tell that I need
> to add some parts to the chassis to make it a usable system, but I don't
> know what.  If you have a pointer to a good reference manual for it,
> could you forward that?  If not, I'll keep looking and I expect I will
> find something.
> Thank you,
> Ralph
>

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I only use this email
address for mailling lists and don't check it very regularly.

Anyway, the link to the chassis at Servers Direct I send it basically
just an empty case with a SATA backplane in it.  You have to add your
own hardware.  The power supply I would get from servers direct, and
the rest I usually would buy from provantage.com or newegg.com.
Typically, you can get a pretty good idea of reliability from the
newegg user reviews.  You might want to look at the "server
motherboard" section of the newegg site to choose your motherboard
from.

Once you get it all built, I would install your favorite Linux (or
FreeBSD) and then mount the raid array (which you would create in the
3ware firmware, if you got that card) and then set it up as a samba
file server.

The major downside to this is that you have much less overall support
for the machine.  Usually the individual component warranties are
longer than if you bought a pre-built machine, but you have to deal
with each manufacturer seperatly.  Really, it comes down to what you
are comfortable with.  The company I work for is somewhat small so we
can't get the "Enterprise" Dell support, only the "Small Business"
support.  In our experience, even with purchasing the highest level of
support offered, we might get someone on site quickly, but they can't
always solve problems right away (sometimes taking days).  The benefit
of building the machines yourself is that you can be sure that there
is no vendor voodoo in the system that might keep you from being able
to fix it quickly.  For example, after many trying hours we found out
that drives for one of our Dell servers require a special magic
firmware.  Even though they look like and were the same model as the
Seagate drives we ordered from newegg, Dell had put some Dell
proprietary firmware on the drives that keep them from crashing under
high loads.


Anyway, I hope this helps and possibly gives you some new ideas.

Preston