building a NAS device

[-ct-]

anyone got good ideas? i have power, i have drives, what i need is a way to just connect the drives to the network, without making a full pc out of the box all i want is a network port and a power plug port on the back of the unit i've seen similar ways, but they use firewire - and that of course requires a pc to connect to i was thinking of a SNAP! server, but that's WAY out of my price range, and not enough storage

[Peachy]

hmm,I think your choices will be fairly limited. Even the Snap! Servers have Linux embedded into it to interface with the network. Without knowing what your drive interface is, I can't even image anything that will cost less than a PC. But, do you not have a spare box lying around, even something like a Pentium? A cheap Linux box with SAMBA installed would make a good file server.The reason, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, is that an NAS appliance/box still requires a CPU and an operating system. Thus, Linux is a good candidate.

[nlinecomputers]

I use Linux all the time like this. You can build a box and once it is setup remove the keyboard, mouse, and monitor(or use a switch box like I do) and have a nice file server and use Putty and Webmin to admin the thing. Only if you have a major problem do you need to connect up KVM. If your buying new you can get little cube chassis or pizza box units that are small and can run a cheap Celeron or Duron in a miniATX or FlexATX board.

[RandomBox]

"NAS" ===> Network Access/Area Storage!

[Stonegiant]

"NAS" ===> Network Access/Area Storage!

Or Naval Air Station. [/2¢] You may now return to your regularly scheduled topic, now in progress

[Peachy]

RandomBox,Yes, but he want's a Poor Man's NAS, and even this setup would likely be out of his price range. By definition, a NAS requires a CPU. On the other hand, a SAN (Storage Area Network) doesn't, at least I believe so if I understand the terminology correctly.

2. What is a NAS Device?Network-attached storage (NAS) is a concept of shared storage on a network. It communicates using Network File System (NFS) for UNIX« environments, Common Internet File System (CIFS) for Microsoft Windows environments, FTP, http, and other networking protocols. NAS brings platform independence and increased performance to a network, as if it were an attached appliance.A NAS device is typically a dedicated, high-performance, high-speed communicating, single-purpose machine or component. NAS devices are optimized to stand alone and serve specific storage needs with their own operating systems and integrated hardware and software. Think of them as types of plug-and-play appliances, except with the purpose of serving your storage requirements. The systems are simplified to address specific needs as quickly as possible-in real time. NAS devices are well suited to serve networks that have a mix of clients, servers, and operations and may handle such tasks as Web cache and proxy, firewall, audio-video streaming, tape backup, and data storage with file serving.This paper introduces readers to a category of NAS devices called filers. These highly optimized servers enable file and data sharing among different types of clients. It also defines NAS benefits with respect to storage area networks (SANs). Finally, the paper introduces Sun Microsystems' entry-level NAS device, the Sun StorEdge N8200 filer.

http://www.sun.com/storage/white-papers/nas.htmland:

A storage area network (SAN) is a high-speed special-purpose network (or subnetwork) that interconnects different kinds of data storage devices with associated data servers on behalf of a larger network of users. Typically, a storage area network is part of the overall network of computing resources for an enterprise. A storage area network is usually clustered in close proximity to other computing resources such as IBM S/390 mainframes but may also extend to remote locations for backup and archival storage, using wide area network carrier technologies such as asynchronous transfer mode or Synchronous Optical Networks.A storage area network can use existing communication technology such as IBM's optical fiber ESCON or it may use the newer Fibre Channel technology. Some SAN system integrators liken it to the common storage bus (flow of data) in a personal computer that is shared by different kinds of storage devices such as a hard disk or a CD-ROM player.SANs support disk mirroring, backup and restore, archival and retrieval of archived data, data migration from one storage device to another, and the sharing of data among different servers in a network. SANs can incorporate subnetworks with network-attached storage (NAS) systems.

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefin...i212937,00.htmlAnd of course, Microsoft has an OS for a NAS device.

[-ct-]

ok, i'll byte ( )a NAS it will have to bei have a few spare PC lying around here, and one of them can be convertedbut: it'll need to run headlesssit in the corner and humm quietlyand then i'll need some way of administering the unit, and it can't run windows (well, it can, but then it's a full OS and PC and that's what i'm trying NOT to build)as far as price range goes, $150 is the limit for any hardware other than what would be found normally, i.e.: board, cpu, ram, case/power, etc because i already have all that availableas far as drives go, i already have a stack of 40gb 8mb cache 7200rpm WD drives (i'd use bigger, but that's what's available and i can always upgrade them later), and the ATA controllers i have /should/ support RAID0+1 or RAID10, if not then that's part of the extra cost, and i'll assume i need 2 of those controllersAND, they need to be hot-swappable incase of drive failurethen of course if i'm forced to have a "real" OS in that system, i need another spare drive (no problem, got a few dozen 1-3gb drives around) on an IDE channeli should mention i have had ZERO luck in getting any *nix to run correctly on any system i have installed it on (rh, mandrake, suse, etc - and several different systems) so my chances of getting it setup and running webmin and headless are fairly close to nilthe mere fact i have to reboot the system to change refresh rate REALLY pisses me off... ahh, getting offtopic here better </rant> here thenugghhi just want a sh..load of secure, reliable drive space on the network without the overhead of another whole system

[nlinecomputers]

You've not going to get a NAS that isn't a full computer. ANY NAS box is just that. They often are Linux or FreeBSD based units. I've never seen a Windoze based NAS but they are out there. One of the small Linux distro's may be use but I use Mandrake all the time for this and just do a limited install.

[Netochka]

http://www.areasys.com/

[Guest ThunderRiver]

You've not going to get a NAS that isn't a full computer.  ANY NAS box is just that.  They often are Linux or FreeBSD based units.  I've never seen a Windoze based NAS but they are out there.  One of the small Linux distro's may be use but I use Mandrake all the time for this and just do a limited install.

Yeah there are Windows based.. but they are only NT4 based. I haven't seen any that are Windows 2000 kernel based.

[Peachy]

Like I said earlier, Windows 2003 Storage Server is the Microsoft OS you would use to build a Microsoft OS-based NAS device.

[-ct-]

http://www.rebyte.comanyone know anything about these?i read the info about it, but i didn't see anything about hot-swap drives, or anything about drives up to XXXgb in size - though ads i have seen say over 120gb, but not a max size, if there is oneand it says RAID1 and RAID5, but i think i need RAID10this may be the ideal solution....

[-ct-]

5 days later:sooooo, i guess not then..