Les Mikesell wrote:
Rudi Ahlers wrote:
I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using
normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU
(probably a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x
320GB - 750GB). My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built
NAS device.
Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is
built on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the
hardware support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for it.
You can use a stock Centos - just set up Samba if you are serving
windows clients and NFS for Linux/Mac clients. The only thing even
slightly difficult is keeping authentication and user mapping
coordinated between the windows/linux sides. You can also run
whatever else you might want (web/ftp/email/streaming media servers,
etc.) or even run it as a workstation too. If you are serving mostly
windows clients and don't need NFS, you might look at SME server
(http://www.contribs.org) as something easier to set up.
I mainly want to use it as a backup server for hosting servers, so I'll
focus on FTP / SSH / SFTP / iSCSI (if possible), and maybe NFS - I don't
want SMB (for security reasons). I'll probably also add Webmin to allow
users to browse their backups via HTTPS, manage folders, etc.
We already use SME Server 7.3 in the office, and it works great, but it
doesn't support RAID 10, and needs min 6 drives for RAID 6, so I can't
add a hot spare in this chassis. Also, ideally I'd like to run the OS
from a USB memory stick / CDROM to keep it secure & fast to boot. I'll
probably use LDAP authentication, with a seperate LDAP server, or maybe
a separate IDE HDD / 16GB USB drive for authentication, still need to
decide on this
Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)
Are you pricing the low end NAS boxes (like Buffalo
Linkstation/Terastation, etc.)? It might be hard to beat that if all
you want is a file server. Most run Linux of some sort on ARM or PPC
processors and may need to be hacked to add NFS or support >2gig files.
We're limited to the higher end equipment in our country, like Netgear,
Dell, Sun, etc - which is too expensive IMO. A 4 drive 1U Netgear box
without HDD's cost about $3500!
--
Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
CEO, SoftDux
Web: http://www.SoftDux.com
Check out my technical blog, http://blog.softdux.com for Linux or other technical stuff, or visit http://www.WebHostingTalk.co.za for Web Hosting stuff
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