Recommended NAS?

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by coppit

Just to throw in my two cents... I built a nice server using unRaid for under $400 (not including the drives). My beef with hardware RAID is that if something goes wrong, you lose everything. With unRaid, even in the unlikely event of a simultaneous two drive failure, I can still pull the data off the remaining drives. I also didn't like the price/storage ratio of RAID-5, and the closed nature of the commercial systems.

I blogged about my setup here. If I had to do it again, I would get a motherboard with a faster bus... I/O is the bottleneck.

Your link doesn't work... I get a login screen.

I am not a fan of hardware raid for the same reasons you mention. But software RAID5 under linux is pretty good. And I'd rather have 1 drive failure not lose any data at all. You can add a online hot spare in linux raid that if one drive fails, the hot spare will automatically be put into service to replace it. Or you can run raid6 which protects against a 2 disk failure.

Choice of the motherboard is key. I just builta server (not for NAS use though) around the Biostar T560 A2+ which is an $80 AM2 Motherboard with 4 AHCI SATA2 ports and a PCIE Gigabit ethernet controller. Very fast, overclocks well, and has 2 PCIEx1 slots for extra SATA2 controllers, plus 3 PCI slots for other cards. Very nice, esp. for $80.

Thanks,
mike

[toricred]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Here's a very interesting story: http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardwar.../2031234.shtml

What firmware revs are your drives?

Thanks,
mike

Very interesting. My revs are 3.AAE so if I read the article correctly that shouldn't be the problem.

[toricred]

I need help again. I've discovered part of my problems using samba. I keep getting an error in dmesg "eth0: too many iterations". I've researched this on the web and it looks like I need to set an option for the forcedeth module that my network card is using. The problem is that I can't seem to get it to take the option. Any recommendations on how to get this in or a recommendation for a PCI-Express gigabit card?

[coppit]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Your link doesn't work... I get a login screen.

Oops. Sorry... I misfiled it under a protected category.

[Flatstanly]

Hello everyone and welcome to my very first post here !!

I did have a Dell Dimension box running in partnership with a Thecus N5200. However I did find the N5200 bios horribly buggy, in fact it was a dashed awful.

I decided to put everything together. Especially as I am using SageTV client / server setup. This way my main media hub is all in one box !!

So, I have an OriginAE S21T case with an Abit AB9 pro mobo. The mobo has three sata controlles and on the first (two sata ports) I have my boot drive in RAID 0, i then have the tv recording drive and blue ray drive connecting into the second bank of two SATA ports - again with their own controller. Lastly I have six 1tb drives in RAID 5 connecting to the main six port sata controller.

I have found that given the way sage runs, using a main server app and a client app. That i get significantly better performance with this set up. BTW the OS is windows server ent as I found it ran better with the additional ram than XP pro.

I think that if Sage did not run the client / server option i would still have two boxes but it really does seem to work a lot better.

One last wee question, how come there does not appear to be a 64bit version of sage..? I would have presmed it was ripe for such a recompile..? I am sure even more performance could be extracted if the change was made..? Would the nice chappys recomile one for us all...?

Anyway, thats my two pennys into the discussion an the end of my very first post !! Its been a pleasure !!

[GTwannabe]

Originally Posted by Flatstanly

One last wee question, how come there does not appear to be a 64bit version of sage..? I would have presmed it was ripe for such a recompile..? I am sure even more performance could be extracted if the change was made..? Would the nice chappys recomile one for us all...?

I think the problem is that Sun doesn't have a fully-working 64-bit Java JRE yet.

[toricred]

So it turns out that my on-board network card is on the PCI bus. I don't want to get the wrong replacement card so what would you guys suggest for a PCI-Express gigabit card?

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by toricred

So it turns out that my on-board network card is on the PCI bus. I don't want to get the wrong replacement card so what would you guys suggest for a PCI-Express gigabit card?

Pretty much any of them work fine. But if the disks are all on the PCI-E bus, this shouldn't be that big a deal. I didn't think the nvidia gigabit controllers went through the PCI bus at all. Why do you think that's the case?

[toricred]

I was trying to research how to get rid of the "too many iterations" error message I keep getting every time it's under load and several of the web sites stated that it was only on the PCI bus. Since I can't find any evidence that it's on the PCI-E bus and it would explain the speeds I'm seeing it made sense. I've already ordered an Intel e1000 card, but I can put it to better use if I can get the speed issue resolved. I know the disks are on the PCI-E bus as they're attached to my ahci card on the PCI-E bus.

Maybe the problem is simply that the existing ethernet card's driver resetting the card when it gets the "too many iterations" error. Everything I've tried to do to set the apparently necessary option has failed.

I've added it to /etc/modprobe.d/options, and /etc/modprobe.d/forcedeth files. Any other suggestions?

[toricred]

I'm beginning to wonder if the problem might be that I'm using the 64bit Server version. Could it be that the forcedeth driver doesn't work right under 64 bit.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by toricred

I was trying to research how to get rid of the "too many iterations" error message I keep getting every time it's under load and several of the web sites stated that it was only on the PCI bus. Since I can't find any evidence that it's on the PCI-E bus and it would explain the speeds I'm seeing it made sense. I've already ordered an Intel e1000 card, but I can put it to better use if I can get the speed issue resolved. I know the disks are on the PCI-E bus as they're attached to my ahci card on the PCI-E bus.

Maybe the problem is simply that the existing ethernet card's driver resetting the card when it gets the "too many iterations" error. Everything I've tried to do to set the apparently necessary option has failed.

I've added it to /etc/modprobe.d/options, and /etc/modprobe.d/forcedeth files. Any other suggestions?

I have a Nforce 4 based motherboard too, and I see these errors occasionally. But I know that I am on the PCI-E bus from the chipset block diagram, and I also use the forcedeth driver, which works fine and works pretty quickly too.

The e1000 will work fine too, but don't think that's the source of the problem.

thx
mike

[toricred]

OK, I've been grasping a straws with this. I'm also discovering that the Cat 5e cables I bought are actually just Cat 5 (at least that's all the label says). I ordered some Cat 6 cables with shorter runs that should eliminate excess cable maybe that will help.

Do you know what version of forcedeth you're using?

I wouldn't be worrying about the speed so much, but I want to start recording my HD shows to the NAS server and get the last 2 HDDs out of my Sage server.

[toricred]

Kjake, what did you do to get from 40MB/s to 50MB/s? I'm getting just under 40MB/s and I'm trying to figure out if that is enough to store HD, view a separate HD, and support 2 other SD clients while compressing files.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by toricred

Kjake, what did you do to get from 40MB/s to 50MB/s? I'm getting just under 40MB/s and I'm trying to figure out if that is enough to store HD, view a separate HD, and support 2 other SD clients while compressing files.

20MB/s is more than plenty for all that. 1080i HD maxes at 19 mbits/sec, oe about 2.3 MB/s.

Plenty of headroom.

thx
mike

[toricred]

Sorry, but I have one more question if you guys have any ideas (I'm also going to ask this on the ubuntu forums). I just received an e1000 card I had ordered previously and when I installed it the speed was incredible (75+MB/s transfer rates) but it bounces back and forth between the great speed and 0 under bmon. I'm not sure what it could be.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by toricred

Sorry, but I have one more question if you guys have any ideas (I'm also going to ask this on the ubuntu forums). I just received an e1000 card I had ordered previously and when I installed it the speed was incredible (75+MB/s transfer rates) but it bounces back and forth between the great speed and 0 under bmon. I'm not sure what it could be.

Wow, really? 75 MB/s + data rates? I may to get one of them myself.

My guess would be that you are seeing very good speed for data that's buffered in memory, but that doesn't explain the 0.

You aren't moving it to a Vista system are you?

Thanks,
mike

[toricred]

No, Vista isn't involved it is from an XP home system I'm using for my Sage Server. I fixed it sort of (It's now the same as the on-board at ~ 40MB/s) by installing the latest driver from Intel. I'm still trying to figure out what happened.

[mikesm]

BTW, I can now officially confirm the default kernel shipped with opensuse 10.3 supports SATA port multiplication on the SI3132 and AHCI ports. I converted my patched 10.2 system to 10.3 a couple days ago and no kernel patches were needed. Works great.

So if you are building a NAS around linux and need PMP support, 10.3 is at least one place you should look.

Thanks,
mike

[sandor]

i am still having great success with server element's NasLite. i use an old dell tower, and have almost 3 TB of storage in it. i can sustain two 60 MB/s connections on the gigabit enet network.

NasLite has some drawbacks (only hardware RAID, very simple software) but also has some great aspects (ext3, unlimited disks, low overhead/highthroughput, boots off a flash drive, multi-platform, runs on ancient (PII/PIII) hardware) i've enjoyed the time i have been running it, and have no problems whatsoever with it. other than adding more storage space, i have had not a single issue with it.

[mikesm]

BTW, for those folks looking to build a nice nas, best buy has on sale the hitachi 1TB external USB drive for only $199 here - http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1177112455081

The cool thing is that inside the unit is a single 1 TB SATA2 drive, the 7K1000, which is a great drive. This is approx 60% off the normal price of TB drives, and makes it slightly cheaper than 500 GB drives, esp if you use one of the 10% coupons that's still good today.

I cleaned out my local best buy and bought 4 of them with 10% off on each. This will add 3 TB of needed space to my NAS server, and allow me to retire my 5x320GB original raid array and let me use these for system disks on other systems.

These drives save SATA ports, mounting slots, and power over double the number of 500 GB spindles at the best price you can get today on a $/GB basis. They are really FAST drives too.

PS If you get an R5000-HD, and your cable company has a lot of HD programming you like, you'll be surprised how much space you burn...

Thanks,
Mike