[gentoo-user] homemade nas setup

[gentoo-user] homemade nas setup

[Harry Putnam]

I've been looking into setting up or getting somekind of nas
storage/backup capability lately so thought I'd ask about it here
since I'm sure some of you will be using something or will have built
your own.

After looking at a few on google .. I'm a little surprised at the high
end pricetags and even the midranges for a factory made setup.

Makes me wonder what if anything I'd be missing, functionality wise,
if I were to build it up myself.

I see these storebought things are mostly running a small embedded
linux os.

The lowend stuff like WD `mybook 1tb world Edition II' advertises
gigabit throughput but I see many reviews that report way less in
practice.  In fact it started to look like that particular one is way
below its advertised capability.  I ran across many complaints about
dreadfully low write speads.  Also apparently has some sorry thing
called Mionet for (secure) remote access.

I'm thinking of doing something like a semi-minimal regular (not
embedded) install on a P4 I have with asus P4C800 mobo and some 2 gigs
ram.  Maybe add an extra sata controller (the mobo has one) so I can
put up to 6 or so sata disks on it along with one small IDE disk for
the OS (just to head of any problems related to installing on sata)

Maybe start with 2 500 sata disks and build up as I need it.  Or more
likely `if I need it'... I kind of doubt I'd need more than 4 anytime
soon so maybe wait on the controller part too.

I guess I'd connect to it mostly thru samba/cifs for windows XP
machines that have lots of biggish graphics and video type stuff to
backup/store.  And nfs for my main gentoo desktop.

I wondered what the downsides are compared to a medium range
storebought rig?

A few I can think of are space and noise.. but having never been
around our run a nas setup... I'm not sure if that is really true.

Anyway, a few thoughts on what I might be running into doing it myself,
or missing compared to storebought.  Maybe maintenance
considerations.. or whatever, would be welcome.

Re: [gentoo-user] homemade nas setup

[Matt Harrison]

Harry Putnam wrote:
> I've been looking into setting up or getting somekind of nas
> storage/backup capability lately so thought I'd ask about it here
> since I'm sure some of you will be using something or will have built
> your own.
> 
> After looking at a few on google .. I'm a little surprised at the high
> end pricetags and even the midranges for a factory made setup.
> 
> Makes me wonder what if anything I'd be missing, functionality wise,
> if I were to build it up myself.
> 
> I see these storebought things are mostly running a small embedded
> linux os.
> 
> The lowend stuff like WD `mybook 1tb world Edition II' advertises
> gigabit throughput but I see many reviews that report way less in
> practice.  In fact it started to look like that particular one is way
> below its advertised capability.  I ran across many complaints about
> dreadfully low write speads.  Also apparently has some sorry thing
> called Mionet for (secure) remote access.
> 
> I'm thinking of doing something like a semi-minimal regular (not
> embedded) install on a P4 I have with asus P4C800 mobo and some 2 gigs
> ram.  Maybe add an extra sata controller (the mobo has one) so I can
> put up to 6 or so sata disks on it along with one small IDE disk for
> the OS (just to head of any problems related to installing on sata)
> 
> Maybe start with 2 500 sata disks and build up as I need it.  Or more
> likely `if I need it'... I kind of doubt I'd need more than 4 anytime
> soon so maybe wait on the controller part too.
> 
> I guess I'd connect to it mostly thru samba/cifs for windows XP
> machines that have lots of biggish graphics and video type stuff to
> backup/store.  And nfs for my main gentoo desktop.
> 
> I wondered what the downsides are compared to a medium range
> storebought rig?
> 
> A few I can think of are space and noise.. but having never been
> around our run a nas setup... I'm not sure if that is really true.
> 
> Anyway, a few thoughts on what I might be running into doing it myself,
> or missing compared to storebought.  Maybe maintenance
> considerations.. or whatever, wodld be welcome.

I know its a little OT, but I have to mention ZFS. It'll mean running 
Solaris or FreeBSD in order to get the best out of it, but it's worth it.

I changed my fileserver from a gentoo box with software raid and lvm 
over to ZFS on OpenSolaris and I haven't looked back. Gentoo is still my 
main OS but I think you just can't beat ZFS for a filer.

Just check it out and see what you think.

-- 
Matt Harrison

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Harry Putnam]

Matt Harrison <iwasinnamuknow@genestate.com> writes:

> I know its a little OT, but I have to mention ZFS. It'll mean running
> Solaris or FreeBSD in order to get the best out of it, but it's worth
> it.
>
> I changed my fileserver from a gentoo box with software raid and lvm
> over to ZFS on OpenSolaris and I haven't looked back. Gentoo is still
> my main OS but I think you just can't beat ZFS for a filer.

Matt, I'm interested in quizzing you further on this so will ask the
main question here.  But, if you don't mind I'd like to talk to you
off list at more length.  Maybe a few pointer getting Opensolaris
setup with the ZFS or the like.

Are you backing up any windows boxes onto the ZFS? Is it just a matter
of making it available by way of samba/cifs?

Your list email address looks like it might be a phony (I didn't try
it) but mine isn't so if you don't mind the personal contact please
let me know and I'll write direct.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Matt Harrison]

Harry Putnam wrote:
> Matt Harrison <iwasinnamuknow@genestate.com> writes:
> 
>> I know its a little OT, but I have to mention ZFS. It'll mean running
>> Solaris or FreeBSD in order to get the best out of it, but it's worth
>> it.
>>
>> I changed my fileserver from a gentoo box with software raid and lvm
>> over to ZFS on OpenSolaris and I haven't looked back. Gentoo is still
>> my main OS but I think you just can't beat ZFS for a filer.
> 
> Matt, I'm interested in quizzing you further on this so will ask the
> main question here.  But, if you don't mind I'd like to talk to you
> off list at more length.  Maybe a few pointer getting Opensolaris
> setup with the ZFS or the like.
> 
> Are you backing up any windows boxes onto the ZFS? Is it just a matter
> of making it available by way of samba/cifs?

I'm using it for both attached storage via ISCSI, and standard sharing 
on a domain via cifs. I've got backups running from linux and windows 
boxes onto it.

> Your list email address looks like it might be a phony (I didn't try
> it) but mine isn't so if you don't mind the personal contact please
> let me know and I'll write direct.

Well I didn't realise my address looked fake :P It is real and I'd be 
happy to try and answer your questions to the best of my ability.

Matt

[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Harry Putnam]

Matt Harrison <iwasinnamuknow@genestate.com> writes:
>> Are you backing up any windows boxes onto the ZFS? Is it just a matter
>> of making it available by way of samba/cifs?
>
>I'm using it for both attached storage via ISCSI, and standard sharing
>on a domain via cifs. I've got backups running from linux and windows
>boxes onto it.

Ahh sounds like what I'd be doing.  Although I'm not really sure what
you mean by `via ISCSI' (a scsi transport?)

>> Your list email address looks like it might be a phony (I didn't try
>> it) but mine isn't so if you don't mind the personal contact please
>> let me know and I'll write direct.
>
> Well I didn't realise my address looked fake :P It is real and I'd be
> happy to try and answer your questions to the best of my ability.

Hehe... no slam intended... some people do obfuscate there email on
lists such as this, and yours is somewhat unusual looking.

I've had people say the same thing about mine... `newsguy' sounds kind
of made up. (True story =>) It used to be `zippo.com' some yrs ago but
they were sued by the famous `Zippo' lighter people and had to change
the name. They picked the silly name `newsguy'.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Matt Harrison]

Harry Putnam wrote:
> Matt Harrison <iwasinnamuknow@genestate.com> writes:
>>> Are you backing up any windows boxes onto the ZFS? Is it just a matter
>>> of making it available by way of samba/cifs?
>> I'm using it for both attached storage via ISCSI, and standard sharing
>> on a domain via cifs. I've got backups running from linux and windows
>> boxes onto it.
> 
> Ahh sounds like what I'd be doing.  Although I'm not really sure what
> you mean by `via ISCSI' (a scsi transport?)

iSCSI is kinda like ATA over ethernet, it allows you to "attach" a disk 
to a system, over the network, but have it appear like a local disk. For 
example, I have a windows 2003 domain controller that doesn't have much 
space for storing roaming profiles etc. So I attached a disk to it via 
iSCSI (in fact it is only a ZFS dataset, not a whole disk), windows sees 
it as a local SCSI disk and lets me format it with NTFS and use it for 
local storage.

try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISCSI

>>> Your list email address looks like it might be a phony (I didn't try
>>> it) but mine isn't so if you don't mind the personal contact please
>>> let me know and I'll write direct.
>> Well I didn't realise my address looked fake :P It is real and I'd be
>> happy to try and answer your questions to the best of my ability.
> 
> Hehe... no slam intended... some people do obfuscate there email on
> lists such as this, and yours is somewhat unusual looking.
> 
> I've had people say the same thing about mine... `newsguy' sounds kind
> of made up. (True story =>) It used to be `zippo.com' some yrs ago but
> they were sued by the famous `Zippo' lighter people and had to change
> the name. They picked the silly name `newsguy'.

No offense taken, i was just surprised :)

Feel free to email me off-list if you want to talk ZFS etc, I'll be 
happy to answer what I can or point you to the people that know all ;)

Matt

Re: [gentoo-user] homemade nas setup

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday 30 January 2009 00:06:05 Harry Putnam wrote:

> I've been looking into setting up or getting somekind of nas
> storage/backup capability lately so thought I'd ask about it here
> since I'm sure some of you will be using something or will have built
> your own.

I just bought a USB hard disk and plug it into whichever box I want to back 
up. Each box has a small rescue system, which I boot into to make the 
backup to ensure that all files are copied. Just a simple tar command, 
without compression for speed.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Harry Putnam]

Peter Humphrey <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org> writes:

> On Friday 30 January 2009 00:06:05 Harry Putnam wrote:
>
>> I've been looking into setting up or getting somekind of nas
>> storage/backup capability lately so thought I'd ask about it here
>> since I'm sure some of you will be using something or will have built
>> your own.
>
> I just bought a USB hard disk and plug it into whichever box I want to back 
> up. Each box has a small rescue system, which I boot into to make the 
> backup to ensure that all files are copied. Just a simple tar command, 
> without compression for speed.

Well, that isn't even close to nas... but thanks.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday 30 January 2009 18:30:41 Harry Putnam wrote:
> Peter Humphrey <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org> writes:
> > I just bought a USB hard disk and plug it into whichever box I want to
> > back up. Each box has a small rescue system, which I boot into to make
> > the backup to ensure that all files are copied. Just a simple tar
> > command, without compression for speed.
>
> Well, that isn't even close to nas... but thanks.

No, of course not, and what's more it denies you the fun of getting another 
gizmo working, but for simplicity it's hard to beat. For my purposes, 
anyway.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] homemade nas setup

[Norman Rieß]

Harry Putnam schrieb:
> A few I can think of are space and noise.. but having never been
> around our run a nas setup... I'm not sure if that is really true.
>
> Anyway, a few thoughts on what I might be running into doing it myself,
> or missing compared to storebought.  Maybe maintenance
> considerations.. or whatever, would be welcome.
>
>   

I am running my old AthlonXP system with 2 gig ram, a minimal
installation on a small extra disk, 3 disks for data as raid 5 and some
crypto, as a home nas. The system is build from spare parts except the
data disks and a small sata controller, which i had to buy. The old
miditower resides in a lumber-room under a shelf. So noise and space is
no problem. Of course you could build such a system in a smaller case.

The system only runs nfs, samba and a cups server. I do not use some
fancy guis or anything like that. So settings have to be made in the
config files manualy, except the cupsd which brings a web gui. Maybe
that is something some people would miss. But i do not think a gentoo
user would care.

As maintainence i do ,beside the regular emerge --sync and updates, a
raidcheck every weekend, but that can be cronjobed of course.

One point i feel mentionable is scalability. You buy a home nas with two
disks and you are stuck with that two disks because the case can not
handle more than that. Your do-it-yourself nas can do that.
It is a point of personal liking i think. I mean, you buy a home nas
click 5 minutes in the gui an you are done. Selfmade nas needs
understanding of the system, setting the whole thing up and some
configfile changes every now and then.

Regards
Norman

Re: [gentoo-user] homemade nas setup

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 461 bytes --]

On Fri, 30 Jan 2009 12:56:48 +0100, Norman Rieß wrote:

> The system only runs nfs, samba and a cups server. I do not use some
> fancy guis or anything like that. So settings have to be made in the
> config files manualy, except the cupsd which brings a web gui. Maybe
> that is something some people would miss. But i do not think a gentoo
> user would care.

If he did, he could emerge webmin :)


-- 
Neil Bothwick

WinErr 002: No Error - Yet

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[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Harry Putnam]

Norman Rieß <norman@smash-net.org> writes:

> The system only runs nfs, samba and a cups server. I do not use some
> fancy guis or anything like that. So settings have to be made in the
> config files manualy, except the cupsd which brings a web gui. Maybe
> that is something some people would miss. But i do not think a gentoo
> user would care.

Have you timed any thing like write speeds across the network to this
box? 

Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Norman Rieß]

Harry Putnam schrieb:
> Norman Rieß <norman@smash-net.org> writes:
>
>   
>> The system only runs nfs, samba and a cups server. I do not use some
>> fancy guis or anything like that. So settings have to be made in the
>> config files manualy, except the cupsd which brings a web gui. Maybe
>> that is something some people would miss. But i do not think a gentoo
>> user would care.
>>     
>
> Have you timed any thing like write speeds across the network to this
> box? 
>
> Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup?
>
>
>   
It is a gigabit setup. NFS read is about 30-34MB/s, writing is
considerably slower with 15MB/s. So writing is a bit slow. But as i do
not need fast storage i did not investigate. And it must be mentioned,
that the whole data is in AES.

I use this share like a local harddisk. There is nothing like "Oh, this
is on remote storage, i will do <random thing> differently." I do
everything i do on a local disk, and i did not find anything that would
not work due to lack of performance. Admitted i do not do much
performancecritical stuff.

[gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Harry Putnam]

Norman Rieß <norman@smash-net.org> writes:

 >> Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup?
>>
   
> It is a gigabit setup. NFS read is about 30-34MB/s, writing is
> considerably slower with 15MB/s. So writing is a bit slow. But as i do
> not need fast storage i did not investigate. And it must be mentioned,
> that the whole data is in AES.

Being AES should have a pretty dramatic impact right? or is it not
decrypted and just bounced from one place to another?

> I use this share like a local harddisk. There is nothing like "Oh, this
> is on remote storage, i will do <random thing> differently." I do
> everything i do on a local disk, and i did not find anything that would
> not work due to lack of performance. Admitted i do not do much
> performancecritical stuff.

Thanks for very good input.  What you report beats the snot out of the
WD `My Book World Edition' I'm testing out.  I only tried a few tests
and they weren't done rigorously like someone benchmarking would have
to do.  I made no attempt to control what else might be running, other
than not purposely starting anything.
 
I tried copying 950MB of graphic files across gigabit lan (winXP to
the Book) ... it took 3 min 40 seconds. (about 4mb sec)

Whereas copying the same data from one machine to another (windowsXP)
took 40 seconds.
(Incidently.. that appears to be a bit faster than what you report at 
23mb sec)  Might have something to do with the fact that it is
identical filesystem to identical filesystem (ntfs)

Copying the same data from a winXP to my gentoo box across 10/100 lan
took 1 min 10 seconds. (A little less than what you see at 13mb sec)

So even in a case where the measurement should have been skewed in
favor of the Book, it was over 300% slower.

And in the case that should have been comparable it was over 500%
slower.

Unless I've made some horrible error in the math, which is not
unlikely, I think my test shows 4mb per second.  (I just divided the
MB by the seconds), that is so far under what you see, that alone
tells me to return this dog and spend the money ($229) building up my
own.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Norman Rieß]

Harry Putnam schrieb:
> Norman Rieß <norman@smash-net.org> writes:
>
>  >> Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup?
>   
>    
>   
>> It is a gigabit setup. NFS read is about 30-34MB/s, writing is
>> considerably slower with 15MB/s. So writing is a bit slow. But as i do
>> not need fast storage i did not investigate. And it must be mentioned,
>> that the whole data is in AES.
>>     
>
> Being AES should have a pretty dramatic impact right? or is it not
> decrypted and just bounced from one place to another?
>
>   

Yes AES has some impact. These are the speeds with de/encryption.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: homemade nas setup

[Stroller]

On 30 Jan 2009, at 18:33, Harry Putnam wrote:

> Norman Rieß <norman@smash-net.org> writes:
>
>> The system only runs nfs, samba and a cups server. I do not use some
>> fancy guis or anything like that. So settings have to be made in the
>> config files manualy, except the cupsd which brings a web gui. Maybe
>> that is something some people would miss. But i do not think a gentoo
>> user would care.
>
> Have you timed any thing like write speeds across the network to this
> box?
>
> Is it connected into 10/100 or 1000 (gigabit) setup?


I meant to say in my last message that IIRC you're never going to  
actually achieve "gigabit" speeds. If your motherboard lacks an  
onboard gigabit card then you're limited by the PCI bus, and I don't  
know that most drives can even write as fast as gigabit.

AFAICT one tends to use gigabit at present because it's "faster than  
100 Mbit/s" - one would probably be happy with 400 Mbit/s or so, but  
if you've never used NAS or network storage before then in general old  
100 Mbit/s ethernet is plenty fast enough for most people. Copying  
700mb across old 100 Mbit/s ethernet only takes 2 minutes (I should  
add this is from a slow old PIII 700mhz "NAS" to my dual-proc G5 Mac  
with 3gig RAM & SATA; copying the same file to the same disk on the G5  
was less than 50% faster).

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] homemade nas setup

[Stroller]

On 30 Jan 2009, at 00:06, Harry Putnam wrote:
> ...
> A few I can think of are space and noise.. but having never been
> around our run a nas setup... I'm not sure if that is really true.

Power consumption, too. I think some of the off-the-shelf mini-NAS use  
a low-power MIPS processor.

I like a "real Linux" server rather than an off-the-shelf mini-NAS  
because you can do so much more with it. I rip DVDs & download  
torrents on the headless server, as this saves me having to leave my  
workstation on overnight.

Unfortunately "all the other stuff" is a considerable reason I had to  
rule out Solaris, which I would like to have used for its ZFS file- 
system. I felt I probably wouldn't like the package manager, and I  
didn't seem to be able to find supported hot-swap controllers. There's  
just loads of stuff I know I'm more easily going to be able to find  
help with on Linux.

But mini-NAS does really well for many people. I found the problem  
with going it myself to be feature creep - I want room for plenty of  
drives and once you've got a server running 24/7 there's always  
something else you can "usefully" run on there. I ended up buying one  
of these <http://www.tstcom.com/product_details.asp?id=4> and a 3ware  
9500 RAID controller - this has turned out pretty expensive but I  
think worth it to me, as it should last me a long time. I am just  
about to build.

3ware's customer support, BTW, is second-to-none - if buying one of  
their controllers on eBay ask the vendor to check the serial, as many  
are still under 3ware's no-quibble 3-year warranty. My experience with  
their tech support has been excellent, and will make them first choice  
for hardware in the future.

Stroller.