Build Your Own Atom-based NAS

[infernoo]

Have you tried OpenFiler?

Tim,

First of all, I have to thank you for your interesting articles. Most of them gave me good ideas to mount my own system or what to avoid when doing so.

I was working for some months trying to mount my DIY NAS waiting for propper components. Fortunately I was able to get a VIA C7 1GHz mini-itx system from a special offer (60€ with DVD reader, 40GB PATA Disk, 256MB and small case with external 50W power supply) and tried different OS to finally install OpenFiler on a 2GB CompactFlash with 2x1TB SATA Samsung drives and 1GB RAM. It works better than planned.

The main point here is Openfiler. I believe its very stable and could outperform Ubuntu on tests. It's free, but if you want you can purchase support. Its GUI is very easy to use and configuration options are wide enough. Many people has installed it on production SAN with succesfull results. You can check its forums.

It would be very helpfull if you give it a try and tell us (your readers) what do you think about it. Your opinion will be very appreciated.

Regards.

 

[thiggins]

The main point here is Openfiler. I believe its very stable and could outperform Ubuntu on tests. It's free, but if you want you can purchase support. Its GUI is very easy to use and configuration options are wide enough. Many people has installed it on production SAN with succesfull results. You can check its forums.

I'm aware of Openfiler and will probably look at it in a future article.

Since it is Linux based and I assume uses mdadm, I would expect similar RAID performance to Ubuntu Server, no?

 

[infernoo]

You are right

Tim,

You are right. However Openfiler is a specialized Linux distribution and this fact has pros and cons. Its optimized for NAS/SAN services and all its features are oriented to that and only that goal. That could be a problem if you want to integrate new services, because you have to do it yourself or with forums help. Its based on rPath so standard packages are supported, but you have to integrate them into system and that's not always easy. Examples of this could be P2P, streaming and other additional funtionality that other linux distros include by default.

But we are looking for a good DIY NAS and I believe Openfiler is one of the best options for that use. That's why I tried to introduce it to you. I was expecting you to be interested and write a comparision to Ubuntu and FreeNAS. I'm sure you will be surprised with its features and easy of use.

Regards.

 

[InfectiouSoul]

Hi Tim,

Excellent article.

You helped me out last week with a few questions and I managed to build my system over the w/e and set it all up. I was planning on using FreeNAS but I cannot get it to work so I too went for Ubuntu. My server really is overspec'ed to be used as just a NAS, so Ubuntu it is.

I didn't actually use a GUI to go through the process that you went through so I had to learn all the Linux commands (fun fun fun!) BUT at least I now have a good understanding of how it all works.

That is where I found this little gem ... When you format the RAID partition, you can tell Linux about the size of the RAID stripes, you do this with the stride=nn option on mke2fs. This can severely impact performance on striped RAIDs (0,4 and 5) ("Knowledge of the size of a stripe allows mke2fs to allocate the block and inode bitmaps so that they don't all end up on the same physical drive." from http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Software-RAID-0.4x-HOWTO-8.html)

Now because you used a GUI, I do not know how the RAID partition was formatted but you could try to do that part in a Terminal Window:

mke2fs -b 4096 -E stride=nnn /dev/md0

You can easily calculate nnn by taking the number of disks and multiply it by the chunk size of the raid array (default for mdadm = 64k). This gives you your stripe size. Then you take the stripe size, and divide it by the number of blocks in the filesystem (which the above command set to 4K).

Give it a try and see if these race-stripes (sorry) make it go faster.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[thiggins]

Now because you used a GUI, I do not know how the RAID partition was formatted but you could try to do that part in a Terminal Window:

mke2fs -b 4096 -E stride=nnn /dev/md0

The command that webmin used to create/format the ext3 raid array was:
mkfs -t ext3 /dev/md0

The command output reported a 4k block size, but I can't see any report of stride.

I have been playing with stride using iozone running on XP and testing on the "BigNAS" testbed (Core2Duo, 1 GB, 2 Velociraptor drives, Ubuntu Server). I am using a 2 drive RAID0 array with chunk size 64kb and stride=32 and chunk=128k and stride=64. I'm seeing minor improvement, but still hitting the single drive wall of ~70 MB/s.

Just can't seem to get effective alternation between drives...

 

[thiggins]

Set the 'noatime' or 'relatime' mount options in the /etc/fstab file. Look for the 'defaults' section and add 'defaults,noatime'.

/dev/md0 /mnt/raidarr/public ext3 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Sudo and edit /etc/init.d/rc file, look for CONCURRENCY=none and change it to:
CONCURRENCY=shell

The default SAMBA setup has terrible defaults!
Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and find the line 'socket options'
Change the line to read:

socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

JS. I tried all three tweaks and performance was reduced in a two-drive RAID 0 array. Iozone running on a Win XP SP2 machine.

 

[Unregistered]

I would like to see a similar article that uses a motherboard based on the VIA C7. There are many that include a gigabit ethernet adapter already, so the costs compared to an atom based motherboard, cpu and ethernet card is similar. See http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153062

 

[Unregistered]

I would like to see a similar article that uses a motherboard based on the VIA C7. There are many that include a gigabit ethernet adapter already, so the costs compared to an atom based motherboard, cpu and ethernet card is similar. See http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153062

There was a comment about the power requirements for the atom processor not be great. Perhaps the VIA C7 is better? And perhaps the performance will be similar?

 

[Dennis Wood]

I'd say Tim's got it right, particulary using Ubuntu server. When trying to troubleshoot a problem with a "free" OS, installed user base, hardware support and user resources are everything. To this end, using strange hardware/more obscure OS variants, is pretty much just asking for long nights and grief sorting drivers and performance issues. So many devices use embedded Linux these days, and overhead is so low, why not use the full monty?

My own interest in these devices for home/small business is simply in the fact that they can potentially support far more than just storage. Hosting services such as MySQL and PHP mean the possibility of installing open source collaborative tools (like Horde for example) in the intranet environment. Add in simple things like groups and permissions management and this vastly increases attractiveness for administration. Call it "server in a box" if you will. Given my personal background in supporting both corporate large networks, and supporting small business...devices like the TS509, home built Ubuntu variants etc. have a huge market potential IMHO.

So Tim, once again, great work

 

[InfectiouSoul]

Hey Tim,

Sorry if this is a bit off topic but have you managed to get the machine to wake up from either Hibernate or Suspend/Stand By?

I got my server up and running but I want it to spin spin down at night, save the earth and all, but I cannot wake it up (well, not unless I press the power off/on button).

I was actually trying to get Wake-on-LAN to work but I couldn't, tried for 4 days. Then I noticed that it doesn't come out of hibernation no matter which method I use: mouse, keyboard, hitting it with a stick ... so it is not a WOL issue but a general Resume issue.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[thiggins]

Sorry if this is a bit off topic but have you managed to get the machine to wake up from either Hibernate or Suspend/Stand By?

No. Didn't try either.

 

[InfectiouSoul]

No. Didn't try either.

Do you still have the machine? Can you give it a quick whirl?

 

[thiggins]

Do you still have the machine? Can you give it a quick whirl?

Not at the moment, sorry. What OS are you running?

 

[InfectiouSoul]

Not at the moment, sorry. What OS are you running?

Ubuntu Desktop 8.04.

The Internet is littered with issues related to this feature, I'm wondering whether I should try a different distro or if this works better on FreeNAS. I really do not want this behemoth sucking power 24/7, but I also do not want to have to switch it off manually and then on again, why can't it works like my windows desktop. It powers off after 30 minutes of inactivity (Hibernate) and when I touch anything, it pops right back up.

 

[AndyJapan]

All, below is the link I came across for the dual core atom link.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=33303&vpn=BOXD945GCLF2&manufacture=Intel

Tazdevil.

The D945GCLF2 looks indeed interesting because it has Gigabit-LAN which the D945GCLF did not have. I just wonder about the throughput - it's supposedly a RealTek chip.
I still have a Promise P-ATA RAID controller and 5x P-ATA 200GB HDDs lying around and wonder what power supply would be needed to build a NAS. Any suggestions or recommendations of power supplies?

 

[InfectiouSoul]

The D945GCLF2 looks indeed interesting because it has Gigabit-LAN which the D945GCLF did not have. I just wonder about the throughput - it's supposedly a RealTek chip.
I still have a Promise P-ATA RAID controller and 5x P-ATA 200GB HDDs lying around and wonder what power supply would be needed to build a NAS. Any suggestions or recommendations of power supplies?

Hi AndyJapan,

There are a few cool power calculators available on the internet, e.g. on the ASUS website:

http://support.asus.com.tw/PowerSupplyCalculator/PowerSupplyCalculator_right.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Good luck with it, I just finished my own one, 6 SATA + one IDE (containing Ubuntu), RAID 6, lots of fun.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[AndyJapan]

Hi AndyJapan,

There are a few cool power calculators available on the internet, e.g. on the ASUS website:

http://support.asus.com.tw/PowerSupplyCalculator/PowerSupplyCalculator_right.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

Good luck with it, I just finished my own one, 6 SATA + one IDE (containing Ubuntu), RAID 6, lots of fun.

Cheers,
Mark.

Thanks for the speedy response and the link. I also found some other websites and will calculate the wattage of the power supply. I guess that my current Enermax 420W PSU is overkill and needs to be replaced with a more power-efficient '80 Plus' PSU in the 200W range.

 

[dtbear]

Raid failure test

Hello,

Has anyone performed a raid failure test with the atom-base NAS using ubuntu? If so did you get an email alert (if you set it up) and how long did it take to rebuild?

Thanks

dtbear

 

[thiggins]

Has anyone performed a raid failure test with the atom-base NAS using ubuntu? If so did you get an email alert (if you set it up) and how long did it take to rebuild?

Where would you set up the alert?

 

[dtbear]

Where would you set up the alert?

The setting is on (Fig 7) of Build Your Own Atom-based NAS - Part 2 under "RAID problem notification options"

Thanks

dtbear