I know I'm a little late, but others may read this as I did.
I've just gone through setting up a NAS box using OPENFILER and then FREENAS.
My needs: I'm running a small VMware setup. I currently have a nice MSA HP SAN for my live VM's, but I need another location to backup all my VMs to. Plus it's nice to have a spare location I can move my VM's to for temp reasons/cloning etc. I needed to do this with an extreme budget, around $1,500 shipped.
My hardware: Single CPU Supermicro 1U server, 4GB ram, dual core 2GHz Intel CPU, 4 Western Digital Green 2TB drives, 2GB mini USB.
I first tried OPENFILER because I read it was a little more powerful than FreeNAS. I'm NOT linux pro, but I am a Microsoft Cert person with 15yrs professional experience under my belt. Openfiler took me around 10hrs to totally setup and understand. Now that I know it I could set it up in a couple hours with a software RAID setup. I was successful in getting it setup and VMware to connect to it however performance was pathetic. To the point where there were issues with the iSCSI connection so I was getting like 1mb per sec.
I scrapped that and tried FreeNAS.
I first installed version 8 beta, only to find it didn't have any iSCSI stuff built into it (yet). Version 8 has all the standard stuff anyone would need out of a NAS and it was VERY EASY to install, and has a SLICK interface (web based). I proceeded to install version 7 because I need iSCSI support. Not as easy to install as ver 8beta, but not too bad either. Setting up the software RAID (ZFS) was the hardest thing to understand. More on SOFTWARE RAID later. Once I got it up and running I was able to get VMware to attach to the new NAS/SAN without issues, I get around 800-900Mbit per sec in bursts, MUCH better than OPENFILER. I get sustained writes at around 500-600mbit!
What I learned: I was able to setup a system to meet my needs, however I'm going to rebuild the system with a Perc 5i RAID card this time and use hardware RAID. Setting up LUN's isn't really possible in FreeNAS, so you have to play tricks with your partitions to get it to work properly. VMware can only use 2TB targets and I have 4 2tb drives, so I ended up doing two RAID1's. Performance would be better if I did a couple Hardware RAID 5 partitions across all 4 drives.
The next time I need to get another storage device for LIVE stuff, I'll be getting a QNAP device that's VMware Ready. It's more costly, however as someone else already said, there are a team of engineers behind the product to make sure it meets specs required for things. cont..
For your stated needs: With that being said, if you don't need to attach to something like VMware or other Virtual Machines then you're looking at basic file sharing needs. For this situation at home, I would build a NAS of my own using FreeNAS 8beta or latest version. Heck, I wouldn't even bother with a hardware RAID card because I'd want to use XFS and just make ONE HUGE storage share. I'd start off with 4 2TB Western Digital Green Drives, or the Samsung 2TB drives. I'm starting to like the Samsung drives, very user friendly.
As far as cpu and power concerns, I'd choose the cheapest AMD socket AM3 CPU and a motherboard with 6 SATA ports. I'd also suggest getting a small 1-2GB USB stick to install the OS on. Besides that you'd have to find a case to your liking. You'd get all the features you want at a fraction of the cost of a full blown readynas or Qnap NAS box.
If I already didn't have a HTPC I'd build a small NAS.
I've just gone through setting up a NAS box using OPENFILER and then FREENAS.
My needs: I'm running a small VMware setup. I currently have a nice MSA HP SAN for my live VM's, but I need another location to backup all my VMs to. Plus it's nice to have a spare location I can move my VM's to for temp reasons/cloning etc. I needed to do this with an extreme budget, around $1,500 shipped.
My hardware: Single CPU Supermicro 1U server, 4GB ram, dual core 2GHz Intel CPU, 4 Western Digital Green 2TB drives, 2GB mini USB.
I first tried OPENFILER because I read it was a little more powerful than FreeNAS. I'm NOT linux pro, but I am a Microsoft Cert person with 15yrs professional experience under my belt. Openfiler took me around 10hrs to totally setup and understand. Now that I know it I could set it up in a couple hours with a software RAID setup. I was successful in getting it setup and VMware to connect to it however performance was pathetic. To the point where there were issues with the iSCSI connection so I was getting like 1mb per sec.
I scrapped that and tried FreeNAS.
I first installed version 8 beta, only to find it didn't have any iSCSI stuff built into it (yet). Version 8 has all the standard stuff anyone would need out of a NAS and it was VERY EASY to install, and has a SLICK interface (web based). I proceeded to install version 7 because I need iSCSI support. Not as easy to install as ver 8beta, but not too bad either. Setting up the software RAID (ZFS) was the hardest thing to understand. More on SOFTWARE RAID later. Once I got it up and running I was able to get VMware to attach to the new NAS/SAN without issues, I get around 800-900Mbit per sec in bursts, MUCH better than OPENFILER. I get sustained writes at around 500-600mbit!
What I learned: I was able to setup a system to meet my needs, however I'm going to rebuild the system with a Perc 5i RAID card this time and use hardware RAID. Setting up LUN's isn't really possible in FreeNAS, so you have to play tricks with your partitions to get it to work properly. VMware can only use 2TB targets and I have 4 2tb drives, so I ended up doing two RAID1's. Performance would be better if I did a couple Hardware RAID 5 partitions across all 4 drives.
The next time I need to get another storage device for LIVE stuff, I'll be getting a QNAP device that's VMware Ready. It's more costly, however as someone else already said, there are a team of engineers behind the product to make sure it meets specs required for things. cont..
For your stated needs: With that being said, if you don't need to attach to something like VMware or other Virtual Machines then you're looking at basic file sharing needs. For this situation at home, I would build a NAS of my own using FreeNAS 8beta or latest version. Heck, I wouldn't even bother with a hardware RAID card because I'd want to use XFS and just make ONE HUGE storage share. I'd start off with 4 2TB Western Digital Green Drives, or the Samsung 2TB drives. I'm starting to like the Samsung drives, very user friendly.
As far as cpu and power concerns, I'd choose the cheapest AMD socket AM3 CPU and a motherboard with 6 SATA ports. I'd also suggest getting a small 1-2GB USB stick to install the OS on. Besides that you'd have to find a case to your liking. You'd get all the features you want at a fraction of the cost of a full blown readynas or Qnap NAS box.
If I already didn't have a HTPC I'd build a small NAS.
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