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Replies:
19
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Last Post:
Mar 18, 2007 3:38 AM
by: dp
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Posts:
2
From:
Registered:
1/25/06
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How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 26, 2006 4:25 AM
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Hi,
I'm very pleased to see this list. I'm considering building a NAS box
for home and have up to this point been assuming it'd be based on
some Linux solution (like www.openfiler.com) or FreeBSD (like
www.freenas.org), but I just can't get away from the thought that ZFS
might be a REALLY good thing.
My current hardware specs are: Antec Sonata II case, Celeron 2.0,
512MB memory, 6 used 300GB IDE disks. I could buy a 2 year-old 3ware
8-channel RAID card, but I'm not sure it's worth it. I have
previously been planning to do software RAID-5 (or hardware if
needed). This is all for home use, particularly a very large
collection of digital photography. Backups will be rsync'ed to a
similar system geographically far away... The system needs to be
accessible to both Windows and Linux systems I have.
I know how to build this thing with both FreeBSD and Linux, but the
learning curve to build it on OpenSolaris seems daunting.
My questions:
Does doing this with OpenSolaris with the hardware I have make sense?
Is there (even the beginnings of) a HOWTO somewhere on doing this?
Are there fundamentally important bits (e.g., samba, rsync, ...) that
are still missing in OpenSolaris for this to be feasible?
is ZFS cool enough to make it worth abandoning the tools I know just
to use it? (Don't get me wrong... I know Solaris is rock-solid.)
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Cheers,
David
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Tom Haynes
Thomas.Haynes@Sun.COM
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 26, 2006 9:41 AM
in response to: dpartain
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David Partain wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I'm very pleased to see this list. I'm considering building a NAS box
>for home and have up to this point been assuming it'd be based on
>some Linux solution (like www.openfiler.com) or FreeBSD (like
>www.freenas.org), but I just can't get away from the thought that ZFS
>might be a REALLY good thing.
>
>My current hardware specs are: Antec Sonata II case, Celeron 2.0,
>512MB memory, 6 used 300GB IDE disks. I could buy a 2 year-old 3ware
>8-channel RAID card, but I'm not sure it's worth it. I have
>previously been planning to do software RAID-5 (or hardware if
>needed). This is all for home use, particularly a very large
>collection of digital photography. Backups will be rsync'ed to a
>similar system geographically far away... The system needs to be
>accessible to both Windows and Linux systems I have.
>
>
>
Some of the rock-solid NAS boxes offered commercially do not
do RAID in hardware. The biggest cost is in computing checksums
for the blocks.
>I know how to build this thing with both FreeBSD and Linux, but the
>learning curve to build it on OpenSolaris seems daunting.
>
>My questions:
>
>Does doing this with OpenSolaris with the hardware I have make sense?
>
>Is there (even the beginnings of) a HOWTO somewhere on doing this?
>
>
You should look at the ZFS discussions. There is certainly a lot
of simple examples about how to set it up.
The rest of it, the remote backup steps and such, are most likely the same
as what you were planning to do with the other OSes.
>Are there fundamentally important bits (e.g., samba, rsync, ...) that
>are still missing in OpenSolaris for this to be feasible?
>
>
>
samba and rsync are not part of the kernel - they are found on
the Software Companion CD. I.e., you use the same stuff for
OpenSolaris that you would for Solaris 10.
>is ZFS cool enough to make it worth abandoning the tools I know just
>to use it? (Don't get me wrong... I know Solaris is rock-solid.)
>
>
>
How often are you doing stuff at the filesystem? I.e, how often do
you tweak ext2 or ReiserFS? If the answer is never, then I don't
think you are abandoning any tools. OpenSolaris (and Solaris for
that matter) makes the same use of the open source community
as does Linux and FreeBSD.
When you use ZFS though, you will pick up the ability for snapshots.
If you've never had those before in a filesystem, you will like it.
>Any thoughts would be appreciated.
>
>Cheers,
>
>David
>_______________________________________________
>appliances-discuss mailing list
>appliances-discuss at opensolaris dot org
>http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/appliances-discuss
>
>
So, I've got a half built OpenSolaris NAS box sitting next to me. I'm
having issues with the SATA drives. The main reasons I'm using
OpenSolaris and not Linux (or FreeBSD) are:
1) ZFS
2) Zones
3) NFSv4
4) Being able to contribute to testing all of the above.
Playing with technology is cool, but being able to help out a relatively
new open source project is the main reason to play with OpenSolaris.
Later,
Tom
PS: Watch http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/tdh for my progress on my NAS
box.
_______________________________________________
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http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/appliances-discuss
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Posts:
3,793
From:
GB
Registered:
3/9/05
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 26, 2006 10:16 AM
in response to: Tom Haynes
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On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 09:41, Tom Haynes wrote:
> samba and rsync are not part of the kernel - they are found on
> the Software Companion CD. I.e., you use the same stuff for
> OpenSolaris that you would for Solaris 10.
Samba is part of the core Solaris 10 media it is not on
the companion CD anymore.
--
Darren J Moffat
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Posts:
374
From:
US
Registered:
12/9/05
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 9, 2006 9:19 PM
in response to: Tom Haynes
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Hey Tom, you might like to know that Microsoft has released a iSCSI initiator driver for Windows2000/2003 [i]and[/i] XP. This means that iSCSI on most home Windows systems is a distinct possibility. It's a free download from the MS downloads site.
Now if Solaris offered a iSCSI target server... just think... attaching a ZFS volume served from a Solaris NAS to a WinXP box over iSCSI. That would be yet another option along with SMB and other network fs protocols.
/dale
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Posts:
12
From:
Broomfield, CO
Registered:
3/22/06
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 22, 2006 8:09 PM
in response to: daleg
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I'm currently working on an iSCSI Target for Solaris. I'm working on integrating the project into Solaris now and it should be available in a couple of months.
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Posts:
42
From:
Registered:
3/9/05
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 26, 2006 11:13 AM
in response to: dpartain
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Love seeing this discussion starting off! I've build a ZFS based NAS server, and will post out my experiences so far.
Has anyone seen http://www.freenas.org/, looks like there might be some potential sharing of ideas from there...
Thanks,
Richard.
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Posts:
2
From:
Registered:
1/25/06
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 26, 2006 11:40 AM
in response to: rmc
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Hi all,
On Thursday 26 January 2006 20:13, Richard J. McDougall wrote:
> Love seeing this discussion starting off! I've build a ZFS based
> NAS server, and will post out my experiences so far.
Excellent!
> Has anyone seen http://www.freenas.org/, looks like there might be
> some potential sharing of ideas from there...
They've just gotten started (no user auth, for example...), but there
is certainly potential for collaboration, I think. From the messages
in the fora there, it seems to have really struck a chord. The thing
that seems to get people's attention is that it's trivially easy to
install and get up and running. If you've had any FreeBSD experience
at all, it is even easier. I think it'd be AWESOME to see something
as simple for an OpenSolaris-based / ZFS solution.
If you're not interested in stuff like booting off of a USB key, then
www.openfiler.com is a very interesting option. It's a fully
open-sourced full Linux distribution for NAS boxes. That's another
of my possibles.
I look forward to an account of your experiences!
Cheers,
David
_______________________________________________
appliances-discuss mailing list
appliances-discuss at opensolaris dot org
http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/appliances-discuss
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Posts:
21
From:
AU
Registered:
8/9/05
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 26, 2006 3:39 PM
in response to: rmc
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> Has anyone seen http://www.freenas.org/, looks like
> there might be some potential sharing of ideas from
> there...
The Free NAS stuff looks interesting but I think their goal is to do everything off a small flash card
which is pretty cool but not necessary when your running a file server.
The screen shots of the GUI look great well work a look
I also did some googling around NAS Home Free
there is also
http://www.openfiler.com/
there is a good summary of commercial products available
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,119069,00.asp
It looks like the market can do charges between $1.60 to $3.00 per gigabyte without redunancy
Rgds
Robin
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Posts:
3,793
From:
GB
Registered:
3/9/05
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 26, 2006 3:47 PM
in response to: robinm
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On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 15:39, Robin McDonald wrote:
> > Has anyone seen http://www.freenas.org/, looks like
> > there might be some potential sharing of ideas from
> > there...
>
> The Free NAS stuff looks interesting but I think their goal is to do everything off a small flash card
> which is pretty cool but not necessary when your running a file server.
> The screen shots of the GUI look great well work a look
They looked okay but I think the current ZFS GUI is much better.
For the other stuff like DNS and users etc there is Webmin which
IIRC has a theme that matches the one used in the ZFS GUI (thought it
might just have been a Sun internal demo of that I saw).
--
Darren J Moffat
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appliances-discuss mailing list
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http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/appliances-discuss
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Posts:
1,172
From:
US
Registered:
3/9/05
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 26, 2006 6:26 PM
in response to: robinm
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Robin McDonald wrote:
>> Has anyone seen http://www.freenas.org/, looks like
>> there might be some potential sharing of ideas from
>> there...
>
> The Free NAS stuff looks interesting but I think their goal is to do everything off a small flash card
> which is pretty cool but not necessary when your running a file server.
> The screen shots of the GUI look great well work a look
>
> I also did some googling around NAS Home Free
>
> there is also
> http://www.openfiler.com/
>
> there is a good summary of commercial products available
> http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,119069,00.asp
>
> It looks like the market can do charges between $1.60 to $3.00 per gigabyte without redunancy
>
> Rgds
> Robin
> --
> This messages posted from opensolaris.org
> _______________________________________________
> appliances-discuss mailing list
> appliances-discuss at opensolaris dot org
> http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/appliances-discuss
I recently built a NFS/CIFS server for home w/ ZFS and
a Tyan 2865 mobo... including a nice NVidia 6600 GT framebuffer,
I have 750G (3+1 250 GB SATA) RAID-Z (eg redundant storage)
for about $1300 all done, so that's $1.73/GB. I could have
shaved this some, but I wanted enough CPU to be my desktop
as well so that only one machine need to be kept powered-on;
this keeps the power bill more reasonable.
I'm using Samba to export the various filesystems to the
rest of the family's PCs/Macs; this is part of Solaris.
Right now I'm running build 30.
I'm currently putting together some info on this, including
power consumption, etc, along w/ some prelim. performance
figures. For a teaser, the 4 250 GB seagates drives yield
about 120 MB/sec on large file reads, so I'm network or
destination drive limited on copies. One of the cool things
with ZFS is that I can stream two files at the same time only
dropping to around 100 MB/sec total. Compression is off (these
are .avi files). This is all out of the box, no tuning.
Also, it looks like the Athlon64 3200 CPU could handle a
bunch more drives w/o working too hard; there's lots
of idle cpu.
- Bart
--
Bart Smaalders Solaris Kernel Performance
barts at cyber dot eng dot sun dot com http://blogs.sun.com/barts
_______________________________________________
appliances-discuss mailing list
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http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/appliances-discuss
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Posts:
21
From:
AU
Registered:
8/9/05
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Jan 27, 2006 1:11 AM
in response to: barts
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> as well so that only one machine need to be kept
> powered-on;
> this keeps the power bill more reasonable.
The only achilles I can see for an opensolaris NAS box is the power consumption cost for an always on server
looking at http://www.pge.com/tariffs/ERS.SHTML#ERS
It looks like 12c per KWH that come out very close to $1 per watt per year
So if you spend say $500 on a box but it consumes 200W you will
spend more on electricity over 3 years than on the hardware!
>
> I'm using Samba to export the various filesystems to
> the
> rest of the family's PCs/Macs; this is part of
> Solaris.
> Right now I'm running build 30.
>
> I'm currently putting together some info on this,
> including
> power consumption, etc, along w/ some prelim.
> performance
Cool keep us posted
Robin
> figures. For a teaser, the 4 250 GB seagates drives
> yield
> about 120 MB/sec on large file reads, so I'm network
> or
> destination drive limited on copies. One of the cool
> things
> with ZFS is that I can stream two files at the same
> time only
> dropping to around 100 MB/sec total. Compression is
> off (these
> are .avi files). This is all out of the box, no
> tuning.
> Also, it looks like the Athlon64 3200 CPU could
> handle a
> bunch more drives w/o working too hard; there's lots
> of idle cpu.
>
> - Bart
>
> --
> Bart Smaalders Solaris Kernel Performance
> barts at cyber dot eng dot sun dot com http://blogs.sun.com/barts
> _______________________________________________
> appliances-discuss mailing list
> appliances-discuss at opensolaris dot org
> http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/appliances-dis
> cuss
>
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Posts:
15
From:
Bayarea, CA
Registered:
9/23/06
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Nov 3, 2006 5:17 PM
in response to: rmc
To: Communities » appliances » discuss
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It is excited to see this. I'm wondering where I can find your ZFS/NAS server build info/experience.
Yuen
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Posts:
6
From:
Dublin, Ireland
Registered:
7/18/05
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 13, 2006 3:21 AM
in response to: dpartain
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Hi everyone!
I wonder if there's any relevant power consumption info available yet? I'm looking to build a NAS box as well, and right now it looks like it'll be a big tower box equipped with 4x300Gb internal SATA drives, so I'm looking for any info to see how much it'll cost me to have these 4 disks in a machine up and running 24x7.
Thanks a lot in advance,
Gleb
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Sean McGrath - ...
sean.mcgrath@sun.com
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 13, 2006 3:29 AM
in response to: greys
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Yo Gleb !
There is:
Server power calculator :) At the least it'll give you the power data
for the server box.
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4200/calc/
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4100/calc/
Gleb Reys stated:
< Hi everyone!
<
< I wonder if there's any relevant power consumption info available yet? I'm looking to build a NAS box as well, and right now it looks like it'll be a big tower box equipped with 4x300Gb internal SATA drives, so I'm looking for any info to see how much it'll cost me to have these 4 disks in a machine up and running 24x7.
<
< Thanks a lot in advance,
< Gleb
< --
< This messages posted from opensolaris.org
< _______________________________________________
< appliances-discuss mailing list
< appliances-discuss at opensolaris dot org
< http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/appliances-discuss
--
Sean.
.
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Posts:
6
From:
Dublin, Ireland
Registered:
7/18/05
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 13, 2006 3:53 AM
in response to: Sean McGrath - ...
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Hey Sean,
That was pretty quick! ;) Thanks! Exactly what I needed! According to these calculators, things don't look as bad as I thought.
Talk to you later!
Gleb
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Posts:
1,172
From:
US
Registered:
3/9/05
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 13, 2006 11:11 AM
in response to: greys
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Gleb Reys wrote:
> Hi everyone!
>
> I wonder if there's any relevant power consumption info
> available yet? I'm looking to build a NAS box as well,
> and right now it looks like it'll be a big tower box
> equipped with 4x300Gb internal SATA drives, so I'm
> looking for any info to see how much it'll cost me to
> have these 4 disks in a machine up and running 24x7.
>
4 disks @ 15W apiece is 60W :-), so actual draw will
be something like 70->75 W allowing for PS inefficiencies.
Fast 3D Video cards pull a fair amount of juice, as
do multi-core CPUs.
I decided to have a single server/desktop so I have only
one machine running 24x7... now if we can get CPU power
management working on dual core systems, power consuption
will improve.
- Bart
--
Bart Smaalders Solaris Kernel Performance
barts at cyber dot eng dot sun dot com http://blogs.sun.com/barts
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Posts:
6
From:
Dublin, Ireland
Registered:
7/18/05
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 14, 2006 12:34 AM
in response to: barts
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Thanks for this info, Bart!
I'm getting an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ for this box, AFAIK it's still a 89W CPU. As for the graphics card, it's still to be decided which one I'm going for, but I don't think I'll aim for the really fast one - I want something in the low-range with passive cooling (silent).
I'll be sure to post the exact configuration of my NAS appliance once I have it built.
Thanks again!
Gleb
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Posts:
5
From:
AU
Registered:
5/3/05
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Sep 20, 2006 4:25 PM
in response to: dpartain
To: Communities » appliances » discuss
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Hi all,
Have there been any further developments on the "home NAS with ZFS" front?
I'm currently running freeNAS at home on a P4 2.4GHz / 512MB RAM as a headless system booting from a USB memory stick. It serves my Solaris x86 and Windows boxes very well and with power management enabled it spins down the discs to keep things cool and quiet. I have only two 300GB discs at present and have them as two separate filesystems - there seemed to be a problem with getting freeNAS to stripe them reliably, so I chose the path of least resistance.
Here in the office I have a SCSI box of eight 180GB discs connected to my (now rather old) ultra80. ZFS allowed me to create a 1.3TB filesystem in about 90 seconds. I have an IBM server and a rack of 14 300GB discs - it took IBM's serveRAID about a day to configure 9 drives, then another few hours to format the 1.5TB thing with NTFS!!
So, how badly do I want ZFS at home? ;-)
Any follow-up postings and HowTos would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers! Gary
Sydney, Australia
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Posts:
567
From:
Registered:
3/17/07
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Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 18, 2007 12:54 AM
in response to: dpartain
To: Communities » appliances » discuss
Cc: OpenSolaris » discuss
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I've evaluated in depth several solutions for the home-NAS: Openfiler, FreeNAS, Windows 2003 and Longhorn Server beta, and most recently Windows Home Server.
And now I'm trying out Solaris.
The problems with Solaris for me so far are driver support and ease of administration.
Driver support is very limited. And when certain hardware IS support, it isn't always clear how to install/use it. Console commands buried in man pages aren't going to cut it anymore -- I hope Unix will join us in the 21st century by the time we hit 2010 :)
There aren't many help resources out there. The community isn't large yet. There aren't many forum posts and up-to-date FAQs to draw from. So a new user getting stuck in the mud starts to sink pretty quickly.
Simple features like file sharing aren't so simple yet. SMB support isn't all there yet, and there isn't a GUI that takes care of everything for you. There is a "share folder" GUI and a "users" GUI, but how do you share this folder to that user with these access permissions?
There is no single coherent front-end for this OS. Gnome lets you do some things one way, CDE some other things another way, and then you have the console (which I couldn't even find in gnome).
That said, Solaris x86 seems stable when it isn't in a state of flux. Solaris obviously has a contingent of professional software developers behind it, which is not something you can say about every Microsoft project or Linux distro out there.
ZFS is the most awesome and fresh innovation in computing that I can recall. Some people get excited about virtualization or parallel computing, but it is ZFS that gets me hot and bothered.
So Solaris can get there (to the point of being a modern and usable OS), but it needs to keep pointed in the right direction. GUI design isn't rocket science (which is a good thing since programmers aren't rocket scientists), but it does take a certain type of mind to figure it out.
This concerns me, for instance: http://blogs.sun.com/rmd/entry/opensolaris_appliances because the requirements for OpenSolaris Appliances 1.0 should instead be:
NAS server SMB and NFS (IMPLIES) Easy interoperability with other home network devices
Simple & easy management
First it needs to work, and then it needs to work for [i]people[/i].
Microsoft has its eyes on selling Windows Home Server to several MILLION homes that can use its feature set. They realized some time ago that there is going to be a huge demand for a central redundant home data repository, and they're set to ship a product, with support from hardware vendors, early this year. And basically all WHS does is (a) host files with optional mirroring over devices, (b) offer cluster-based client PC backup software, and (c) offer simple web access to shares and web remote desktop to clients. That's it. No RAID, nothing even close to ZFS or snapshots, no OS redundancy or backup, no redundancy for the client backup data. No email or other fancy local services.
And the GUI for those features is a little remote desktop window that has 4 giant buttons: Users, Shares, Backups, and Devices. It is one thing they actually got right. ( http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/whs_03.jpg )
So what does Solaris need to fill that role? Some pretty mundane NIC and ATA controller driver support. Working and manageable SMB shares. An expanded web front end.
At this very moment I'm using WHS beta 2, Openfiler, and the latest SXCE. WHS "just works", but it is basically just a pretty front end on existing Windows Server 2003 features. Openfiler works but the GUI and SMB are sketchy, and it is supported by what looks like a team of two guys. Some of the features offered by Solaris make those two alternatives look like a rickshaw next to a Saturn V, but that is just on paper. In reality I can't do anything with it because I can't figure out half its features, and it only supports 1/2 of my ATA controllers and 1/4 of my NICs. On that note, I think I would like a Sun Thumper very much. :~)
I would be very happy to use a Solaris that works for me. I hope it enters that state some day. In the mean time I will try to pile up some bug reports and feature requests ;)
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Posts:
807
From:
US
Registered:
3/9/05
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Re: Re: How to build a NAS box
Posted:
Mar 18, 2007 3:38 AM
in response to: loomy
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On Sun 18 Mar 2007 at 12:54AM, MC wrote:
> Simple features like file sharing aren't so simple yet. SMB support
> isn't all there yet, and there isn't a GUI that takes care of
> everything for you. There is a "share folder" GUI and a "users" GUI,
> but how do you share this folder to that user with these access
> permissions?
Greetings and thanks for the thoughtful posting.
I agree that SMB server support (via Samba) is not great. I'm
not 100% sure how much of this is Samba, and how much is OpenSolaris.
Maybe others can chime in. Samba does come with a GUI called SWAT,
which we also ship with Solaris.
'svcadm enable swat' as root
(then look at port 901 on the machine with your browser)
The problem I have with SWAT is my lack of knowledge about SMB, which it
seems you need to have to set up Samba. I spent some time reading the
Samba docs and writing a config file by hand, and personally
felt more in control and better about the config than the SWAT approach.
> There is no single coherent front-end for this OS.
You're right.
> So Solaris can get there (to the point of being a modern and usable
> OS), but it needs to keep pointed in the right direction. GUI design
> isn't rocket science (which is a good thing since programmers aren't
> rocket scientists), but it does take a certain type of mind to figure
> it out.
Over in the VPanels project
(http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/vpanels/), promising work
is happening in terms of creating a unified framework for developing,
for lack of a better word, "control panels" for various system
services. The screenshots are unfortunately a little out of date. Some
of the new ones are a bit more drool inducing :)
Since Java can now impersonate the look and feel of GNOME, it should
slot right into a gnome based desktop.
> So what does Solaris need to fill that role? Some pretty mundane NIC
> and ATA controller driver support.
One thing we really value are specifics: please let us know which NICs
and ATA (SATA?) controllers you are interested in-- there may be drivers
floating around for some of them, especially the NICs. See
http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/eng/
and
http://sol-enet.sourceforge.net/
BTW, drivers are a key way in which communities and individuals can
inform the development process; and contributing to the driver
development effort, even just by doing testing, would be great.
> An expanded web front end.
You might also check out webmin, which is included with Solaris:
/usr/sfw/bin/webminsetup (As root) will set it up for you. It is
not (IMO) especially visually appealing (you can tweak the theme
in the "webmin" tab once you log in), but is functional.
> I would be very happy to use a Solaris that works for me. I hope it
> enters that state some day. In the mean time I will try to pile up
> some bug reports and feature requests ;)
That would be great: http://bugs.opensolaris.org has a nice web
form which you can use to post bugs and feature requests.
There are also some nice success stories floating around-- perhaps
others can provide pointers.
-dp
--
Daniel Price - Solaris Kernel Engineering - dp at eng dot sun dot com - blogs.sun.com/dp
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