[GLLUG] Network storage question

[Robar Philip]

On May 14, 2012, at 11:11 AM, "Bert W. Carrier Jr." <bertcarrier at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm building a small Linux network for my office, (8 workstations running Ubuntu 10.04) and I'm looking to attach some network storage. I was thinking about using an old Dell poweredge server that I have lying around, with some internal HDDs running Ubuntu linux with Samba. Samba is hard for me though, I’m not much of a networking expert.

Out of curiosity, why Ubuntu 10.04?


> A friend suggested that I get a NAS device, which I know very little about. Does anyone have any ideas/ suggestions?


PC Mag: How to Buy a NAS

PC Mag: The Top 8 Best NAS Devices (Published 3/5/12 so it’s still up to date.)

I’d also investigate the reviews at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/ if you decide to buy a NAS. I can’t recommend this site enough.

Setting up SAMBA by hand editing config files is a PITA if you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve always thought of NFS as really easy to set up, but then I worked at Sun for years so I guess that makes sense. :-) NFS has a zillion options, but you normally only use the same few every time.

I second the recommendation for FreeNAS if you decide to go the DIY route. It has a very nice admin GUI and you can use ZFS for your filesystems. (This is for a business so you do care about your data don’t you?) ZFS’s competitor in Linux land is BtrFS, but it is just starting to be offered as an option on some Linux distributions. It lacks the proven maturity of Sun’s ZFS—in particular a stable version hasn’t been released yet.

One easy way to use FreeNAS would be to buy a server from iXsystems. They’re well known in the BSD community and they are the primary supporters of the development of FreeNAS. Unfortunately, the nicest thing that can be said for their pricing is that they’re not inexpensive.


Also, you do have a backup and disaster recovery plan, yes? (Backing up with ZFS by breaking off mirrors or sending to a remote system is trivial.)


Phil
--
The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it. —Vannevar Bush, “As we may think” (1945)

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