it's linux software raid - you can read the array from practically any linux box that has the ability to connect that many drives at once

I'm about to buy one of these http://web.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=212 with 4x 3TB HDDS - comes in at about $1250 delivered

I thought about doing the HP Microserver route and then decided to fuck that and go this way instead.

I went the road of the HP Microserver and opted for 'storage pooling' instead of RAID.

It's made of win and excellence.
Fuck storing 12+TB of storage at the whim of a RAID controller... if the HPMS dies tomorrow I can access ALL of my data spanned across 4x3TB disks. If I lose 1 of those 3TB's sure the data on it is lost, but I also have the option to 'duplicate' only data I consider essential across as few or as many of the physical disks in the pool as I wish.

It provides me a single target for storage that is as flexible as I want it to be, and provide me as much (or as little) redundancy as I want.

w/o HDD's it came to less than $300. Performance isn't break-neck but as it serves <5users this isn't an issue at all.

I also went down the proliant HP microserver route. I run freenas 8 with mirrored ZFS storage

qnap 869.

i've got two 859's. qnap's are good. buy one.

If space or physical hardware features aren't what you require in a nas, I'd seriously recommend building your own with a mini itx mobo with a low end intel cpu and a hunk of ram, a case like this (with expansion slots for any raid cards), and using a distro that natively supports ZFS (tho I guess you're stuck with whatever raid you've got setup if you don't have any other drives you can get a hold of to copy stuff off).

Alternatively you could buy a qnap and replace the DOM to run your own distro, but it'll be a little pricy and a fair bit underspecced compared to the above (but it will still do the job unless you do anything demanding like transcoding).

The Synology stuff seems to have an awesome ui/interface. I've been temped to get the 8bay one for a while. Rocking on with a Microserver atm though with 5x2TB and a 500g momentus XT I used to have in my laptop. I envy the expandability of the dedicated NAS boxes though. Is there anything that can expand raids to add new disks software wise as easy as the dedicated boxes?

That said... with an unlimited internet plan plus usenet + sick beard + couch potato, I just delete stuff if I need space and it's easy enough to get back what I want in no time if I'm missing it. I probably don't need more storage.

PS dont use WD non ES series drives in a NAS, they have error checking disabled and will error out of the array over time. Seagate or Hitachi drives instead.

Synology or gtfo. hese things HAMMER! Will not buy anything else, ever again.

^ I have 5 of those seagates in my synology and they are awesome! Cannot go wrong!

^ nice.

I have a Thecus sitting there doing absolutely zero cause its the biggest pos on earth.

I have two QNAP 659 Pro's and love them.
One is loaded with WD green drives for storage and the other has hitachi enterprise disks for the esxi environment.

i just bought a

- ASRock / A75 itx m/b (4x sata 3, 4x usb3, amd FM1 socket)
- AMD A4-3400 Dual Core FM1, 2.7GHz, TDP65w
- 8gb ram
- Chenbro ES34169 Mini ITX Server Chassis with 4 Bay Hot-Swap
---
All for less than the cost of a HP Microserver, and far more powerful.

Have 1 hdd in while installing, and power metre says 32w.
Installing linux as i write this..
only issue I had (others of similar setup also had) was with while trying to install the monitor kept turning off (some graphical bootloader and driver and AMD APU related issue.) - I switched from vga to hdmi (different monitor) and it works.

^^^ really cheaper then HP??? when i was looking that case cost $399 just for the case!

cheapest I could find the HP N40L was $300+$15 post.

- The Chenbro case was the most expensive part of this at $140 (but included psu, so that lightens it a bit)
- The m/b is $65**
- The APU is $60
- 8gb ram $45 (could be less if used less ram)
--
$310, no waiting on post
** i got the m/b on the cheap, add $25~ for normal price

The whole system could be another $50+ cheaper if the case wasn't a big factor (i.e. NAS-style front loading and super compact).
It is a really nice case though, cables all routed to mb area, easy loading of drives, has a tamper switch too which i'm going to wire to an alarm.

It has an inbuilt card reader in the front - but when considering running linux on SD or USB in that compartment, the door can't close/lock. So i'm just taking away 40gb from a 3tb hd for the system and home partitions.

last edited by Jerry at 23:53:12 17/Aug/12

last edited by Jerry at 23:53:48 17/Aug/12

yay, my server 'room' is looking more complete.

setup is getting around 100mb/s according to windows file transfer





last edited by Jerry at 10:35:19 19/Aug/12

pretty sure a *single connection* will still only traverse one nic with lacp, you'd need to use round robin bonding

Hey jerry if you ditch that switch and opt for something with lacp and get a couple of cheapo dual nics you could get that to well over 150

sounds like more effort than benefit for home..

Can that fit more than 4 drives? Microserver can fit 6x3.5 if you're not using the 5.25 bay. The extra grunt would be nice though.

There is provision for a 2.5" and slim ODD also - which could probably be used for another 2.5" (there were some brackets with the case that may have provision for 3.5" there also). The board only has 4 internal sata3 ports so the case is sufficient. The board is capable of 5 sata3 devices though via 4 internal and 1 esata port, and x* number of 5bgps devices over the onboard 4xusb3 ports. * (i've had some usb3 cards die from heavily simultaneously using multiple drives on the same card so i'll limit this)

For now there is 2x2tb, 1x3tb internal and 1x(2x2tb)=4tb usb3 raid external on the icybox next to the case. I still have allowance for another internal and external sata drive as a minimum.

sounds like more effort than benefit for home..

so does that rats nest of wires there.

cable management. STAT!