# Network Attached Storage

## Tone

Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone would be able to help me please?

I want to create a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device, basicaly I have a Compaq D510 Small Form Factor PC I want to use.

Spec is:

2Ghz P4

512Mb Ram

250Gb Drive 

Other Usual Stuff.

I was just wondering are there any packages that can do this for me? Or do I have to use a culmination of different tools to create what I want?

Hope you can help & Thankyou!

----------

## -Craig-

If you want an inexpensive solution you could add some disks to compaq and use sys-block/aoetools in order to use AoE (ATA over Ethernet).

Personally I don't have experience with it, but I think it should work fine.

----------

## mgbowman

 *Tone wrote:*   

> I was just wondering are there any packages that can do this for me? Or do I have to use a culmination of different tools to create what I want?

 

You could use AoE, NFS, or SMB to accomplish this.  I'm looking at the same idea except I'm doing a RAID-5 1TB configuration.

--mgb

----------

## madchaz

It really depends on what exactly you are trying to accomplish. 

If what you want to do is acces the HD directly (as in, partition it, format it and all as if it were a real hd, but on another machine), then AoE is what you want. 

If you want to acces the file system, then NFS will work if your client is linux. If it's windows, samba is the way to go. If it's a mix, you can do both or just use samba, as you can connect to it from a linux box as well.

----------

## lbrtuk

As far as I'm aware, if you use AoE, you'll only be able to mount the drive from one machine at a time.

Your best bet is probably CIFS/SMB.

----------

## GNUtoo

i have the same problem

some nas and aoe-like is a good solution for me

my problem:

basicaly i've poor nfs performances in some task such as:

*partition backup with partimage directly on the nfs folder

*LEGAL copy of a dvd9 using vobcopy(that use libdvdread) (i'm a laptop user so having a dvd on the hdd instead of a disc has many advantages such as no risk for the disc,save physical space in luggage,no risk to have the dvd robed,more battery life(hdd->consume a lot less than the dvd),more performances...)

these 2 things have a very strange nfs behaviour:the files writes itself slowly to the nfs server,stop incrasing size,continue incrasing slowly...

that's insanly slow compared to a local hd performance!!!

so i thoat about aoe-like solution and i have some questions

*is that the only solution???

*i saw this http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/02/08/iscsi_the_open/ is iscsi possible with ata,scsi,sata drives over gigabit lan???

*is aoe capable of exporting others hdd than ata ones(sata for example)

*does aoe work with jobs(non raid hdd) under a pci raid card(that may be problematic because some of theses card doesn't use full ata specs and that led to some problem with some unreadable smart)

*can the hdd be securised

*because of caching,only one computer is capable of using such hdd,so is there a comparison between others protocol than samba such as andrewfs,open-gfs...

----------

## GNUtoo

 *madchaz wrote:*   

> 
> 
> If you want to acces the file system, then NFS will work if your client is linux. If it's windows, samba is the way to go. If it's a mix, you can do both or just use samba, as you can connect to it from a linux box as well.

 

or install nfs on windows

----------

## fuzzyfelt

Im part way through building a high performance NAS box at the moment. I intend to do a write up of my experience but for now I have just one recommendation: avoid 32/33 PCI limitations  :Exclamation: . This includes using 32/66 PCI devices alongside 32/33 PCI devices. I didn't realise how important this was. 

Avoiding this problem and with minimal tuning, initial stats are:

50-80MB/sec Network Throughput (by netperf)

70-80MB/sec Read + Write Disk Throughput (by dd, which I know is not a true test)

This is with a Pentium 4 HT 3Ghz , 1GB RAM, 3x250GB in a software RAID 5 array, 1Gb Ethernet Card, 1U Case.

I have not yet tested NFS access or benchmarked anything properly. Not bad for 500 GBP.

----------

## GNUtoo

 *fuzzyfelt wrote:*   

> Im part way through building a high performance NAS box at the moment. I intend to do a write up of my experience but for now I have just one recommendation: avoid 32/33 PCI limitations . This includes using 32/66 PCI devices alongside 32/33 PCI devices. I didn't realise how important this was. 
> 
> Avoiding this problem and with minimal tuning, initial stats are:
> 
> 50-80MB/sec Network Throughput (by netperf)
> ...

 

if you want more than the theoric 132MB/s that is very important of you use only one machine...

the other option is use the 132MB/s per machine and use protocols such as open-gfs, in order to create a raid of network machines...

but you'll still need a high oput pci in order to be able to connect to the nas at incredible speed,you can't use 32/33 pci because it's a shared bandwith and so bonding some 1000 nic is not usefull

if you use only one machine there is also some other  problem to be aware of such as:

*the relation between the driver and the kernel(for example against wich kernel the open-source module can be built)

*some expandability of the raid array(i think that can be solved by software)

*mabe processing power for raid 5/6(don't know the exact processing power consumation...)

 *Quote:*   

> 1U Case.

 

mabe you could be more specific on the need of such SAN/SAN

you tested nfs with dd?

i should test it in order to see if i need to tweek my nfs settings(have some problems with partimage and vobcopy(legal use))

if it's a protocol problem...i wonder how whould be the perfs of a diskless machine...

----------

