[CentOS] Central file server advice please

[Les Mikesell]

John Bowden wrote:

> I have a Gygabyte GA-7N400 PRO2 with a 2.6 mHz Athlon cpu. I want to set up a 
> central file storage for 2/3 users using 6/7 machines. A mixture of win2k, XP 
> and various Linux distros (my home network). It will be used to store files, 
> (docs, music and DVD ) for all of these machines, print server, (two 
> ink-jets), mail server and later on  a myth tv set up. Would SAMBA be the 
> best option for the file and print serving ?
> The mother board has 2 X IDE channels, 2 X IDE channels with raid and 2 X SATA 
> raid channels, that's up to 10 hard drive devices. The IDE raid chip is a 
> GigaRaid IT8212F chipset. It supports raid 0 or raid 1 and raid 0 + 1 and 
> JBOD. The SATA raid is a Silicon Image Sil3512. It supports Raid 0 or 1. 
> Would I get better speed performance using the chips to manage the raid or 
> using software raid?
> Oh and I will be using the CentOS 5 install dvd. Any advice from the list 
> would be appreciated.

If you are interested in an appliance-like setup for serving files, 
printers, email and some other things, you might like the SME server 
from http://www.contribs.org. It's based on centos code but with a 
kickstart install and completely web based administration. It will 
automatically install as raid1 if it sees 2 disks, or as a 'broken' raid 
set if you only have one so you can easily add the mirror later (a very 
nice trick).  Since the configuration is all built by web/perl scripts 
it is hard to do additional customization, but in a multiple machine 
setup you might find it easy to take advantage of its features.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com