[CentOS] settings up cheap a NAS / SAN server, is it possible?

[Les Mikesell]

Rudi Ahlers wrote:
>
> I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using 
> normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU (probably 
> a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x 320GB - 750GB). 
> My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS device.
> 
> Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is built 
> on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the hardware 
> support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for it.

You can use a stock Centos - just set up Samba if you are serving 
windows clients and NFS for Linux/Mac clients.  The only thing even 
slightly difficult is keeping authentication and user mapping 
coordinated between the windows/linux sides.  You can also run whatever 
else you might want (web/ftp/email/streaming media servers, etc.) or 
even run it as a workstation too.  If you are serving mostly windows 
clients and don't need NFS, you might look at SME server 
(http://www.contribs.org) as something easier to set up.

> Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)

Are you pricing the low end NAS boxes (like Buffalo 
Linkstation/Terastation, etc.)?  It might be hard to beat that if all 
you want is a file server.  Most run Linux of some sort on ARM or PPC 
processors and may need to be hacked to add NFS or support >2gig files.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com