Rainer Duffner wrote:
Am 29.06.2008 um 09:08 schrieb Rudi Ahlers:
Hi all
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.
What hardware do you own that is not supported?
I haven's used FBSD (or any other BSD) since 4.9, and I know what hassles I had back then with some NIC's. But, it's worth a try. This is a Linux list, so I didn't think a BSD suggestion would come from it :)
Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)
While it can certainly be done with CentOS, I'd take a look at Solaris/OpenSolaris for that purpose. ZFS really beats anything else out there. But you need a lot of RAM. 2 GB is good, 4 GB would be better ;-) Actually, the calculation is that it needs a GB of RAM for every TB of managed data. So, if RAM is scarce and the feature of ZFS are not needed (for whatever reason), CentOS may be still be a good option.
cheers, Rainer
I don't know Solaris. At all. I've never seen it (i.e. file & directory structure, security, kernel, etc). Apart from ZFS, what else would I gain? Can ZFS work on Linux? If not, I'm sure I could give Solaris a shot.
1GB per TB? mm, ok. This is my first attempt to this, so there's still a lot to learn. With 6 SATA slots available (2U case), I would probably only have about 3 - 4TB available (depending on whether I got for RAID 6 or 10) - so I would really only need 4GB RAM, but I'm sure if I spend a bit more cash on the mobo, I could get one that supports 8TB.
I currently have a PC, with 4GB DDRII 667 RAM, i6750 CPU & some 160GB HDD's, but want to replace the HDD's at some stage when I have more cash.