Tom Brown wrote: > Hi > > Has anyone got any ideas on a nfs/nas appliance that i can install on > x86 hardware with a few JBOD shelves attached to it. I would like an > appliance like install and based on CentOS would be great. I really > like the look of www.openfiler.com but it seems to be only in RC > release stage so i don't think the 'boss' would like that idea. > > thanks Someone else has mentioned OpenNAS, and I've looked at that, but it's in its infancy, and wouldn't work well with my network. Now, what I've done for my own NAS is to install CentOS 4.3 under Server->Minimal. I create a 6GB partition on one of my 3Ware cards for the OS. Then the rest of the space I use LVM to manage what I need. You'll need to install Samba if you need SMB, but essentially building a NAS is pretty easy. I've reached the stage where I can start from bare metal, and have a 5TB NAS up and running in about 30 mins - after the RAID5 array has finished initializing! :) I looked at OpenFiler as well, but was have difficult times getting it to run on my HW. It would simply lock up while formatting drives - not sure why... Since I really don't need a GUI to manage things, I keep things simple and use CLI for everything. HTH Mark