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Looking for a NAS Solution

S

slarco

n00b
Joined
Feb 16, 2010
Messages
5
Hi. I am really new at this forum but i find it very interesting. i been reading it for a while and now I have a few questions that i would like to ask if anyone can give me some help here.

Im not tech at all, so anyways.

I live in Chile (yes, we did have an earthquake 8.8 richter 4 days ago) and im a wedding photographer. I edit my pictures on a iMac 27". Each wedding is around 40-50 gb and sessions around 10gb . all this has to be in at least 2 copies.

I was thinking in built a NAS server with 4 to 8 disk and i would love to be able to add more in the future without having to re-do everything.

I was looking at the NORCO 4220 (dont know how im gonna bring that to chile) I know is way over my needs but im looking for a permanent solution, I already have 7 external drives and im tired of that.

Do you guys have any suggestions?
Can anyone give me an idea of how much this might cost?
Can i run FreeNas on it and use it with my iMac / MacbookPro?

I normaly go to the states every 3 months so i can bring some stuff with me if i cant find it down here.

Thanks in advance...!

Sry for my english.. xD
 
Thanks! I'm gonna check those links right now.

Does anyone ever try one of this unRaid Servers? Any coments on performance, transfer speed, etc?

And 1 more thing. In the web site said "It is almost impossible to lose all your data, since each individual data drive has its own file system"

That means that i would lose some data, but not all?

Thx again
 
slarco said:
Thanks! I'm gonna check those links right now.
And 1 more thing. In the web site said "It is almost impossible to lose all your data, since each individual data drive has its own file system"

That means that i would lose some data, but not all?

Thx again
Click to expand...

I don't know about unRAID, but no matter...if it is important enough to worry about losing a drive then you should be planning for backups. Yes, I said backups...as in more than one backup. There are too many sob stories on this forum asking for help recovering from a disaster without have a backup to restore from. Nothing is bulletproof, but multiple proven good backups sure help me sleep better at night.
 
Each disk does had its own file system. There are many advantages to this and a few disadvantages.

Advantage:
drives can be taken out and mounted using any linux system that can recognize the Reiser FS
you can lose one drive and rebuild all your data. lose 2 at the same time you lose the info on only those 2. with a RAID5 you would lose ALL data from a multi drive failure.

Disadvantage:
because each disk has its own FS you don't "really" have "1 large drive" like in a RAID5. Therefore the right speed tends to be a little slower as you are writing to an individual disk and not striping the data across all disks like in a RAID5.

There are more that I am sure I have overlooked but that is an overview.


I do run an unRAID server in my home. I run a torrent server among other things on it. I also use it for backing up to via my Mac and my parents computers. I am running a 10 drive 8TB system right now on a Gigabyte motherboard.
 
Since this is for a business I would look at business solutions, not home stuff like freenas/unraid.
 
Yes, those Linux and FreeBSD webservers are also clearly inferior to a real Windows Server. Only if you pay for a product can you expect quality. Open Source is just a piece of crap made by teenage trainee programmers.
 
lol, you get what you pay for. I dont think the OP wants to be his own tech support for one of those products. If your data is important to you go with a vendor that offers 24x7 support. Not support that is only available via a forum.

How many business do you know of that have their data stored on unraid or freenas?

"I'm not tech at all" tells you all you need to know.
 
I know a lot of businesses that use Open Source software to do their multi-million business. So sometimes paying nothing is better than paying something.

FreeNAS is pretty easy and should be fine for small business use. The argument that something you pay for is automatically better does not conform to known fact.
 
I have nothing against OSS, but just because the software is free doesn't mean the support is. YOur time spent troubleshooting issues can add up quickly.
 
I don't get the idea when reading the topic start, that he owns a company with lots of staff. Instead, he'll probably try to make it work himself. That means his situation is not that different from a home user.

I agree an enterprise company shouldn't fiddle with any product (open source or commercial) without proper support contracts (SLAs) - but i think you're misjudging his situation. He wants a solution he can implement himself, at lowest cost and greatest ease and abilities he uses. FreeNAS is an excellent option for that, as long as you don't want anything too complicated its quite easy to setup using the online manual.
 
hmm, no idea if he has a staff. But going by what he said his experience level is, I would recommend against building your own.
 
If you have the time to learn/read, nothing beats a homemade Linux box (Debian/mdadm/samba..). They end up being a lot more flexible than the other alternatives.

I would strongly suggest a software raid over a hardware raid for compatibility/expense.

Thats what I did for my nas and it works perfectly.
 
sub.mesa said:
I don't get the idea when reading the topic start, that he owns a company with lots of staff. Instead, he'll probably try to make it work himself. That means his situation is not that different from a home user.

I agree an enterprise company shouldn't fiddle with any product (open source or commercial) without proper support contracts (SLAs) - but i think you're misjudging his situation. He wants a solution he can implement himself, at lowest cost and greatest ease and abilities he uses. FreeNAS is an excellent option for that, as long as you don't want anything too complicated its quite easy to setup using the online manual.
Click to expand...

Actually my "company" is just me and my Wife. We shot weddings here in chile, Argentina and the United States, so i was looking for a solution that i can implement basically by my self. I dont think that i can get any kind of support from down here and call to the states is a pain in the ass, even with Skype.

phildabill said:
If you have the time to learn/read, nothing beats a homemade Linux box (Debian/mdadm/samba..). They end up being a lot more flexible than the other alternatives.

I would strongly suggest a software raid over a hardware raid for compatibility/expense.

Thats what I did for my nas and it works perfectly.
Click to expand...

I do have time, but i don't wanna make a $1000 mistake, market here in chile for wedding photographers is not that good xD.

Thanks for all the feed back, so far is really helpfull but still dont know what to do. =(
 
Go download Virtualbox, then download FreeNAS. Go experiment with FreeNAS by setting up in a test environment, with a virtual disk. Just get it working and see if it meets your demands. If so, its probably your easiest option that doesn't involve buying special hardware like ready-made NAS.
 
I'd say just get a copy of Windows Home server and plug in a bunch of drives. Its ridiculously easy to use and give you the redundancy you need. If you need a lot of ports then get the SuperMicro 8 port SATA (or 2) card and plug that into the Norco.

Or for a simple solution just buy one or two of the HP EX490 Windows Home Servers. Just add disks as needed. Full support from HP and they are cheap.
 
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