Need some NAS Advice

[_Bogus_]

OK, I've been reading a lot about NAS devices. I started my research a couple of weeks ago and it seems like every time I turn around I discover a better way. The posts here have been some of the best resources I've found. (Thanks!) But most are dealing in much larger solutions than I can afford at this time.

Unfortunately, I have to create my NAS on a very tight budget. I've got about 2TB of files that I want to be available on my network - mostly for streaming media, and some for user file storage (docs, pics, etc.). Of course, that will grow a lot if I have some room to expand.

I currently have a mini-ITX Via EPIA M10000 system running FreeNAS v0.7. It has 1GB of RAM, a 160GB system drive (IDE) and a 500GB storage drive (USB 2). This motherboard does not have three key features: SATA, GigE, or PCIe. But for now it serves media just fine. The problem is adding space to it. It only has one PCI slot. So I can either add a GigE network card OR a SATA controller, but not both.

I currently get about 11MB/s transfer rates from it, which is about the max for the 100BaseTX network interface. My network is GigE (everything else in the house), so I think I could get better transfer rates by upgrading the network interface on the FreeNAS box.

But I also need to add more storage. So where will my bottleneck be if I add a PCI GigE card and USB 2 drives? What kind of speed can I expect?

If I were to build a new PC with GigE, SATA and more RAM, what kind of speed improvements should I expect for my money?

Should I just buy an appliance (like a Qnap TS-210)? It would be cheaper than a new PC, but would not allow for later expansion. Is it worth it?

 

[lightp2]

Based on your existing EPIA selection, the fact that you mention Qnap TS-210, that you have been running storage on USB2 connection

The initial impression,

1. extreme performance is not critical to you.
2. Neat and efficiency likely appeals to you choice.

Therefore, based on common models that can be seen in forum, (and others probably can supply even more selections due to more exposure to NAS)

1. TS-210 USD290
800MHz marvell, 3xUSB2, 256MB RAM, 2xSATA

2. HP microserver N36L USD310
Dualcore x86 1.3GHz, 1GB ECC RAM, 4xSATA, 160GB HD

Based on raw specification, HP microserver looks favorable, including disk unit expansion. HP does expect you to roll your own software choice. The Qnap has the benefits of ready to go software.

To clarify the issue on PC build, based on the observation, again, extreme performance appears to be on lower level of consideration. By the time you really need superior I/O, a new generation of stuff will be there to suit your needs. (You also listed 2TB of data, which is within the realm of possibility for many current NAS products due to abundance of 2TB/3TB hard disks.)

Finally, you are current on FreeNAS, which means software build is not unreasonable to you, thus HP could be a really attractive option, neat casing, if you can consider 256MB, then 1GB ECC is not an issue to you thus you can live with it without making any hardware modification. The downside for HP here obviously is no support call in case data corruption issue, which the Qnap does support I believe.

That is unless you declare more requirements, for example, superior I/O rate now, to last many-many-years, then the PC build question will re-surface.

Cheers

Edit : If you follow the ZFS crowd, then raising RAM to 4GB or more is strongly recommended by the gurus in the forum.

 

[JeffBlair]

If it were me, I would almost look at just replacing the MB/CPU. You can get a cheap older CPU off of Craigslist. You might even just be able to move the drives to the new board. I'm not sure how FreeNAS would like it. I've never used it before.

The up side to doing something like that would be that you could find a board that was top of the line about 3 or 4 years ago, for really cheap. My old motherboard had dual GigE's, and 6 SATA ports if I remember right.

Only reason I replaced it is it stopped booting one day. But, it had a good 5+ year run, and was serving movies to 2 PC's with no problem even at the end.

You didn't say what kind of case you have, but just about any now a day's will work with internal SATA drives as big/cheap as they are. You could keep the IDE drive as your system/boot drive, and then get 3 1TB drives, and put it in a RAID5. Or, however FreeNAS does it for redundancy. That way just in case you lose 1 drive, you're not out 2TB..trust me, that sucks. I lost almost 3TB before because of a stupid mistake on my part.

Me personally, I've got Gentoo Linux running on my server. I have it running my torrent/web/proxy, and serving out blueray. Only thing I don't like about my current MB is it only has 1 onboard GigE, so I had to get another cheap NIC until I get a dual Intel PCIe card.

 

[_Bogus_]

Thanks guys!

In the short term, I am going to add a PCI GigE card to my current FreeNAS system, and probably add a 2TB USB drive to it as well as a 1.5TB drive that I have on hand (also USB). So I will end up spending about $165: 100 for the 2TB drive, 50 for the two USB enclosures, and 15 for the GigE card. Long term, I will save some cash and build a 6 or 8 drive system based on SATA, ZFS and either FreeNAS or FreeBSD (maybe ZFSguru).

What kind of throughput can I expect from the GigE interface?

I know it won't reach anywhere near 100MB/s (at least mine won't). The PCI bus should be able to handle 100MB/s, but the USB2 interface to the drives will max out at a theoretical 60MB/s.

Realistically what can I expect from the USB2 interfaced drives? 30MB/s?