VIA as a NAS: suggestions?

djBon2112

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I'm looking basically to build a NAS unit (4-port RAID 5) for my home network, and considering that your average 4-port RAID 5 NAS unit is $1000+, I've decided to build one myself.

Since the thing needs very little actual power, and it's gotta be small, I've decided to venture into this little subforum ;)

Only stipulation is it's gotta have a PCIe port, if they even exist on VIA boards (it's for the RAID card).
 
the Everex Via Systems that walmart sells for $199 have a PCI-e Slot in them....... they use the idot pc3500 board.... they are clocked at 1.5ghz I use mine to the same extent, and it works fairly well. These boards can be had for around $60 us dollars, they suppport up to 2 gigs of ram and have 2 pci slots
 
I'm using the Via PC-1 board with 2 PCI slots for my WHS server. I am running a GigE card in one slot and an 8 port PCI-X Supermicro SATA controller in the other slot. The PCI-X card works fine in a PCI slot. I've got 3x 1TB WD GP drives and 3x 500GB Seagates running now. This things pulls only about 85 watts at idle. So far I've had had this setup for 3 months and am quite pleased with how its working.
 
I'm using the Via PC-1 board with 2 PCI slots for my WHS server. I am running a GigE card in one slot and an 8 port PCI-X Supermicro SATA controller in the other slot. The PCI-X card works fine in a PCI slot. I've got 3x 1TB WD GP drives and 3x 500GB Seagates running now. This things pulls only about 85 watts at idle. So far I've had had this setup for 3 months and am quite pleased with how its working.

But how do they perform on PCI? I've always heard gigabit ethernet alone, let alone gigabit ethernet plus a RAID controller, on PCI isn't sufficient.
 
Works fine for me. I don't have super high performance requirements...at most streaming 2 movies concurrently. For that level of usage the VIA platform works fine. My single largest goal was to get my power consumption for this file server < 100W...which I have accomplished.

The only time I had slow performance was when I was migrating some of my olders drives out of the server and replacing them with 1TB drives. That process took about 1 day per drive for WHS. I am guessing that was more a reflection of WHS processing time than anything to do with the drive controller being on the PCI bus.
 
ASUS M2V-MX SE
ASUS P5VD2-VM

Those boards looked quite nice to me for building a server or NAS. They're pretty much the same board except one is for AMD chips and the other is for Intel. They both come with two PCIe ports (perfect for a RAID controller and a Gigabit Ethernet card), onboard video, and support DDR2. The AMD version comes with two PATA ports instead of one, so you can throw on any old IDE drives you might have lying around for extra storage. They only have two SATA/300 ports, but since you're using a RAID card that shouldn't matter too much. You could use those to RAID 1 (or RAID 0 at your peril) your O.S. drives at least.

EDIT:

The boards are built by ASUS but use VIA north and south bridges, so I'm assuming they still fall under your criteria.
 
a geode system might be better
I have a VIA system for my home NAS (plus ssh,ftp,http,... server) and it is great but if i was todo it again I would go for an AMD Geode-based system
 
You might consider this.

Gigabit Ethernet on the MB with SATA. Nothing about RAID, though.

That's actually looking pretty fine if I can find it for a decent price. Worse case scenario I can use software RAID 5 (go Linux!).

Speaking of finding it, anyone know where to get/price one? There's only about 8 results for each on Google, and they're all news on it!

a geode system might be better
I have a VIA system for my home NAS (plus ssh,ftp,http,... server) and it is great but if i was todo it again I would go for an AMD Geode-based system

That's also an excellent idea. Do you have any information on them, specs, etc? I'm new to this area, and a quick NCIX search turned up nothing useful ;)

To clarify my position, I'm really looking for an all-in-one (as much as possible), really small solution. I'm going to build a custom case for this and the smaller the better. It'll have at least 4 hard drives as well, so the more SATA (II) ports, the better (though a RAID controller as well isn't out of the question if the board has PCIe/PCI slots). Gigabit ethernet isn't much of a concern as my wired ethernet is only 10/100 anyways (wireless N though).
 
Gigabit ethernet isn't much of a concern as my wired ethernet is only 10/100 anyways (wireless N though).

Given that G Ethernet is pretty standard on a MB these days, I'd make it a priority so that you can go Gigabit with a computer or two in the future. The difference in price for the NAS now will be negligible but will be cheaper and easier than upgrading everything down the line.
 
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