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schalliol · Jan 2, 2004, 12:52 AM

Here's the deal: I want to move many files to a large removable array that I want to be able to use for decent speed access at the local level but ultimately want to serve to a few machines around my [forthcoming] house. This is going to be for my "MediaFurnace" concept I've had for a long time, where I will be serving regular files around to machines around my home and also will want to serve audio AND video (hopefully later HDTV).

I remember the old Sledge Hammer systems and other arrays like the XServe RAID and wonder if we can't do something that's expandable these days. I don't have a big budget, maybe a few hundred bucks for the chassis to start and I can add drives as I can afford, but it doesn't seem like a system should need to be that expensive, after all it's only like $150 for a 250GB 7200RPM IDE Drive. I'd like expandability to 1TB at least, which would be 4 drives bays at this size. Ideally, a RAID system with a parity drive for data protection would be a possibility. I'd probably put this in a rack and am curious about what's doable.

So, given this mythical drive chassis, what connection am I thinking of? Well, I guess I could do Fibre Channel, that would be ideal, but the cost would be prohibitive and I don't think that I'd really need that high of performance. FireWire 400 or 800? Both of these seem like they would be sufficient from a cost and bandwidth perspective, but FW 800 would probably be better. SCSI or IDE? Well, SCSI can be quite fast, but it's very expensive anymore and my software RAID U2W system in my Mac is slooow. IDE externally is not very common, but I suppose if you used a few channels tied directly to the drives and controlled it from one machine.

I'm really just exploring options right now, so any thoughts you have would be great.

velodev · Jul 19, 2004, 11:08 PM

You ever get this working?

schalliol · Jul 20, 2004, 02:20 AM

no, but let's not drop this. I still need it, and many others could certainly utilize it.

veryniceguy2002 · Jul 20, 2004, 06:44 AM

SANcube800?
Sounds like that is almost what you want. (1Tb, FireWire800)

However, what is your budget? That would cost you about US$5000!

But your question and the subject sounds a bit contradictary...

Do you want Network Attached Storage (you connect your disk into a network via something like ethernet), or Storage Attached network (which connect the drive into the computer using fibre channel, FireWire)??

There is a difference.

jac · Jul 20, 2004, 07:08 AM

Cheap Wintel machine with gigabit ethernet?

schalliol · Jul 20, 2004, 07:15 AM

Of course there's a difference, which I am well aware of. I would ideally like a high powered NAS, but if I can't get the performance I want at a price point I want, I would go with local storage and make a machine a file server, effectively to do NAS. SAN isn't really that helpful, as typically they don't offer much in the way of distributed networking, it's usually pretty local.

A wintel machine with gigabit may be the way to go for price/performance.

veryniceguy2002 · Jul 20, 2004, 08:33 AM

Originally posted by schalliol:
A wintel machine with gigabit may be the way to go for price/performance.

Perhaps run on a cheap Intel (or AMD) box on linux in headless mode, gigabit ethernet card, and using 2 Serial ATA hard disk in RAID 1 configuration?

schalliol · Jul 20, 2004, 02:35 PM

Something like the products from fastora makes sense, but they seem to be more $ than makes sense for the offering. If I get a NAS setup, I'm pretty sure that I'd want something scalable and supports RAID 5 or similar. I guess it doesn't seem to hard, but I'd think that someone would so something similar for a lot less. I guess I could buy a PC w/ a RAID 5 controller :-/

macxtal · Jul 21, 2004, 01:02 PM

I am using a linux box running striped and mirrored RAID setup for this. I have a motherboard, card, and drives on a UPS tucked away out of site. It's on 100mbit now, with good performance, I will be moving it to a gigabit ethernet connection shortly.

Works fine, cost a fraction of what a commercial solution would. I highly recommened, even without the RAID.

velodev · Jul 21, 2004, 01:25 PM

Originally posted by macxtal:
I am using a linux box running striped and mirrored RAID setup for this. I have a motherboard, card, and drives on a UPS tucked away out of site. It's on 100mbit now, with good performance, I will be moving it to a gigabit ethernet connection shortly.

Works fine, cost a fraction of what a commercial solution would. I highly recommened, even without the RAID.

Which mobo and card are you using?