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Hardware specifically for the "File Server - Simple Network Attached Storage" device.
First I'd like to say that I think what you folks are doing is so stinking COOL. :-D I've been poking around here for a while now mostly out of curiosity but also because I see some really useful tools here.
To that end, as well as to accomodate a project I'm working on with my home network, I'm looking to put some hardware together specifically for the "File Server - Simple Network Attached Storage" ISO. My goal is to replace a Buffalo Link Station Pro Quad with something that would be a little more like a REAL NAS and it looks like this will do the trick.
I'm curious if anyone has ever run this on something like an Intel desktop board with an on-board SATA RAID controller in a RAID-5 configuration. If I'm not mistaken, the Intel on-board "RAID" on such motherboards is still technically a "software RAID"... but speed isn't really what I'm after. Just redendancy and availabilty. I intend to depoly a Unitrends Enterpise Essentials VM to backup several servers (two Windows AD's and two Ubuntu Servers) that live on a VSphere host and then use the "NAS" as the targer for the backup data.
Sort of long-winded there... but any thoughts about whether this would run on such a configurtion of hardware... ? :-D
Replies (4)
Oh ok, missed that you were using new hardware...
Reply 1Really excited to get the project moving.
Reply 2Thanks for the reply Jeremy, it's deeply appreciated. :-D
Yeah... was looking at the hardware so that it would actually be a seperate physical device from the existing VSphere server. I think it would also allow me to use a removable disk for archiving and D/R as well. Since this would actually be new hardware, it'll definately be a 64-bit capable motherboard but I'm also betting that I can very likely get it running on the RAID array. I'm one of those "bang on it 'till ya figure it out" type of guys anyway. :-D If you're curious how it turns out I'd be happy to keep you posted once I have it going. Will likely be a few weeks though before I can squeeze the hardware into the budget.
TBH I see no reason why not
Reply 3As for deployment, personally I can't go past Proxmox (free open source Debian based) running as a hypervisor. I have been running Proxmox on ~7yo desktop hardware (CPU: Core2Duo @~2GHz; RAM maxed out at 8GB) for years now and it's been working sweet. I am in the process of upgrading the hardware (I'm running out of RAM with the ~20 VMs that I have loaded on it). One of the VMs I have is a fileserver appliance (old v12.0; needs updating - that will be part of the upgraded hardware process). I have other software installed in the fileserver as well and it currently streams media all over my house and it works awesome!
Obviously YMMV but I think that assuming it's not too low spec hardware (it must be 64 bit and also provide CPU virtual extensions i.e. AMD-v/Intel vt-x) the additional overhead of a hypervisor is well worth the added flexibility you get by not installing bare metal...
Also FWIW to use the current version of TKL you need a 64 bit capable CPU anyway. If it's older than that you'l;l need to use the previous v13.0 release...
Can hardy wait to get this going...
Reply 4Excellent! Then I'll let you know just as soon as I have the hardware and am up and running with it. :-D
And yeah I'd love to hear how things go. Actually installing TurnKey with RAID would make a great tutorial! Our current installer doesn't provide it as an option so you'll need to do a post-install RAID install/config. We don't have tons of requests but we do get the odd one for RAID so it'd be cool to be able to point other users in the right direction!