Any of you wotppers know anything about NAS

[Tr!une]

I am trying to learn about NAS and all the options. I think I want to go that direction for adding more disk space rather than adding drives to my netware server. Trouble is, the ones I am looking at cost around $3k and that is a bit expensive to just go on a hunch.

I prefer Gig Ether and am looking at around 400 to 600 Gig of space. But how does one back all this up? I have looked at SNAP and MaxAttach, but am still in the dark.

Thanks

[Tr!une]

guess that is a no?

[imaeditedbysowulo]

The only NAS I've ever used was a Maxtor 120GB. We had problems getting the permissions to work properly. We still used it but basically had to just trust that the drives wouldn't fail, and if they did we would have been f****d.

For 3 grand, I would suggest instead building a stripped down PC or two with massive hard drives installed and setup a RAID Array so that your butt is covered if one of the drives were to fail. NAS's are a good idea in theory, but the price for what you get just isn't worth it in my opinion.

[kato2274]

yeah, if you know a little something bout linux and samba, you can build your own NAS box a lot cheaper. did it with VMWARE for a project in school with redhat 8.0 worked well

[tommo666]

There are loads of NAS boxes around, some use propriety os's like the quantums, netapps etc but some of the recent ones use ms 2003 server with the storage 3.0 appliance kit.

Basically speaking a NAS box is just shared storage, mapped drives and folders. Buying a NAS box makes it easy because it's all set up for you. Plug it in and start using it. You can build a NAs box with a server, loads of disk space and http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...nstall_kit.asp

look for the refence sub menu and the downloads are there.

have fun, i did i turned my laptop into a NAS box.

400 to 600 gb of disk space will be expensive in any format, as you will need some form of raid contoller unless you use large IDE drives. Then you have to consider performance, redundancy and backup strategies.

I work with Dell and EMC NAS boxes, the Dell don't have masses of internal storage but you can bolt on external disk boxes and expand that way. The EMC boxes use a server and a clariion SAN array for the storage, scalable depending on your pocket. Either way they're expensive.

[gizmo1_1]

I have always preferred running a server OS that I am comfortable with (Mandrake , REd-hat, M$) With a major amount of Hd storage. The new SATA drives prove to be cost effective 4 200GB SATA, will be about $150 ea . Good box, MB and OS will prove to be the most reliable dut to the permissions, and control that you have over the security, plus you will be able to have the OS availble for other things in a pinch.

[Tr!une]

okay so now I am looking at a windows box with large SATA drives. I should be able to do RAID 1 with that.
What MS OS should I look at? Is Win2k Pro sufficient? Or am I going to have to bite the bullet and go Win 2003 server?

Thanks for the input.

[gizmo1_1]

okay so now I am looking at a windows box with large SATA drives. I should be able to do RAID 1 with that.
What MS OS should I look at? Is Win2k Pro sufficient? Or am I going to have to bite the bullet and go Win 2003 server?

Thanks for the input.

Go with the OS that you are comfortable with. Myself I prefer Linux (for the stability and price) Win2k would be sufficient if it's in a NT or 2000 domain.

In the past I have seen win9x used as storage controllers when security is not an issue..

SOYO makes a mainboard with RAID capabilities built on the board (IDE)

[tommo666]

If you are going to use the server application kits then it's server os. Win2k uses SAK2.0 as the NAS front end and Win2k3 use SAK3.0.

you could always throw a few nics in, team them for load balancing and create shares or use dfs in 2003. Google it and you'll find loads of different flavours and solution.

[Tr!une]

Not in a domain, so that is an issue. I pondered that and would probably have to create users for that machine. That isn't all bad though.

The PC I am looking at is a supermicro with SATA controlled RAID 1 or 0. Has two Gig Ethernet NICs.

Thanks for all the input.

[gizmo1_1]

Not in a domain, so that is an issue.
Thanks for all the input.

If you are not in a domain, and using a Windows based system, then the possibilities are limited to only how much money you want to spend on an OS. For best Performance and ease of installation I would suggest Win2k. If Cost is an issue, Linux w/SAMBA makes an excellent file server.