Building Your Own NAS: Silverstone DS380 Chassis Tested, Reviewed

TechSpot combines some popular NAS components, a Silverstone DS380 case, Asrock C2750D4I motherboard, and FreeNAS.

Assembling your own NAS would net more performance as well because you’d be using a Celeron or Pentium over the Atom or other SoCs, while power shouldn’t be a concern with Haswell using less than 30 watts at idle. As the cherry on top, open source software such as FreeNAS and enclosures like Silverstone’s DS380 should make it less daunting to get started with your homebrewed eight-bay NAS server.

via TechSpot.

FreeNAS 8.0 now available

According to iXsystems developer James T. Nixon III, FreeNAS 8.0 includes major architectural optimisations and is more modular than previous versions. It features a redesigned GUI, built using Python and the Django web framework, that is aimed at making the OS easier to use. ZFS and UFS2 file systems are both supported – ZFS is used as the primary file system.

via The H Open Source

Systm Episode 60: Build Your Own NAS

An older post, but still good, Systm walks through installing FreeNAS:

If you’re just itching for an excuse to reuse that retired desktop PC or laptop sitting in your closet there here’s your chance. Today we’ll be looking at the basics of installing FreeNAS, an open-source DIY NAS. So instead of spending money on off the shelf options why not save yourself some cash and make use of the stuff you already have and get a super customizable network storage device to boot.

via Revision3 > Systm > Episode 60: Build Your Own NAS.

Network-Attached Storage With FreeNAS

Howto Forge has a great howto for installing and configuring FreeNAS 0.68.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a network-attached storage server with FreeNAS. FreeNAS is based on the FreeBSD operating system and supports CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, RSYNC, SSH, local user authentication, and software RAID (0, 1, 5). It comes with a powerful web interface and uses very little space on the hard drive – about 32MB.

Build a Cheap and Fast RAID 5 NAS

SmallNetBuilder’s guide to building your own NAS device. In it they use a standard PC with an LSI Logic MegaRAID hardware-based RAID card. Included are step-by-step screenshots on setting up the RAID device using the MegaRAID’s bios, and benchmark of the machine while running Ubuntu Linux and FreeNAS.

A look at the FreeNAS server

NewsForge reviews FreeNAS 0.66.

FreeNAS, an open source NAS server, can convert a PC into a network-attached storage server. The software, which is based on FreeBSD, Samba, and PHP, includes an operating system that supports various software RAID models and a Web user interface. The server supports access from Windows machines, Apple Macs, FTP, SSH, and Network File System (NFS), and it takes up less than 16MB of disk space on a hard drive or removable media.