build your own network attached storage device
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.
Robin Harris over at the Storage Bits blog goes over a new UW-M paper analyzing the fault tolerance claims of ZFS.
File systems guard all the data in your computer, but most are based on 20-30 year old architectures that put your data at risk with every I/O. The open source ZFS from Sun Oracle claims high data integrity – and now that claim has been tested.
Learn FreeNAS has posted a list of major features expected to appear in the 0.8 release of FreeNAS. Included are a base on FreeBSD 8 or 8.1, an interface built on Django, AHCI SATA drivers, UFS2 journaling, and more.
Backblaze details how they build a 67 TB 4U storage server for less than $8,000. C0T0D0S0 then takes a look at some of the trade offs of the device against much more expensive systems.
Learn FreeNAS posted news that FreeNAS is no longer dropping FreeBSD for Debian, but will add a Debian based version of FreeNAS called OpenMediaVault.
Versia has a comprehensive guide to setting up Debian 5.0 on a VIA ARTiGO A2000 barebones storage server.
This post will explain how to set up a NAS server with Debian running essential services such as ssh, samba, nfs, cups, rdiff-backup and rtorrent with a web interface; and using two HDDs in RAID 1 mode with everything encrypted. It took me awhile to research all bits and pieces, hopefully it will save you time if you are going to do a similar set up.
SmallNetBuilder walks through building a 16 drive RAID5 NAS with FreeBSD 6.
Debian Administration looks at setting up Software RAID5 with the new Debian installer.
rubbervir.us shows how to quickly turn an old computer into a file server running Samba.
Debian Admin has an article detailing NFS setup and tuning.
HowtoForge has detailed instructions for setting up a fileserver by focusing on the relevant parts of SME Server.
WhatPC? brings a complete NAS building guide involving Mini-ITX motherboards, Promise hardware RAID, and NASLite commercial NAS operating system.
Computerworld is recommending 10 free storage utilities for NAS and SAN use. Number 2 on the list is 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.
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.