I am building a nas to go with my new xbmc buils and would like opinions on the best os for it.
What i want it to do is serve media files to: XBMC machine, my smart Sony TV, Maybe DNLA, 2 linux boxes, 2 Windoze, remote access over the internet if possible, and just for fun access it from my android phone.
I know I'm asking a lot and it could get complicated as I've never done this before.
Thx to all with input.
Check out Freenas it will do most if not all of what you want to accomplish. You can use any computer system and do not need to use hardware RAID as the ZFS file system will support software RAID which works very well.
There will be good amount of setup involved, especially for everything you want to accomplish. Freenas has support for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX and DLNA can be setup using the plugin system.
Thank you for the quick response.
My google brought me back to my own thread. I was looking up unraid when I found Me.
do you want to use the xmbc itself to serve the data?
I was down a similar path, not all that long ago. I had a standalone XBMC box with 1 tb of storage and filled it after a week. At that point, I went all in. I build a NAS and used left over hardware for the head ends. My Nas search was extensive: I don't like paying for opensource software, so although UnRaid is nifty - its cost, and lack of flexibility in the OS left much to be desired. FreeNAS also looked good but I found FreeNas, on non-top tier (sandy/ivy bridge) hardware to slow.
In the end, I ended up with a simpler and more scale-able solution. I am really happy with a basic linux install (Cent if you know redhat, ubuntu server if you prefer Debian) combined with mhddfs + snapraid. Basically, I have 10 drives, data 1-8, and parity 1, parity 2. Each is drive is a simple ext4 drive mounted in a standard location (mnt/data1, mnt/data2, etc.) I have 1 mhddfs file system that joins all 8 data drives together as 1 mount point (/mnt/Media). /mnt/Media is shared out via samba/nfs to all the devices on my network. Writing to /mnt/Media fills data on the various data drives (fill data1, overflow to 2, fill data2, overflow to 3, etc). Disks happen to all be the same size, but they don't have to be. You can add disks at any time.
To handle redundancy, I chose Snapraid. Snapraid runs either on-demand or nightly snapshots of the data, keeping 2 parity files (support 2 drive failures) on the parity disks. I can lose up to 2 drives and not lose any data. If something really bad happens and I lose 3, the data is still present on the remaining drives, just as it would be on a standard ext4 drive.
I don't get the performance gains of Raid5. Since my media rarely changes (I just add to it) the cost of 'parity at run time' is very difficult to justify. I'm still able to stream HD to 4 HTPC's in the house at the same time, write performance is between 50-80 MB/s which is more than functional for me.
Indeed you don't need specialist NAS distro, Just shove a whol load of disks in a big box and share via samba/nfs.
(2013-01-04, 18:01)vbat99 Wrote: [ -> ]Also an option is UnRaid by Limetechnologies. Many plugins already exist for dlna software with excellent support by the users.
http://lime-technology.com
http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php
I couldn't agree more here.
I've tried a bunch of NAS solutions and looked at all the suggestions here, including bare linux. One thing I would urge you to ask yourself: do you want to spend your free time being an IT support person? Because with a lot of the solutions, this is what happens. unRAID from Limetech honestly was the easiest thing to set up, and provides excellent protection for home users.
Some of the big reasons I chose unRAID in the end:
- Simple to add drive space in the future
- Failure protection; if any one drives fails you simply replace it, and data is recovered. A two drive failure is recoverable in some cases. And I've even seen worse cases recovered thanks for the helpful forums member (see a couple items down regarding this)
- All data on the drives is readable outside the computer. This means regardless of what happens, if a drive is still works, you can connect it to any computer and read the data. This was a big one since you can never predict what might go wrong.
- A huge and active support community; I have seen cases where forum members have walked people through extensive fixes to correct errors the users made. Not to mention tons of add-ons if you want to get fancy.
- My performance easily matches the poster above with the Linux box.
There are a ton more features/options, and you can get really fancy if you choose by even running unRaid as a virtualized computer on a VMWare server...but the point is, out of the box, unRAID just works.
My two cents - good luck with whatever you choose.
Unraid was a second for me, but in the end- I like having a full blown linux distro. I can add software without the need for a community. Plus 120 bucks for what is essentially a pretty gui to ReiserFS is a bit much for me... Granted - it does deliver what its supposed to do, and WAY cheaper than a DROBO based solution. Not a bad deal - I just feel that it just should be free.
There are more benefits to snapraid, than I listed. You can see how Snapraid compares here -
http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/compare.html
I used to have a Snap Appliance, but I'm no using a QNAP TS-419P II. I did fool around with OpenFiler, and FreeNAS and the like once and found them all to be lacking. None of them had the ease of use of something like the Snap server.
Then I heard about the QNAP and how flexible they were and had the opportunity to try one before buying. Now I'm hooked. All the features the OP wanted are there, and then some. Rather than me enumerating all these features, just have a look, or better yet read some of the reviews.
Here is a snapshot of one of the administration screens showing some of the built in features:
It's not quite as cheap as putting your own system together, but it's still reasonable, and a hel of a bargain for what you get. The cost of a 4 drive unit is about $400, plus you have to provide your own drives. At the moment I only have 2TB drives, but I plan on replacing them with 4TB drives. That way I can have 12TB or RAID-5 storage.
I highly recommend one for anyone looking at a NAS.
Hmmm...
There are a LOT of options here for me. I failed epicly when I didn't state my hardware.
Old Dell mid tower
GIGABYTE GA-G41MT-S2PT LGA 775 Intel G41 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
C2D E6600
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory
Rosewill RC-209-EX PCI 2.3, 32bit, 33/66Mhz SATA Controller Card (4 sata 3gb ports)
CORSAIR Builder Series CX430 430W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply
1x Western Digital Red WD20EFRX 2TB IntelliPower SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
2x Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive = 1Tb
2x 250gb ide notebook drive with sata adapters = 500gb
1x 640gb sitting in my desktop
1x 320 in another desktop
1x 160gb sitting in a box
2x each 60gb,80gb,and 40gb ide notebook = 360gb
1x 30gb ide notebook
1x 20 gb ide notebook
PNY 8gb usb flash for the OS
Total of 5Tb +
I would like to utilize the most storage I can while maintaining a mirror. I'll have 8 SATA ports and 1 IDE ribbon that can (I believe) support 2 drives for a total of 10 drives. I'm thinking I can stripe a number of drives to equal @ least 2Tb then mirror them to the 2Tb drive. Is this possible? if so what is the best way?
@ divisionbyzero
I'm thinking your way might be my only option. Can you tell me everything you needed? I've only migrated to linux 6 mos. ago.
Thx to all of you
(2013-01-04, 21:15)divisionbyzero Wrote: [ -> ]I was down a similar path, not all that long ago. I had a standalone XBMC box with 1 tb of storage and filled it after a week. At that point, I went all in. I build a NAS and used left over hardware for the head ends. My Nas search was extensive: I don't like paying for opensource software, so although UnRaid is nifty - its cost, and lack of flexibility in the OS left much to be desired. FreeNAS also looked good but I found FreeNas, on non-top tier (sandy/ivy bridge) hardware to slow.
In the end, I ended up with a simpler and more scale-able solution. I am really happy with a basic linux install (Cent if you know redhat, ubuntu server if you prefer Debian) combined with mhddfs + snapraid. Basically, I have 10 drives, data 1-8, and parity 1, parity 2. Each is drive is a simple ext4 drive mounted in a standard location (mnt/data1, mnt/data2, etc.) I have 1 mhddfs file system that joins all 8 data drives together as 1 mount point (/mnt/Media). /mnt/Media is shared out via samba/nfs to all the devices on my network. Writing to /mnt/Media fills data on the various data drives (fill data1, overflow to 2, fill data2, overflow to 3, etc). Disks happen to all be the same size, but they don't have to be. You can add disks at any time.
To handle redundancy, I chose Snapraid. Snapraid runs either on-demand or nightly snapshots of the data, keeping 2 parity files (support 2 drive failures) on the parity disks. I can lose up to 2 drives and not lose any data. If something really bad happens and I lose 3, the data is still present on the remaining drives, just as it would be on a standard ext4 drive.
I don't get the performance gains of Raid5. Since my media rarely changes (I just add to it) the cost of 'parity at run time' is very difficult to justify. I'm still able to stream HD to 4 HTPC's in the house at the same time, write performance is between 50-80 MB/s which is more than functional for me.
I am looking to do something like UnRaid and I like your strategy. I currently have a Debian box (HP Micro N40L) running off a USB drive, and founds i have some lagging issues. Are you running your OS from a USB and have you experienced lagging issues? and is root drive where mhddfs is existing? Have you experimented with a drive failure?
mhddfs looks very simple enough but i have snapraid seems a bit confusing do you have any information on it.
Sorry for the bombardment of question and Thank you for the insight.
I am using QNAP too and are very happy with it.
I went with FreeNAS, and yes i needed to tweak a little. but i'm a total noob, and still managed so.
It streams to a HTPC (XBMC) and Raspbmc using NFS. sambashares for the the windows notebooks.
it runs mysql for for both xbmc (shared database) openvpn for remote access.
I'm very happy with it.