[Simian]

EDIT: Lets not start the never ending discussion about RAID and filesystems. Limit it to discussions about customization.

I understand the difference, but how good /easy is the commercial NAS if you want to install stuff?

MYSQL
NFS
Samba will be supported I bet
HTTP
FTP
Router sw
Sick beard etc

What else could I possibly want to install and how easy is it on e.g readyNAS?

A server would be eaiser to deal with but I guess power will be an issue?
Easy-to-use HW RAID another pro for the NAS.

The con is of course limitation for expansion and customization. But I see on the google it is possble. Limitation and which one is best?

I spent ages trying to work out which NAS to buy - all of the ones with good reviews, that did what I wanted, with room for expansion seemed very expensive for what they did, and had features that I'd never use (hot-swap drive bays, etc) so I built my own NAS:

Tower case with power supply, 6 x 3.5" & 4 x 5.25" drive slots (£25)
ASUS E35M1-pro with 5 sata connectors (£100)
2 x 2TB 3.5" HD (£120)
1 x 2GB ram (£25)
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (£0)

Total: £270 (£225 + VAT) which is $370 + sales.

The motherboard & ram were just bits that I had lying around, so if I were building from scratch I might have chosen a cheaper and more industrial embedded board with more sata connectors. But anyway, for £270 I had a 4TB NAS, easily expandable to 8TB, and almost as easily expandable to 16-20TB.

I'm using software RAID1 (so only 2TB of actual storage), but then it's serving video & audio to a couple of Media PCs in the house, not running a million visitor/hr website. The ubuntu installer made setting up the raid pair a matter of clicking a few options.

The whole system uses 50-60w, and re-encodes DVDs/BDs in it's spare time (although quite slowly). Although even the monster machine I used to rip the bulk of my videos only used 120w at tick-over.

The box is in the cupboard under the stairs, so I can't see or hear it, the bios is set up to boot the machine when the power comes on, in case of power cuts.

Oh, and a couple of weeks ago I installed an STB card, so now it streams live satellite TV as well (though not to xbmc yet).

For cost and flexibility, I think it's hard to beat a self built NAS.


Simon.