[Charlug] NAS...

[Dennis Clark]

On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 10:42 AM, Peter Senft <peter.senft at hpss.de> wrote:

>
> McCaffrey, Ennis wrote:
> > Have you looked into FreeNAS?
> > http://www.freenas.org
> > It runs FreeBSD as opposed to Linux but it works pretty for home
> > networks.
>
> not yet, but I don't mind using BSD :). Thanks for the tip!
>
> > You'll need to supply your own box of course.
>
> That is exactly the crux.. I need the hardware. And it should run Linux
> or a Unix :).
>
>
What are your requirements in terms of storage and performance? There are is
a wide range of devices on the market to cater for different needs. I
currently use a NSLU2 running
SlugOS<http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/SlugOS/HomePage>connected to a
500GB MyBook Essential USB drive for my home storage. I also
own a Kurobox <http://buffalo.nas-central.org/wiki/Category:Kurobox> HG with
a 300GB PATA drive that I plan to install Gentoo on sometime soon. I suspect
neither of those devices would meet your needs.

One device that is more likely to be a better fit for you is the HP Media
Vault MV2120. There is an excellent FAQ for the Media Vault at
http://www.k0lee.com/hpmediavault/. The MV2120 model includes a 500GB SATA
drive but it also includes a second bay if you have another drive. If you're
a Debian fan, Martin Michlmayer has info on installing Debian on a MV2120 on
http://www.cyrius.com/debian/orion/hp/mv2120/.

My current "dream" networked home theater setup includes a MV2120 along with
a Popcorn Hour <http://www.popcornhour.com/> A-100 Networked Media Tank and
a HDhomerun <http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun> networked HDTV
tuner. I could then run MythTV on a Linux desktop to read HDTV programming
from the HDhomerun and save it to the MV2120. The Popcorn Hour could then
pull recorded shows from the MV2120 via NFS or stream it from MV2120's
Twonky media server. A Twonky license is included in the preinstalled OS for
the MV2120, so if you want to use Twonky on a Media Vault you have to keep
the OS or buy a Twonky license for about $30.

Keeping the vendor's Linux install may not be as bad as it sounds: there are
Optware repositories to allow you to install additional packages for more
functionality. You can try compiling your own programs from source, but keep
in mind that Media Vault uses an ARM processor so compiling on the box will
be very slow and cross-compiling from another architecture can be quite
tricky.

The downside of embedded Linux NAS devices is that they are tightly
constrained in terms of CPU power and memory. For example, the current line
of Media Vaults sport a 500MHz ARM processor with 128MB of RAM. On the
bottom end, my NSLU2 has a pitiful 266MHz PPC processor and 32MB of RAM. If
you want to run things like a MythTV backend or a development server, an
embedded Linux NAS is probably not the way to go.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://charlug.org/pipermail/charlug/attachments/20090123/9c2404cb/att=
achment.htm