I've been looking for some home backup solutions over the past couple of months. This has led me down both the do-it-yourself route and buying a ready-made solution.
One of my requirements was that I wanted the solution to be more than just storage - otherwise I would have purchased a straight NAS box from the likes of Qnap, Netgear or if feeling rich Drobo. Most of these dedicated NAS boxes can be "rooted" to allow ssh access , however their CPUs are generally underpowered for general purpose use.
Other requirements were that I wanted a reasonably small form factor and to be able to use at least 4 SATA hard drives, preferably with hot swap ability. Hardware raid was not a requirement because I intended on using a Linux distribution with mdadm software raid.
In the end, I ended up building two boxes.
The first, a home build, based on the CFI A7879 chassis
with a Gigabyte GA-D525TUD Dual Core Atom Mini-ITX Board.
One of my requirements was that I wanted the solution to be more than just storage - otherwise I would have purchased a straight NAS box from the likes of Qnap, Netgear or if feeling rich Drobo. Most of these dedicated NAS boxes can be "rooted" to allow ssh access , however their CPUs are generally underpowered for general purpose use.
Other requirements were that I wanted a reasonably small form factor and to be able to use at least 4 SATA hard drives, preferably with hot swap ability. Hardware raid was not a requirement because I intended on using a Linux distribution with mdadm software raid.
In the end, I ended up building two boxes.
The first, a home build, based on the CFI A7879 chassis
with a Gigabyte GA-D525TUD Dual Core Atom Mini-ITX Board. The second was a off-the-shelf HP ProLiant Microserver which, to be brutally honest, was because HP were offering £100 cashback deal on it. This made the server much cheaper than you could possibly build yourself from components.
I added 4GB ram to each box (total 5GB in the HP box because it comes with 1GB).
The CFI boot drive is a 8GB (30MB/sec) CompactFlash card mounted as an IDE drive. The HP boot drive is a 16GB Sandisk Cruzer USB stick.
Finally added 4 x 2TB Samsung F4EG HD204UI drives to each box.
The CFI box has 8TB in RAID5 providing 5.4TB usable. The HP has 8TB in RAID6 providing 3.6TB usable space.
If there is more interest, I'll write up the build process is more detail with pictures.
For now - here are some shots of my utility shelf.
The CFI boot drive is a 8GB (30MB/sec) CompactFlash card mounted as an IDE drive. The HP boot drive is a 16GB Sandisk Cruzer USB stick.
Finally added 4 x 2TB Samsung F4EG HD204UI drives to each box.
The CFI box has 8TB in RAID5 providing 5.4TB usable. The HP has 8TB in RAID6 providing 3.6TB usable space.
If there is more interest, I'll write up the build process is more detail with pictures.
For now - here are some shots of my utility shelf.
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So what was the total cost? Definitely interested in the details/instructions.
Good point James :)
Total costs - excluding HDs:
NAS01 - Built November 2010.
CFI A7879 Mini-ITX NAS/Server Case - 4 Hot Swap Bays
Gigabyte GA-D510UD Dual Core Atom Mini-ITX Board with 4x SATA
Both bought from mini-itx.com because of great and personal reply to an enquiry. £206 inc shipping.
2GB non-ECC RAM (need to correct original article) from mrmemory.co.uk because it was the cheapest: £25.
8GB 30MB/s CF card: £35
Spare CF->IDE slot card: free (but approx $5 from DealExtreme).
Total cost: £266
Idle Power Consumption: 30W, Loaded Power (4x2TB HDs): 48W
NAS02 - Built April 2011.
HP Proliant Microserver - £242 (pending £100 cashback from HP, resulting in £142 total).
4GB ECC RAM from MrMemory.co.uk £45.
16GB Sandisk Cruzer USB sick for boot drive: £15
Total cost: £202
Idle Power Consumption: 31W, Loaded Power (4x2TB + 1x250GB): 60W
How did you manage to run RAID6 in HP box?
Software RAID, or more precisely "mdadm in Linux" can do RAID6.