CentOS - Jun 2008 - settings up cheap a NAS / SAN server, is it possible?

Hi all

I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using 
normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU (probably 
a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x 320GB - 750GB). 
My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS device.

Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is built 
on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the hardware 
support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for it.

Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)

-- 

Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
CEO, SoftDux

Web:   http://www.SoftDux.com
Check out my technical blog, http://blog.softdux.com for Linux or other
technical stuff, or visit http://www.WebHostingTalk.co.za for Web Hosting stuff

Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using 
> normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU 
> (probably a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x
320GB
> - 750GB). My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS
device.
>
> Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is 
> built on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the 
> hardware support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for it.
>
> Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)
>
you might look at openfiler, too.   same idea as opennas, only its linux 
based.  web management interface, supports NFS and CIFS/SMB sharing, etc 
etc.


IMHO, a storage server really /should/ have ECC memory to minimize the 
potential for data corruption by random memory errors.  this, however, 
requires a server chipset, as 99% of desktop stuff doesn't support ECC 
at all.

you are, btw, way overspecing the cpu.  a storage server would be fine 
with a much slower processor than any of those.

Am 29.06.2008 um 09:08 schrieb Rudi Ahlers:
> Hi all
>
> I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server  
> using normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo  
> CPU (probably a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or  
> 6x 320GB - 750GB). My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre- 
> built NAS device.
>
> Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is  
> built on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the  
> hardware support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for it.

What hardware do you own that is not supported?

>
> Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)
>

While it can certainly be done with CentOS, I'd take a look at  
Solaris/OpenSolaris for that purpose.
ZFS really beats anything else out there.
But you need a lot of RAM. 2 GB is good, 4 GB would be better ;-)
Actually, the calculation is that it needs a GB of RAM for every TB  
of managed data.
So, if RAM is scarce and the feature of ZFS are not needed (for  
whatever reason), CentOS may be still be a good option.



cheers,
Rainer
-- 
Rainer Duffner
CISSP, LPI, MCSE
rainer at ultra-secure.de

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Iv'e done a NAS with centos 5.2 here. Specs are:

Portwell WADE 8056 board with Intel Core2Duo 2,4GHZ, 4GB (2x 2GB
kingston DDR2 667), 4x 500GB Samsung SATA2 HDD's and a very nice Chenbro
ES34069 NAS case. The board only supports SoftRaid, so i made a raid 5
software based on centos. The NAS runs very fine. But u dont have any
kind of webinterface, i managed all over Samba (MediaCenter is a 
Windows System). You can also use NFS or FTP. Here on my Macbook all
fileaccess runs fine with Samba shares. The only reason why i use a
Core2Duo is because is have some other XEN virtual machines running on
that NAS.

Centos 5.2 is running also very nice and fast on a Intel D945GCLF board
with ATOM CPU build in (1.6GHZ),but this board only have 1 IDE and 2
SATA connectors, on the other side is needs much lower power then the
other and its very fast. This board needs for LAN connections a driver
from RealTek homepage!! Otherwise Centos 5.2 is crashing by loading the
installer. You can read about it here:

http://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/HardwareList/RealTekRTL8101

Greetings

Shade

Rudi Ahlers schrieb:
> Hi all
>
> I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using
normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU (probably
a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x 320GB - 750GB).
My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS
device.
>
> Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is built
on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the hardware
support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for
it.
>
> Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)
>
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Rudi Ahlers wrote:
>
> I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using 
> normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU (probably 
> a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x 320GB -
750GB).
> My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS device.
> 
> Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is built
> on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the hardware 
> support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for it.
You can use a stock Centos - just set up Samba if you are serving 
windows clients and NFS for Linux/Mac clients.  The only thing even 
slightly difficult is keeping authentication and user mapping 
coordinated between the windows/linux sides.  You can also run whatever 
else you might want (web/ftp/email/streaming media servers, etc.) or 
even run it as a workstation too.  If you are serving mostly windows 
clients and don't need NFS, you might look at SME server 
(http://www.contribs.org) as something easier to set up.
> Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)
Are you pricing the low end NAS boxes (like Buffalo 
Linkstation/Terastation, etc.)?  It might be hard to beat that if all 
you want is a file server.  Most run Linux of some sort on ARM or PPC 
processors and may need to be hacked to add NFS or support >2gig files.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using 
> normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU 
> (probably a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x
320GB
> - 750GB). My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS
device.
>
> Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is 
> built on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the 
> hardware support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for it.
>
> Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :)
probably a /little/ expensive but not excessively so, you might check 
out the Intel 2U 'kit' servers, like
http://developer.intel.com/design/servers/platforms/SR1500-2500/index.htm
specifically, the SR2500LX configuration, this is a 2U rack server with 
6 SAS/SATA bays using the S5000PAL motherboard, the base kit is about 
$1300, you add a CPU like an E5205 ($200), RAM to suit (up to 32GB ECC 
FBDRAM, $200 for 4GB), and drives.  


of course, if this is for HOME use, a rack mount server is probably NOT 
a good idea, they tend to be quite noisy.

On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 09:08:15AM +0200, Rudi Ahlers
wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using 
> normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU (probably 
> a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x 320GB -
750GB).
> My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS device.
 
My own experience: I have done two NAS systems using CentOS.  One is
a HP DL585G1 with four 300GB drives using a hardware RAID-5.  The
second is a Dell PowerEdge 2600 with four 300GB drives (software
raid-10) and two 32GB drives (software raid-1).  

One has a multi-core Opteron processor, the other has a high-end
Xeon processor with HT disabled.  Both have 2GB of RAM.

Both are used by high-demand compute processes as NFS servers.

Despite a lot of fidding, configuring, testing and tuning, neither
result is very good when it comes to NFS performance.  We've gone
so far as to run everything as noatime (ie local mount, nfs export,
and nfs client mount) hoping for better performance.

In comparing the systems we tried the hardware-RAID5 first on the 
assumption that HW-Raid5 is faster than SW-Raid, for a higher yield
than Raid-10.  However we don't think that the elevator used in the
kernel makes intelligent stepping decisions on the HW-Raid5 because
it doesn't see the "real" geometry of the disks involved, only the
aparrent geometry of the RAID5 disk.

The Software-Raid10 is better in some ways because the kernel sees
the real disk geometries.  Performance is about on par with the 
other computer, even though the other computer has the better CPU.

Due to the hardware involved I couldn't try Solaris 10, but we have
had experiences in the past where the NFS server on Solaris was
significantly better than the NFS server in CentOS/RedHat, both in
terms of throughput and perceved latency under load.

If I was doing it again, I'd push harder for a budget for a NetApp
filer.  For what we are attempting to do, you get what you pay for.

If I was doing it again with the budget restrictions, I'd probably 
try Solaris with software raid.  I would then try the *BSD family,
but only after Solaris because I have extensive Solaris experience.

-- 
 /\oo/\
/ /()\ \ David Mackintosh | 
         dave at xdroop.com  | http://www.xdroop.com
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David Mackintosh wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 09:08:15AM +0200, Rudi Ahlers wrote:
> > Hi all
> > 
> > I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using 
> > normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU
(probably
> > a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x 320GB -
750GB).
> > My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS device.
>  
> My own experience: I have done two NAS systems using CentOS.  One is
> a HP DL585G1 with four 300GB drives using a hardware RAID-5.  The
> second is a Dell PowerEdge 2600 with four 300GB drives (software
> raid-10) and two 32GB drives (software raid-1).  
> 
> One has a multi-core Opteron processor, the other has a high-end
> Xeon processor with HT disabled.  Both have 2GB of RAM.
> 
> Both are used by high-demand compute processes as NFS servers.
> 
> Despite a lot of fidding, configuring, testing and tuning, neither
> result is very good when it comes to NFS performance.  We've gone
> so far as to run everything as noatime (ie local mount, nfs export,
> and nfs client mount) hoping for better performance.
> 
> In comparing the systems we tried the hardware-RAID5 first on the 
> assumption that HW-Raid5 is faster than SW-Raid, for a higher yield
> than Raid-10.  However we don't think that the elevator used in the
> kernel makes intelligent stepping decisions on the HW-Raid5 because
> it doesn't see the "real" geometry of the disks involved,
only the
> aparrent geometry of the RAID5 disk.
> 
> The Software-Raid10 is better in some ways because the kernel sees
> the real disk geometries.  Performance is about on par with the 
> other computer, even though the other computer has the better CPU.
> 
> Due to the hardware involved I couldn't try Solaris 10, but we have
> had experiences in the past where the NFS server on Solaris was
> significantly better than the NFS server in CentOS/RedHat, both in
> terms of throughput and perceved latency under load.
> 
> If I was doing it again, I'd push harder for a budget for a NetApp
> filer.  For what we are attempting to do, you get what you pay for.
> 
> If I was doing it again with the budget restrictions, I'd probably 
> try Solaris with software raid.  I would then try the *BSD family,
> but only after Solaris because I have extensive Solaris experience.
On Linux storage servers that use RAID try elevator=deadline for
better io scheduling performance.

The default 'cfq' scheduler is really designed for single-disk
interactive workstation io patterns.

-Ross

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David Mackintosh wrote:
> 
> Despite a lot of fidding, configuring, testing and tuning, neither
> result is very good when it comes to NFS performance.  We've gone
> so far as to run everything as noatime (ie local mount, nfs export,
> and nfs client mount) hoping for better performance.
Have you updated to Centos 5.2 yet?  And if so, did it improve NFS 
performance?


-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

"nate" <centos at linuxpowered.net> wrote:
>>
If your in RAID 0 then any disk failure will result in total data
loss.
<<

Just to emphasize the point you were subtly making there: with two drives
in RAID 0 configuration, you are twice as likely to have a drive failure,
and since data is striped across both drives, you are twice as likely to
lose data. It's not only "zero data protection", it's even
worse than that.
. .

Best,

--- Les Bell, RHCE, CISSP
[http://www.lesbell.com.au]
Tel: +61 2 9451 1144
FreeWorldDialup: 800909

Rudi Ahlers wrote:
>  
>  
>Using CentOS is preferred since I know it the best. I haven't used 
>FreeBSD since v4.7 ( I think I had a look @ 4.9 & 5.4 as well), and I 
>don't know Solaris.
>I think my action plan now will be to figure out how to install CentOS 
>on a USB memory stick and make it boot on any machine (making it easy to 
>replace if need be), and then to play around with the RAID a bit and see 
>how well it works.
In your problem above, you can use unetbootin (google it) and you can make
bootable USB with Linux (Fedora, CentOS, Ubuntu, etc.) inside. There is
available both for windows and linux platform. I hope this helps.

junji
aisalen.wordpress.com
Linux Registered User #253162
CentOS User


Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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<font size="2">maybe this is not a correct place, but you can
try with opensolaris+zfs.
<br />
<br />with zfs, you can create iscsi, nfs and smb shares from cli.
<br />
<br />it's really easy to do.
<br />-- 

<br />

<br />
<br /><b>---------- Original Message 
-----------</b>
<br />
From: Rudi Ahlers <Rudi@SoftDux.com> 

<br />
To: CentOS mailing list <centos@centos.org> 

<br />
Sent: Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:08:15 +0200 

<br />
Subject: [CentOS] settings up cheap a NAS / SAN server, is it possible? 

<br />

<br />> Hi all 
<br />> 
<br />> 

I want to look at setting up a simple / cheap SAN / NAS server using  
<br />> 

normal PIV motherboard, 2GB (or even more) RAM, Core 2 Duo CPU (probably  

<br />> 

a Intel 6700 / 6750 / 6800) & some SATA HDD's (4 or 6x 320GB - 750GB).  

<br />> 

My budget is limited, so I can't afford a pre-built NAS device. 
<br />> 

<br />> 

Can this be done with CentOS? I've been looking FreeNAS (which is built  

<br />> 

on FreeBSD), and it look like a great project, but since the hardware  
<br />> 

support in FreeBSD is limit, I'd rather use Linux for it. 
<br />> 
<br />> 

Has anyone done this? If so, please share a bit in your experiences :) 
<br />> 

<br />> 

--  
<br />> 
<br />> 

Kind Regards 
<br />> 

Rudi Ahlers 
<br />> 

CEO, SoftDux 
<br />> 
<br />> 

Web:   <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.softdux.com/">http://www.SoftDux.com</a>
<br />> 

Check out my technical blog, <a target="_blank"
href="http://blog.softdux.com/">http://blog.softdux.com</a>
for Linux or other technical stuff,
or visit <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.webhostingtalk.co.za/">http://www.WebHostingTalk.co.za</a>
for Web Hosting stuff

<br />> 
<br />> 

_______________________________________________ 
<br />> 

CentOS mailing list 
<br />> 

CentOS@centos.org 
<br />> 

<a target="_blank"
href="http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos">http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos</a>

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