CentOS - Jan 2006 - OT - Linux NAS for Windows Environment

I'm looking to find a Linux NAS solution for a Windows network.  Looking 
into FreeNAS and OpenFiler.  Anyone using these or any other solution?  
Any comments/suggestions?

Thanks,

Ed

On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 07:42, Ed Morrison wrote:
> I'm looking to find a Linux NAS solution for a Windows network. 
Looking
> into FreeNAS and OpenFiler.  Anyone using these or any other solution?  
> Any comments/suggestions?
Any linux box running samba will work.  If you want something that
is appliance-like but can supply other services (email, web, ftp,
etc.) if you want them, look at SME server at www.contribs.org.
Version 7 that is in pre-release now is based on Centos but the
administration is all through simple web forms.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com

Ed Morrison wrote:
> I'm looking to find a Linux NAS solution for a Windows network. 
Looking
> into FreeNAS and OpenFiler.  Anyone using these or any other solution? 
> Any comments/suggestions?
>From the longtime experience direction, be sure to figure out the
snapshotting upfront; a good snapshot rotation can save you so much pain
it's not funny; many commercial NAS (NetApp, SnapServer, EMC, etc) have
this integrated. When looking at a DIY linux NAS, you may have to roll
it up.

We snapshot roughly like so: [8a,12p,4p M-F] [nightly 2 nights
retention] -- this setup is enough to provide instantanious file restore
without having to deal with the backups. (classic "hey IT, I deleted a
file last night...")

Personally I've used rdiff as a snapshot-esque tool and it works pretty
well, but not very good when the underlying link dies; it's not the
exact right tool. rsnapshot is also in the same vein, but again it's not
quite the exact snapshot type of thing that a NetApp provides. I bet
there are better choices out there...

hth,
-te

-- 
Troy Engel | Systems Engineer
Fluid, Inc | http://www.fluid.com