FreeNAS as an extension to servers?

[sometin]

Hello,

Im pretty new to the whole linux and freeNAS world and would appreciate some patience with my lack of knowledge in this field.
So far i have come to understand from what i could dig that i should use ECC ram and good boards for servers.
Now heres my problem, ive got some decent servers which some power, but they use a scsi hard disk which is hard to get where i am (i cant find it at all tbh) and if i get it from overseas its quite expensive plus the risk of air transport damaging it and warrenty concerns later...

So i was thinking of using old desktops and plugging some scsi harddisks in em with FreeNAS powering em. I would then share these drives exclusively with the servers (if freeNAS supports it by some form of user control).
When i first started looking around i saw some NAS had CPUS and RAMS inside, do i really need those if all the computing is being done by the main server and all i need in my NAS is the hard disk? Or is there some level of computing still happening at the NAS level that i am not aware of yet?
Most NAS with CPU's and RAMs were more expensive then those without, heres one without that i was looking at:
http://global.dlink.com.sg/site_pdtpdfs/DNS-320/DNS-320_ds.pdf

I would then use these NAS computers to run softwares, store files, run MySQL etc. All installations would be done on the server with the computing, but paths would be set to the NAS. Is what i am thinking feasible? Any possible problems in the long term with this idea?
Would appreciate any assistance in this. Thanks.

 

[anodos]

I couldn't understand where you were going with your post.

You should probably take a step back and get a clear idea of the problem you are trying to solve / need you are trying to address. Write it in a single sentence. If you can't do that then you need to refine your thoughts a bit.

Once you do that, post the sentence here along with the following:

• List of the hardware you have to solve the problem (servers and network equipment). Give full specs of server mentioned in post.
• Number of users that will be accessing the server / shared resources as well as what they will be using to access them (I.e. operating system)

 

[sometin]

Ah sorry,
Hardware: Sunfire 40z + some old pcs lying around
Number of users: 2-10

Things to do:
Use SATA Harddisk to serve documents and media to the users instead of using the normal scsi harddisk as though the SATA harddisk was a park of the server

 

[anodos]

Okay, my understanding of your problem is as follows
1) you are low on storage on your current server.
Because
2) you cannot increase storage capacity on your server
Because
3) the hardware is too old.

Your preferred solution is to augment your capacity through network storage.

While this could be done, your questions about running programs and mysql installs on the NAS indicate that what you really need to do is use your budget to replace the sunfire with newer hardware that a) meets your storage requirements and b) has a more general-purpose operating system than FreeNAS.

 

[sometin]

i see... so what if i use the network storage for storing of files such as installers instead of running programs on them?
old microsoft versions like 98,xp,me,vista are still in cd forms and id prefer to have a backup since ive noticed some cds spoiling...
could FreeNAS be used for that purpose?

 

[gpsguy]

Yes. Among other things, I store Microsoft OS .ISO's on mine.

 

[sometin]

great! ive been thinking on this a little more and i was wondering what if i just loaded the same server os into those computers instead, which is centos. Management would be easier on one hand, what do you think? how would freenas be a better alternative to centos?

 

[anodos]

great! ive been thinking on this a little more and i was wondering what if i just loaded the same server os into those computers instead, which is centos. Management would be easier on one hand, what do you think? how would freenas be a better alternative to centos?

Those are questions that only you can answer.

I think you would be better served replacing your aging CentOS server with new a server (probably running CentOS again) for the following reasons:
1) Your current hardware is not meeting your needs
2) Your hardware is very old
3) You have identified supply chain problems if you have hardware failure in your current server.
4) Adding a second server increases the complexity of your setup without alleviating (2) and (3).

 

[sometin]

cool, ty for your advice :)

 

[L]

If I understand what you are asking correctly, you want to run a bunch of desktops all as freenas servers? I can't see why this wouldn't work. You may want to use a lot of redundancy, mirror disks. Since you already know you have a bunch of old desktops, have a plan for "if a desktop fails"... I would probably use nfs as the share protocol. This will be slower than local disk, but it makes good use of old hardware.