Hello community,
as my first post, I want to find a starting point for a rather ambitious goal I have of replacing outdated (slower) and integrating (still good and useful) parts, currently connected by a forest of cables and power supplies. I am going to list them all here in order for readers to get a better overview. I gave them simple names to tell them apart.
First part: hardware owned:
Storage
Blue HDD: 250GB, SATA
Orange HDD: 250GB, SATA
Green HDD: 500GB, SATA
Appz HDD: 500GB, USB 2.0 (internally it is IDE)
Toshiba 750: 750GB, eSATA (internally SATA)
TM: 1.5TB, eSATA (internally SATA)
"floaters"
WD470, 500GB, USB. Movie and song archives. Now rarely moved, but still useful.
G670, 750GB, FireWire 800. Houses virtual machines, mainly. Often gets hauled for demos.
HIT500, 500GB, USB. Currently backup, storage and "large USB drive" for quick debugging of incompatible machines.
Empty FW800 2.5" enclosure
Network devices
Linksys WRT54GL, modded and overclocked.
5-ports gigabit switch
Others
Samsung ML 2510 printer
Second part: what it will be used for
Here, I will list expected usage frequency for each task as +++, ++, or +. All tasks have been combined and numbered for easier reference.
Vibration, heat. All these HDD in a confined space will heat up and vibration decrease their lifespan. I guess there's a reason why Western Digital made a special drive series for use in NAS.
Form factor. Needs to be small, or very flat, 1U server-rack style.
Described as is, it may appear that I am looking for an AirPort Time Capsule on steroids, and you would be right. However, it seems to be too limited for the high price it costs, and still doesn't solve the issue of putting all these drives back online, and doesn't have any data security, etc. Synology NAS would provide a good part of these, but is expensive, and less flexible.
I know it all sounds like a very ambitious and costly project, but if deemed necessary, I could separate the actual network routing and leave it to dedicated hardware running Tomato firmware, for example, and keep the rest on another machine should I want to move it around.
So I came here to welcome your advice on hardware & software combination meeting those requirements, ask questions, suggest alternatives, etc. This is really exploratory as I am completely new to NAS and just made a summary of my current usage. I don't even know if FreeNAS is the right software to run it. Expected timeframe to build depends on price, but I feel it could remain useful for those who have good pieces of older hardware lying around.
as my first post, I want to find a starting point for a rather ambitious goal I have of replacing outdated (slower) and integrating (still good and useful) parts, currently connected by a forest of cables and power supplies. I am going to list them all here in order for readers to get a better overview. I gave them simple names to tell them apart.
First part: hardware owned:
Storage
Blue HDD: 250GB, SATA
Orange HDD: 250GB, SATA
Green HDD: 500GB, SATA
Appz HDD: 500GB, USB 2.0 (internally it is IDE)
Toshiba 750: 750GB, eSATA (internally SATA)
TM: 1.5TB, eSATA (internally SATA)
"floaters"
WD470, 500GB, USB. Movie and song archives. Now rarely moved, but still useful.
G670, 750GB, FireWire 800. Houses virtual machines, mainly. Often gets hauled for demos.
HIT500, 500GB, USB. Currently backup, storage and "large USB drive" for quick debugging of incompatible machines.
Empty FW800 2.5" enclosure
Network devices
Linksys WRT54GL, modded and overclocked.
5-ports gigabit switch
Others
Samsung ML 2510 printer
Second part: what it will be used for
Here, I will list expected usage frequency for each task as +++, ++, or +. All tasks have been combined and numbered for easier reference.
- File server for LAN (+++)
- Backup target for Time Machine (+++)
- General storage for large applications I hold licenses for (+), movies (+++), archived documents (+). AFP protocol.
- BitTorrent client (+++)
- email SMTP server (+)
- SFTP server (no FTP) (+)
- videosurveillance H264 encoding & local storage (backup will take place through real-time upload to distant SFTP server) I haven't had much luck with ZoneMinder on Ubuntu Server however. (+++)
- 802.11n (minimum) router, seamless with current gigabit switch. Must have WAN port (+++)
- Able to saturate the gigabit link given proper HDD setup
- All hard disks will be encrypted. This needs to be enable-able progressively as data would be moved from old setup drives to newer setup.
- Simple swapping of hard drives (+). Note that hot-swap is not strictly necessary, but a new, unformatted drive must be accepted, the system restarted, and the new drive formatted, encrypted and be ready for use with a few clicks in the web interface without disrupting others.
- Print server. Not mandatory, but if included, will be (+++)
- Low power consumption with aggressive power management to save on noise and UPS power. That must not compromise HDD reliability.
- No noisier than an off-the-shelf NAS (18dBA, from Synology's website). Ideally fanless.
- Power from laptop adapter would be ideal (19V), or 12V general purpose power supply. Must be tolerant of brownouts as my apartment has only two circuits and voltage varies from 119V down to 107V under full load. No change to electrical circuit can be made.
- RAID 0, 1, possibly 5, or JBOD-compatible since drives are not assorted.
- automatic update
- Completely self-reliant. Must be able to power down by itself if it senses UPS to go low without needing any monitor or keyboard. Must power up at the press of a button to a working state without having to use a keyboard, mouse or monitor. This includes checking and correcting HDDs if an unexpected power failure occurred.
- Full Gigabit Ethernet. No crappy Ethernet-USB dongle that cut performance in half.
- Able to be installed without external monitor (I don't have any) but directly through a network connection.
- Can't decide yet wether to run the NAS-router OS itself from a SD-family card or one of the HDDs. The former seems to be best.
- being able to change hardware at will shouldn't be necessary. I don't expect to change anything except HDDs as long as performance is satisfactory.
Vibration, heat. All these HDD in a confined space will heat up and vibration decrease their lifespan. I guess there's a reason why Western Digital made a special drive series for use in NAS.
Form factor. Needs to be small, or very flat, 1U server-rack style.
Described as is, it may appear that I am looking for an AirPort Time Capsule on steroids, and you would be right. However, it seems to be too limited for the high price it costs, and still doesn't solve the issue of putting all these drives back online, and doesn't have any data security, etc. Synology NAS would provide a good part of these, but is expensive, and less flexible.
I know it all sounds like a very ambitious and costly project, but if deemed necessary, I could separate the actual network routing and leave it to dedicated hardware running Tomato firmware, for example, and keep the rest on another machine should I want to move it around.
So I came here to welcome your advice on hardware & software combination meeting those requirements, ask questions, suggest alternatives, etc. This is really exploratory as I am completely new to NAS and just made a summary of my current usage. I don't even know if FreeNAS is the right software to run it. Expected timeframe to build depends on price, but I feel it could remain useful for those who have good pieces of older hardware lying around.