Looking for a NAS

[Topcat]

Re: Looking for a NAS

Remember this ?

No - it's not easy at all, since it's not friggin' working the way I expected. It seems MS Word doesn't play nice with network paths...I gave it a whirl anyway to put my highschool-grade PC chops to the test

Mapped as a network drive and with write permissions, it should be fine. With read-only, it should work as well...but for obvious reasons, you wouldn't be able to save changes to the remote host, only locally.

[diif]

Re: Looking for a NAS

Remember this ?

No - it's not easy at all, since it's not friggin' working the way I expected. It seems MS Word doesn't play nice with network paths...I gave it a whirl anyway to put my highschool-grade PC chops to the test

What is it you're trying to do ? What's the issue with the paths ?

[Dannyx]

Re: Looking for a NAS

Remember this ?

an "interactive" playlist that not only directly links to the mp3 file (this is probably easy to do, even in friggin' MS Word with some links)

No - it's not easy at all, since it's not friggin' working the way I expected. It seems MS Word doesn't play nice with network paths...I gave it a whirl anyway to put my highschool-grade PC chops to the test

[Dannyx]

Re: Looking for a NAS

These guys use it to monitor the various devices they've got there, so it means the app used to do this expects a serial COM to read the sensors and whatnot, but since a machine is not locally available, they point the app to the Lantronix device instead. These stations all have individual FO links plus a failover 3g connection to the main office, so it all behaves like one large LAN.

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

One thing I'm not intimately familiar with is what happens at the other end of the wire, so to say: the manual shows a second UDS device placed somewhere else in the network that turns LAN back into serial, to put it bluntly, so what does yours do ? Does it just mimic a serial port (COM X) and you just Putty straight into it like if it were a local port ?

I use it like a "one port terminal server"; it's serial port is connected to the serial port on a headless machine (which has been configured to use a "serial console" instead of the normal "keyboard + video output"). The ethernet port connects to a network switch just like any other network device.

At any time, I can TELNET to the IP address associated with that device (from any machine that I happen to have powered up) and I'm remotely connected to the "serial console" on that host. Of course, the only time I really NEED to do this is if the device isn't listening to the network -- which, in my case, is when the machine has failed to go to "multiuser mode". If it makes it into multiuser mode, then I can just TELNET directly to the machine without screwing around with the "serial console" (because I've deliberately allowed root logins over TELNET as there's no threat to guard against).

[Dannyx]

Re: Looking for a NAS

I can access the box via a serial port or "single port terminal server" (left side of photo).

Funny that you have that Lantronix device too: shortly after starting work at my current shop, I was assigned my first "big" project: watch over a series of water analysis and treatment stations installed by a third-party company along the part of the part of the Danube that's passing through our county. These take samples of the water at various distances (being spread over several hundred KMs - there's 12 of them) and monitor for any potentially hazardous and toxic substances that might get dumped by boats and ships or even people and report all kinds of parameters that I'm not familiar with to a head office from where other people are dispatched accordingly. I of course only need to make sure everything is "on line" - I have no idea what those devices measure or how to interpret any of that chemistry gibberish they display... Long story short, those Lantronix UDSs happen to be in use for some devices here as well (that green thing next to it in the picture is a weather station for instance) and was curious to see what they are and what they do, so I looked up the manual and it's a pretty cool idea: serial over LAN basically. One thing I'm not intimately familiar with is what happens at the other end of the wire, so to say: the manual shows a second UDS device placed somewhere else in the network that turns LAN back into serial, to put it bluntly, so what does yours do ? Does it just mimic a serial port (COM X) and you just Putty straight into it like if it were a local port ?

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

Although that little "torrent" setup hasn't failed me once so far since I've "deployed" it 2 years ago, you are right: no way you can troubleshoot in pre-boot without local peripherals. Notice in those pics I posted there IS a monitor connected to that graphics card and an USB extension plugged in ready to go just in case it fails in some way and I'd have to diagnose on the spot. Pulling that whole thing out of there is a bit of an unpleasant job. The monitor is on a shelf just below that.

I have several "headless" devices. Those with LoM are relatively easy to support when something goes wrong -- I just log into the LoM port from some other machine.

Those that don't have the necessary LoM hardware boot kernels that are built with "serial console" support -- if the kernel can get loaded, I can access the box via a serial port or "single port terminal server" (left side of photo).

If the kernel won't boot, then I keep a small (7 inch) monitor handy (right side of photo) that I can carry to whichever box is giving me problems (I keep a VGA cable plugged into each headless machine just so I don't have to go fishing around trying to plug in a cable, when needed).

I could live with all that, but the time it takes to buffer an hour (+ !) long song is what kills it: if the song is towards the end of the track, I click the seek bar and have a cup of tea ready. The marker jumps there, but the player freezes...a wireless client sucks in this aspect ! Wired moves considerably faster, obviously, but there's STILL a delay that's longer than YT's if I were to seek to the end of a 10h long video. I like this "Media Player Classic" that comes with K-lite, but it seems to struggle with stuff like this....I dunno...

You'd build a "filter" that sits between the stream service and the stream client (running on the server's hardware -- NAS, in this case) and have it elide the initial portion of the track from the stream that it serves to the client. I.e., if the point you're seeking to is at offset 15:23, your client would think the song actually STARTED at 15:23... everything that existed prior to that point in time would have been "absorbed" by the filter agent. So, the client doesn't have to wait for all that data -- that it is going to discard!

I use a variety of appliances as music clients (Squeezebox, Chumby, Cell phone, etc.). Plus, have a pair of Surface Pro 3's that I rescued that "host" small portions of the music archive from 32G microSD cards. But, we tend to listen to music in units of "albums". So, each playlist is simply a reflection of the tracklist on the album that is playing. If you don't want to listen to THIS song, just hit "NEXT".

I've modified the Squeezebox software so that it behaves like a CD jukebox and changed the infrared remote decoder so that we can use the remote that came with the (retired) CD jukebox. This renders the squeezbox's display sort of meaningless so it is used as a clock. (My changes to the squeezebox code now let it mimic that CD jukebox in that it will start playing music at the time scheduled by the alarm rendering the jukebox obsolete -- one less bulky piece of electronics to deal with!)

[Dannyx]

Re: Looking for a NAS

The problem I've had with Windows machines is they really tend to NEED displays and keyboards.

Although that little "torrent" setup hasn't failed me once so far since I've "deployed" it 2 years ago, you are right: no way you can troubleshoot in pre-boot without local peripherals. Notice in those pics I posted there IS a monitor connected to that graphics card and an USB extension plugged in ready to go just in case it fails in some way and I'd have to diagnose on the spot. Pulling that whole thing out of there is a bit of an unpleasant job. The monitor is on a shelf just below that.

A COTS NAS, by contrast, will typically provide some means of tellling you "what's wrong" if it fails to come up completely.

Just pick some random hardware that you have on hand. Pick a software package. Stuff some disposable drives in the box and see what it can do.

Got that and I was all ready to roll, but I decided to ask for other people's advice first.

Speaking of storage, I also store a lot of music - mostly hour long mixes that I download from YT - and I'd often come across a part I really like so what I've done over the years is I've created a playlist of sorts where I'd enter the link of the original video, its title on YT and the timecode of the piece I like and sometimes even the name of that track or at least a description if I can't find the official name. Something like "chimes" or "synth" - you get the idea. THIS would be a handy thing for a NAS to do: have some sort of app which allowed you to preview those select parts when mousing over the timecode I wrote down. Right now, like with my pictures, the music is stored on the NAS as well, so I access it like a share. The order in which it all happens is:

-I think of a song I want to listen to
-open the folder containing the music
-open the "tracklist"
-think of what the song was called or at least what I described it as
-scroll through the list until I find what mp3 file contains it and at what timecode
-look/search for that mp3 file
-open mp3 file
-click the seek bar to jump to the timecode
-WAIT for the thing to buffer ! !
-enjoy...
*if the track was not clearly identifiable in the list from the first try, repeat the earlier steps until found

A snazzy way of doing this would be to have an "interactive" playlist that not only directly links to the mp3 file (this is probably easy to do, even in friggin' MS Word with some links), but would also take me straight to the timecode I wrote down if I click on it, or even better, preview that part before it even opens the player so I know if it's the right track or not. This would probably come down to the media player itself and reverse-engineering would be required to make it jump straight to hh:mm:SS upon launching.

I could live with all that, but the time it takes to buffer an hour (+ !) long song is what kills it: if the song is towards the end of the track, I click the seek bar and have a cup of tea ready. The marker jumps there, but the player freezes...a wireless client sucks in this aspect ! Wired moves considerably faster, obviously, but there's STILL a delay that's longer than YT's if I were to seek to the end of a 10h long video. I like this "Media Player Classic" that comes with K-lite, but it seems to struggle with stuff like this....I dunno...

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

Correct. This was another idea, but I disregarded it for the time being, thinking it's just not "pro" enough to have a Windows machine actually sharing its disks, but in a home environment it's totally doable.

The problem I've had with Windows machines is they really tend to NEED displays and keyboards. Too often, things go wonky and a box won't boot. So, you have to leave a monitor connected (even if powered off) or "nearby" so it can be connected WHEN needed. You have to resort to a PC-Weasel or other type of LoM solution if you truly want to be able to run it as an appliance.

A COTS NAS, by contrast, will typically provide some means of tellling you "what's wrong" if it fails to come up completely.

Not sure how secure it is in the grand scheme of things, though

That's the other downside with Windows -- or any other "closed" software. Unless you are intimately familiar with the OS, you can't truly assess your risk exposure as you don't know what's "running" that can possibly be compromised.

Just pick some random hardware that you have on hand. Pick a software package. Stuff some disposable drives in the box and see what it can do. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You're investing TIME instead of money -- with the same number of potential unknowns (there's no guarantee that a COTS solution will do what you need).

It's also important to get a feel for the type of performance you are likely to see. I've seen (older) NAS boxen that were dog slow -- despite a faster NIC and fast disks! You'll need to see how your file set performs (e.g., I have lots of multigigabyte files which ding the server in different ways than lots of little files would).

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

If you were wanting a good solution that will give you enterprise level capabilities but still would allow you to go a bit DIY, might I suggest a little 1u Supermicro plus Freenas?

I think it might be hard to find a 1U box that holds 4 (3.5") drives -- unless you want to remove covers to access them (most of the NASs that I've encountered try to make the drives accessible from the front panel).

[I had a 1U NAS some years ago that had 4 exposed drives but most 1U "computers" also try to put other stuff on the "front panel" (e.g., optical drive, USB ports, video output, etc.) that compete for space]

The underlying filesystem is ZFS, so you can take snapshots on a schedule and use the "previous versions" tab on any of your file properties and such as well.

ZFS is a resource hog -- particularly RAM. And, you can't just "pull" a drive from a failed appliance and expect to access its contents easily on some other generic machine. For the most part, I think there are cheaper ways of getting that redundancy.

Additionally, because it's an open source project there are many options for doing things like cloud-based replication/backup.

Your options aren't just limited to storage related "options". You could install a media server alongside the storage service. Or, let it act as your local time server. Or...

Note that there are many FOSS offerings beside FreeNAS. Some may "fit" better with the hardware you have available or your familiarity with a particular OS. See NAS4Free, OpenFiler, Rockstor, etc. Or, any FOSS OS offering with the appropriate "packages" installed and enabled (SAMBA, NFS, Apache, etc.)

Bottom line is you have to decide how much of a turnkey box you're looking for vs. flexibility, cost, etc.

[Dannyx]

Re: Looking for a NAS

Install Windows/Linux/*BSD/<whatever> on a "small" machine and configure the services that are already there, as appropriate. E.g., a windows machine with a logical "D:" drive that is exported as a share gives you network accessible storage. When/if something goes wrong, you have to connect a keyboard and monitor to figure out what's hosed. (N.B. This is something that you can't do with most COTS NASs)

Correct. This was another idea, but I disregarded it for the time being, thinking it's just not "pro" enough to have a Windows machine actually sharing its disks, but in a home environment it's totally doable. Not sure how secure it is in the grand scheme of things, though I kinda do this already: I have a barebones PC if you can even call it that (see picture) running all the time in my pantry which handles torrents. It's got an SSD for the OS (Win 7) and a 1 TB drive for storage. I manage it via remote desktop and share its D drive, so that's an example of a crude NAS. I was thinking of expanding on this or build a second machine like that JUST for sharing stuff, so it wouldn't be busy processing P2P stuff as well...

The big advantage to using a computer (Windows/Linux/*BSD/etc.) instead of an appliance is that you can pull the drives when/if something happens to the computer (or, when you want to upgrade, etc.) and just transfer them to another "computer" to access their contents.

Very true - another win for the setup above.

Choose a case that lets you install lots of drives. The advantage then is that you can expand as necessary and also likely benefit from better cooling (bigger case has more room for bigger, less noisey fans).

I would go crazy with this setup, though I don't think my folks would appreciate it too much

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

Yeah, all that sounds very enterprisey, but a bit overkill for my purposes,

I wasn't suggesting it for you. Rather, explaining why the "features" are necessary and why they can't be implemented in the same way that they are in an "integrated appliance" (where ALL the drives all spin at the same time). I.e., you should be thinking about how you can ensure yourself that the entire data content is intact -- even if you don't access particular files for months/years.

so a ready-made solution might be more appropriate, hence why I looked at XigmaNAS or even an off-the-shelf NAS unit.

You don't need to go to the lengths that I've gone to DIY. Install Windows/Linux/*BSD/<whatever> on a "small" machine and configure the services that are already there, as appropriate. E.g., a windows machine with a logical "D:" drive that is exported as a share gives you network accessible storage. When/if something goes wrong, you have to connect a keyboard and monitor to figure out what's hosed. (N.B. This is something that you can't do with most COTS NASs)

The big advantage to using a computer (Windows/Linux/*BSD/etc.) instead of an appliance is that you can pull the drives when/if something happens to the computer (or, when you want to upgrade, etc.) and just transfer them to another "computer" to access their contents.

With an appliance, you need a compatible appliance as your backup -- and/or a keen awareness of the steps you must take to access that data from a "regular computer" in the event the appliance fails.

[I have a 15 drive SAN that I'll probably shitcan because it insists on implementing RAID on its drives; there's no way to turn it into a JBOD. So, any drive that gets installed, there, won't be intuitively readable when/if the enclosure fails.]

For me, the biggest advantage is that I can install an OS and userland that I'm intimately familiar with and maintain it without relying on the "vendor" to fix bugs or add features that I want WHEN I want them. No fear of "I'm sorry, we no longer support the Model 27... (so the security flaws that are present in that codebase will never be fixed, sorry!)"

ATX motherboard would require a tower case, so essentially a desktop PC, which is actually the main hurdle for me, more so than the power aspect

"Make lemonade": Choose a case that lets you install lots of drives. The advantage then is that you can expand as necessary and also likely benefit from better cooling (bigger case has more room for bigger, less noisey fans).

[Retro-Hipster]

Re: Looking for a NAS

If you were wanting a good solution that will give you enterprise level capabilities but still would allow you to go a bit DIY, might I suggest a little 1u Supermicro plus Freenas?

Freenas has more features that you probably would ever need, but you can do pretty much exactly what you might want with it. For instance, right now you might want to just have a cifs share for your file sharing and plex for multimedia, but maybe later you will want to do iSCSI or NFS for an esxi host. The underlying filesystem is ZFS, so you can take snapshots on a schedule and use the "previous versions" tab on any of your file properties and such as well.

Additionally, because it's an open source project there are many options for doing things like cloud-based replication/backup. If you are cool with using an scp/sftp client like WinSCP/Filezilla(they make them for all operating systems) then you can also enable ssh access to a share easilly and then you would be connecting to the files remotely using some very good encryption. There are many other secure ways of accessing the files remotely, that was just one example. For instance, you can set it up with OpenVPN and just appear on your home network like you were there.

One last thing that might help you out is that you can use freenas to make a Domain. Then you can easily allow your machines access to shares and manage permissions/passwords/etc.. but again, that might be one of those "Enterprisey" type things. lol

If you wanted

[Dannyx]

Re: Looking for a NAS

Yeah, all that sounds very enterprisey, but a bit overkill for my purposes, so a ready-made solution might be more appropriate, hence why I looked at XigmaNAS or even an off-the-shelf NAS unit. That would be the laziest and also most expensive option, as the unit itself is costly but the the drives themselves would set me back a couple of grand as well, so I gave the DIY route some consideration too. The only issue is that it's not as space efficient, since an ATX motherboard would require a tower case, so essentially a desktop PC, which is actually the main hurdle for me, more so than the power aspect

EDIT: another demand of this new NAS, whatever that may be, would be to be remotely accessible, which is something absolutely trivial and I'm aware it doesn't depend on the NAS device itself too much, but rather the config of the network/router. I could certainly do this already with the current NAS as well, but haven't looked into it due to lack of time, plus I DO have some personal stuff there, so maximum security would be a must I often find myself at work requiring some file that's at home and I'm like "DAMN ! I have that at home !"

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

For example, whenever a box comes on-line, it examines the "volume ID(s)" currently accessible to it (i.e., this is disk #280983). Then, consults my database to see if there are any files on this particular drive that haven't been verified "recently" (accessible, not corrupted). It then scans those files and verifies their "signatures" (hashes) agree with values previously stored in the database. Then, updates the database to reflect this "time of most recent verification".

You've blinded me with science

Many "storage arrays" implement a feature that checks the integrity of data/files in the array even if you aren't currently accessing those particular files. Just because you were able to retrieve ONE file from your disk/NAS/RAID, doesn't guarantee that any of the OTHER files are intact!

A "Patrol Read" systematically checks the entire medium to detect bad blocks that may have developed -- BEFORE you decide to access the file that occupies those blocks! So, "recovery" can occur before there is a significant data loss.

A "Consistency Check" (in a redundant array) not only performs this function but also verifies the correctness of the redundancy information (i.e., consulting other drives)

Both of these are proactive mechanisms to alert you to failures earlier (instead of whenever you HAPPEN to try to access some particular file). E.g., how often do you take a peek at your 2017 tax return? If the only time the array can "check" it -- and take recovery actions -- is WHEN you go looking at it, then it might be years AFTER a failure before you discover that you've lost that data!

Because of the way that I use my archive (i.e., 99% of the media is offline at any time), there's no way to perform these sorts of proactive checks on the entire array -- it's never completely on-line. Only little pieces of it "appear" at any given time.

And, because I don't leave things spinning for any longer than I need to, the amount of time that the software can spend performing these checks is limited.

[Of course, if I want the software to check an entire drive, I can leave it powered up long enough for that scan to complete!]

Storing a signature (hash) for each file lets me verify that the contents of that file haven't been altered. So, I don't need access to an ONLINE, redundant COPY of the file to attest to it's integrity.

Tracking WHEN a file was last checked gives me a way to prioritize which files should be checked NEXT. If the last time "this drive" was spinning, I managed to check files A, X and Q before the user shut the drive down, then I don't need to bother checking A, X or Q the next time the drive is spinning. Instead, I can work on F, then K, then B, etc.

If the drive is brought online often enough, I can get through the entire set of files in a reasonable number of days/weeks/power cycles.

If a discrepancy is found (signature stored in database differs from signature computed for file, NOW), I'm sent an email telling me which file is faulty. It's up to me to decide how to recover its contents. E.g., if there are lots of errors on a particular drive, this may suggest I need to replace the entire drive instead of screwing around with a file!!

Because the database tracks EVERY file on EVERY drive, it can tell me where to find a backup copy of that file so I can rewrite the faulty copy. If there are backups of all of the files on a failed drive (imagine a drive that has a catastrophic failure), the database effectively tells me how to rebuild a replacement drive -- using copies of those files scattered on other drives in the array.

["Drives" need not be hard disks. I catalog my optical media, as well. So, if I have a copy of a file on a CD/DVD, the database will alert me to its existence so I can use it as a backup to restore a lost copy. It also keeps track of the contents of "containers". So, if there's a ZIP/ISO/RAR/etc. archive that happens to contain a copy of this file, it directs me to that archive to recover the copy.]

So, I get some redundancy without having to keep scores of drives spinning all the time.

If your array is small enough (~a dozen drives), you can buy an appliance that will automatically do most of these things for you. But, you'll have to keep all of those drives spinning in order for it to work its magic.

[Dannyx]

Re: Looking for a NAS

For example, whenever a box comes on-line, it examines the "volume ID(s)" currently accessible to it (i.e., this is disk #280983). Then, consults my database to see if there are any files on this particular drive that haven't been verified "recently" (accessible, not corrupted). It then scans those files and verifies their "signatures" (hashes) agree with values previously stored in the database. Then, updates the database to reflect this "time of most recent verification".

You've blinded me with science That sounds a bit over my head and it's like data-center level - the kind of stuff Topcat would use I've become a lazy f***k lately and although it sounds complicated and interesting, I can't bring myself to start tinkering I've yet to mess around with that Asus board that I said I'd run PFSense on. One year ago, I would've done all this stuff at my shop, but since I've changed places, there's no room for that here....not that time would be an issue - there's times where I do NOTHING at all for one whole week ! - but some people get a little bit too nosy and like ruining my concentration and mood, but I digress....back to our NAS here

Fun fact - "nas" means "nose" in our language, so filtering search results on auction sites and other places to show NASs and not nose trimmers is a bit of a challenge here

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

It's never shut off. All HTPC's stream from it, there's a mass of files on it which are used every day in the office for repairs, reloads, etc.....heck, its a time server for all the access points, switches, and routers.... It's also one of the storage dumps for the DVR. its not horribly inefficient....and SYS2 is a backup of SYS1, and SYS2 is always off except when updating or running backups....it's on maybe 1~2 days a month.

If you can spin down the drives when not being accessed, I imagine you can conserve a fair bit of power. The risks is "tuning" that feature correctly (you don't want the disk spinning down and then spinning right back up because some periodic job needed to scribble something in a log file, etc.)

I keep an Optiplex 160 under a dresser that does my "core services":

• DHCPd
• BOOTPd (diskless devices that don't speak DHCP)
• TFTPd (serve up diskless kernels)
• NFSd (serve up applications)
• DNS ("can't tell the players without a program")
• NTPd (so everyone agrees as to notion of "now")
• FTPd (so UPS's can dump their periodic logs, here)
• TELNETd/SSHd (so I can control the box)
• syslogd (every box reports their errors to this one)
• HTTPd (convenience access to files/logs from friendlier browser format)
• xdm (richer working environment for maintenance)
• fonts (for X servers)
• lpd (offload printing jobs from other hosts)
• nessusd (security scanner)
• POPd/IMAPd (so I can retrieve email alerts routed to me from other boxes)
• music streamer (plus about 60G of "select" MP3s)

I.e., it does lots of "low frequency" things -- but, almost continuously (can't spin the disk down).

It also has all of the source code for the system as well as the compiler suite, man pages, etc. So, I can build/tweek kernels and applications without needing a separate "development system" (cross/canadian build) for that purpose.

But, because it's not expected to be highly performant, it's just run off a dual core Atom (1.6GHz) with a 640G disk for all of the above. (If I need to build a new kernel, I can afford to walk away and wait for it to finish... it's not like someone is PAYING me to get it done quicker!)

Last time I measured power consumption (Watt's Up), it was around 20W (power supply is only rated for 50W). My 3 switches each draw that much!

Half a KW-Hr per day? I think I can afford that! :>

We're on a cooperative for electric, its ~$0.09/KWH.

I think we're 12-15c (I'd have to check). OTOH, when the ACbrrr runs from April/May thru September, I think a 20W continuous load gets lost in the "noise"...

[Topcat]

Re: Looking for a NAS

I think a lot depends on how you use it. If you want to leave it "up" and poke at it throughout the day, every day, then power consumption can be an issue -- esp if you live someplace with high utility costs. We don't worry about that, here (e.g., I don't shut machines off when I'm done for the day).

It's never shut off. All HTPC's stream from it, there's a mass of files on it which are used every day in the office for repairs, reloads, etc.....heck, its a time server for all the access points, switches, and routers.... It's also one of the storage dumps for the DVR. its not horribly inefficient....and SYS2 is a backup of SYS1, and SYS2 is always off except when updating or running backups....it's on maybe 1~2 days a month.

We're on a cooperative for electric, its ~$0.09/KWH.

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

What do you think of XigmaNAS ? I was thinking of using that with the Gigabyte board. Power consumption is not of particular importance to me, now that you've brought it up...

I've not looked at any of the "prepackaged" NAS distributions/products. I find it easier just to build NetBSD boxes as I can augment them with whatever capabilities I deem appropriate, instead of relying on someone else's notion of what should be in a NAS.

For example, whenever a box comes on-line, it examines the "volume ID(s)" currently accessible to it (i.e., this is disk #280983). Then, consults my database to see if there are any files on this particular drive that haven't been verified "recently" (accessible, not corrupted). It then scans those files and verifies their "signatures" (hashes) agree with values previously stored in the database. Then, updates the database to reflect this "time of most recent verification".

[If the file is missing, not readable or has been altered/corrupted, it emails a message to me on another machine]

In this way, I get an early warning of "problems" in the archive BEFORE there is any actual data loss.

[I could do this with my other COTS NASs but it all had to be done "over the wire" -- by a different host! -- which is horrendously inefficient]

Because I'm not using any special I/Os on these machines (sound, video, wireless, <whatever>), I can build a slimmed down kernel that will work on pretty much every box (NIC drivers are the only thing that need to be addressed; so, I throw the kitchen sink at those!). This makes it a lead-pipe-cinch to PXE boot a brand new box to "service" disks.

[Curious.George]

Re: Looking for a NAS

I was actually thinking of reworking my NAS for sake of power consumption....but I just can't bring myself to do it....

I think a lot depends on how you use it. If you want to leave it "up" and poke at it throughout the day, every day, then power consumption can be an issue -- esp if you live someplace with high utility costs. We don't worry about that, here (e.g., I don't shut machines off when I'm done for the day).

Given the way that I use mine, it is "on" very infrequently -- typically when I have to archive "updates" I've downloaded for some application that I'm using. Or, when I have to build a new machine (retrieve/save the drivers required). It's easier to just burn a CD/DVD from a stored ISO (you can store a lot of ISOs on TB+ drives) than it is to hunt for the original installation media, in most cases!