New
#11
Hi there
@sygnus21
If you have a spare machine why not just install any sensible Linux distro on it with SAMBA and run that as a NAS. The OS is FREE, you can easily install other applications, Software RAID works very efficiently and you can use a decent GUI on the NAS as well.
For this purpose I'd recommend CENTOS 7 -- OK the kernel is slightly old but it's so stable and solid (its the free version of RED HAT's Enterprise server - and supported by RED HAT -- the RHEL server with CENTOS for smaller shops is probably the most used server software around the world.
Install KDE as the GUI, SAMBA for file sharing, NTFS3G for Native NTFS read/write ,GRSYNC for file backup and other software to choice. Depending on how you logon to the CENTOS system -- either directly or remotely -- in which case you'll need to install tigervnc so you can RDP from Windows (say a laptop) to your GUI console on the NAS. For software raid ensure MDADM is installed .
Software installation is a breeze -- usually you just need to type from the command line yum install package1, package 2 etc. The system handles all dependencies etc.
To backup from the NAS to external devices just run GRSYNC which will copy changed / new files to your external drives which for speed I'd format with Linux file system -- XFS is a good one (mkfs.xfs -f /dev/sdx where x is the number of the disk attached). Simple file sharing via samba will make files acessible to windows for your windows machines. You can also setup CRONTAB which will schedule jobs to run at specific times.
This is a complex idea but IMO anything is better than having important data controlled by proprietary systems. Software RAID also in Linux works extremely well.
Using an i7 CPU is a bit overkill for essentially a NAS server unless you are going also to run a whole slew of VM's on it. Incidentally there's nothing wrong either in using 2 / 4 bay external USB / SATA boxes either if your server doesn't have enough internal HDD bays etc.
Why not start practising by installing CENTOS as a VM on your Windows system, play with it and then you'll see the possibilities you have.
BTW I have 2 NAS systems running CENTOS -- they run 24/7 -- the only time I ever re-boot is when I'm adding say new hardware (e.g more RAM) or after a rare kernel upgrade. I've had these for several years now -- 100% reliable. I'm though using the HP proliant Microservers - small 4 bay servers with 2 Nic's each and they occupy very small storage space and totally stored away in a closet unseen. They can run totally headless (i.e no keyboard / screen connected and easily accessed via RDP from a windows laptop or xrdp from a linux laptop).
Should be an interesting project for you -- the i7 though is grossly overkill -- an i3 is more than enough for a decent NAS server !!!!.
Cheers
jimbo