Home media integration / NAS (non-Apple) suggestion pls?

[Nimbus]

lestag said:

Its not proper RAID anyhow, the OS wil need to support the onboard raid controller. stich to a 3GB/s SATA disk as I have had issues with the 6GB/s disks on the microserver (run like a dog using ESX)

but if he was using freenas etc then it would be software raid... so he can recover the data elsewhere if the the hardware dies..

I bought a couple of the cheap samsung 2tb disks. more than fast enough and quiet..

[AcidReflux]

Nimbus said:

Putting freenas on is a peace of p**s.....

I'd do something roughly like..
buy hp server, + 2 2Tb disks..
open server, remove the supplied hd, ( its only small and taking up a bay...)
put your 2 new disks in the caddys and install in first 2 bays
burn freenas image onto usb stick, then put stick in the internal on board usb slot..
plug in keyboard/monitor
boot hp server
install freenas onto usb stick
stick hp server somewhere ( garage ? )
reboot it, then log on from main pc, via web gui..
configure the server options to what you need..
I'd recommend setting the 2 disks up as mirroring raid, so you dont lose anything...
transfer your data
job done...

I had a play with freenas when building my hp box, and reckon it took about 30 minutes, start to finish..

Once you've done the initial install, its all web gui, and you wont need any drivers, it works out of the box for the hp server.

My Microserver arrived this morning and I'm downloading the .iso of FreeNAS 8 as I type. Off to Google now to find out how to burn a bootable image onto a USB stick. I want to install FreeNAS onto the 250GB drive that's in the server - I don't need that disk for anything else.

The USB slot on the motherboard: where is it? The booklet that came with the server doesn't mention it. There's a slot at the front of the mobo next to the first drive bay. Is that it?

[AcidReflux]

So I think my box is up and running. It's booted from the USB disk with FreeNAS and I'm playing with the web interface. So far so good.

In case anybody else needs this info after buying one of these ProLiant boxes, this is the process I followed to get it booting with FreeNAS on the USB:
http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?251-How-t...

FreeNAS simply boots to a terminal window but with a handy menu mechanism that seems pretty straightforward to use. But with the web GUI I doubt I'll need the terminal much at all. I've got a bit of a learning curve with the FreeNAS configuration though to get it set up and shared on my Windows workgroup so all my machines can see it.

The HP microserver has a gentle fan hum sitting on my desk, but when slotted away underneath I suspect I'll hardly notice it. It's a dull-looking little box but has an air of unassuming competence about it.

[Nimbus]

AcidReflux said:

My Microserver arrived this morning and I'm downloading the .iso of FreeNAS 8 as I type. Off to Google now to find out how to burn a bootable image onto a USB stick. I want to install FreeNAS onto the 250GB drive that's in the server - I don't need that disk for anything else.

The USB slot on the motherboard: where is it? The booklet that came with the server doesn't mention it. There's a slot at the front of the mobo next to the first drive bay. Is that it?

Yepp, thats the one, you can see the usb slot on the motherboard when you open the front door, its on the left next to the cmos battery.

You don't really want to install freenas to the 250gb...
save that for data only and install freenas to a usb stick on the mobo, that way you get 4 free dedicated slots for hd... makes it easier for using raid ( you need at least two slots per raid array ), and for upgrading your storage in the years to come

[marctwo]

scovette said:

A QNAP NAS can run Squeezecenter, and then a Squeeze device as a player? Or for a budget route to good sound, a Joggler running Squeezeplay (£50 secondhand) and a USB DAC.

I do exactly this and it works very well. I even use the free Squeezebox app on the iPhone as a remote control.

[AcidReflux]

Nimbus said:

Yepp, thats the one, you can see the usb slot on the motherboard when you open the front door, its on the left next to the cmos battery.

You don't really want to install freenas to the 250gb...
save that for data only and install freenas to a usb stick on the mobo, that way you get 4 free dedicated slots for hd... makes it easier for using raid ( you need at least two slots per raid array ), and for upgrading your storage in the years to come

Cheers. At the moment FreeNAS is booting from my USB stick, so perhaps I'll leave that arrangement in place and leave that 250GB disk free. For the short- to medium-term I've got no plans to bother with RAID but long-term, who knows.

I'm away from home at the moment. I couldn't get the NAS visible on my Windows network when I tried quickly yesterday morning. I'll play with it properly later on. There must be a step-by-step guide online somewhere....

[AcidReflux]

After another couple of hours in frustration poking at the many options within the FreeNAS web GUI I've managed to create a shared 250GB volume that's visible on both my Windows machine and my Ubuntu media player. So I thought I'd install the 2TB disk and begin copying files over in earnest.

Pulled out a free HDD holder to discover that I needed four low-profile screws to hold the disk in and of course I don't have any. FFS!



... and then I noticed the row of screws set into the bottom of the door ready for exactly this purpose. This little box is impressive.

[Nimbus]

and the included allen key there ready for you to use

[Ston]

I've gone for the HP N36L with the 100 quid cash back. Thats a server for about £120 quid. Compare that to the Drobo FS I was looking at for £450!

I'm suprised there is only 1 mention of unraid here as thats the option I've settled on.

[AcidReflux]

Irritatingly I'm not getting very good network speeds yet. Copying large files to the box is taking much more time than copying them between (for example) workstation and laptop. Network is Gigabit wired but the data transfer isn't continuous (according to Windows task manager). It's a pulsing transfer, whose peaks are at 35% network usage and whose troughs are zero. Pulses have a frequency of just a couple of seconds. The CPU and memory graphs on the FreeNAS web GUI are far from maxxed out.

If anybody has any bright ideas, I'd love to hear 'em.

[lestag]

AcidReflux said:

Irritatingly I'm not getting very good network speeds yet. Copying large files to the box is taking much more time than copying them between (for example) workstation and laptop. Network is Gigabit wired but the data transfer isn't continuous (according to Windows task manager). It's a pulsing transfer, whose peaks are at 35% network usage and whose troughs are zero. Pulses have a frequency of just a couple of seconds. The CPU and memory graphs on the FreeNAS web GUI are far from maxxed out.

If anybody has any bright ideas, I'd love to hear 'em.

try teracopy for copyingand see if that speeds it up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teracopy

[AcidReflux]

lestag said:

try teracopy for copyingand see if that speeds it up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teracopy

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to update the ProLiant's firmware first to see whether that helps. After reading a few forum posts I've tried mounting my 2TB disk as ZFS in both normal and 'forced 4102-byte' mode (or whatever it's called), but without success.