Storage Solutions New NAS enclosure units in market?

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Renegade

Renegade

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Its been a while since we discussed NAS enclosures. I guess the market must have moved on since then. Last time it garnered fair amount of interest.

I am looking to get two dual-drive enclosures. So can you guys please suggest me some enclosures within $200

Are these things available locally?

Last time I looked at D-Link DNS-323 but even that did not have decent transfer rate. Today I came across this enclosure from Tagan

Tagan - IB-4220

Here are some reviews

[Phoronix] Tagan Icy Box NAS4220 NAS Enclosure

Icrontic Tagan IcyBox IB-NAS4220-B review

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I had some difficulty mounting the NFS shares, as the share names are not shortened. In order to mount the public directory, one must mount /mnt/md1/public instead of /public. Once I figured this out-I logged into the device via telnet to look at its NFS exports file-all was good.

NFS

RAID0

Read 2.04s large, 56.1 MB/s, 0.167s small, 48.0 MBps

Write 14.761s large, 7.8 MBps, 1.079s small, 7.5 MBps

RAID1

Read 2.208s large, 51.9 MBps, 0.153s, 52.4 MBps

Write 15.583s large, 7.006 MBps, 1.269s small, 6.042 MBps

SMB

RAID0

Read 6.477s large, 16.856 MBps, 0.818s small, 9.374 MBps

Write 42.237s large, 2.585 MBps, 2.918s small, 2.628 MBps

RAID1

Read 10.823s large, 10.087 MBps, 0.700s small, 10.954 MBps

Write 43.763s large, 2.495 MBps, 3.201s small, 2.396 MBps
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Performance seems decent enough to me
 
why not just build a system & use freenas?

i am doing the same thing here in my office.

using software raid via freenas. raid5 setup. its working great & is highly customizable like a pc
 
I don't see a single benefit of this thing over a Atom based Linux NASbox

not only is more expensive, it does not offer any addl benefits

Power -
The power supply is rated for 150 watts input and 57 watts output , and according to http://www.nas-4220.org, the maximum observed power draw was about 75 watts with normal operation consuming anywhere between 23 and 26 watts.
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An Atom NAS will consume marginally more power, but nothing to break your bank

Throughput
Video Playback (Standard Definition) - The situation changes when accessing the episode over an 802.11G wireless network connection. While the video played, there was significant hesitation; it was annoying enough to be unwatchable for any length of time. This is not a fault of the NAS4220-B, but rather a limitation of wireless networking in general. An 802.11n network might not have this issue, however one was not available for testing.
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I can happily playback SD over wireless from the NAS over wireless g

720p used to work earlier, but not anymore with my network bursting at the seams

both 720 and 1080 work happily over wired anyway
 
superczar said:
I don't see a single benefit of this thing over a Atom based Linux NASbox

not only is more expensive, it does not offer any addl benefits

Power -

An Atom NAS will consume marginally more power, but nothing to break your bank

Throughput

I can happily playback SD over wireless from the NAS over wireless g

720p used to work earlier, but not anymore with my network bursting at the seams

both 720 and 1080 work happily over wired anyway
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+1

The atom is cheap and can handle ALL this and more with ease :)

It makes for a very good server.
 
The atom 945GCLF avlbl in india has 10/100 LAN. think that might be a bottleneck. the GCLF2, with the dual core atom has gigabit lan, however.
 
if u are planning for an atom-NAS, i think openfiler is better than freenas any day. its more linux like and customization is more easy. also, i was not able to install transmission in freenas. (i think i was able to install torrentflux, but it sucks)
 
udayrulz said:
I can do all these things and more using Windows Home Server as well .
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I thought you needed Windows devices to connect to a Windows Home Server. Obviously rules out being used as a NAS. That is, if my info is correct :P .

Edit: It would add up the costs too. Last time I heard, Linux was still cheaper than any Windows OS :P!

More Editing:

SunnyBoi said:
The atom 945GCLF avlbl in india has 10/100 LAN. think that might be a bottleneck. the GCLF2, with the dual core atom has gigabit lan, however.
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Huuge bottleneck. Even on my giga-LAN NAS, the avarage transfer speed of 17~25MBPs is a real pain when friends pop in with their HDDs for sharing HD files. Also, we'll have to see how the Atom DC scales up with gigabit speeds.

For a normal NAS, atom seems to be the best. Me, I want lotsa speed and plug and play convenience when it comes to storage, so looking for a 4 Bay NAS which I can afford. Found none till date :P !
 
Me, I want lotsa speed and plug and play convenience when it comes to storage,
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The gclf2 with gigabit should be available soon if not already so

WHy don't you call delta and check, if it's available, I or Saiyan will arrange for a shipment

Am sure the dual core atom should happily handle gigabit speeds with nary a hiccup

(you do know that most consumer level gigabit NASs barely anywhere close to the rtaed speeds as the embedded proccy can't handle any more than that despite the port being capable of delivering more)
 
Naga said:
I thought you needed Windows devices to connect to a Windows Home Server. Obviously rules out being used as a NAS. That is, if my info is correct :P .

Nope , can connect just fine to all my shared folders on my mac .

Edit: It would add up the costs too. Last time I heard, Linux was still cheaper than any Windows OS :P!

True , btw :tongue: ]

More Editing:

Huuge bottleneck. Even on my giga-LAN NAS, the avarage transfer speed of 17~25MBPs is a real pain when friends pop in with their HDDs for sharing HD files. Also, we'll have to see how the Atom DC scales up with gigabit speeds.

For a normal NAS, atom seems to be the best. Me, I want lotsa speed and plug and play convenience when it comes to storage, so looking for a 4 Bay NAS which I can afford. Found none till date :P !
Click to expand...


10 chars ...
 
superczar said:
(you do know that most consumer level gigabit NASs barely go over 40-50 mbps as the embedded proccy can't handle any more than that despite the port being capable of delivering more)
Click to expand...

Yeah, the max my N2100 does is 20 something MBPs. Was looking for a NAS actually cos I like the overall tiny form factor and the almost plug and play aspects. I used to run a headless DL rig with XP on it but the experience wasn't much fun. The headaches of attaching monitors, KBs etc for troubleshooting compared to a hard reset of my NAS has me prejudiced :).

Any idea on what stuff to get if I want a very small Atom setup with RAID 1 with min 4 drives, gigabit LAN etc.? I might just take you up on your offer once I get some extra funds by next month.

@udayrulz, thanks for the info. I must have mixed up the home server connector info on the evaluation copy blurb. Never got to actually evaluate my copy because of the lack of time and a free machine. I've read up some on WHS after reading your post but can you please confirm if the drive extender has redundancy comparable to a RAID1 setup?

I just might go with a Atom setup+WHS as I'm better equipped to trouble shoot a Windows OS than a Linux one. Don't want to start on a new learning curve with Linux unless I don't have a choice :P ! yeah, I know I'm going to make Gates richer but the problems I faced with a recent installation of Linux imbedded thin clients connected to a Windows server for something as simple as adding local printers has put me off Linux for a time till I have a simpler life. Business, gaming and kids leave me with hardly any time to broaden my horizons. I'm turning into a typical middle aged person :no: !
 
Ok well i ll look up that for you tom , btw sharing printer on Windows HS is simple as installing the driver for the printer made for "Windows Server 2003" and you are done .

Other than the port forwarding (which is actually easy) , the whole thing did not take much to figure out , infact i tried it first on a VM before actually buying hardware for the same .

However this is the version of Home Server i used , comes with tweaks etc , just use your own genuine key .

Windows Home Server X:\Files Edition v1.3.1 - We Got Served Forums
 
Nice thread... and just in time.

I'm also thinking of getting WHS, but have few questions.. one just what Naga asked, how reliable Drive Extender feature on WHS is compared to RAID1. I'm not looking for drive performance, just reliable storage. I don't mind if half of the space is going for mirroring.

Second, can you do IIS (with PHP/MySQL and whole shebang) on WHS? Along with NAS, I would like to use my Atom setup as a testing server for my web applications. (I know PHP/MySQL are better off on linux, but I also have .Net based stuff for regular testing, hence the IIS)

Third, what other media services WHS offers... or more specifically, can WHS's media features (streaming server etc.) can be used on other platforms than Windows?

Oh, and most importantly... how much does WHS cost to get it locally?

Just like Naga said... I would prefer going for WHS/Windows than Linux, just for the sake of saving time and eliminating any learning curve. I too, would prefer spending my time using it more than tweaking it and setting it up. :)
 
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