Which NAS Should I Buy

[piggybank1974]

Hi There and hello to you all,

I'm in the process of wanting to purchase a NAS I've norrowed it down to two machines

(1):- Synology Cube Station CS407 e

(2):- Thecus N5200 Pro

Although they are not cheap by no means but they should do what i want and hopefully in the future, they will be bare bones systems.

any help!! we would be helpfully of course!!

[piggybank1974]

if your looking for some links/reviews to the NAS here they are

Synology Cube Station

(1)http://www.thetechlounge.com/article...ion+CS407+NAS/

Although this is not the E version (Their so called business version)

Thecus N5200 Pro

(2)http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=9426&page=1

[popper]

those are fine for what they are, but i think it mad to pay that high price for esentially a small case box and a very limited motherboard.

remember that a NAS is really ment to be housed in an out of the way place (or in the case of 11N wireless NAS/routers as high as possible to get coverage)or even another room, so id look to freeNAS http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/19...l#post34384688
before you pay out masses for simple 1gigabit iSCSI and media/data NAS servers.

hell if you really wanted to see your NAS then get one of these cases and make your own nice one


http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/87...l#post34324947

see first link above:
iv not got around to making the new FreeNAS box to try raid0 iSCSI and the XP iSCSI driver out
as yet but it seems XP doesnt have the capability to Software Bond (I.E combine several 1gigabit cards in to one virtual 2Gigabit+ LAN network) but it seems it will be fine for mear single 1Gigabit iSCSI (raid0) drive connection.

anyone know of any free/open Software drivers to allow windows XP to bond (or is it better to say 802.3ad for a standards-compliant implementation)its NCs as linux/Unix can today?.... URLs please.

[piggybank1974]

hi Popper,

Sorry for not replying sooner, as I was at work when you replied yesterday, as I am now, I'll take a look at it later, FreeNas not a bad idea

[piggybank1974]

Hi Popper,

I've been having a look at the FreeNAS, this is all good but it uses an existing PC, my opinion is what the point in using an existing PC,(Monitor/PC etc) when A single Simple(Most of the time), NAS will do and uses around 65watts which is less an my monitor now??

[Dai]

Originally Posted by piggybank1974

Hi Popper,

I've been having a look at the FreeNAS, this is all good but it uses an existing PC, my opinion is what the point in using an existing PC,(Monitor/PC etc) when A single Simple(Most of the time), NAS will do and uses around 65watts which is less an my monitor now??

My freeNas setup uses an old Dell box which chugs away silent and happy behind the piano. It's remotely adminstered from any browser on the network and doesn't need a screen, keyboard or mouse connected.

[piggybank1974]

Hi DaiNasty,

So how have you done it them?? please explain and possibly pictures, I'm really interested in this

[popper]

its all pritty straight forward:
its a so called LiveCD so no need to install to try, just boot the CD on an old machine and run it off that cd.

take a look at the browser pictures you work with on the FreeNAS site
http://www.freenas.org/index.php?opt...d=15&Itemid=28

i assume you currently have several PCs on a your LAN all connected to
a switch or (wireless)router that can do 100Mbit or far better 1Gigabit.

"===" =straightthrough RJ45 cable
"=x=" =Xover/crossover RJ45 cable
"---" = wireless connection to and from somewere

something like:
VM-CM-===multiport(wireless)10/100/1000 router

and all LAN machines plug into this router with === and/or ---

you can also do an =x= connection directly from your FreeNAS to your main machine if you plan on playing with 1GigaBit iSCSI there,just add an extra 1Gigabit NC at both ends and Xover a seperate IP segment assignment (for instance you can use 10.0.0.* for that bit on both ends)
and you need a min of 256Meg Ram in the freeNAS to play nice iSCSI, not a problem with most of todays old machines.

Now, getting faster than 1gigabit Bonding virtual network on windows is a big problem so if you readers sus that part out after reading the links then let me know but its fine with upto 1gigabit for now.
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/19...l#post34385995

and http://www.freenaskb.info/kb/?View=entry&EntryID=204),

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
take your old PC (now refered to as the FreeNAS machine) with a CDrom and 1 or more blank/old Harddrives in it
put a 1gigabit card in there, a cheap £6/12 RTL one will work fine (or 10/100 of thats all you have) or perhaps its already got an onboard 10/100/1000 so just use that.

find a nice place to put it out of the way later but remember to buy an RJ45 cable long enough to reach all the way to the router (thats anything upto 300foot away so no problem there in most houses).

now heres basicly the outline:

grab the latest FreeNAS liveCD ISO http://www.freenas.org/index.php?opt...ions&Itemid=51

grab the latest Nightly Build if you want to play with more iSCSI options http://downloads.sourceforge.net/fre..._mirror=heanet
or just the last 685b

burn that ISO to a CD and place it in the freenas CD drive and boot it.

if you happen to attach a screen and kb to it then you will see the options , it should already have set up the default static LAN address of 192.168.1.250

you can just play it blind if you like and assume the defaults so try without the screen and kb just wait for the cd to stop and it should be fine.

yes,fine ,go to any LAN connected PC and start your browser.

if not, take note of the Ip address as your network might have issued another No, use that IP No instead in the next bit.

thats usually your router giving out IPs so check that router screen to see if it it gave the FreeNAS another No and use that instead.

open the said browser as http://192.168.1.250 and you should see
the FreeNAS HTML pages as per my original screen grab above first link to configure it as you please.

Ohh , the default user/passwords are admin and freenas you can change them once inside.

set up your drives and play with it, once your happy you can then reboot the CD and take the plung to install it for real on the HD so as to be able to boot the HD, and not to have to keep booting the liveCD and slowing it down on accessing the NAS pages/binarys etc.

just follow the userguide PDF http://www.freenas.org/downloads/doc...reeNAS-SUG.pdf and be up and running in 2 minutes, it will take longer to fit your drives and find a nice place for the BOX

[Dai]

Thanks popper, you seem to have covered most of it there. What i found easiest was to set up the box with screen/kbd/mouse attached initially. Once you've got past the initial setup, installed to harddisk and the nas box has an IP address then you can restart without the bits attached and manage it from a browser.

1> get iso
2> prepare box
3>boot from cd and run installation to HD.
4>set up local parameters and initialise hard disk<s>
5>get IP via DHCP (or can set fixed IP.)
6>power down, remove kbd etc, reboot
7>attempt to connect from browser with http://whatever.ip.you.set

http://www.howtoforge.com/network_at...e_with_freenas