Custom Built NAS Server

[James]

Thought I would ask advice from my fellow Shark's on my new project.

I had a choice between upgrading my system, or building a project I've been wanting to complete for awhile with my tax refund.

I'm choosing the high-performance NAS server.

My goals with the project are:

1. Extremely small footprint.
2. Extremely powerful server.
3. Limited to no bottlenecks in data path.
4. PCIe based for communications and storage.

One of the things I've found disappointing about the current crop of NAS servers is many of them use USB for the ethernet port, or worse, for the RAID controller itself. Another complaint is that often times, the drives are not hotswappable, which means taking down the storage unit to add/remove drives.

As such, I've been noodling with the idea for a homegrown NAS server that has a similar footprint to a commercial one, but is much more powerful under the hood.


Component List:
$120 Supermicro CSE-M35T-1B 5 drive hotswap cage
$280 A-Value Industrial 5.25" motherboard EBM-945GM
$0 Areca 4 port SATA RAID Controller PCIe x8 (Already owned)
$35 PCIe x16 flexible port extender
$80 T5600 Merom 1.83GHz Dual Core Socket M CPU
$50 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 667 SO-DIMM 200-pin
$30 Sandisk Ultra III 2GB CF card
$60 PicoPSU 120w PSU w/ adapter
----------------------
$645 total before drives

Drives are an option of cost and availability, but more than likely I will go with 750GB drives. (currently around $150 each.)

The OS will run from a RAM drive, similar to many consumer level products (boot from flash into RAM), and will be a Slackware 12 base.

It has taken me awhile to track down a motherboard that suits my needs. Namely, one that is the same width as a 5.25" drive, but has the I/O ports on the "short" edge. (Most 5.25" Industrial boards have the I/O ports on the long edge.)

The enclosure will have to be custom fabricated, but I have time. Lead time on the motherboard is 4 weeks, so this won't be up and running anytime soon, but I thought I would show you guys at least the plan, and see if you find any glaring flaws in it.

Can anyone suggest a good place for custom machined aluminum in the Atlanta, GA area? Or barring that, a good set of tools for working on aluminum myself?

[MrDigital]

You're going to spend nearly $300 on that motherboard and get a custom enclosure? Space is that *that* much of a concern? 5 hard drives will take a bunch of space anyways.

[James]

lol, yessir.

I truly appreciate the small footprint of the consumer grade NAS boxes. The problem is that I don't appreciate the performance or features they offer.

The 5hdd enclosure is 3x 5.25" in height, standard width, and approx 9" long, including fan on the back. I am shooting for an enclosure the same width (slightly wider due to panel thickness), same length, and approx 4x 5.25" bays in height.

[MrDigital]

So what's the downside of something like:
http://www.8anet.com/merchant.ihtml?pid=5486&step=4

The only thing I see is that's limited to being a NAS, but I'm not sure where the downside is in that if that's all you want. How powerful does a fileserver have to be?

[James]

So that's $900 though. That is more expensive than what I'm building, and again, uses an all-in-one arm/usb interface for the control.

Somehow I don't see the worth in that. Not to mention, where's the fun?

Oh, and here's the PSU I plan to use:

Pico PSU 120w

[MrDigital]

I'm not sure how that's more expensive by the time you factor in a custom case. Maybe getting a quality custom case is cheaper than I think.

[James]

We'll see.

***GRRRRRR!!!***

Update: My supplier for the motherboard has fallen through. I will update the thread when I can locate a new one.

[James]

Well, this is a thread resurrection.

After finding a new, better paying job, and having several of the component providers fall through, I finally, finally, have ordered all the parts for this NAS system. Save for the CPU. (I will probably grab that from eBay)
Nexcom EBC500 5.25" embedded motherboard (now with two PCIe gigabit nics, and supports teaming!)
SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B 5-in-3 SATA hotswap enclosure
4GB Sandisk Extreme III CF card for the OS
4GB (2x2GB) Kingston Low profile DDR2-800 RAM
Supermicro PCIe riser (left hand)
PicoPSU and power brick
4x 1.5TB Seagate hdd's

T7200 2.0GHz 4MB L2 cache Socket M CPU (34w)

All of the parts should arrive in the next few weeks.

I'll post pics as I get it. I've also found a small shop that does custom metalwork as well as waterjet metal cuts to help me fab the case/enclosure.

So far, the only thing that has actually arrived is the PSU. Man that thing is small! (Pics tomorrow when I bring my camera to work.)

[Colossus]

Great looking forward to this

I have had to return quite a few Seagate 1.5TB so hopefully you wont run into the problems I did
Maybe you had received a newer firmware or they fixed whatever problems I was experiencing.. A few of my 1.5TB drives would start to get bad sectors with only hours of use.

[James]

Great looking forward to this

I have had to return quite a few Seagate 1.5TB so hopefully you wont run into the problems I did
Maybe you had received a newer firmware or they fixed whatever problems I was experiencing.. A few of my 1.5TB drives would start to get bad sectors with only hours of use.

Newegg has a link to the updated firmware on their site. The shipping firmware apparently corrupted data, caused timeouts, etc. in RAID configurations. I will be updating all of the drives firmware before I even start to connect them to the RAID controller.

[vertices]

OpenFiler is an awesome free NAS OS. With very reliable iSCSI support. I've been running it in a VM for some time now and use it as an iSCSI target with Windows Server 2008 builtin image based backup. You should take a look at it.

[James]

OpenFiler is an awesome free NAS OS. With very reliable iSCSI support. I've been running it in a VM for some time now and use it as an iSCSI target with Windows Server 2008 builtin image based backup. You should take a look at it.

I'm probably going to start with a stripped Ubuntu Server version, and move to my own Linuxfromscratch build once I complete it. I don't like Openfiler due to the size, and lack of features that I want. (Areca Hardware RAID drivers, XFS filesystem support, x64 source code) The ultimate long term goal is to roll my own linux build that uses busybox dropbear for ssh, samba, iptables, and xfs kernel drivers.

*Edit: At the beginning of this flight of fancy I went through all the currently available NAS OS's, Openfiler, FreeNAS, and a few others. None of them is what I'm looking for specifically. You know what they say, necessity (or stupidity) is the mother of invention.

[vertices]

I wish you luck! I thought OpenFiler was sweet. Although I really like running stuff like that in VMs as I don't have to worry about HW support or monitoring.

[James]

I wish you luck! I thought OpenFiler was sweet. Although I really like running stuff like that in VMs as I don't have to worry about HW support or monitoring.

*Edit: I've actually just started re-perusing the Openfiler site. Seems like they've made a lot of progress since February. Maybe I'll give it a go. The only thing I want to find out is if it can run without a swap space. (running the OS from a CF card.)

**Edit again: I think I will try Openfiler 2.3. It's x64, supports xfs, supports Areca hardware, and offers NIC bonding. Those are the major features I'm interested in.

Oh, and no pics today. I forgot my camera at home.

[Colossus]

I have wanted to try openfiler but my NAS box has a custom commercial stripped down linux version.

So the firmware is on the egg's site? Have a link? Probably find it before you post the link =) I have 8 drives to update then =/