[alex84]

I recently was running freenas on an old computer connected to my asrock 330 xbmc machine. This was working alright but not perfect. After reading alot off reviews i decided for a pre built nas solution. The absolute winner was Qnap and there TS-809 Pro. That nas hade everything i needed and more to it. The downside, its expensive but i can justify it with an problem free nas, great community, kick ass pure performance =) ... Now i connect my asrock to my qnap ts-809 where i store all my data. My Qnap also runs sabnzbd, witch i am controlling with my xbmc machine using switch SABnzbd Plugin with rss feed from my favorite sites. The only regret i have is that i did not buy one sooner...

[GJones]

freenas is in the middle of a full rewrite by ixsystems to freebsd 8
The current stable has AIO support, and svn samba 3.5.2 - assuming you don't have a rubbish network card, performance sacrifice compared to linux is a thing of the past

But why bother with a system trying to catch up to Linux solutions when you can go with an established Linux solution?

[darkscout]

But why bother with a system trying to catch up to Linux solutions when you can go with an established Linux solution?

Please point to the established Linux solution with ZFS in kernel.

I'm running OpenSolaris as a Xen Dom0 with Debian as DomU and Windows 7 as a PVM.

I have 5 x1.5TB drives in RaidZ as my media tank and 2 x1TB drives in mirror as my Boot disk. (With a 200GB and 300GB disk in Mirror for Debian/Windows 7).

ZFS is about as easy to configure as it gets. NFS, SMB, iSCSI all in Kernel and EASY to setup:
zfs set sharesmb=on tank/Movies

I've even had a hard drive failure that it caught and fixed.

[ragonline]

One of the former developers of FreeNAS is doing a new NAS solution based on Debian. It is not released yet but it sure looks promising. Its called OpenMediaVault and can be found here: http://blog.openmediavault.org

[GJones]

Please point to the established Linux solution with ZFS in kernel.

I'm running OpenSolaris as a Xen Dom0 with Debian as DomU and Windows 7 as a PVM.

I have 5 x1.5TB drives in RaidZ as my media tank and 2 x1TB drives in mirror as my Boot disk. (With a 200GB and 300GB disk in Mirror for Debian/Windows 7).

ZFS is about as easy to configure as it gets. NFS, SMB, iSCSI all in Kernel and EASY to setup:
zfs set sharesmb=on tank/Movies

I've even had a hard drive failure that it caught and fixed.

Again, you are assuming I would use ZFS. That is not a correct assumption.

[GJones]

One of the former developers of FreeNAS is doing a new NAS solution based on Debian. It is not released yet but it sure looks promising. Its called OpenMediaVault and can be found here: http://blog.openmediavault.org

There are established products out there that work well with great performance. A new, untested product is not where you put several terabytes of data that is cumbersome (when possible) to recreate.

[ragonline]

I wouldn't say there are too many NAS solutions out there. Certainly not that are Open Source.
Anyway, I think there are people here that actually are interested in hearing about new solutions...

[TugboatBill]

I wouldn't say there are too many NAS solutions out there. Certainly not that are Open Source.
Anyway, I think there are people here that actually are interested in hearing about new solutions...

Yes, but a product that isn't even available is not a good option.

After ripping a few hundred DVDs/BRs to a NAS the last thing you want is untested/unreliable software.

[GJones]

Yes, but a product that isn't even available is not a good option.

After ripping a few hundred DVDs/BRs to a NAS the last thing you want is untested/unreliable software.

ding ding ding

[ragonline]

No, a product that is not ready yet is not a good option now, but it might well be the best option tomorrow.

As a current FreeNAS user I know I will switch once its ready and it seems I'm I'm not alone in this...

But for now I think FreeNAS is the best option out there.

[vikjon0]

Its called OpenMediaVault

No, a product that is not ready yet is not a good option now, but it might well be the best option tomorrow.

I also noticed OpenMediaVault and I will be interested to use it over freeNAS in the future. The main advantage is that it is debian based and thus more accessable for some of us. I will probably like to add stuff and customize like we do with xbmcLive.

After ripping a few hundred DVDs/BRs to a NAS the last thing you want is untested/unreliable software.

True, but the solution seem to be based on well known components which will make the reliability tests less troublesome.


Otherwise I really like what I hear about unraid..BUT it is not free. If I am spending my spare time to learn something I don't want to do that on a limited version.

[jmarshall]

Otherwise I really like what I hear about unraid..BUT it is not free. If I am spending my spare time to learn something I don't want to do that on a limited version.

One hopes you're referring to libre here . The actual cost of unRAID ($59 for 6 drives) is not all that bad considering the outlay for hardware. The real problem with it is it's not completely opensource. I suspect it would get much more uptake if it was - after all, it's essentially a device driver layer with a web interface to set it all up. Imagine if those two aspects received the attention of the wider community (the unRAID community does fantastically on the second considering what they have to work with.)

Cheers,
Jonathan

[vikjon0]

One hopes you're referring to libre here . The actual cost of unRAID ($59 for 6 drives) is not all that bad

I was referring to the monetary cost, but maybe you are right… the cost is not a problem for me or most other people. On the other hand…in this forum we spend hours and hours to avoid buying a remote or graphical card that is working out of the box to replace the crap we picked up somewhere.
My interest in open source is mostly oriented towards the free beer part. When I was working in erp consultancy I saw license cost killing service and solutions. It is sad to see a solution being less than it should due to price model restrictions. Of course, at that time the problem was somewhat bigger than 70 bucks.

[poofyhairguy]

Agreed. Unraid not being "free-as-in-beer" does make it less appealing (as does the pro version having a Windows OS price for licensing).

But after tons of research, I don't see how anything else compares. UnRaid gives you:

1. Ability to mix and match drives (FreeNAS and RAID solutions require all the same disks, which ends up costing more than buying "whatever is cheapest at the time").

2. Ability to grow the array (a limitation of RAIDZ from what I understand).

3. Ability to have a single drive provide redundancy for the entire array (both RAID 6 and WHS fail at this).

4. Ability to get the data off the individual drives (unlike RAID solutions).

5. Ability to spin down drives not in use for power saving (unlike RAID solutions).

Nothing else brings this much to the table. The downsides? Lack of stripped read speeds, a write bottleneck, and price. Considering that the first two downsides are pretty much useless with a media array, the cost ends up being the only reason this isn't the obvious solution.

When you research solutions for a media server is obvious that traditional RAID is better served in a business setting where maximum read/write performance is needed, and WHS was designed for regular people who think that 6TB is a lot of space.

If you are going to build a media server, and it is going to have more than 4 drives in it (which is needed- HD media fills 2TB drives like nothing), then the best solution is ponying up for Unraid.

I personally haven't done so yet, but I intend to once my Antec Three Hundred comes in. I am ready to stop playing with my storage solutions and start using them....

[vikjon0]

flexRAID is perhaps an alternative. I can't judge the quality but the system seems well suited for media collections.