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custom NAS appliance without the hack



I've bee looking around for a relatively low cost 4-drive NAS appliance 
that could be hacked to run Linux (or further customized if it already 
did) or FreeBSD (FreeNAS w/ZFS). They're available, but once you get 
into 4-bay devices, they become disproportionately expensive (typically 
$600+), relative to the cost of the components they are built from.

(A Western Digital ShareSpace can be found populated with only 2 drives 
for a bit over $300. A great deal, given the drives alone are worth $180 
~ $200, but it would need to be hacked in order to be customized.)

Looking at the available components, if you want something compact and 
low power, the first challenge is finding a suitable enclosure. There's 
not much on the market for NAS appliances that isn't proprietary.

I did find this Chenbro Mini ITX case with 4 hot-swap SATA trays:
http://usa.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?sku=79

Not bad, but it departs from the typical cube design, instead turning 
the drives sideways, to create a narrow tower. The power supply is 
external, and the bays aren't trayless. For a hunk of sheet metal and a 
power supply, it's also a tad expensive at $160+. To get a NAS you need 
to add a Mini-ITX board to it, which is going to run another $140 (for a 
model w/4 SATA ports), plus CPU and RAM. The low-power oriented Mini-ITX 
boards with Atom CPUs ($75) don't support enough SATA ports. A PCI card 
might be an option.

Then I ran across the VIA barebones systems specifically aimed at OEM 
and DIY NAS appliances. They've got a 2-bay model[1][2] that comes with 
a motherboard incorporating their 1.5 GHz VIA C7-D CPU, so it should be 
fairly power efficient (one review said 29 watts; low noise too: 26dB). 
They've also incorporated a CF slot for storing the embedded OS, which 
is great. That can be found for a bit over $200. Add some RAM and a CF 
card loaded with FreeNAS and you're good to go.

A nice box, even if it uses an external power supply and you have to 
disassemble it to swap drives. You'd be hard pressed to find any other 
built-it-yourself solution that is as small, but commercial 2-bay NAS 
appliances that are well supported by hacks aren't that hard to find, 
and some are cheaper (D-Link DNS-321). (Though I suspect most are 
probably running slower CPUs, and many don't have GB Ethernet.)

VIA also has an 8-bay version[3], which sounds like it uses similar 
controller hardware (same CPU) plus Wake-on-LAN, Wake-on-Alarm, watch 
dog timer, and of course 8 SATA ports. The case also comes with hot-swap 
trays and an internal power supply. This runs $600, which again seems 
disproportionate given that most of the difference is scaled up sheet metal.

Now if they only had a 4-bay version...

1. http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/embedded/artigo/a2000/index.jsp
2. 
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/11/review-via-artigo-a2000-barebone-storage-server/
3. http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/embedded/nsd7800/

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/






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