Lets talk about NAS/Backups

[8mpg]

Im looking for some ideas on creating some redundant backup for a home network. Right now Im using SyncToy and backing up each week or so to and external hard drive on a Thermaltake BlackX with an internal 1tb drive.

Im thinking a NAS device would be good on a raid setup for the redundancy. Im backing up 3-4 computers crap right now on my desktop internal drive, then off to the external 1tb.

Any suggestions? Cheap is always nice. Reading some decent things about the Dlink 323 NAS. Drobo has mixed reviews and is EXPENSIVE.

[roliath]

Stay away from drobos for home use, they are pricey and they are slow. The 323 is okay but it has its issues from what i've seen in a *nix environment. I would seriously just build an ITX machine and load it up with drives.

[8mpg]

FreeNAS is looking like a good idea... I think you are onto something

Ok, after researching for a couple hours now, I think Im going with FreeNAS with Raid 10. Redundancy with some speed. Also nice because you can lose a 0 or 1 drive and still have all the info. Downside is a 4 drive minimum and only 1/2 the amount of space.

[ceyko]

FreeNAS is looking like a good idea... I think you are onto something

Ok, after researching for a couple hours now, I think Im going with FreeNAS with Raid 10. Redundancy with some speed. Also nice because you can lose a 0 or 1 drive and still have all the info. Downside is a 4 drive minimum and only 1/2 the amount of space.

I'd have to seriously recommend Free NAS as well.

I've used off the shelf NAS devices...

A RAID 5 box from Buffalo - I will never buy another Buffalo product. RMA'ed it 3 times and every time it was a complete loss of data - even at RAID 5. 1-3 hours on hold waiting for someone to answer too. They were great when you got someone on the phone, but until then - and the reliability issues...

I currently use a simple RAID 0 DNS-321. Zero reliability issues, and then I backup the DNS-321 to another hard drive. I used to backup that drive to Mozy - but until they make that software less...clunky - I'm not using consumer based on-line backups. ***The D-Link boxes are great, but nothing you can't accomplish on your own, cheaper and with ALL the functionality you want.

Anyway, with freenas you get ALL the features you could possibly want, all the protocols and standard hardware reliability. Nothing proprietary, so easy swaps and such in the even of a hardware failure.

[8mpg]

I'd have to seriously recommend Free NAS as well.

I've used off the shelf NAS devices...

A RAID 5 box from Buffalo - I will never buy another Buffalo product. RMA'ed it 3 times and every time it was a complete loss of data - even at RAID 5. 1-3 hours on hold waiting for someone to answer too. They were great when you got someone on the phone, but until then - and the reliability issues...

I currently use a simple RAID 0 DNS-321. Zero reliability issues, and then I backup the DNS-321 to another hard drive. I used to backup that drive to Mozy - but until they make that software less...clunky - I'm not using consumer based on-line backups. ***The D-Link boxes are great, but nothing you can't accomplish on your own, cheaper and with ALL the functionality you want.

Anyway, with freenas you get ALL the features you could possibly want, all the protocols and standard hardware reliability. Nothing proprietary, so easy swaps and such in the even of a hardware failure.

The more I read last night the more I got confused. It looks like ZFS is the best way to go when doing a raid setup which isnt exactly raid to begin with. The only downside is you need more processing power and more ram than a standard raid setup. From what I read, they say 4gb ram and a dual core where as a raid setup can use an Intel Atom processor and 1gb of ram.

Any thoughts? Any experience with ZFS?

[hunt4m3x]

Freenas is the SHIT.

Hostname hunt4m3x.local
Version 0.7.1 Shere (revision 5065)
Built on Tue Mar 9 22:40:04 UTC 2010
OS Version FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE-p7 (revision 199506)
Platform amd64-full on Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU 330 @ 1.60GHz
Space: 11% of 4.0TB
Total: 4.0T | Used: 420G | Free: 3.2T

4tb in a raid 5. 1.5tb x 4

500$ total.

I bought a acer homestore for work, flashed to freenas. 4x2tb in raid 5

[ceyko]

The more I read last night the more I got confused. It looks like ZFS is the best way to go when doing a raid setup which isnt exactly raid to begin with. The only downside is you need more processing power and more ram than a standard raid setup. From what I read, they say 4gb ram and a dual core where as a raid setup can use an Intel Atom processor and 1gb of ram.

Any thoughts? Any experience with ZFS?

Na, to be honest I'm a Network/UC/etc guy, not a Systems Admin. I always kept my RAID setups simple. What I prefer is either RAID 5 (if 3 or more drives) or RAID 1 (if 2 drives) and then use NFS for anything that can use it. (they have options for Windows)

How are you actually going to get the data to the drive?

Once thing nice is you can use NFS too, which WAS (dunno if it still is) supported by VMWare. So I ran a few VMs off my NAS. Quite sluggish, but if you low on local drive space...

I've NEVER touched RAID 10. To be honest, most things I deal with today are RAID 0 and we just worry about backups. Even my current 2 drive NAS is RAID 0 and I back it up. However, if you're going to have 4 or more 1TB drives - it'll be difficult to find places to backup 4TB so RAID 5 or whatever makes sense.

For the record, I had to find a solution fast and after the expensive Buffalo solution let me down it had to be cheap. As soon as this D-Link solution craps out, I'll be switching to FreeNAS as well.

Sill me with the Buffalo thing. You'd think a fairly high priced appliance would be reliable. For data backup (home), I could careless about uber high speeds. Just reliability.