Random Synapses

I have a small network set up at home, and a bunch of files I’d like to share easily without the need to keep my computer on all the time. Clearly, a file server is my solution, but there are 1001 ways to make one.

The obvious choice is to get a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. Lots of these are popping all over the market. Some are as simple as a hard drive in an external box with an Ethernet connectors, others can create redundancy over several hard drives and even run applications on their own.

Pros: they’re quiet and don’t eat up a lot of electricity.

Cons: oh boy, what a long list. The cheap ones require all computers to install some software, have limits in number of concurrent accesses and use the unreliable FAT instead of NTFS or some other file system. The more expensive ones have a severe problem with performance; RAID is incredibly slow, defining access restrictions is quirky at best, and I could go on for days.

If you want to go in detail about what’s available on the market, SmallNetBuilder.com site has an entire section dedicated to NAS.

So, about a year ago I rescued an old computer from a second hand shop. It’s a pretty decent Dell desktop, with enough juice to run a dedicated file server software, and then some. I maxed out the memory installed on it and added a fat hard drive with plenty of space. Then, I began looking around for software options. I crossed out Windows in a second, as it’s a resource hog and requires constant maintenance. I could install some decent Linux, but I dreaded customizing it for the role I had in mind. And finally, there are some specialized Linux/BSD distributions for file servers that caught my eye, all oriented towards simplicity of use and complete remote management through a friendly browser interface.

First to look at was OpenFiler, considering the reviews. All seemed nice, except it would play really well in a network with Active Directory or LDAP for managing accounts, and I really didn’t feel like tinkering with it to make it run one.

Next was FreeNAS, a BSD spin-off, which survived on this box for a few weeks. It’s weird at configuring drives and shares, and the account authentication is still problematic. Plus, I’m reading lots of posts about people losing data in the event of an upgrade. Not fun.

Now I’m downloading the recently released new version of ClarkConnect. It’s more than what I need, but I can “opt-out” on extra features. But even before I install it, the information available on it warn me that the particular Dell hardware I have may not be supported and may not work. Tut tut.

Worst case scenario, I’ll just get Ubuntu Linux (possibly Server) installed and running for what I need. At least with that one I know that I’ll have open possibilities and loads of help. But, for the sake of keeping resources low, I’ll end up fiddling with this as much as if I kept running Windows, if not more.

Looks like I’m going in circles. What solution would/did make you happy?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 1:13 am and is filed under PC stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.