New member - Wanting input about NAS

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New member - Wanting input about NAS

Postby rc2904 » Sun Oct 13, 2013 5:34 am

Hello everyone,
Im fairly new to linux. I got my raspberry pi model b a few weeks ago and started out with raspbmc. After a while I got bored and wasnt really learning anything so I decided to reinstall with Arch and set up a web server. So far that is going great.

I also have a need for network storage. This is just for home use so I ordered the pogoplug series 4. I realize this has less memory and processing power than an earlier version but I still picked this one due to the number of interfaces and form factor. I know that I probably wont be able to do everything on my wish list but id just like to get some input from someone who has more experience than myself with setting up NAS on one of these devices to help set my expectations of what I can do.

NAS Wishlist
- iscsi, samba, nfs, FTP support.
- ssd cache or some form of performance tiering to a faster drive that is plugged into the sata dock connector.
- Given that the CPU power is limited, would the processing overhead from RAID eat my overall performance? Interested in RAID 1 (mirror) two external usb drives.
- some form of web browser based management like freeNAS has would be awesome so I dont have to SSH in just to quickly share a flash drive or SD card. I could probably even settle for an automount + auto create samba share when new drives are plugged in. Just some way to keep day to day useability simple.
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Re: New member - Wanting input about NAS

Postby moonman » Sun Oct 13, 2013 7:33 am

SAMBA, NFS, FTP works. Never tried (or heard of anyone trying iscsi). The RAID1 or 0 will be slow and may be terribly slow depending how you choose to connect the drives. For web based administration people tend to use webmin.
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Re: New member - Wanting input about NAS

Postby rc2904 » Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:18 pm

Awesome. What about ssd cache? I know a lot of higher end SAN and NAS systems can do this. Has it been ported over or is it unrealistic with this kind of low end hardware?
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Re: New member - Wanting input about NAS

Postby WarheadsSE » Sun Oct 13, 2013 4:38 pm

You are going to cap out at about 18MB/s transfer rates, and that is from the nature and connectivity in the SoC + RAM size. Even with an SSD, your network speeds will be slightly limited.

I have used iSCSI from a GoFex Net - it works, but it caps around 13MB/s from a Windows box to iSCSI target on the GFN.

The V4 is great to due to price, availability, form factor, and available interfaces. It is however limited due to the system clock and bus speeds.
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Re: New member - Wanting input about NAS

Postby rc2904 » Sat Oct 19, 2013 3:44 pm

Appreciate your input. Heres an update.
I got my pogoplug series 4. Before installing arch I gave it a fair try on the normal software and it just does not fit my needs. I installed Arch with no issues. Set up all the extra stuff like udevil, samba, webmin, fought with static ip for a while, etc. So far I really like it. I think im going to keep it simple for home file shares and get something with more power like an odroid to tinker with iscsi and raid. I may do a revert and start over with a clean image and do a more minimal install.

I have gotten it to the point where I can plug in a drive and udevil will automount it to /media and then I just have to restart the samba service to get the new drive to share. I would prefer if i could get samba to share the drive as soon as its mounted so I dont have to teach my wife how to ssh into the plug and restart the service to access her thumb drive or pull pictures from her SD card. Is this something that I could mod from udevil to mount + restart samba on insertion? Or should I approach it from a different angle? After I get this sorted out ill probably try to work with that eject button to see if I can make it trigger a graceful shutdown.
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Re: New member - Wanting input about NAS

Postby WarheadsSE » Sat Oct 19, 2013 6:41 pm

As a heads up, you do not need to do a full revert to start over with a clean rootfs. You can simple reformat & re-extract the rootfs as root from a LiveCD.
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Re: New member - Wanting input about NAS

Postby grayman4hire » Sat Oct 19, 2013 9:43 pm

Not sure why you need to restart samba. Does udevil automatically modify the samba.conf file?

How about sharing out the /media folder via SAMBA?
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