Addonics Mini NAS

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The Addonics Mini NAS is a small portable Network Attached Storage enclosure solution in the market. Come built in with fast Ethernet 10/100Mbps connection, any 2.5″ SATA hard drive or Solid State Drive (SSD) can be installed into the Mini NAS and become instantly sharable over the LAN. A USB printer can also be shared over the LAN simultaneously when attached to the Mini NAS. With a size equivalent to a VHS tape cassette and weight less than a pound, the Mini NAS can be easily moved around or installed into a very small space.

Similar to the NAS adapter, the Mini NAS supports both SMB (Server Message Block) and the open source Samba network protocols, allowing for cross-platform access of all shared data for most versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and various Linux distributions. For remote users who are not connected over the LAN, the Mini NAS provides FTP access for up to 8 simultaneous users anywhere in the world with an internet connection. In addition, the Mini NAS can also be configured Bit-Torrent downloading appliance or as an iTune media server..

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Gluster enhances open-source clustered NAS

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Gluster adds data storage management, virtual server support to open-source clustered NAS

Gluster is joining a recent wave of emerging vendors adding enterprise storage management features to clustered network-attached storage (NAS) systems based on commodity hardware with this week’s release of the Gluster Storage Platform.

Gluster came out of stealth in 2007 with GlusterFS, a scale-out file system for clustered NAS based on open-source code but reengineered “from the ground up,” according to senior director of marketing Jack O’Brien. Version 2 of GlusterFS came out last May with striping, data replication and management tools.

The Gluster Storage Platform, which became available this week, continues to build on those management features with a new software delivery model, an updated Web-based management GUI, and new support for virtual servers, including the ability to self-heal data errors in virtual server environments.

With the Gluster Storage Management Platform, users can now get GlusterFS, the Linux operating system kernel layer and management tools in one package loaded on a thumb drive. Gluster calls this “clustered storage on a stick.” This package also includes a two-step installation process with the goal of making the open-source software accessible to customers who aren’t used to working with code. “We call this release rated ‘E’ for everyone,” O’Brien said.

Similarly, the Gluster Storage Platform uses a Web-based GUI that’s added support for more of Gluster’s management features, such as event logging, which used to require a command line interface.

Finally, though not officially certified with any major server virtualization vendor yet, Gluster is offering support for running virtual machines (VMs) on its clustered NAS. Customers who choose this option can use the cluster’s internal replication to provide high availability (HA) failover for VMs running on the cluster, which is set up using a checkbox at the time of installation. From there, the file system automatically handles the replication using the underlying object-based storage system.

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DIY NAS with Debian Lenny

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Versia has a comprehensive guide to setting up Debian 5.0 on a VIA ARTiGO A2000 barebones storage server:

After playing with FreeNAS I ended up using Debian for my server. FreeNAS is a great distribution if you want an out of the box experience, but I found it hard to customise, mostly because I’m not very familiar with BSDs. Also, they are switching to Debian for the next version. So, Debian it is.

This post will explain how to set up a NAS server with Debian running essential services such as ssh, samba, nfs, cups, rdiff-backup and rtorrent with a web interface; and using two HDDs in RAID 1 mode with everything encrypted. It took me awhile to research all bits and pieces, hopefully it will save you time if you are going to do a similar set up.

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FreeNAS ready for the next step – Future of FreeNAS

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freenas logo 100x100Olivier Cochard-Labbé, the original founder of the FreeNAS Project, has indicated that FreeNAS is in need of some big modification to remove some of its current  limitations (one of the biggest is the non support of easly users add-ons).

This will probably require a full-rewrite of the FreeNAS base.

He also mentions that plans with regards to the future of FreeNAS are:

- Volker, the current FreeNAS project leader and main developer, will create a new project called “‘OpenMediaVault” based on a GNU/Linux using all its experience acquired with all its nights and week-ends spent to improve FreeNAS during the last 2 years. He still continue to work on FreeNAS (and try to share its time with this 2 projects).

ixsystems logo- And, a great surprise: iXsystems, a company specialized in professional FreeBSD  products and services, has offered to take FreeNAS under their wings as an open source community driven project. This  mean that they will involve their professionals FreeBSD developers to FreeNAS! Their manpower will permit to do a full-rewriting of FreeNAS.

Olivier will come back to actively work on FreeNAS and begin to upgrade it to FreeBSD 8.0 (that is “production ready” for ZFS).

FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.

Cheap and NASty – How to Build a FreeNAS Server

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MaximumPC has a step-by-step article (Cheap and NASty – How to Build an Open Source FreeNAS Server) on how to set up your own FreeNAS NAS server. All this step-by-step with many photographs and suggestions as to the best hardware you’ll need for your FreeNAS server, how to install and configure your server.

If you’ve been wanting to set up your own NAS storage server, this is definitely for you.

Don’t want to pay for Windows Home Server? We show you how FreeNAS lets you create a server for storing, sharing, and streaming all your digital content—for free!

Back in the day, the average nerd household had one or two computers, a printer, and a game console. If you were lucky, you had an Internet connection on one of those computers—forget about the printer; forget about the console. And forget about home networking. But now, the average geek household has a multitude of machines: desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones, and networked game consoles—not to mention terabytes of ripped movies, music, and photos. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a central location where all of those files lived that was accessible to all your computing devices? A place where you could back up all of your computers, host your media files for streaming to your console or other computers, and use as a file share for your whole network? Yes. Yes, it would.

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Five ways the no-cost server software can benefit your home network

1. Storage

Let’s face it: A family’s worth of home movies, music collections, photos, school assignments, and ripped DVDs takes up a lot of room. Rather than keeping all that content scattered among four computers and six external hard drives, centralize! Use FreeNAS as a central repository for your family’s media, so everyone can access it.

2. Media Server

A FreeNAS server isn’t just a place to store your media—it’s also a fully featured media streaming machine in its own right. The built-in Firefly media streamer creates a library in iTunes that anyone on the network can access. And with FUPPES, the open-source UPnP server, you can transcode and stream movies to your networked computers, HTPC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or any other UPnP or DLNA-enabled media player. It also streams photos and music!

3. BitTorrent Downloading Machine

Rather than wasting your personal machine’s processor cycles and bandwidth, use your FreeNAS server to automatically download and seed .torrent files. We’ll show you how to set a watch folder so that your NAS will immediately download any torrent it finds there.

4. Web Server

FreeNAS is configured through a web GUI, which means FreeNAS has a built-in web server. You can use FreeNAS to host your own websites—and even access them from outside your home network!

5. Backup Server

Back up all your computers to your NAS box—whether you’re an advanced Unix user and back up using FreeNAS’s built-in rsync support, or you merely point your backup software toward your FreeNAS user folder, a FreeNAS server is a great centralized location for data archives.

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