LekroNAS - 16TB raw (8TB with two drive redundancy) expandable NAS build (NOT good looking) using FreeNAS

[_ASSASSIN_]

Done!

 

Here's some pictures of the NAS. I didn't want to move it around much, so the light isn't great, but everything (necessary) can be seen. I also need to improve my photography skills ;P

I blurred out the side cable mess. Need to clean that up sometime ;P

Basically everything (except CPU) can be seen in here. 

Here's that internal USB port that I'm going to try to boot off of so I won't have a flash drive sticking out the back.

Top of CPU cooler and DIMMs.

PSU.

A view with the window on.

I'll be using this USB stick. It's an old one, but still works, and that's what matters.

pretty well done for a newbie at photography.

[lekro]

pretty well done for a newbie at photography.

 

Thanks. I just wanted to get some better angles and maybe focus on the right things. Maybe I'll do that sometime, but for now, testing continues.

 

Just installed FreeNAS on that USB stick and booted it. It uses nginx for the webGUI, which at first glance looks quite robust. Testing from here is probably a better idea than using Debian, as I can control it from another room and do everything from one chair.

 

 

However, it's a bit different as it's FreeBSD, not Linux, but many things are similar. One easily noticeable change is the change of drive names:

/dev/sdx -> /dev/ada#

[alpenwasser]

Looking nice and clean.

Don't forget to stop by this thread, at 16 TB you qualify for the

10 TB+ rankings.

[lekro]

Looking nice and clean.

Don't forget to stop by this thread, at 16 TB you qualify for the

10 TB+ rankings.

Thanks! I just posted on that thread - hopefully the software setup doesn't need to be complete.

[lekro]

I connected using SSH to the NAS. It was remarkably easy. I just created a new user for myself, enabled SSH, and logged in with putty.

 

I am now doing some final testing with badblocks, following the guide found over here. Running the tests simultaneously on all drives will take about 20 hours.

 

I made a few errors when typing the commands (such as not typing or mistyping sudo). Please blissfully ignore those and pay no attention to the empty space where my name used to be.

[lekro]

Well, looks like these tests are going to take around 64 hours, of which 30 are done, so next update in two days or so ;P

 

edit: ~85% done. Should be done by tomorrow sometime

[lekro]

Here's how those badblocks tests look on disk I/O...

These graphs are from the FreeNAS webGUI.

 

 

badblocks does entire-disk pattern writes, then reads to verify that all values are as expected. If set with -w, it DOES destroy all data present on any tested disks, although with only zeroes on my disks, I had no data to lose anyway.

[lekro]

While badblocks was running, I set up emails from FreeNAS. I used the following options to use Google's SMTP server:

From email: root@freenas.localSMTP server: smtp.google.comPort 587TLS authenticationUser/pass required: YesUsername: [email address]Password: [password]

 

 

Now that the badblocks tests are done, I will do a SMART long test, which will conclude my testing and burn-in.

[lekro]

Well, it looks like it's all set up. Doing this was a breeze through the WebGUI.

 

Unfortunately, though, it seems that my computer's network card is too slow to fathom the speeds of the NAS. (I need to run a wire down here or get a non-9-year-old WLAN card.) However, testing on another computer sitting next to the NAS gave me ~40 MB/s. If I can produce optimal conditions, that would probably double. (?)

 

 

Ahhh, now to remember the good old days when disks were small and MapleStory games were big.

 

 

For comparison, the other computer copied twice as much in ~15 minutes.

[lekro]

Update! Back from vacation. Connecting my computer directly to the router gave me ~93 MB/s. Now all I need to do is get a better connection to the NAS ....

 

Music streaming and tagging works flawlessly with foobar2000. The NAS's speeds are almost as fast as my secondary hard disk.

 

So far, I'd say this project was a success. However, I still have some more playing around to do - what else can I make the NAS do?

[_ASSASSIN_]

Update! Back from vacation. Connecting my computer directly to the router gave me ~93 MB/s. Now all I need to do is get a better connection to the NAS ....

 

Music streaming and tagging works flawlessly with foobar2000. The NAS's speeds are almost as fast as my secondary hard disk.

 

So far, I'd say this project was a success. However, I still have some more playing around to do - what else can I make the NAS do?

you could run plex, only downside is that it costs money for the android version with a free version for NAS's.

Plex is pretty useful if you store all your anime on their and want to stream it to your devices.

[lekro]

you could run plex, only downside is that it costs money for the android version with a free version for NAS's.

Plex is pretty useful if you store all your anime on their and want to stream it to your devices.

I could, but then I'd have to, as you said, pay money for the android version. Currently using ES file manager to navigate the CIFS share works just fine for me. The speeds of ~10 MB/s I get from my phone are good enough.

 

As for the i-devices other people in the house use, they can probably find some DLNA/uPnP browser to work with miniDLNA if there isn't a CIFS share browser and decent video player on the horribly locked down iOS. (unless Plexserver will transcode to DLNA/uPnP)

 

Plugin configuration was the next step, but I'm currently busy just cleaning out my old hard disk in preparation for a clean wipe, so I haven't installed any plugins.