Need info for NAS setup

[Jonathan Lemmens]

I have some old hardware lying around and I was planning to build myself a NAS. For OS, I'm currently looking at NAS4Free, because the hardware will not be able to handle Newer versions of FreeNAS (definitely not ZFS).

 

However I'm a total networking noob. In this video Linus mentions to read the "Highly recommended 60+ page .pdf written by Cyberjock from the freeNAS forums" 

 I can't seem to find this document or for that matter any other information like "NAS for noobs". Does anyone have some easy to read guides or tutorials for FreeNAS or NAS4free?

 

Anyway, I'm not fixed on NAS4free, If you can recommend a different OS, I'm all ears. Any help will be appreciated.

I'll list the hardware below.

 

Intel DQ45EK mobo

Core2Duo E8400 3.0GHz

8GB DDR2 Ram

6x 500GB HDD's

 

[littlepigboy5]

5 minutes ago, Jonathan Lemmens said:

I have some old hardware lying around and I was planning to build myself a NAS. For OS, I'm currently looking at NAS4Free, because the hardware will not be able to handle Newer versions of FreeNAS (definitely not ZFS).

 

However I'm a total networking noob. In this video Linus mentions to read the "Highly recommended 60+ page .pdf written by Cyberjock from the freeNAS forums" 

 I can't seem to find this document or for that matter any other information like "NAS for noobs". Does anyone have some easy to read guides or tutorials for FreeNAS or NAS4free?

 

Anyway, I'm not fixed on NAS4free, If you can recommend a different OS, I'm all ears. Any help will be appreciated.

I'll list the hardware below.

 

Intel DQ45EK mobo

Core2Duo E8400 3.0GHz

8GB DDR2 Ram

6x 500GB HDD's

 

Tek Syndicate has plentey of great tutorials and explanations of networking, and a lot of NAS stuff as well, and if you're looking for a way to learn I would definately reccomend checking out their networking videos, very informative.  FreeNasVid(

)  This will teach you how to use FreeNas which shuold be fine with your hardware.  You can search there channels for other networking and nas vids(they have some great build videos) to learn more.

[Jonathan Lemmens]

11 minutes ago, littlepigboy5 said:

Tek Syndicate has plentey of great tutorials and explanations of networking, and a lot of NAS stuff as well, and if you're looking for a way to learn I would definately reccomend checking out their networking videos, very informative.  FreeNasVid(

 

)  This will teach you how to use FreeNas which shuold be fine with your hardware.  You can search there channels for other networking and nas vids(they have some great build videos) to learn more.

Thanks, i've seen this and many video's like it. but I'm actually looking for a little more background information. (preferably text instead of a video)

The problem I have with video's like this is that whenever they say "do this and that, and then this should happen" if 'this' doesn't happen op my pc, I'm at a loss  

 

Edit: Is this hardware really good enough to run FreeNAS? Most sources I have say 8GB RAM minimum, preferably more...

[littlepigboy5]

Just now, Jonathan Lemmens said:

Thanks, i've seen this and many video's like it. but I'm actually looking for a little more background information. (preferably text instead of a video)

The problem I have with video's like this is that whenever they say "do this and that, and then this should happen" if 'this' doesn't happen op my pc, I'm at a loss  

ok, i understand, I'll try and give you some background.  Basically a NAS(network attatched Storage) function as a box that stores data, usually in your house connected to your home network, but it can be anywhere.  Old motherboards and cpus are great for Nas because they don't require a lot of power.  If you want to keep your data safe, as a priority, stick with raid 1, but if speed is also a factor, try raid 0, 10, 5, or 6.  5 & 6 are recommend for 3-8 drives.  This Nas will be attatched to your network, preferably via ethernet, and depending on your setup, will be avaliable on all of your pcs connected to that network.  Your "Network" is made up of your PCs, and other devices, and most likely your modem/router providing you with an internet connection.  I assume you don't have a network switch, so you will have to plug your nas directly into each PC, or if speed is not a concern, you could put a wifi card in your nas and make it wireless.  Let me know if you have any specific questions

[Jonathan Lemmens]

Thanks, I was aware of this already. I guess I'm not such a noob after all  

Maybe it helps if I tell a little about my plans:

I play in a band and we like to use this NAS to store and share our music with eachother. I planned to use five 500GB drives in RAID 5 and one 500GB or 1TB drive to manually mirror our most important data to (a little unorthodox, I know). So far I have installed FreeNAS 9.3 on a 16GB flash drive, and got stuck at the point where FreeNAS would detect none of my drives (or I couldn't add drives or whatever) but they do all show in the BIOS. This all happened like a month ago, after I got no further with it I left it gathering dust... untill now. I have a simple LAN at home, just 2 pc's connected through the router. If this wasn't as plug-and-play as it was, I wouldn't know how to set this op either.

 

It pretty much boils down to this: I know very little about networking, I started this project full of ignorance and it left me pretty dissapointed. I'd like to start again and learn this stuff but I have no idea where to start.

[Jarsky]

FreeNAS doesn't support RAID anymore, it only supports ZFS so you'd have to create a RAIDZ1 if you wanted the ZFS equivelant to a RAID5.

Are you still having an issue with it not detecting your drives? Are your drives in IDE or SATA (AHCI) mode in BIOS?

 

You don't really need to know much about networking for these systems.

Your biggest thing once you get past setting up your pool, is going to be generally configuring your shares (most probably CIFS) and your user/group permissions.

Because you most likely have a standard workgroup with just a couple of devices, this should be fairly straight forward

 

If you've already switched to NAS4FREE what sort of issues are you having?

[Jonathan Lemmens]

All drives are SATA 2, I think they were in AHCI mode, though I have to check to be sure. Everything is in pieces in a box right now.

If i can't use ZFS, I'd have to go with either stripe or mirror, right? 

 

I guess my biggest problem is "language". I don't know what a 'pool' is (all my HDD's I guess?) or what my domain is or whatever.... I have no idea what my DHCP settings are and what they are supposed to be, or where to find them. About those shares I heard I need CIFS for windows, but I don't know why, or what any of the others are for.  

 

I'm probably asking for more information than I actually need, I guess I need it to feel more secure about what I'm doing.

[Byte]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Lemmens said:

I have no idea what my DHCP settings are and what they are supposed to be, or where to find them.

DHCP is a protocol, the server is usually running on your NAT router and the purpose of it is to assign LAN internal IPs to your stations (clients).

[Jarsky]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Lemmens said:

All drives are SATA 2, I think they were in AHCI mode, though I have to check to be sure. Everything is in pieces in a box right now.

If i can't use ZFS, I'd have to go with either stripe or mirror, right? 

 

I guess my biggest problem is "language". I don't know what a 'pool' is (all my HDD's I guess?) or what my domain is or whatever.... I have no idea what my DHCP settings are and what they are supposed to be, or where to find them. About those shares I heard I need CIFS for windows, but I don't know why, or what any of the others are for.  

 

I'm probably asking for more information than I actually need, I guess I need it to feel more secure about what I'm doing.

 

ZFS is a bit different as its not just a basic file system like FAT32 or NTFS or EXT3/4 - it has smart features and allows u to manage disks into pools which is a fancy way of saying an array (a number of disks that belong to a group).

 

Essentially, you have the physical disks, then you use software to 'group' the disks into a pool - that pool is then setup in a configuration. for ZFS that would be something like a RAIDZ1 (which is striped raid + 1 disk parity...aka RAID5), RAIDZ2 (striped raid +2 disk parity...aka RAID6), etc....

 

There are different types of RAID depending on your individual setup and configuration

Traditional Hardware RAID

Windows Software RAID (RAID5  / StorageSpaces)

Linux Software RAID (MDADM)

UnRAID (JBOD + PARITY)

FreeNAS (ZFS RAID)

etc.....

 

As for your other questions:

Domain - You won't be using a Domain, this is a particular network setup that uses Active Directory to centralise user/computer configuration/security. You will be using a Workgroup, so don't worry about domains.

DHCP - This is a setting that automatically assigns an IP address to the machine, no configuration required. Generally your modemrouter will have a build in DHCP server, which is where it gets the info from. You can disable this and setup IP Address/Gateway manually if you want too.

CIFS - This is the protocol used for Windows sharing, you need to enable a CIFS share to see the shared folders on the network and be able to interact with them from Windows File Explore. Different services use different protocols. e.g Plex streaming uses what's called DLNA, OS-X/Apple again can use different protocols but they also support SMB. 

[Jonathan Lemmens]

56 minutes ago, Jarsky said:

 

ZFS is a bit different.............

Thanks, that was helpful. I´ve started putting the hardware back together to give it another shot  

 

I would still appreciate it if someone could post a link where i can learn stuff like this.