Custom Linux NAS in the UK

[thattommyhall]

Hello guys, I've been using slimserver on my custom NAS's for about 3 months now.

There seems to be a gap in the market for a NAS powerful enough to run the latest slimserver with cpu hungry plugins like AlienBBC.
This is a bespoke Linux solution, configured to work out of the box with options to 8x750G drives.
It can update to the latest slimserver by issuing one command, has an AJAX themed web admin.
Ive also got uPnP AV, iTunes server (mt-daapd)
See http://www.youtube.com/view_play_lis...B71E73EBEB53E7 for video of it in action (1min13 sec to get it mounted as Z:\ drive in windows)
Check out prices at www.customstorage.co.uk
As they are built to order i can upgrade CPU, memory and give you a choice of SATA disks. Get in touch at customstorage@gmail.com for a custom quote.
Turn around is about 10 days.

Hope to get a few of you sorted with a high quality NAS.

Tom Hall

[thattommyhall]

http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=74B71E73EBEB53E7

[flipflip]

Hello

In one video you say something about CPU usage and AlienBBC. You say its "below 50%". How much is it exactly? What type of CPU is used?

Just to compare with a DS-106 series NAS: Playing the BBC Radio 1 stream, transcoded to FLAC uses about 35% for mplayer, 25% for perl and 6-8% for flac (total < 70%). These are 1 minute averages.

I'd be interested to know the details of the properties relevant for a NAS: How much power does it use (standby, idle, under load)? What about noise? What's the size of the box?

It would be nice to have more details on your website about the hardware components and software used.

Regards,
flip

P.S. You have a rather loud keyboard :-)

[thattommyhall]

The Synology devices look very good.

CPU usage was 26.8% in the first instance and 11.2% the second time i looked (caching i presume) that is with the default cpu of Athlon3200+, make the step up to dual core and i would expect staggering results.

I must admit in the trade off between noise/power usage/processing power/size/cost I wanted primarily processing power and good value, settling for "small enough" and "quiet enough" (you may not agree with the trade off)

http://uk.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=7&l2=37&l3=95&model=569&modelmenu=2
Is the case currently used (though obviously i could use a different one if you wanted)

Sources of heat/noise in case:
CPU (cooled with stock heatsink and very cool anyhow - Athlons do not run as warm as they used to. Lots of scope for change here, choose a HSF you like and ill use it)
Hard Disks (you would be surprised how warm these get, even the RAID ones) I personally recon that this forces at least one exhaust fan, i would not trust passive cooling to remove that much heat.
80mm exhaust fan (stock one in that case is a little noisy, could add heat sensing one instead for £10 or so)
PSU fan (heat sensing and v quiet, ASUS got that right at least)

170 x 355 x 383 mm are dimensions
181 X 212 X 60 for synology (hardly fair as it only has one drive)

I recommend these to folk who don't need 4x or 8x drives and want the media server stuff (I love that they have a webserver in there but would be reluctant to have the NAS externally accessible anyhow). Note it is not quite as trivial to get slimserver on them.

I also offer (though its not made explicit in the marketing yet) an upgrade path to more dives, possibly in a different case. I can offer this as linux does online RAID5 reshaping (very cool). I have not seen 8 drive configurations for sale anywhere targeted at home users and i am very competitive with the ones I have seen targeted at businesses.

Something I believe is worth mentioning about my philosophy:
"Simple things should be simple, Complex things should be possible": It 's really easy to use my NAS's with absolutely no setup bar switching it on and telling your PC what drive you would like it to be, but nothing is hidden from you; If you know what you are doing (and i encourage people to learn) you can add and configure any of debians 15000 or so packages.

What more do you want to know?, other than whats at
http://www.customstorage.co.uk/pages/software
http://www.customstorage.co.uk/pages/media-servers
I will be happy to explain.

Re: Keyboard, my mic was on the table and i guess it rattled, expect a more polished screencast in the future (I may get an actor in for the voice :)

All the very best, Tom





Hello

In one video you say something about CPU usage and AlienBBC. You say its "below 50%". How much is it exactly? What type of CPU is used?

Just to compare with a DS-106 series NAS: Playing the BBC Radio 1 stream, transcoded to FLAC uses about 35% for mplayer, 25% for perl and 6-8% for flac (total < 70%). These are 1 minute averages.

I'd be interested to know the details of the properties relevant for a NAS: How much power does it use (standby, idle, under load)? What about noise? What's the size of the box?

It would be nice to have more details on your website about the hardware components and software used.

Regards,
flip

P.S. You have a rather loud keyboard :-)

[flipflip]

Thanks for the info. Nice solution, I think. But I wouldn't call that a NAS, I'd call that a (bookshelf) PC, a barebone, a small form-factor server or something like that. Of course, "NAS" is not a standardised concept, but usually properties like "very small", "silent", "low power consumption" and "not very powerful" are associated with a NAS. And this usually involves specialised CPUs (e.g. XScale or Freescale) and boards, and excludes standard PC components.

So I think your boxes are not really comparable to the well-known NAS from Linksys/Cisco, Netgear, Qnap, Synology and some others.

Well, I don't really mind as I won't buy one anyway, but I think you should make this a bit more clear on the page so people know what they will get. The box is certainly a good choice for people who want a dedicated media server and don't want to set it up themsleves.

The page misses (IMHO) detailed technical specifications (power consumption, noise level, weight, size, etc.).

For CPU usage measurements I would recommend to look at "top" with a delay time of 30 or more seconds (averaging over a longer time produces more meaningful results).


flip

[thattommyhall]

Cheers for the feedback, I agree entirely except for one point: I don't think its misleading to call it a NAS. I think it is fair play to name things by their primary function, though I accept that NAS evokes small form factor, low power etc with some people, I don't think they are necessary (http://www.xinit.com/main/storagenetworking/NAS/sns524012.html or http://www.sun.com/storagetek/nas/5320/ are big and power hungry for instance). I hope you don't feel I'm being sarcastic here as I don't intend it.
I will try and make the ad clearer however and add the details you suggest (I'm looking into a page with more customisation options so every customer can assemble a system they are happy with)

Yours, Tom


Thanks for the info. Nice solution, I think. But I wouldn't call that a NAS, I'd call that a (bookshelf) PC, a barebone, a small form-factor server or something like that. Of course, "NAS" is not a standardised concept, but usually properties like "very small", "silent", "low power consumption" and "not very powerful" are associated with a NAS. And this usually involves specialised CPUs (e.g. XScale or Freescale) and boards, and excludes standard PC components.

So I think your boxes are not really comparable to the well-known NAS from Linksys/Cisco, Netgear, Qnap, Synology and some others.

Well, I don't really mind as I won't buy one anyway, but I think you should make this a bit more clear on the page so people know what they will get. The box is certainly a good choice for people who want a dedicated media server and don't want to set it up themsleves.

The page misses (IMHO) detailed technical specifications (power consumption, noise level, weight, size, etc.).

For CPU usage measurements I would recommend to look at "top" with a delay time of 30 or more seconds (averaging over a longer time produces more meaningful results).


flip