Data warehousing To run your own download server and host a big repository of source code or even company documents that would take up terabytes of storage space, repeatedly adding more hard disks to a single server would be impractical. In fact, it would be suicidal. So many pieces of hardware inside a single computer put a lot ofload on the MoBo and the SMPS. Moreover, how many hard drives can you possibly attach to a single MoBo?
There is a solution, and it's called Network Attached Storage (NAS). A grid of computers interconnected with the Ethernet and running NAS servers is called a SAN, or Storage Area Network But here's the good news: NAS comes cheap.
To have a NAS machine, you don't need very good hardware. A 600 MHz Transmeta Crusoe or Efficeon will suffice. Hey, you can even have ARM boxes. And in case you think you need something more, out here in Kolkata, eSys sells a Mini-ITX 'System In A Box', consisting of a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor mounted on an Intel 82945G Express Chipset¬based motherboard, for a little over Rs 2,000. That's a good deal. As for RAM, you need about 512 MB for a decent performance. And the only storage unit you'll ever need is a USB pen drive.
You can add as many hard drives to this baby as you want. I'd recommend buying some multi-terabyte SATA2 hard drives and attaching them internally. To expand storage, you can use as many external USB HDDs as you want (only if you use USB hubs to increase the number of available USB ports).
You'll need a 256 MB USB pen drive to install the firmware onto this storage unit. Yes, it cannot be called an operating system. What we're talking about is FreeNAS. Boot up your storage unit with it, and then attach the USB pen drive after FreeNAS has started booting.
Once done, follow these steps to install it:
1.At the first prompt, type "9" (without the quotes) and
press Enter.
2.At the first screen, select the third choice.
3.Hit OK at the next screen.
4.Now select the CD drive (most probably "acdO") where the FreeNAS disk is located.
5.Select the destination drive: your 256 MB or above USB pen drive
6.Do not read any of the text that comes up next (unless it's an error) and hit Enter.
7.You're done! Exit the installer now, and reboot the unit.
Enter the BIOS and enable booting from the USB (this depends on your BIOS make and version). Remove the FreeNAS disk. keep the USB pen drive attached and reboot the unit. Pretty soon, you'll be booted up into FreeNAS. Congratulations!
By default, you have a static LAN IP address, 192.168.1.250. Leave it at that. Now, open up a Web browser and browse to http://192.168.1.250. Now do you know why I called FreeNAS a 'Firmware'?
The default login credentials are "admin" as the username and "freenas" as the password. Once you are in, savour the beauty of the interface for a bit before moving on to configure this as a NFS server.
1.Go to Disks-.+Management and click on the" +" icon at the bottom of the empty table.
2.On the resulting page, choose a hard disk (example: ad6).
Add a description if you wish. Then, activate SMART monitoring (check the tick box), leave the Prriformatted FS option as un formatted and hit Add.
3.On this page, hit Apply Changes. The status column should show ONLINE.
4.Now go to Disks-Format.
5.On this page, select a hard disk (it should have been added in the Management Section). It is important that you use the UFS+SU (GPT) filesystem, as this gives the best speed and reliability. FreeNAS doesn't use an MBR-based partition; it uses the more recent GPT style partition table from the EFI standard. Add a volume label and leave everything else intact. Hit Format Disk and then OK.
6.The next bit is mounting the partition. Go to Disks-Mount Point, and hit that "+" icon again. Select a formatted disk. set the Partition Type to GPT, the partition number to 1 and the filesystem to UFS. Add a mount point name, and then remember it. On the next page, hit Apply Changes. Disk configuration is now complete. We need to initialise the NFS service.
1.Go to Services-.+NFS and check the "Enable" tick box. Set the Number Of Servers t? something suitable, for example, 16. Then hit Save And Restart.
2.Now go to the Shares tab and click on the "+" icon.
3.On the resulting page, set a Path To Share. This refers to one of your mounted disks.l]se the format /mnt/<mount point name>. Then select whether to map all users as root (it's safe because Anonymous FTPwill allow just Read-Only access). The authorised network should be 192.168.0.0/16. Hit Add and then apply changes.
Now, we are fully done with that.
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