NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hi there everyone, NASLite noob here again.

I've been doing some experiments with NASLite floppy over the past week or so, all using Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 (so that I don't have to mess about with real hardware).

I've also been doing similar experiments with other alternatives, with a view to settling on a solution that suites my needs and runs on the hardware I have available.

The hardware I intend to run on is a mixture of stuff, I have a lot of left over components which I have used in the past for building routers and firewalls etc so I think I can use some more of this with some large disks for a NAS system. The hardware I have is as follows :-

CPUs are generally Pentium MMX 200Mhz and AMD K6-II and K6-III at 350 & 450Mhz.

I have Jetway and PCChips Pentium boards with 64mb and 128mb PC66 DIMM sticks. These boards have four IDE channels, and a floppy, but AFAIK don't boot from USB. These are good candidates for a NAS box.

I also have about 10 of these motherboards which I rescued (believe it of not) from being thrown in a skip from a company I was once doing work for. Each one has a 9GB fujitsu HDD, 128mb of SIMM memory, two network cards (one 10BaseT and one 100BaseT), a FDD and a Pentium 200MMX Cpu. Each also has a 12" flat panel TFT screen (800x600). The downside of these is that each only has two IDE channels, and again won't boot from USB (AFAIK). But they do support PXE boot from network (not sure if that can be used with NASLite) and also can use a 'DiskOnChip 2000' flash disk of upto 72mb capacity. These might be an option for a small footprint NAS box with two large HDDs, and booting from DiskOnChip 2000 (if I can still get those chips somewhere...). I've built a few firewalls based on Smoothwall and IPCop with these and they have been rock solid. They would also fit nicely into a small case of some description. I saw in a local electrical store a few days ago a very cheap DVD player (£14.95!) which had a very nice slimline case - rip out the guts and install one of these boards and a few disks and you have a nice system.

Anyway, sorry for rambling on, but I'm after your feedback on the following systems which some of you may have tried before. I'll list what I've tried and/or discovered, and what I see as being pros and cons of each (for me using the hardware I have) :-

NASLite floppy

Pros: Boots from floppy so doesn't occupy an IDE channel.
Cons: Supposedly not as fast as NASLite+.

NASLite+

Pros: Faster (?) than NASLite floppy.
Cons: Would need USB boot, or kicker floppy disk, or CDROM (using an IDE channel).

FreeNAS

Pros: Supports USB disk drives (although havn't tried these yet).
Cons: Installs to a hard disk (thus uses an IDE channel) or USB Flash (no USB boot features on my hardware). Also is still in Alpha.

ClarkConnect 2.2

Pros: Although installs to a HDD, you can add shares on that same drive so can still use it with upto four IDE drives. Also supports USB disk drives. Also supports authentication (samba).
Cons: May use resources un-necessarily on my low spec hardware, although it can be trimmed down to pretty much just Samba.

ClarkConnect 3.2

Pros: As above, but is supported and current.
Cons. Runs slower still on the same hardware/requires more resources, but again can be trimmed down.

OpenFiler

Pros: Seems a really full featured system and has RAID support (although not relevant for my applications).
Cons: Seems well suited to modern hardware, will be very clunky on older hardware such as mine.

So there I have some options. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, please do shout up! I'm really looking for the best performance on my hardware, but I need a LOT of storage too.

Thanks

Joe

Hi Joe,

I have tried all the packages you mention and others, and for what I use my nas for Naslite+ is the one I use. it has a small footprint and does not need to be installed. this is one of the main points for me, plus ease of use. there is not a lot that can go wrong with naslite+, its a case of turn on and forget about it. you should run Naslite on one of your pc's and see what I mean. u have nothing to lose ! no installation.

Eden

Thanks for the reply eden. I hear what you are saying regarding ease of use, but that is not an issue for me really. I'm really just looking for the best performing/most efficient solution for my hardware. I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and test all these out for real using a freshly built system, and do some benchmarking of each on the identical hardware.

In the mean time, anyone else have any views they could share ?

Thanks

Joe