LegRoom.net Kick back and relax

Note: This post is just a first draft. It will be updated as I continue my research. I'm hoping to have all parts selected by the end of the week.

For the past couple of months I've been researching various home NAS (network attached storage) solutions. Currently, all file-serving and backups are handled by a desktop system in my living room - which also handles my website and e-mail, multimedia functionality (hence running it in my living room), and a whole lot more. As I'm getting rather tired of the noise and recent instability, I want to migrate all functionality off of this system onto other systems/servers better suited to the tasks. My first step is setting up a NAS system for my house.

As I said above, I've been researching this for quite some time now, mostly because I'm having trouble deciding which direction I want to take. The two main choices are:

• Setup a commercial NAS appliance (such as the Linksys NAS200)
• Build a dedicated NAS system, based on something like FreeNAS

A commercial appliance would be the much simpler route, and is mostly what I'd been researching, but for various reasons I'm actually learning towards building a dedicated system now. The primary reason, to be completely honest, is flexibility. If I build my own hardware and install a "real" OS on it, even though it may be used specifically designed to function as a NAS device I still have the ability to do anything else with it that I may want or need. With an appliance, I'm much more limited in what I can do here (if it's even possible at all). Some appliances do allow remote console access, but every one I've seen is very vague on details as far as what can be done once you've logged in. Without being able to test it out myself, I have to assume that I won't meet my requirements.

So, why is building a dedicated system such a hard decision? This breaks down into two categories:

• power, heat, noise (ie., efficiency)
• NAS functionality

Let me address the efficiency issue first as it's more straightforward. This box will be running 24x7, and I want something that's going to be as quiet and energy efficient as possible. The majority of the appliances I've looked at were designed with this in mind, and while some are much better than others, all are more efficient than a typical desktop system. I want to stick this thing in a corner and not ever see it or hear it; just have it run reliably and not make a significant dent in my power bill.

The functionality issue is a bit more complicated. I stated previously that flexibility was the primary reason I wanted to build my own system, which may seem to contradict with this current statement, but they apply to different scopes. The former is about OS-level functionality; the latter is more about hardware functionality. Eg., two features I'd really like from my NAS are hardware RAID 5 using four disks and hot-swappable drives, both of which a fairly among among higher-end home NAS appliances. Hardware RAID is easy enough to do on a custom built system, but how-swappable drives is a completely separate issue; short of a rack mount server or tower-style case (both of which are ruled out by the noise/efficiency requirements), options are extremely limited.

With all that said, here are the components that I'm currently looking at. Any and all feedback, especially regarding personal experience, is most welcome.

Unlike most custom built systems where the case is a fairly insignificant component, this choice of components in this system is almost entirely dictated by the case as I've only been able to find one that meets both the noise/efficiency and NAS functionality requirements described above. As a result, my requirements (and personal preferences) are:

• Mini-ITX motherboard
  • integrated gigabit ethernet
  • single PCI (not PCI-E) slot
  • at least one, preferably two GB RAM
  • optional: integrated CF (compact flash) support for OS drive
• low-voltage/wattage processor
• low-profile, 4-port SATA II RAID card
  • must be fully supported by both Linux and FreeBSD
• four energy-efficient 500 GB SATA II hard drives
• slim DVD-ROM optical drive

Case
Chenbro ES34069 - ~$185
+ PCI Riser card - where/how to buy?

Motherboard/CPU
Under Investigation:
Intel Mobile (socket P)
AMD Mobile (socket S1)
AMD Brisbane desktop core
VIA

Memory
undecided - will probably go with a single 1GB DIMM, specs depending on motherboard choice

RAID Controller
undecided - best choices so far (but would love a comparable at a better price):
LSI MegaRAID SATA 300-4XLP - ~$330 (PCI-X)
3ware 9550SXU-4LP - $300 (PCI-X)

Hard Drives
RAID (x4): Western Digital Caviar GP WD5000AACS - ~$100 (no NCQ?)
RAID (x4) (alt): Samsung SpinPoint T166 HD501LJ - ~$105
System: undecided - 2GB compact flash drive, 2GB IDE disk on module, or low capacity, efficient 2,5" hard drive

Optical Drive
Samsung SN-M242D - ~$40

Video Card
integrated

Power Supply
integrated

Network Interface Card
integrated

Sound Card
integrated

Input Devices
N/A

Operating System
FreeNAS or OpenFiler

For reference, here are the best appliance options I found:
to complete - QNAP, Storango, Irfrant, Thecus?

I've been out of town for a while, and before that rather busy with work. Obviously, I haven't gotten much done on the site. However, once again I felt the need to post a quick note just to let everyone know that yes, I am still alive.

And with that said, I'd like to wish a belated Merry Christmas and early Happy New Years to all my family, friends, and visitors.

Also, I'd like to leave you with this xkcd comic. I'm sure the simple fact that it's 3:00am right now has a lot to do with it, but this just struck me as one of the funniest things I've read all week. Warning: as noted in the title, prepare for hardcore geek humor.

I haven't made very many posts lately, so I just wanted to update everyone that may be wondering what's going on. I've been insanely busy with work, both with my day and side jobs, and I just haven't had much time to work on personal projects. I definitely have some stuff in the works, just finding the time to move forward on any it is really hard to do lately.

I released a beta version of Universal Extractor v1.6 a while back now. That's pretty much ready for release right now, and has been for a couple weeks. I just need to polish a few last things related to the installer and language files, update the website with all of the appropriate new information for the release, and then put it out there. I'm hoping to dedicate some time to finishing this up soon.

I've actually begun working on a new version of AutoFLAC as well, but so far changes have mostly been limited to bug fixes and efficiency/workflow updates. I have some ideas for some pretty useful new features (aside from all of the issues that have been discussed in the Hydrogenaudio AutoFLAC thread), but it'll take a while to implement everything and put out a new release. In the meantime, just rest assured that this project has definitely not been abandoned, despite the fact that it's been over a year since the last release.

Less obvious to most visitors are the various website updates I've slowly been working on. Most of this involves restoring administrative functionality that was lost in my migration from PostNuke to Drupal a few months back (for a good example of this, see my last last post), or introducing some "private" features of the website, such as a new webmail system, that's restricted to specific users. I've also been (slowly) working on various other updates and under-the-hood tweaks to the site and server to keep things running as smoothly as possible.

So, yes, I'm still around, and this website (and associated projects) is still under development. Also, even if I'm busy and things are moving slowly, I'll try to at least update my website more than once a month. :-)

I finally got around to updating my Wishlist earlier tonight. I'd been putting it off for some time because I still haven't completely finished re-implementing the admin interface that allows me to add/update/remove items since moving to the new site a few months back. However, since Christmas is coming and I'm already being asked, "what do you want?", I figured it's about time to start working on it again. I can now add items through the administrative web interface (woo-hoo), but removing and modifying existing items still requires direct database edits (boo). I'll get around to finishing that part as well as soon as I can figure out Drupal's really, really odd method of form handling with tabular data.

Also, I used this opportunity to make a couple changes to the wishlist. I'm now including the Date Added, so you can tell how old (or new) a particular item is. Anything already on the list from before the migration will just have a blank value here. I've also begun adding links to Best Buy, since it's sometimes easier to purchase items in a physical store than order them online. And finally, each column is now sortable, so you can sort by things like cheapest or most recently added. Just click on the title of whichever column you'd like sorted.

So anyway, for those of you that may interested in purchasing something for me, my Wishlist page is now current. Enjoy.

Edit: I added a "Last Updated" field as well, in the upper-right corner of the page. Use this to determine at a glance how long it's been since I last updated the wishlist.

I just upgraded LegRoom.net to Drupal 5.3. Everything should be in good order, but in case you find any errors on the site please let me know ASAP so I can correct them.

Thanks.