Set Centos as NAS?

romanrsr · 03-02-2015, 08:57 AM

Hello friends, as they are? I was evaluating several options for creating a virtual NAS (Freenas, nas4free, Openmediavault, etc). But none meets the requirements I need.
So I have thought configure an OS Centos as NAS.

I recommend ext4 formatting disks or zfs?
Assuming you have 4 disks 2TB, I should make a Raid-5?
I have 4 NICs, for better performance bonding should work?

Many Thanks!

TenTenths · 03-02-2015, 11:18 AM

RAID 5 will have lower performance than RAID1+0 but will give you extra disk space. I assume you're using a proper RAID controller or are you going with the Linux software RAID option?
Bonding NICs for performance will really only help if your network switches also support the relevant bonding mode, and you'll also find that unless you've a LOT of users it really won't seem to make that much of a difference.

romanrsr · 03-02-2015, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TenTenths

RAID 5 will have lower performance than RAID1+0 but will give you extra disk space. I assume you're using a proper RAID controller or are you going with the Linux software RAID option?
Bonding NICs for performance will really only help if your network switches also support the relevant bonding mode, and you'll also find that unless you've a LOT of users it really won't seem to make that much of a difference.

You would with Linux software RAID option, RECOMMEND Raid-5 + Ext4?

smallpond · 03-02-2015, 12:05 PM

If you do software RAID or a RAID controller with no battery, then you need a UPS to protect for power failure. You also need a good backup scheme to other disks, tape, DVD or cloud. A good alternative to ext4 + RAID1 is to use ZFS with mirrors.

273 · 03-02-2015, 06:36 PM

From experience I wouldn't particularly recommend software RAID5. In mine and a friend's experience of it you're more likely to have problems with inconsistent data due to the RAID itself than any hardware problems. Whether the same kind of software issues would be encountered just using the drives as one large partition I could not say definitively but I suspect not.
Hopefully somebody will have experience using RAID in this kind of situation as, personally, I found RAID a waste of time since a backup needs to be in place anyhow.

jefro · 03-02-2015, 07:34 PM

ZFS has it's own tools and could be a consideration for a filesystem. It is not as well known as software raid and ext4. It may be slightly slower. It has some unique features more suited to enterprise level management.

Just to be clear, you are doing this on a physical machine and not in a virtual machine correct?

I'll second that the choice of nas distro isn't fantastic. I've never tried it but the Synology and QNAP nas boxes run intel processors and they offer their OS usually. Might be possible to take one of that OS and run it with some work.