Fedora Core 5/6 NAS + folding farm router
 

Greetings.

I am not exactly a :newbie: to Linux, but don't have the knowledge I want yet. (do any of us have all the knowledge we want/need in life at any given moment?)

I want to build a NAS box under Fedora, via Webmin, and also set it up as a router for a folding farm later on. I would be using one of the versions of the eVGA 680i boards since it has 2 NICs. I would also be using a pair of 3Ware PCI-Ex SATA RAID cards. I have seen many packages out there, as well as the various roles Fedora can play, but am still not sure how'd I go about setting up a NAS that Windows XP/Vista can access for movies, music, etc., and perhaps games that don't require a specific path. It would be stocked with two arrays of 3.4 TB each in RAID 5+1/JBOD (not sure of best route now), and would most likely be on 24/7.

I'm not asking for a step-by-step walkthru, but rather a guided push in the right direction.

My previous experience with external drives has bees rough, as 3 out of 3 drive controllers failed one month after the warranty ended...(LaCie).

Thanks in advance,

JNTK

On a simple level I use FC5 w/Samba to share my 200Gb (RAID 1) storage box to my windows machines, and then just map a drive to the share. Works reliably & seems to pick up & transfer files quite quickly, but how this performance scales when you are sharing terabytes, I don't know. I suppose you could also look into using iSCSI, and use the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator to connect the windows machines to the server, something I've played with briefly in the past to map large volumes. 3 Terabytes, gotta be RAID imo :) I'd probably go RAID10 if I had the option, just 'cos I like it.

Good to see another folder on here - good luck setting it all up mate :)