[nylug-talk] Slim home server for samba and subversion (and possibly IMAP)

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 17:46 -0400, Ajai Khattri wrote:
> Also the Drobo device (Google for it) comes in two pieces: a dumb drive 
> box which you can use alone or with an add-on device that plugs into your 
> network.

I have real issues with external storage, unless it's SAS (which is not
commodity, so a non-consideration here).  USB and FireWire have time-out
issues to the point even Apple had to admit shortcomings of FireWire.
eSATA is a ball of mechanical non-standards (don't get me started).
Most cheap NAS' just have piss-poor performance (especially when you try
to use a GbE MAC on a slow microcontroller with an embedded NPE/SPE).

[ Sent before finished, sorry ]

On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 09:29 -0700, Peter C. Norton wrote: 
> I want to re-focus this on the second-order problem that comes from
> these discussions: once you have a "dumb" nas device, you have
> problems that come from not having a dumb network that they live
> on. Authentication between windows, linux, and possibly mac and
> various other strange OS' in VMs is hard (both mainstream and bleeding
> edge free os's for example), or at least is hard to do on
> constrained-hardware systems.

Understand that network authentication, authorization, file and naming
services are different.  Red Hat's IPA (e.g., FreeIPA) attempts to
address that though, leveraging several different components (it's built
around Fedora Directory Services, fka Netscape iPlanet
Directory/Certificate).


On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 17:46 -0400, Ajai Khattri wrote:
> In your case, could you not use a mini ITX machine to serve as file server 
> and authenticator in front of your drives?

Consider Intel's $60-70 Yonah Mini-ITX solutions:  
http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D201GLY2/index.htm  

They say "MicroATX compatible" but are Mini-ITX mechanical (6.7" x
6.7").  They are much better than anything ViA offers and beat AMD's
aging Geode NX (embedded Athlon, not to be confused with the older Geode
GX or LX, which are Cyrix/NS licensed designs).

Awhile back I started (but never finished) an article on on "Smaller Footprint x86 Embedded):  
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2006/12/smaller-footprint-x86-embedded.html  

Here's a small 7" x 7" x 2.7" in comparison to a 9" x 11" x 14" MicroATX
cube:  
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2005/09/travla-c156-12g512m40dvd-in-7x7x27.html  

In the future, the 2-issue "Atom" design (IA-32e aka x86 EM64T) from
Intel will prove even more interesting, especially as Intel has dropped
its IXP (X-Scale ARM) line that dominates those "cheap" SOHO devices.
Of course not everyone agrees, and even Apple snatched up an IBM Power 5
licensee recently, showing that not everyone believes in Atom yet.  ;)


Alexander L. Belikoff wrote:  
> Old laptops - well, same reason as above. I doubt, there are
> affordable 500+Gb 2.5" drives. I also don't think they are as
> reliable as their 3.5" cousins.

First off, the largest commodity disk in 2.5" right now is 320GB.

Secondly, what do you mean "don't think they are as reliable"?

Commodity 2.5" disks can take a crapload more of vibration and off-line
than commodity 3.5" disks.  Have you ever used (and abused) an external
3.5" disk like you have a laptop?  The MTBF is an order of magnitude
difference.

The 2.5" disk is overtaking the data center.  It's more reliable, cooler
and -- at 10-15Krpm -- can almost be just as high performing.
Correspondingly, this has pushed down the price of more commodity
5400-7200rpm 2.5" disk to almost $0.30/GB.



-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
-------------------------------------------------------------
           Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution