[GRLUG] The perfect home file server

[David Pembrook]

On 10/31/2011 7:22 AM, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-10-30 at 13:04 -0400, David Pembrook wrote:
>> Its in a mixed environment of Linux and Windows machines, several family
>> users and some of my daughter's friends also use the system. I have over
>> 7tb storage to work with. Some of it needs to be mirrored or otherwise
>> protected against data lost. Some of the data, mainly movies can be at
>> risk as it consumes so much space and are replaceable. The real fly in
>> the ointment is file indexing in Windows 7.
> Why is indexing an issue?  Are you referring to adding UNC references to
> a "library"?
>
I don't like Win7's "libraries" at all mainly because I have never 
really used them because they don't work on a Samba share.  I can have 
local drives indexed. I could have a windows server and index those 
shares and assume I'd be able to search files faster. I don't want to go 
that way though.

>>   I want to be able to find
>> things fast regardless of desktop OS. Another problem would be migrating
>> data as I'm using about 50% of my capacity. Buying a few large external
>> hard drives from best buy and returning after use wouldn't be nice lol
> Are you currently deployed on LVM?  If so then add the new drives as
> physical volumes [potentially mirrored] and just do a pvmove.
>
In migrating, I'm thinking about the problems with moving everything 
from one box to another and doing a total rebuild of the server.  I 
could take some things offline to spare up the drives needed to build 
mirrored drive arrays for what is important. That said, I'm not using 
LVM currently.

I'm leaning towards using a pair of 1.5TB drives mirrored for important 
data and another drive to backup really important stuff from the 
mirrored pair. Less important (and bulky) files (replaceable stuff like 
movies and iso's) can go in the remaining space.  Then do weekly rsyncs 
of family pictures and music to a backup only drive, tar up projects 
keeping a rotating backup of those. Those backups are probably a good 
candidate for some cloud storage option. That way I have at least 3 
copies of the important stuff.

Is anyone using ZFS and pushing its capabilities? The specs on that 
provide for data redundancy, snapshots as well as expanding volume size.

>> I've looked at ZFS as mentioned a while back on here and that looks real
>> interesting. FreeNAS looks like an interesting way to go but I keep
>> coming back to file indexing
>> Built on Linux or BSD is the only real requirement.  Forgetting about
>> migration for now, any thoughts? I know one person's idea of perfect is
>> far from perfect to the next though.
>
>

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