Post by alexplatform on May 25, 2011 8:49:23 GMT 7
Wanted to give something back to the community...
I have a Thecus N5500, but I felt too limited by the Thecus FW (dont get me started about the state of N5200 support) and so I investigated a number of alternatives. My goals were as follows:
1. ZFS (not the half baked LVM-only approach Thecus employs with their 3.xx+ fw)
2. ZFS Snapshot with Samba shadow copy integration
3. Stable, efficient, mature distro with an active community
4. All media server functions that the Thecus firmware provides
5. Transmission, SABNZB, sickbeard (nuff said)
6. As little as actual modification as possible (kernel should ideally resize on the original 128MB DOM)
The choices were narrowed down to the following:
1. DSL (http://www.d**nsmalllinux.org/)
2. Eon (https://sites.google.com/site/eonstorage/)
3. FreeNAS (http://wiki.freenas.org/)
I discounted DSL pretty early on as it would have required a tremendous amount of customization for the purpose. Eon seemed like a great solution, and I did get it running; unfortunately it really isnt designed for extensibility, and I found myself constantly breaking it with each new module. Also, it has no native GUI, and the available options are primitive and ugly.
Enter Freenas 7. It hits every one of my requirements except for shadow copy integration; it installs and run like a champ on the 128MB DOM, and with few boot-time directives I was able to have everything running like a clock. The only part that is not working is the front panel.
There are instructions on how to install Ubuntu elsewhere on this site that can be adapted to installing FreeNAS. It essentially boils down to one of the following:
1. Remove the DOM from the N5x00, use an adapter to attach it to a PC, install FreeNAS to it, configure NIC and reinstall in N5x00.
2. Connect a VGA monitor to the N5x00 (instructions elsewhere on this site) and install via external CDRom/USB thumbdrive.
Important! Dont plan on using ZFS with less then 2GB Ram- ZFS can and will use all ram you give it, and you want to give it as much as you can. A CPU upgrade is strongly recommended (64 bit code is preferred for ZFS, and the Celeron M on the N5x00 isnt capable.) The performance improvement that the combination of Freenas+RAM+64 bit CPU is considerable- think 70MB/S over a single link SMB connection....
I have a Thecus N5500, but I felt too limited by the Thecus FW (dont get me started about the state of N5200 support) and so I investigated a number of alternatives. My goals were as follows:
1. ZFS (not the half baked LVM-only approach Thecus employs with their 3.xx+ fw)
2. ZFS Snapshot with Samba shadow copy integration
3. Stable, efficient, mature distro with an active community
4. All media server functions that the Thecus firmware provides
5. Transmission, SABNZB, sickbeard (nuff said)
6. As little as actual modification as possible (kernel should ideally resize on the original 128MB DOM)
The choices were narrowed down to the following:
1. DSL (http://www.d**nsmalllinux.org/)
2. Eon (https://sites.google.com/site/eonstorage/)
3. FreeNAS (http://wiki.freenas.org/)
I discounted DSL pretty early on as it would have required a tremendous amount of customization for the purpose. Eon seemed like a great solution, and I did get it running; unfortunately it really isnt designed for extensibility, and I found myself constantly breaking it with each new module. Also, it has no native GUI, and the available options are primitive and ugly.
Enter Freenas 7. It hits every one of my requirements except for shadow copy integration; it installs and run like a champ on the 128MB DOM, and with few boot-time directives I was able to have everything running like a clock. The only part that is not working is the front panel.
There are instructions on how to install Ubuntu elsewhere on this site that can be adapted to installing FreeNAS. It essentially boils down to one of the following:
1. Remove the DOM from the N5x00, use an adapter to attach it to a PC, install FreeNAS to it, configure NIC and reinstall in N5x00.
2. Connect a VGA monitor to the N5x00 (instructions elsewhere on this site) and install via external CDRom/USB thumbdrive.
Important! Dont plan on using ZFS with less then 2GB Ram- ZFS can and will use all ram you give it, and you want to give it as much as you can. A CPU upgrade is strongly recommended (64 bit code is preferred for ZFS, and the Celeron M on the N5x00 isnt capable.) The performance improvement that the combination of Freenas+RAM+64 bit CPU is considerable- think 70MB/S over a single link SMB connection....