NAS-specific board separately available?

Jasper · Post by **Jasper** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:29 pm

Hi, I'm looking at making a NAS box for myself. Now all the commercial enclosures tend to use boards with an Intel Xscale or similar processor (ie, a PDA proc) running a custom linux to provide the link between the ATAs and the network, probably with a separate parity calculating chip if they support raid5. Does anyone know if such boards are available for the DIY market reasonably sanely priced? Desired specs:

- low own power consumption
- powered by just 5 and 12V rails, no negs, 5vsb, 3.3v
- 4 sata connectors on one end
- a 100 Mbit lan or preferably gigabit lan on the other
- reasonably confirgurable over probably a web-admin style tool

As an alternative, I've seen people offering Geode NX based full-ATX systems with a linux OS-on-a-USB-key. Can anyone guess which linux distro they'd be using (512meg USB key, so it could easily be almost an entire livecd), and if geode/c3 CPUs can compete thermally/powerwise with something as described above? I suspect that short of a real RAID card, they won't be able to provide full-speed raid5 performance, though.

fyleow · Post by **fyleow** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 2:35 pm

FreeNAS is probably what you're looking for. Software RAID 5 is probably good enough for SOHO use.

Jasper · Post by **Jasper** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 3:49 pm

fyleow wrote:FreeNAS is probably what you're looking for. Software RAID 5 is probably good enough for SOHO use.

Thanks, I just couldn't seem to find anything decent & Free, probably because I was googling for a linux version.

Still, though, that reduces the question to: what are very low power all-in-one (possibly it could do without a permanent VGA card) motherboards & CPUs (plus, possibly, RAM boards, if there are differences in that), which still feature a plethora of expansion possibilities (at least old-fashioned micro-ATX 3PCI) which are also reasonably economical?

Secondhand is not, when all is said and done, an impossible option, if the configuration in question is reasonably plentiful on the open market.

In the new end, This one doesn't seem be too bad (although it is pc-chips, hack, ptui) - the HSF on it is smaller than even that on via C3 mini-ITX boards, which suggests that the thermal characteristics of that CPU are very small indeed. Diasadvantage is the mounting system for the cooler, it's a northbridge-cooler. ONTOH, the zalman flower for northbridges looks like an improvement over what's there and with sufficient case airflow ought to be reasonably doable without an explicit fan.

The slightly more expensive boards that are even remotely interesting seem to feature athlon xp-m CPUs.. those any good thermally?

disphenoidal · Post by **disphenoidal** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 4:07 pm

I saw an ad earlier today for x-scale based single board computers. Check out http://www.kontron.com. They have lots of single board and embedded systems stuff that might suit you. Didn't look very closely, though. Also, I think there are other companies that make similar products, I just happened across this ad today. You may want to use something other than x-scale, since I don't think those are x86 compatible. Maybe via, celeron m, or an older family, like pentium 3.