Build A High Quality NAS Server on the Cheap
With the ever increasing consumption of data by the average family from movies, music, letters, budgeting software and so forth, the need for large capacity backup solutions are becoming a priority. Portable hard disk whether connected by usb or firewire have limited capacity, speed limitations and questionable reliability. In a multiple computer household the usb drive is hardly the answer. Enter the NAS server.
Until recently NAS servers were expensive and reserved to larger scale environments where the need justified the cost. Today however, there are a lot of high quality NAS servers on the market for small office/home use. They are lower in price than their corporate cousins but they can still be pricey depending on drive capacity. One of the best NAS servers I have seen and worked with is NetGear’s ReadyNAS server. It has an excellent interface for configuration and comes with a lot of options. It is also decently priced starting at $360.00 for the basic 500gb capacity. However, for roughly the same price a 2 terabyte NAS server can be built. If you are wanting to save money and build a high capacity, high quality, low energy consumption, low noise NAS server, have a read of the article below.
A Quick Overview.
What we are going to do is build a NAS server from all new parts and use FreeNAS as the embedded OS. To keep the physical size down we are going to use an Intel Mini ITX board with an atom processor mounted in an ITX form factor case. Below is a list of parts needed for the build.
Parts List:
- Intel D945GCLF2 Essential Series Mini-ITX DDR2 667 Intel Graphics Integrated Atom Processor Desktop Board – Retail
- 4BAY Desktop Blk 250W ATX12V Mitx
ITX Case
- Sata 3.0 gb/s Hard Drive(s)
- USB drive (smallest being around 64mb) for holding the FreeNAS operating system
Software:
- FreeNas
- SuperFDisk (if partitioning)
The Intel ITX board and processor is a high quality low energy consumption board that comes standard with gigabit ethernet, pata and sata connectors, embedded video as well as support for 2gb ram, 1 pci expansion slot and the usual accompaniment of usb, audio and serial ports. The lower energy consumption means less heat which means quite operation. The last thing we want is a server that sounds like a jet engine. The audio and abundance of usb serial ports has little use to us on this built but they are there.
***Keep in mind that the ITX board can be replaced with the BOXD945GCLF board. it is basically the same board but has the Atom 230 (single core) processor. It is about $10 to 15 dollars cheaper, but should still work just fine. The USB drive is optional given that you could install Freenas on a variety of mediums including the hard drive.
The ITX case has a small footprint and comes with a SATA power connection and has ample space to accommodate 2 hard drives. It is also quite and looks nice.
The 2gb ram is pretty straight forward.
The USB thumb drive can be of any size equal to or greater than 64mb. In this configuration the USB will hold the FreeNAS OS in an embedded fashion. This will allow us to use the entire hard drive and allow for quick and easy FreeNAS upgrades and repair without interfering with the data on the drive(s). Now that we have the overview out of the way, lets get started.
Just a quick note: If you are wanting to use the fuppes UPnP that is included in FreeNAS and you are anticipating having to edit the fuppes.cfg FreeNAS must be installed on a Hard Drive.
Hardware Assembly
The hardware assembly should be pretty straight forward. Since the motherboard/cpu combination is already assembled simply mount the motherboard in the case, add the ram and the hard disk and move on to FreeNAS installation.
FreeNAS Installation
For the FreeNAS installation download FreeNAS 0.7 or greater (as of the writing of this article it was under the nightly build). Please note that FreeNAS 0.7 or greater is required for the onboard gigabit ethernet. Once you have the download in hand and burned to a cd proceed to a working desktop pc, pop in the cd and boot into FreeNAS. Once loaded, FreeNAS will present with a textual menu. Select option 9 to go to the install menu. Use option 2 to load FreeNAS as an embedded os onto the usb drive with a data partition. The FreeNAS installer will ask what drive holds the install media and which drive to install to. Please keep in mind that it will show the hard drive on the pc as well so be sure to select the usb drive. Once installed shutdown the pc, remove the usb drive and proceed to the new server.
Place the USB drive in the new hardware and boot up the system. FreeNAS should load and present you with a textual menu. Select option 1 to setup the network interface. The first screen should show you the detected interface. Selecting it will automatically setup the system to use it. Getting back to the main menu, select option 2 to setup the ip address for the interface. If you are using DHCP select yes if not select no and it will prompt you for the ip address. From this point on configuration is done from the web interface.
FreeNAS Configuration
With the new server successfully setup and connected to the network, fire up a web browser and browse over to the FreeNAS server entering the user name and password to begin configuration. By default the username is admin and the password is freenas. This can be changed later. Configuration of the drives on the system is dependent on what we want to with it.
Making decisions about the hard drive(s).
By default FreeNAS is not able to partition the hard disk (thats not to say it cannot be done). It only sets one big partition for storage. This is fine for most backup jobs, however it is not useful for a Macintosh environment where multiple macs are using Time Machine. If you wish to use multiple Macs and Time Machine on the FreeNAS server see the article on this site titled “OS X Time Machine and FreeNAS”. Those who wish to partition the drive should also read the portion of this document detailing the partitioning process. Once the drive is ready proceed to initialize it in the web interface.