Comments on: ZFS powered NAS, ultimate alternative to Drobo + Droboshare [Complete Guide]

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 09:00:29 +0000

the GPU is not going to help. I was referring to the main chipset which has a GPU embedded in it.

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 08:58:00 +0000

Hi. forget about FTP. I never mentioned anything about it in the guide, nor are we ever going to be using that with this setup.

The machine you end up building uses standard Windows file sharing protocol – SMB aka CIFS. This means that Windows can detect the server on the network directly. You will access the file just like you would with any standard Windows network share.

And yes, you can drag and drop any file, any size of files you want from your existing NTFS partitions.
You will want to use fast hard drives. the WD Greens I used will not do you much good.

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 08:49:00 +0000

It was never meant to be a drobo killer. drobo has its place. but for the people who want the best performance/cost ratio, this is it.

most importantly. if your drobo ever breaks down like mine did. your only bet is to buy another drobo. which can be quite costly for most people here

By: Burzukk

Burzukk — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:53:00 +0000

I am a video designer and work with numerous and huge files that I wish to keep all this as safe as possible, fast and easy to access from my win7 os

My questions:
1.How will this virtual machine interract with windows 7. Via ftp!?
2. Is it possible to make it a DAS communicating directly with windows (recognized as just an external disk via esata). Would the VM OS just sort all this as the Drobo seems to?
3. In its current state (NAS) can I just throw files from my ntfs drives at it whitout any concern and vice versa?
4. Do you think there is any way I could work directly on the NAS from windows? Without using a ftp!? (edit files, open after effects projects from it, render directly on it, etc)

I know you probably don’t use windows as and OS may not know all the answers concerning windows, but just trying to find answers, can’t find anything related to my questions on the web. Thanks!

By: Mbwjoe

Mbwjoe — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:21:00 +0000

I think all you’ve done here is prove just how great the drobo is.

By: mobi

mobi — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 08:39:00 +0000

Thanks for a great article, I’m now fully signed up to freenas! I’m using the Asus E35M1-M PRO
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_CPU_on_Board/E35M1M_PRO/

but I fail to see how the GPU is going to help with data copy throughput. Can you explain? Maybe freebsd or zfs makes use of the GPU??

By: day traders

day traders — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:43:00 +0000

I really love reading your comments guys.I learn a lot from you.

Thank you so much.

Regard,

Epoyjun

By: Polovni automobili

Polovni automobili — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:33:00 +0000

Great job here. I really enjoyed
what you had to say.

Polovni
automobili

By: Izrada web sajtova

Izrada web sajtova — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:31:00 +0000

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By: Concord

Concord — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 22:00:00 +0000

Not sure if you want it for personal use or corporate use. In any case, for business, I’m using a couple of aberdeen inc. (abernas) RAID6 standard NAS servers for 4-5 years. They came out with ZFS server using NExenta software in 2010. Like any rack server, the fans are real noisy, at least on the ones I have.

By: gcs8

gcs8 — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:40:00 +0000

i got feedup with my drobo about 3 months ago when i ran out of space (95%) an it slowed down a lot. so i build my self a freenas box that now holds 20 2TB drives in a raidZ2 with ZFS over iscsi for 33.9TB of storage and a lot better RW speeds. let me know what you think i will leave some links if you dont mind, its my new baby. http://gcs8.org/m http://gcs8.org/rack great wright up BTW.

By: Review – HP Microserver « Chris Swan's Weblog

Review – HP Microserver « Chris Swan's Weblog — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:40:37 +0000

[...] again to the end of May. [2] I’d considered building my own NAS box along the lines of this guide, but had decided that life’s too short. [3] The Dell is now doing duty as my main box. It may [...]

By: eric

eric — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:16:00 +0000

Thanks. I never ordered anything from NCIX before, but I’ve heard of them before.

Thanks for letting me know

I think I might just get the Fractal Design Define R3

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 18:24:00 +0000

oh sorry about that. I got the case from NCIX.com
they are Canadian but also have a US site.

By: eric

eric — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 17:54:00 +0000

Hi Frank,

I think you missed my comment.

By: sims

sims — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:48:00 +0000

thank you for the link. too expensive for my needs.
need to find somebody who can do what you have done

thanks for sharing!

By: eric

eric — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:41:00 +0000

Hi Frank,

Where did you get your case from?

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:21:00 +0000

Not that I’m aware of. I don’t think FreeNAS has a commercial license.

You can take a look at unRAID
http://www.lime-technology.com/

hope that helps

By: sims

sims — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:07:00 +0000

Hi Frank, thanks for sharing your experience.

Much as I am tempted to go into creating a solution like the one you have created, time pressures do not allow me to do so. And neither am I happy with the rather slow performance (Comparitively at least) that I hear Drobo’s suffer from.

So would you know if there is an option of buying a pre-built computer with such features as the ones you mention. I guess I mean to ask if there is a pre-built FreeNAS computer of this kind that I can buy from somewhere?

By: Frank Leng

Frank Leng — Sun, 29 May 2011 23:37:00 +0000

Not a problem.

Love your selection of the board and the case. tho the cost probably would be my only concern. lol