Today I spent the afternoon building a NAS (network attached storage) appliance. I have been looking for a better place to store virtual machine backups, and this seems like a good solution.
I started with a 2U rackmount case, the Norco RPC-230. I like this particular case for several reasons: First, it has a shallow depth that allows it to be mounted without rails, and it is sturdy enough that it won’t sag. Secondly, being 2U allows for a standard off-the-shelf power supply unit. I do not like scrambling to hunt down an odd-ball power supply when my server goes down.
I went with a fan-less mini-itx motherboard from Asus that comes with a dual-core Intel Atom processor already integrated. This is one of the few Atom boards that met my three qualifications: four SATA ports, no fans, and a decent price.
For storage I selected two identical Seagate 1 Terabyte drives. The data on these will be mirrored (RAID 1).
I finished it by installing the fabulous and open-source FreeNAS version 8 on a 8 GB USB thumb drive, freeing the entire RAID pair to be used for storage.
For reference, here is a list of all the hardware for the appliance, cleverly linked to my Amazon affiliate account:
- Norco RPC-230 rack-mount enclosure
- Antec Basiq BP430 Power Supply
- Asus AT5NM10T-I mini itx motherboard
- Two Crucial 2GB memory modules
- Two Seagate 1 TB hard drives
- Lexar 8 GB flash drive
How is it holding up? I am looking at putting together my own NAS with the AT5NM10T-I motherboard and you are the first person I have come across using it. Any problems with the built-in NIC? How are the temperatures in that case? Any idea of power consumption? Thanks
So far it is working great – as least as far as hardware is concerned. From a software standpoint, it is is OK. Getting FreeNAS 8.0 to sync users and passwords with our Windows Domain Controller has been very quirky, and setting permissions is confusing as well. I eventually abandoned the idea of syncing users and passwords, and since then it has been doing just fine. I like FreeNAS, but version 8 was a complete rewrite and I think there are still a few rough edges.
Pete, I didn’t read your entire comment before responding. The built-in NIC is working just fine – there were no issues with it being recognized, and through-put seems to be in line with what I would expect for a gigabit NIC. I don’t have any idea of temperatures in the case – this was not much of a worry for me, as I have built several fan-less dual core atom systems in the past and never had a problem with overheating. I’m not sure of the power consumption either. I measured a similar Intel atom motherboard using the same processor and the meter show 22 watts at full load and about 20 idle. But that was with just a single 2.5 inch hard drive. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to power the NAS unit down some evening and check out the numbers.