Replaced my own DIY NAS with an Intel SS4200EHW this weekend. These are
1.6GHz Celeron 420 ("Core2 solo", 65nm) based barebones systems that
kind of look like a suitcase. It's not the most attractive thing, but
it is well engineered and can be purchased for under $400 in the US:
- Fairly inexpensive, powerful CPU, orthodox/open PC architecture
- Tool-less chassis, everything is pre-wired
- Nearly silent after it boots (70mm PWM fans, slow speed, active
thermal monitoring that is configurable in the BIOS)
- Gigabit NIC (e1000)
- Worked fine with the first 2GB DDR2 DIMM I tried. Ships with 512MB
- Has IDE port and power connector for internal flash DOM
- Four 3.5 SATA bays (with vibration isolation mounts)
- Can always run MS Windows Home Server on it if the open source
solutions disappoint
The downsides seem to be (so far):
- Designed to run MS WHS, so it is prohibited from having a VGA port.
There is a serial header on the motherboard and rear-panel knockout
for a DB9 port. BIOS is configured to redirect console to serial port
(115200, 8n1). I found the necessary cable in my parts drawer
- Might be possible, but docs say not to hot swap drives
- FreeNAS ACPI enabled (FreeBSD 6.3) kernel does not get along with
the active fan control: the fans throttle up to top speed when
FreeNAS shuts down. This does not happen when the non-ACPI kernel is
selected. Otherwise all functions seem to work with FreeNAS
- Openfiler is Linux based, and Linux kernel support works well with
this hardware (full ACPI support, lm_sensors, WOL, etc.). It was not
a big deal to make Openfiler work with readonly-root, so I have it
installed on an IDE flash module. OF does not support readonly-root
by default, so some config file editing through SSH is necessary
FreeNAS has SlimNAS, which is a slick way to have SqueezeCenter.
Openfiler does not have a SqueezeCenter package (yet?), but it is based
on rPath Linux (very similiar to RHEL, with a non-rpm/yum package tool
called conary) and could definitely be made to work if someone wanted
to package it.
I already have another system for SqueezeCenter, but this might be a
future opportunity to consolidate...
Some SS4200 related reading:
- Intel SS4200 product page:
http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ss4200/index.htm
- SS4200 is sold by Fujitsu-Siements as the Scaleo Home Server. A
review:
http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2008/04/10/hands-on-fujitsu-siemens-scaleo-1900-home-server/
- Discussion of SS4200:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2827039
- Serial console pinout (if you don't already have the necessary
cable): http://ss4200.pbwiki.com/
- FreeNAS users disappointed by FreeBSD's weak ACPI support:
[http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4925029
--
syburgh
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