Network Storage?

Would like to add some storage capability to my network.

Would like to make it a network storage type unit so I can access it
from any of the systems in the network and not be tied to any one
system.

Mainly Xp systems with 1 Sun Solaris 10 system.


Have seen drives from Buffalo, Maxtor, Ximeta and others.

Any recommendations?


Thanks,
Mike

wrote:
Would like to add some storage capability to my network.

Would like to make it a network storage type unit so I can access it
from any of the systems in the network and not be tied to any one
system.

Mainly Xp systems with 1 Sun Solaris 10 system.


Have seen drives from Buffalo, Maxtor, Ximeta and others.

Any recommendations?

Buy a regular PC with a SATA controller. Need not be a top of the line
PC or a PC with a very fast processor. You can get 500GB SATA drives
for as low as $350. Put in a couple of them or if you want redundancy
then put in four 250GB SATA drives in RAID5 and install Linux on the
PC. Use NFS and Samba to share the storage with Solaris and Windows.
Thats more or less what cheap NAS vendors do.

- Siddhartha

Siddhartha Jain wrote:

Buy a regular PC with a SATA controller. Need not be a top of the line
PC or a PC with a very fast processor. You can get 500GB SATA drives
for as low as $350. Put in a couple of them or if you want redundancy
then put in four 250GB SATA drives in RAID5 and install Linux on the
PC. Use NFS and Samba to share the storage with Solaris and Windows.
Thats more or less what cheap NAS vendors do.

I'm going to second this suggestion. Assuming you have the technical
know-how, it's really the best way to go. While it's going to require
a bit more work, the flexibility you end up with will never be matched
by any shrinkwrapped solution.

I've got a low-cost version of the above (4x 120GB PATA, largest
partition as RAID5, others as RAID1).

I recently acquired a wireless access point, so I took my NAS box, threw
freeradius on it, and now I can do 802.1X authentication for WPA
Enterprise. It's this sort of flexibility that makes it all worthwhile.

If you have an old spare PC (I used a K6-III 450), you're well on your
way. The only thing I needed to purchase were extra PATA controllers
(so I have no more than one HD per cable) and the drives themselves.



--
-WD