My Ultimate Home Storage Solution.....

Part 1 : Infrastructure Decisions

After searching around on the web for storage solutions, I have decided to go for a NAS solution because it is the least expensive. I already have a WHS (Windows Home Server) setup in my environment (that I will recycle later for reasons that I will explain later) but I have decided to go with FreeNAS for reasons that I will go into detail later when I have time to post the supporting reference links.

Today I want to outline the options of computers that I am going to use for this project.

I have severs older Compaq racmount servers with Xeon processors and loads of SCSI disk but they just suck too much power and most people won't have them laying around at home. I also have a bucket load of older Pentium and AMD class desk tops that may be fine but I don't feel like digging through boxes of old RAM to find matched sets.

I do howerver have two older Compaq Deskpro Pentium II towers that I used as servers (up until last year) that I have already modifed the cases to support additional SCSI drives inside the cases. I also have three small HP/Compaq presario desktops that have more flexible cases that I can upgrade the microATX motherboards to Quad Core processors to use for virtual environments so I will hold on to those for another project.

My favor with the old Deskpros is that the back end bus has very good thru-put and even though they are the older slot Pentium II machines, they are still viable for what they did.


Here is a picture of the two cases. This is a solid case that I can expand later and mod the case and upgrade the guts but I will use them as is for right now!.

Ok let me pull these things out an put them on the bench to get ready! The next thing that I am going to look at is changing out the disk controller. I already have some nice SCSI w and wo raid but SATA and SAS drives look very promising. I would like to have each machine to support 3-5 TB in a single cabinet.

eUNIX