How much memory is needed in a NAS machine

[DeadSeaSquirrels]

If I'm looking to setup a NAS machine (one of those so readily advertised on Newegg) to play movies off of (straight from an ISO image) how much memory do you suppose I would need to make sure I don't have any problems. You can assume a 100 Mbit or Gigabit network, and the movie would be played off a separate stand-alone HTPC. I'm not sure where all the bottle neck would be, so any advice would be welcome.

 

[bamacre]

You mean, you are building a PC that acts soley as a NAS? What OS are you running on it? If Win2K or even XP, 256MB is enough, especially if it is only streaming media to one other PC at a time.

I've done this before, I had a PC with about 750GB of HD space, and used it to store video. It was networked to an HTPC connected to my TV and stereo receiver. It had 4 hd's, a Duron 900mhz cpu, 256MB PC133 memory, and ran Win 2K. Did the job just fine.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing that bamacre did. A NAS is actual "Network Attached Storage", which is usually a complete hardware only solution which contains a disk array with SMB/NFS/PCNFS network sharing server applications that run natively on the system, with a limited interface to issue only some commands (i.e. setup disks, RAID, and/or volumes, configure shares, configure network, reboot, shutdown, diagnose disk problems...).

What you are really describing is a data server, not a NAS. Probably the most important thing about a server is the OS that you run on it. As bamacre mentioned, you will want to run either Win2k or Win2003 (or linux/unix if you know what you are doing), not XP. XP will not give you the security/flexibility in your network shares for the disks.

 

[erwos]

This is really one of those "it depends" cases. If you're going to do software RAID with parity (eg, RAID 5), more CPU is definitely a good thing. Otherwise, it's really just whatever the OS needs. I'm betting you could run a non-software-parity-RAID Linux NAS effectively with a 500mhz PIII and 128mb of RAM.

 

[ShockwaveVT]

Originally posted by: Fallen Kell As bamacre mentioned, you will want to run either Win2k or Win2003 (or linux/unix if you know what you are doing), not XP. XP will not give you the security/flexibility in your network shares for the disks.

I'm curious about this statement... What added security/flexibility does Windows 2000 offer over Windows XP Professional?

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: ShockwaveVT

Originally posted by: Fallen Kell As bamacre mentioned, you will want to run either Win2k or Win2003 (or linux/unix if you know what you are doing), not XP. XP will not give you the security/flexibility in your network shares for the disks.

I'm curious about this statement... What added security/flexibility does Windows 2000 offer over Windows XP Professional?

Yeah, why Windows 2000?

Would something like this work effectively in a wake on LAN configuration? I would like me data to be accessible, but don't want a machine running 24/7 due to energy consumption concern.

 

[Missing Ghost]

I think you would need around 256MB. Or at least that's what worked well on my debian home server, but now I've upgraded to 1.25GB since I've added a lot of services since the beginning.

 

[imported_eppenoire]

I would never say Win2K was more stable than XP for the average user, although once you have it set up properly it is a rock, it just doesn't handle the changes a consumer line system has to undergo very well. If you are just storing movies on the system and then watching them over the network, Windows XP is the best OS for that. If you want to save some money Linux is free and can be setup on computer that you made on a stamp board.

There are a couple of reasons why you may want to use Win2k or Win2003 and it doesn't sound like they would be an issue here, but they are:
1. You want to set up your system as a domain controller, which gives you the advantage of setting profiles and controlling all the system that link to you domain. This is great for educational purposes and if you host LAN parties.
2. You need a high level of fault tolerance and security on the box.

Since the cost of a Win2K server or Win2K3 license would easily exceed the cost of building a basic File Server box, I can see no reason why you would go that route... just my 2 cents.

 

[Azimuth40]

From freeNAS pdf file

www.freenas.org

1 Introduction
1.1 Hardware Requirements
· A PC with a minimum of 96Mb of RAM, a bootable CD Rom Drive plus either:
o A Floppy Disk (for configuration storage) and one or more Hard Drives (for storage)
o A Bootable USB or CF drive and one or more Hard Drives (for storage)
o A Bootable Hard Drive and one or more Hard Drives (for storage)
o A Bootable Hard Drive (The drive will be partitioned for FreeNAS and Data)
· Or a virtual PC emulator such as VMware/QEMU, configured as above.
Note ? Where FreeNAS is installed on a bootable USB Drive, CF Drive or Hard Drive, the bootable
CD Rom should be removed once FreeNAS is installed. At this time installing FreeNAS from CDrom is the only supported method.

 

[soydios]

I have a NAS running FreeNAS. It's a great little OS. Free, but very stable, full-featured, and extraordinarily well documented (any questions or problems? read the manual, everything is exquisitely detailed).

check out http://www.freenas.org/ for downloads, etc.