NAS with ZFS?

[Pandamonium]

I own a Synology DS209. I love how it is more of an appliance than it is a server. It does DLNA streams, iTunes serving, and runs Transmission for torrenting. My problem is that I've recently become acutely aware of data integrity. AFAIK, only a ZFS file system will do what I want.

I've done some digging, and all I can find is a Thecus and a Zenavault as NASes that support ZFS. Are there more that I'm missing?

 

[Nothinman]

Probably not, despite everyone screaming about how awesome ZFS is, the bandwagon hasn't been jumped on all that much. Probably because it's pretty resource hungry and your only real choices to use it are Solaris (ugh) and FreeBSD (kinda-ugh).

The two NAS "appliance" distributions that support ZFS and come to mind for me are NexentaStor and FreeNAS. But I don't have any real experience with either so I can't recommend for or against them.

 

[Pandamonium]

I was hoping for a NAS appliance that supports ZFS. If I wanted to go the DIY route, it would be a lot easier to get ZFS up and running.

 

[Fayd]

an NAS appliance isn't necessarily going to allow you to use the most up to date zfs build.

besides, freenas will allow you to add on packages that will increase functionality. (DNLA server like ps3mediaserver, should be able to add transmission and something approximating itunes serving..)

 

[Pandamonium]

I'm not looking to put together a new machine though. I don't want to tweak an OS and I don't care for the latest builds of anything. I want network storage with bit rot protection, DLNA, iTunes server support, time machine support, and transmission. I want something that's simple and that I can forget about. That said, did I miss any commercially available NAS appliances with ZFS support or are the Thecus and Zenavault it?

 

[Fallen Kell]

Don't know Pandamonium. I use ZFS, but then again, I am also a Sun/Oracle Certified Solaris 10 System Administrator, so tweaking the OS and such is what I do for a living, so for home use, it is just second nature. My server is actually an old Sun Ultra 60 (UltraSparc CPU architecture). As long as you have compatible hardware and at least 2GB of RAM (more the better though), ZFS is fine on just about any hardware out of the box. But you do have some tweaking you have to do for setting up the SMB shares, but it really isn't too bad anymore. Heck, the installation of Solaris is no harder than installing Linux or BSD, and will walk you through the majority of the settings you will need to do (like system name, IP address, etc) during the installation. All you have to do after installing is shutdown, and then attach all your hard drives (easier to install on 1-2 small dedicated disks just for the OS and the rest as your ZFS share), startup the system and setup the ZFS disk pool (zpool) and then add the SMB share flag to the disk pool.


I mean from soup to nuts:

1) Ensure SAMBA is installed (as "root" user) type "pkginfo | grep SUNWsmb" and you want to look for the "SUNWsmbs" and "SUNWsmbskr" packages. If they do not exist install them by typing "pfexec pkg install SUNWsmbs" and then "pfexec pkg install SUNWsmbskr", reboot, then enable smb with the following command "svcadm enable -r smb/server".

2) List what disks you have installed: type "format" and then hit "Ctrl+c" to exit (or you can select a disk and then type "quit").

3) Create a zpool from your disks (using the "cxtxdx" values for your disks you found from the format command that apply to the disks you want to use):
"zpool create share_pool raidz2 c1t1d0 c1t2d0 c1t3d0 c1t4d0 c1t5d0"

4) Setup the ZFS filesystem share:
"zfs create -o casesensitivity=mixed -o sharesmb=name='whatever you want your share name to be' share_pool/shared"

5) Setup proper account/password security settings via PAM for smb:
Edit /etc/pam.conf file and add the following to a new line (you will see where, but you can put it anywhere really) "other password required pam_smb_passwd.so.1 nowarn"

6) Setup a user account and set permissions for that user to access the share area:
'groupadd users'
'useradd &#8211;g "users" &#8211;c "<Full Name>" &#8211;d /home/<username> &#8211;m &#8211;s /bin/bash'
'chown <username>:users /share_pool/shared'
'chmod 2775 /share_pool/shared'

Done....

 

[Pandamonium]

Thanks for the walkthrough FK. I might use it someday, but for now, I have zero spare parts lying around and am in decluttering mode. I figure in about 3 yrs or so, I'll have the freedom (currently renting a cramped apartment) to build out a home server. I just want to preserve the integrity of my lossless CD rips, photos, backups, etc until that time.