Server for Firewall / Network Storage Drive

[Schadenfroh]

Greetings,

I am debating whether or not I need to build / purchase a physical server to meet my needs. I want to be able to share pictures and movies that I shoot with my friends and family in other states. So, I was thinking about putting a server together (or buying a refurb one).

I would need the following functionality:
1. RAID 1 support for redundancy with ~1.5 TB of storage
2. Ability to map a network drive to this storage array via a VPN
3. (Optional) offload my current Tomato / Buffalo router firewall capabilities to the new box.

Software is not a problem, as I am a graduate student with access to MSDNAA and Windows Server 2008. But, I think it might be overkill to purchase a server with at least a Pentium Dual Core CPU to do these things.

So, I was thinking of just buying a router with NAS support and placing an external enclosure on it that has RAID 1 support, like the following:

Asus Router (NAS capable) with Tomato or DD-WRT:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-038-_-Product

RAID 1 SATA HDD External enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-032-_-Product

and maybe a couple of 1.5TB "green" drives to go in there.

Would there be any significant disadvantage for what I want to do by going with the cheaper router with NAS option? Thoughts?

 

[mxnerd]

If you worry about utility bill, get a Windows Home Server system from any online retailer. Windows Home Server has #1 (kind of, with WHS's duplication function) & #2 function you want.

I would not trust DD-WRT based NAS function at all. It's very slow and hard to configure.

Or assemble one yourself using Atom based motherboard, a mini-itx case and memory. You can then buy OEM Windows Home Server, or install free ClearOS(ClarkConnect) or eBox platform. Not necessary cheaper than prebuilt system.

 

[Jimmah]

I built an Amahi server out of sales I found on Newegg. D51S board (80$ free shipping), 512mb DDR2 800 (10$ local), cheap ITX case w/PSU (30$), 500gb HDD (40$ on sale).

With Amahi I used an inexpensive JBOD dual bay enclosure and set up for two single drives, then had the built-in storage pooling handle the RAID function. Quick and relatively simple.

As for the firewall aspect, I've yet to try using it as a dedicated firewall, I have another mini itx box which handles that.

 

[classy]

There are a lot ways to do this. Money wise it will probably be about the same. I would purchase two boxes. One a nice cheap box, setup and run Smoothwall, which will allow you to control the ips who come through to access the 2nd box a raid 1 with server 2008 installed on it sharing out the photo folder using webfolders. While this might be a bit more time consuming, one it will be super secure and two you can easily add more folders or space when necessary. The way you have thought it out now is okay too. But nothing can top a well setup smoothie. And smoothwall will run on anything just about. My suggestion would be a chore, but good benefits.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Hmm, interesting suggestions guys. So, using a router like the ASUS with DD-WRT and/or Tomato would be really slow and/or horrible compared to just shelling out the money for a cheap server. I was thinking about this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-018-_-Product

Should have plenty of RAM for what I am doing and I can just slap a few cheap HDDs in there and RAID 1 them. Like I said, I can get Windows Server 2008 for free via MSDNAA.

Still, even that one might be overkill when I can go with a celeron or Atom system like this (although, I would need to buy a RAID card):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...0atom%20server

Would be cool to have the firewall and the NAS on the same box, but I can understand the need to keep them separate.

 

[Crusty]

I ran my Firewall and NAS off the same box before for years. I had an Athlon XP 3200+ w/ 1GB of ram with a couple of 200GB IDE drives in RAID 10 running on Debian with samba for file sharing on the local network and iptables for my firewall. I had no problems serving up at 1gbps, however most of the network clients couldn't get anywhere near that in disk write speeds. If I wanted to setup file sharing for others I would either give them SFTP access or just use apache for whatever type of application.

Nowadays though I use my trusty Wrt54g V4 w/ Tomato as my firewall and use an old retired PC for my 'server'. Everything is gigabit but the Linksys obviously, but that doesn't matter for my local traffic.