Let's say that, as fine as NetApps are, I can't afford their prices. So I set up a FreeBSD box with a whole lot of disk attached and use that as network-attached storage, serving files by NFS, with gigabit ethernet.
Setting up such a box is trivially easy. But what are the practical considerations? Have any of you done this, or know anyone who has? Does serving stay at wire speed? Recommendations for motherboards or peripherals?
I built an entry-level file server which has 3*200Gb + 1*160Gb ATA Drives. The motherboard is Abit BE6-II with built-in HPT370 IDE controller, Celeron 950GHz and 384Mb RAM. I don't use HPT Software RAID, ccd or vinum. The net throughput is 10Mbytes/s. 6-7 people often watch movies simultaneously over Samba and don't even feel they're not alone.
IMHO, it's very, very cost-effective.
I'd put it this way: if there are some OS'es which are good for file serving, FreeBSD is among them.
Best wishes, Andrew P. _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
