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There's lots of choices out there for server operating systems..... much of it free! Some of you might remember that last year I did an experiment using one of my old ThinkPads (an A31) to build a "proof of concept" for a Portable Server. I used an older distro of CentOS, installed several random drives into it's UltraBay and the one in the 2631 Dock as well. It all went fine, and the thing works. However; at the end of the day, it's still an old P4 computer that interfaces with drives via IDE, and there-in lies the issue. Well.... that and the fact that it's P4 is a single core processor and most OS's these days require a dual core. Oh yeah; there's also 2Gb limitation on RAM which pretty much eliminates anything like FreeNAS using ZFS.
So, if I want to go FreeNAS, which by the way is what I use at home, I'm going to have to do something about using hardware up to snuff. Duel Core, processor and at least 4Gb of RAM, maybe more.
The other direction I could go is to pull out my copy of MS Windows Home Server 2011 of which I own a license. Doesn't need as much RAM, but has other demands. So, let's look at the candidates to replace the A31.
In one corner, stands my old ThinkPad Z61m. It has a T7200 Core 2 Duo processor and the ability to have 2 drives onboard. It's really a nice machine complete with titanium LCD lid that's beautiful and unique. However, a quirk of that generation's chipset is a memory limitation to 3Gb regardless of what the RAM sockets have in them!
And in the other is the new-comer, an R500 that I was given this last summer. For some of you who don't deal with ThinkPads on a regular basis, they may seem very similar, but conceptually here's the difference that we're dealing with. If the Z61m is a BMW SUV, the R500 is a Chevy Suburban...... with bench seats! You might be able to see that it's so chunky, that the USB ports are standing on their sides! This machine can also take 2 drives internally, but you can get 8Gb of RAM in it.
I guess what it'll come down to is this. If I want to go with FreeNAS, then it's a no-brainer. I go with the R500. Max out it's RAM, put two drives in the SATA bays and the OS onto a USB stick. Attach one or more external drives and call it a day. However, if I do Windows Home Server; I'll use the Z61m. The 3Gb of RAM isn't really an issue, put a system drive of 160Gb in one bay and a bigger drive in the other one for storage as well as USB or Firewire external drives.
Which then brings on the deciding factor.....networking. Which OS is going to be friendlier as a stand-alone system and be able to server files creating it's own network.
I've been avoiding this for a while now..... the grunt-work associated with a major change. But it had to happen sooner or later. As I've discussed before, there are a number of things about my WHS (Windows Home Server 2011) running file server that I've become unhappy with; although, much of it doesn't have anything to do with WHS itself, but rather the HighPoint Caching controller.
After a lot of hours of watching YouTube I came to the following conclusions:
- I have to decide how I want to manage my storage.
- I have to decide what operating system I want to use.
- How safe do I want to be in terms of the files residing on the file server?
- How much money do I want to put into the server in terms of drives?
- How much time do I want to allocate to learning the OS?
Don't get me wrong: I love this stuff! But I have another full-time profession, a family that expects me to spend time with them. AND I do not have an unlimited amount of cash to expend on this solution.
So, here are my options. They start with reloading Windows Home Server 2011 which has the distinct advantage that I own it and have used it for close to a year now so there's a level of familiarity. My hardware is also set up for it, with a 160Gb SSD for the OS to live on, and a Highpoint caching controller that I know works with it. The downside is that I'm not very happy with how it's working and will have to expend an unknown amount of time figuring out how to make it work better..... if that's possible. Furthermore, it's a product that's been "orphaned" by Microsoft, so this is the "end of the trail" for it.
An obvious alternative is FreeNAS. It's well-known and quite popular today. It has that always favorable attribute of being a free product. As such is supported by the "open-source" community. It and it's off-shoot, NAS4Free (more on this later), have the advantage of having a robust software RAID file system that doesn't require the use of an expensive (and often annoyingly difficult to use) hardware controller. Plus underlying technology that allows it to play nicely with various other systems ranging from Windows (CIFS), Linux (SMB) to AFP (Mac Networking). They can also handle standalone authentication or work with Active Directory, although that's not particularly relevant in my case.
And of course, you can't talk about FreeNAS without getting into NAS4Free which is ixSystems' attempt to do FreeNAS with a better web interface and plugin system. As it turns out, based on lots of research, it seems to be somewhat less "bleeding edge" than FreeNAS and thus easier for laymen like me to grasp. I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of what exactly pushed me in this direction. Suffice to say that the cleaner and easier interface was a better fit for me.
....But what about the various Linux distros? Although, I'm certain that these are great for full production environments with a professional well versed in running command-line, these aren't for me. I will say that I was suitably impressed with CentOS during my time with it, but I just don't see myself investing the time necessary to become fully comfortable with it's use. Plus; I don't need a full server. I just need something to serve files, so really a "roll-your-own" NAS with greater flexibility.
What got done today? I loaded the OTP (Old ThinkPad) mobile file server up with NAS4Free 32-bit v. 9.3.0.2.1190 with it. Got it up and running. Copied a ripped movie file to it and played it back off. It's a good start! So stay tuned as this project proceeds and I decide whether this is in fact the server OS for me.
They say: "Every Dog Has His Day"! I say: every computer problem has a solution.... almost anyway. You guys know that last week was a disaster in all manner of ways. I figured that over the course of the week, things would resolve themselves like they always do:
- On my day off with the sick daughter; I finished repairing the fence by building a new gate.
- Then I resolved my problematic R60 ThinkPad issue.
- I got a cool offer from Lenovo for half-off of a new device.... which I took advantage of!
- Got another of the R60s up and running with a different OS.
I gotta tell ya; I LOVE Windows 7! When given enough RAM and a halfway decent set of hardware, it'll run with the best of 'em. Essentially, it's like a modern Windows XP! That's a high compliment indeed if I do say so myself. When I moved the hardware from the R60 that was freezing up to another one of those machines; it was like magic! All I did was to take the T7200 cpu, the 4Gb of RAM and Intel 40Gb SSD out of the one machine and put it in another one and "BAM" (like Emeril Lagasse would say), it just worked. I took it to show my Principal how fast those machines could be made to work and he was suitably impressed. Now it's in the hands of one of my computer club student/minions for long-term stabilty testing.
I was so excited that the very next evening, I loaded up the previously freezing-up R60 with Zorin OS 9 and showed that to my Principal as the "proof-of-concept" for what I wanted to do with the rest of the 26 R60s (and possibly 100+ X200s) sitting on selves in a closet! I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed with how simple Zorin was to work on coming from Windows. Now for the ultimate test! I'm going to try and put it in the hands of one of my least hardware savy computer club minions for daily trials. Stay tuned!
While all this was going on, I went on a shopping binge.... the Frugal Propellerhead way! You guys know that for the last several months, I've been busy helping a number of people buy computers. You might, or might not have figured out that I mostly make little, if anything on these gigs. It's kind of like playing in a weekend band. However, besides the occasional old computer they throw out, there is a little bit of a silver lining. The majority of these purchases come on eBay, and for the last couple of years, they've had this little incentive program called "eBay Bucks" which returns a tiny percent back to you from the purchases four times a year. A bit like what credit card companies do with their loyalty points. Over the last quarter, I've had a lot of these purchases ranging from the Dell Precision workstation laptop for a former student going to college to the ThinkPad X1 for a co-worker. All this ended up netting me a whopping $57 in eBay Bucks for the quarter that ended on September 30th! Don't scoff: in the Frugal Propellerhead world, $57 and some cents is no laughing matter! Basically, it allows me to rationalize buying things that don't really have a real purpose.
I know what you're thinking: Really; what in the heck is this weird stuff!?! OK. From top to bottom, it goes as follows. A Cooler Master 4-in-3 drive cage. It's purpose is to go into my old Cooler Master Centurion 5 case that I'm turning into a file server. Although it was actually designed for this case, it can be used in any computer tower that has 3, 5.25" external bays and turn it into a, fan-cooled drive cage that can hold 4, 3.5" hard drives. The second device is a portable USB 3.0 Hub/Card Reader that in one device will allow my ThinkPad X1's single 3.0 port to do multiple things. And the last is a rather difficult to find, power supply for one of my Lacie "Porsche" external Firewire hard drive enclosures. That will not allow me to use the other of them "daisy-chained" together as external storage for the "Old ThinkPad Server" project that I'm building out of an A31. It's just $60 worth of stuff; why not just buy it and have done with it? It's all part of my philosophy and the purpose of this blog to start with. Finding ways to do things as cheaply as possible and if possible using old repurposed technology.
Before my OTP (Old ThinkPad) can become a rolling form of this, it needed a few things.
An operating system that can serve as a decent server, and run stably on old hardware. As it turned out, the most obvious solution, Windows Home Server v1 didn't like my A31. The load threw all manner of errors during the install and generally "acted a fool". From there, I moved on to Ubuntu, which ran very well, but I just didn't like it very much. After a suggestion by one of my internet friends from the ThinkPad Forum, I decided to give CentOS a try. Once I got the ISO burned properly, the load went very smoothly. Everything was recognized and the old P4, with the 2Gb RAM (max) was responding like something a couple of generations newer!
A little bit of this, and Samba was downloaded..... not configured mind you, but downloaded! The configuring part could wait. What I needed to was make sure that the machine would talk to my drives.
The first order of business was to get this sorted out. What is it? Well; it's a hard drive adapter for the UltraBay 2000K (UB2K) generation of ThinkPads. I'm not completely certain, but it's a pretty safe bet that IBM invented the concept of the replaceable device "bay" going all the way to the original ThinkPad. Back in those days, there were many devices that weren't built-in on notebook computers, so there needed to be all manner of standardized (PCMCIA) and quasi-standardized connections to allow devices to attach. The A31 is unique in that it didn't have just one like the run-of-the-mill corporate notebooks, but TWO!!! However, they didn't behave the same. One of my issues was to figure out whether CentOS would recognize devices in these bays other than the normal optical drives and floppies. As it turned out, after some experimenting, it was learned that a second hard drive could be placed in the right-side bay, but not the left. It didn't matter how I set the "boot sequence", the machine would hang trying to boot from the UB2K drive if it was in the left side! When this was confirmed and I could access the secondary drive through the Drive Utility, I was set. Optical drive in the left and hard disk drive in the right. This gives me replaceable storage of relatively large sizes, although it was limited to PATA/IDE drives which is a problem. More on this later.
Next came the dock. In this case, I went with the ThinkPad Dock II, Model 2877 because: a) it's newer than the original 2631 and b) I have it. This "dock" was actually designed for the later T4x machines, but IBM, being IBM made it backwards compatible. So, what's so special about it? OK, first of all; it's an actual DOCKING STATION (hence dock) meaning that it has capabilities of its own beyond what is built into the machine attached to it. Most people call what is in reality a port replicator, a dock. They are wrong. You'll notice that it's quite a bit deeper than the typical port replicator. That's because it has it's own power supply (so no need for the adapter), two more PCMCIA card slots, a half-length PCI card slot, and another UltraBay. On top of that, there are the normal pass-throughs for things like video, serial and parallel interface and floppy disk drive. For all intents and purposes, these things make a notebook computer a full desktop in miniature. It turns out that the A31 running CentOS has so far completely recognized this thing so I can attach all manner of devices to it..... SCORE!
The last 2 devices that I needed to get going were the Adaptec AUA-1422 PCMCIA adapter that would give the A31 USB 2.0, and most importantly IEEE 1394 (AKA Firewire).... that's because, I have an old Lacie "Firewire" external drive with a 500Gb hard drive in it. I've had both of these devices forever, and finding a way to use them productively would the the icing on the cake! In fact, I have a second Lacie enclosure that would daisy-chain nicely if it worked. To make a long story short, it worked, all of it. I was able to connect, have the disk recognize, partition and format for Linux in short order.
So, the concept is almost complete. I can take this old notebook that most people would consider obsolete, set it up almost anywhere as a full blown file server, or pretty much any other service that Linux has in it's bag of tricks. With the various add-ons that it recognizes, I can access an almost limitless amount of storage!
Now, on to the next (more difficult) stage of the project. Learning how to configure and administer a Linux file server.
