Want to DIY a NAS?
Ars Techinca has a basic walkthrough of the “why not DIY” when it comes to NAS. I would be curious to see how Window Storage Spaces’ performance stacks up to what an off-the-shelf NAS can provide, but aside from that there’s little fault to find with the thought process and component selection (although the price is reasonably high-end for a consumer NAS). The motherboard certainly checks the boxes with 2x Intel GbE and 6x SATA, although it has quite a few extras I’d probably skip if it were me.
Recently I began outgrowing my home file server. It’s an older Mac Mini with 1TB of storage space, and though it has worked well enough for several years (and through more than one OS X Server review), it’s not a great choice for someone who primarily uses it as a file server. It’s not as expandable as I’d like it to be, its Fusion Drive setup offers no redundancy, and as a general-purpose computer it is rendered unnecessary by the 27-inch 2012 iMac on my desk that’s still happily humming away.
NAS boxes are already pretty
NAS boxes are already pretty inexpensive, and with new boxes with additional features on them, it’s an interesting thought.
My NAS is DIY, but it’s a bit
My NAS is DIY, but it’s a bit overbuilt for most users (6 drives, Core i7, 32GB RAM, Windows 2012 R2). That said, I think the AT guy (and most folks) would probably have been better off with a consumer NAS given his needs :). Lower power, lower upfront cost, less maintenance, etc.
I guess I have 2 NASs
I guess I have 2 NASs running. A WHS2011 and a FREENAS box. My WHS holds all my personal files on a 2T raid 1 array and and all the video is on an 11T JBOD both via the motherboards on board controller. My FREENAS box is made from left over components and also has an 11T JBOD but is software based via FREENAS and it also hosts my PLEX server. Both have 3GHz quad core AMD CPUs & 16G of ram which may be a bit of over kill for the WHS but it allows my PLEX server to stream w/o getting bogged down. Network transfers are slower to FREENAS, probably due to the software RAID, but since FREENAS is, well.. free, I hightly reccomend it. Aslo there are a number of plugins for backups etc & the affore mentioned PLEX.