NAS system

[Brad du Plessis]

Hi all,

I was just wanting to find out if anyone can give advice about using NAS
systems with a NetBSD based system as a client. I'm also looking for
information about what NAS systems have been tried and tested with NetBSD.

Any information would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Brad

[Johan A. van Zanten]

Post by Brad du Plessis
Hi all,
I was just wanting to find out if anyone can give advice about using NAS
systems with a NetBSD based system as a client. I'm also looking for
information about what NAS systems have been tried and tested with NetBSD.

I use an Infrant (now Netgear) ReadyNAS NV+ with my NetBSD machines, and
a Mac OS X machine.

With an older version of their OS, "RAIDiator," 3.x, there was a problem
with NFS locking. It's been fixed in the 4x release, which i think is
current shipping. RAIDiator is based on Linux.

The problem was actually in some badly-written rpc code in an older
rev. of the Linux 2.4 kernel, which i mentioned because there may be some
other NAS devices out there based on the 2.4 Linux kernel, and it took me
some time to figure out why vi kept hanging. (Older revs of FreeBSD and
OS X also had similar problems.) the 4.x rev of RAIDiator uses the 2.6
Linux kernel, IIRC.

I like the ReadyNAS NV+ pretty well, but it's a bit slow with four SATA
drives. I get about 20MB/sec. read but only about 5 MB/sec. writes. (The
bottleneck is CPU.) I'm not using Jumbo frames, but i am using gigabit
Ethernet and have increased the Read and Write sizes.

Web management with CLI (ssh) access. I'd be 100% happy with it, except
for the low write throughput. For the price i paid (~$500 US, no drives)
it was a good deal.

Initial setup may require OS X, Windows, or a Linux box.

-johan

[Brad du Plessis]

Post by Johan A. van Zanten
With an older version of their OS, "RAIDiator," 3.x, there was a problem
with NFS locking. It's been fixed in the 4x release, which i think is
current shipping. RAIDiator is based on Linux

Thanks for your detailed reply.

Is NFS is the most common file system a NetBSD client would use with NAS?


Brad

[Johan A. van Zanten]

Post by Brad du Plessis
Is NFS is the most common file system a NetBSD client would use with NAS?

Hmm.. if memory serves, the network file systems NetBSD can mount are:

NFS
SMBFS
.. and maybe AFP with the netatalk package.


Of those three i'd definitely choose NFS.

I've never tried to mount an SMB file system on a Unix machine, so i
can't comment on how well it works or performance.

-johan

[Jeremy C. Reed]

NFS
SMBFS
... and maybe AFP with the netatalk package.

Also see pkgsrc/filesystems/fuse-afpfs-ng

And Coda. NetBSD kernels can be built with Coda support. (Many ports have
it enabled by default.) And coda (and coda5) kernel modules are available
with NetBSD. See http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/ and pkgsrc/net/coda

Also other fuse filesystems (in pkgsrc) can be used to as simple
network-based file systems using webdav, ssh, ftp, http, smb, and others.


Jeremy C. Reed

[Simon Truss]

Post by Johan A. van Zanten

Post by Brad du Plessis
Hi all,
I was just wanting to find out if anyone can give advice about using NAS
systems with a NetBSD based system as a client. I'm also looking for
information about what NAS systems have been tried and tested with NetBSD.

I use an Infrant (now Netgear) ReadyNAS NV+ with my NetBSD machines, and
a Mac OS X machine.

+1 for readynas.

After 16,000 hours, 1 failed hard disc and a flash upgrade to 3.01, I
have to say it was a pain free experience. It just works :-)

Post by Johan A. van Zanten
With an older version of their OS, "RAIDiator," 3.x, there was a problem
with NFS locking. It's been fixed in the 4x release, which i think is
current shipping. RAIDiator is based on Linux.

likewise I experienced some quirks with 2.x firmware but 3.01 is fine
with my setup.

Post by Johan A. van Zanten
I like the ReadyNAS NV+ pretty well, but it's a bit slow with four SATA
drives. I get about 20MB/sec. read but only about 5 MB/sec. writes. (The
bottleneck is CPU.) I'm not using Jumbo frames, but i am using gigabit
Ethernet and have increased the Read and Write sizes.

I get 11MB/sec writes, although I got 14+MB/sec for many months while
when new, which dropped to 5MB/sec until the the firmware upgrade.
likewise I am not using jumbo frames. I have a high turnover of large
files and keep the fs near full most of the time so I cannot expect good
performance. The forums have suggested that buying the 1GB RAM
version/upgrade increases performance especially with the builtin media
servers.

Simon