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fabrik
Asked: 2009-08-18 05:34:31 +0800 CST

Debian-based local fileserver in a mixed-OS environment?

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I'd like to build a Debian-based server that will take out our old Infrant ReadyNAS? I am somewhat familiar with Debian but as far as here my knowledge was limited to typical LAMP-needs.

My initial needs are:

  • Software RAID10 (that's ok, i think)
  • User Access/Level Control
  • Must be available from any computer in our LAN (OS X, Windows, Linux equally)
  • Speed gain over Infrant's solution

I'm afraid maybe the mixed environment can cause some problems (OS X especially). I've heard from FreeNAS but it's still not reached 1.0 which makes me insecure.

Is it possible to reach my goals with Debian or i am stuck with ReadyNAS?

networking

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If you don't run a distro like FreeNAS then you'll need to read up on Samba. It's the CIFS file and print server for *nix. It will work just fine with Windows, OSX, and Linux clients.

    Its in Debian's repository so you should just be able to apt-get it. Windows is a moving target proper support for the newer versions may only be found in the newer Samba versions. So read the release notes. I know if you want proper domain support for Windows 7 and Vista clients you'll need one of the newer releases.

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  2. Also on ServerFault: Is FreeNAS Reliable.

    Given two machines, [a] and [b] serving files, where [a] is a celeron 1.3ghz with two 7200 rpm drives, and [b] is a quad core xeon with two 7200 rpm drives -- you may not see much of an overall speed difference for fileserving purposes due to the task being primarily disk bound. If your new server has faster drives, more drives, or a considerable amount of ram for disk cache -- you might see an increase.

    If the drives in question are going from 40gb to 640gb, you will see a speed increase due to disk densities and such -- but generally the machine speed is irrelevant in most cases.

    Going from an embedded solution (ReadyNAS) to a real 'server' should produce a considerable speed difference; but justto be sure -- run RAID 10 accross 4 drives.

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  3. Your requirements can easily be facilitated by a common file sharing configuration.

    • Create local accounts for each user.
    • Manage access using permissions.
    • Use Samba to serve your files. Windows, Linux and Mac OS X will interoperate with SAMBA shares.

    If you're comfortable with performing configurations with files and reading documentation than you'll be fine. The Samba documentation is verbose and there hundreds of example configurations floating around the internet.

    If you're looking for predictable release cycles, I'd encourage you to grab Ubuntu 8.04 Server Edition. It's supported until at least 2013. If you're familiar with Debiab, you're familiar with Ubuntu.

    We're currently using a similar configuration in our office.

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