BeyondRAID, is there something similar yet cheaper?

HardwareFalcon

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2010
5
0
18,510
Hello All,

The Story:
I want to get around 4-8TB of storage that repairs itself and can deal with a drive dieing or heck 2 would be nice, so of course the first thing that comes to mind is RAID but I have dealt with RAID before and want something that requires much less interaction (yes I want to be lazy). So the next thought was the Drobo FS but damn is that thing expensive.

The Wish:
Is there any other company that does something similar to the Data Robotics BeyondRAID for a little bit less than the Drobo FS? Or does anybody know a good way to get a cheep Drobo FS, best I can find are $100 off Coupon codes bringing it down to $620 after shipping but I am hoping for more like a $500 range, of course less would be nice. And yes I am entering every month to win the $250 off but no luck as of yet.
 

sub mesa

Distinguished
ZFS may be for you. It may have a steeper learning curve in the beginning, but then it should be virtually maintenance free; no disk checks or other headaches. And very reliable.

You are looking for a NAS setup, right?
 

HardwareFalcon

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2010
5
0
18,510
Are there any products on the market that use ZFS? or are you suggesting setting up my own server using ZFS? I am looking for something simple, I don't want to have to put it together, Plug and play is what im looking for, self contained unit that just takes HDD's.
 

HardwareFalcon

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2010
5
0
18,510
After some reading I have been unable to find a ZFS product, I did find a great walkthrough of somebody making their own NAS http://frankleng.me/2010/05/01/zfs-powered-nas-the-ultimate-alternative-to-drobo-droboshare-the-complete-guide/ but while reading I found a pretty big flaw, "I cannot stress this point enough, you need to fill your case’s drive bays or you won’t be able to later on without losing data!" no adding hard drives once you are set up without wiping all the data.

I guess I need to add more items to my list of wants
- 5-8TB space
- at least 4 HDD's
- small power consumption 10-30W
- small size
- hot swappable drives
- self repairing
- can add more drives after the first 3 without having to clear data
- Gigabit Networking (2 ports with failsafe would be awesome but 1 is fine)
- SMB protocol (others would be nice but SMB is best for my Boxee Box)
 

sub mesa

Distinguished
Not sure about ZFS-ready NAS you can buy off the shelf. But building your own NAS isn't that difficult, if you have some guidance. If you want to go this path, then i'll assist you with any questions you may have.

You do have to consider that running a ZFS NAS is something exotic, and not 'mainstream'; not that many people are using something this advanced on a real UNIX server operating system. Still tens of thousands of people must use this, and likely even more, but the point i'm making is that it may require more effort than a solution that is 'commercially ready' and lying on the shelf.

Just to get an idea of how this works, you can try my own ZFS distribution called ZFSguru. It is still under development, but it's easy to use as it is bootable by LiveCD and uses a web-interface for configuration.

If you want to download ZFSguru check this thread:
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036391745&postcount=429

That thread is also the main support thread which i check daily. You may want to register there if you want to get serious with ZFS.

For now, just try the LiveCD if you're interested. You don't even have to burn the .iso, you can download Virtualbox (a free VM solution like VMware) and run a virtual machine and let it boot the downloaded .iso. Then you can try this without setting up anything or even burning a cd.

Cheers,
-sub
 

HardwareFalcon

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2010
5
0
18,510
That information was great and When I have the money to drop 1k into a full 15TB server (yes i hope to do this some day) I will check that out but for now what I want is more of the "commercially ready" option.

Does anybody know of something commercially ready that fills all those items on my list yet is cheaper than the Drobo FS (which does fulfill all of the wants on my list)?
 

HardwareFalcon

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2010
5
0
18,510
I ended up going with unRAID, it is exactly what I wanted, allows for extra drives to be added, has parity for protection and can even loose a drive and still play info from that drive while you find yourself a new drive to replace it with and it has some cool features with a Cache drive so you can have one fast drive and all the rest 5400RPM you can get a unRAID system or just the OS and build your own, Sadly the OS is not free but i figured it was worth amount they wanted for it.