Storage Box (I)
I’ve wanted to build a dedicated file server for quite some time now. I had a lot of requirements floating around in my head for what I wanted to achieve, mainly:
- 1TB+ of fault tolerant disk space - I’ve already got 5 disk drives in a variety of sizes holding my precious data. Losing a disk would be a tragedy. So the new storage system needs redundancies in case of a disk failure.
- ZFS - I’m a big fan of what Sun has brought to the table with ZFS. Snapshots are perfect if you’ve ever blown important files away with an accidental slip on the delete key. And the ability to grow a pool makes future expansion a breeze.
- Energy Efficient - My current server is my old desktop. On average it draws 165W of power, all day, every day. Worst part is, 98% of the time it’s not doing a damn thing. For the new server I’d like to be using < 60W. I feel like using less electricity than a standard light bulb is a fairly good goal.
- Easy to Manage - I’ve seen some truly terrible management GUI’s in my time, and I feel that most companies really underestimate how important a solid design is. A good web based interface is my preference, but I also want to be able to muck around at a lower level if needed.
Today I purchased most of the hardware to build a box that would meet all of these goals. I decided to wait until after I return from my trip to Italy to purchase the hard drives. Tomorrow I’ll get into the details of the hardware I picked out and the overall plan for how I’m gonna do this.
