Cheap NAS using FreeBSD - practical considerations?

[David Gerard]

Let's say that, as fine as NetApps are, I can't afford their prices. So I
set up a FreeBSD box with a whole lot of disk attached and use that as
network-attached storage, serving files by NFS, with gigabit ethernet.

Setting up such a box is trivially easy. But what are the practical
considerations? Have any of you done this, or know anyone who has? Does
serving stay at wire speed? Recommendations for motherboards or
peripherals?


- d.