Cheap NAS using FreeBSD - practical considerations?

[Andrew P.]

David Gerard wrote:
> 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?
> 

I built an entry-level file server which has 3*200Gb + 1*160Gb ATA 
Drives. The motherboard is Abit BE6-II with built-in HPT370 IDE 
controller, Celeron 950GHz and 384Mb RAM. I don't use HPT Software RAID, 
ccd or vinum. The net throughput is 10Mbytes/s. 6-7 people often watch 
movies simultaneously over Samba and don't even feel they're not alone.
IMHO, it's very, very cost-effective.

I'd put it this way: if there are some OS'es which are good for file 
serving, FreeBSD is among them.

Best wishes,
Andrew P.