Best LAN file archive server?

[Vulpes Velox]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 23:20:47 +0400
"Andrew" <infofarmer at mail.ru> wrote:

> Good day to everyone!
> 
> I want to arrange a file archive on my FreeBSD box so that windows
> users can access it via LAN (100Mbit). It'll be over 100Gb, mp3 and
> divx mostly. Throttling is imperative, it must be designed so that
> clients can listen to music and watch movies directly, without
> downloading them. There are only 10 LAN users, so I expect 5-8
> simultaneous connections.

BTW what OSes are they running. If it all just various unix machines,
nfs should work. Not exactly sure how to throttle it though.
 
> I wonder, what do you think is the best solution for this - samba,
> http, ftp or something else? I don't want users to install
> additional software on their computers, but I'm ready to consider it
> if it's worth the worries.

SMB :)

I would setup some rules for throttling using IPFW to each client
machine. Not sure if samba supports throttling or now, but doing it by
IPFW should work fine.
 
> If ftp is the best, what is the best server? Ftpd?

Possible, but would make it annoying for fetching files and probally
more network load.


> Another point - how to configure the filesystem so that it suits the
> purpose best? It's just my imagination - but I want it to cache
> everything insanely, to be very fast in responses and to spare the
> hard drive (as the latter is going to be a simple ATA drive, Maxtor,
> Seagate or Hitachi, which are inclined to deadly failures under
> heavy loads).

man tuning
man sysctl
:)

IIRC there is also a section in the handbook on it.

If you have not bought the drive yet, I would suggest advioding
Western Digital. I have all ways have problems with transfer speeds
and their drives.


BTW movies and music does not eat much bandwidth. You may very well be
able to do it with out throttling, depending on the bit rate. But
should all be fine for the most part with out throttling.