David McGown wrote:
Shashi,
I guess I have to say that putting together a NAS for the purpose of a music file server (with additional functionality) is not like having to be responsible for a file server in a company or datacenter, where reliability and throughput is critical. A home application is pretty lightweight, favoring reads rather than writes (if used as a media server), and it is more important to have data redundancy rather than performance. This is a hobby, and developing a customized solution based on commodity hardware both to save money over a high end commercial NAS solution (sometimes a closed system that does not permit upgrading to current versions of server programs, such as LMS), as well as a good learning experience should not be discouraged. I could argue why should we build our own amplifiers...they might fail and take out our speakers, or burn down our houses, or, in the case of tube amps, zap us with high voltage and kill us. Here, the only risk is that we *might* lose or corrupt data, which is easy to remedy if we maintain proper backups (like a mirrored drive with our data), and rely on the NAS once we have established that it is running reliably. Issues with power glitches can be easily mitigated by use of UPSs. I totally agree that you should not use home-brew NAS for anything that is critical to your livelihood, but doubt if many of use are in that situation.
David
David,
While I agree with you 100%, I am addressing two issues.
1. Is the Home Brew NAS right solution for a typical Audiophile?
I say no because most of the people are not informed in the field of computers. To build a how me NAS, one should be very well versed on all the hardware components of a computer and how they work with each other. And more importantly they need have excellent knowledge of Linux and ZFS file system.
A 1 TB music directory is not unusual now-a-days. To back it up periodically, you would need specialized software to do a decent job.
UPS is an additional component in the system.
The point is, FreeNAS might not be a desirable solution to vast majority of end users. Of course, it would be a feast to a geek.
2. FreeNAS as a reliable solution in general. We agree on this point.