Build a 14.5 watt data center in a shoebox Those supercomputing guys love to build their massive data centers full of hardware and high-end cooling systems. They make you feel like a real man or at least a real geek, which is important. Folks with smaller egos and perhaps smaller hands might consider building a tinier, more energy-friendly supercomputer. Consider this …
Corporate standards require file servers to either be locked in a secured place or its contents be encrypted and only be accessible to users authenticated in the AD. None of this products can be used to remove the small office data center+file server combo until they are encrypted.
Well, at least the locked room can be kept and instead of the big racked thing we can put one of those...
Any of the solutions mentioned should handle encryption if it is possible to upgrade to an unlocked linux kernel. Then you could setup the file system any way you like. None of these are encrypted out of the box however. In my opinion client side encryption would be more beneficial, the server could hold the encrypted files without a key.
Remember NAS devices are not created equally:
Linksys NSLU2 = 133MHz ARM 32MB
WD myBook = 200MHz ARM ?MB
Linkstation HGLAN = 266MHZ PPC 128MB (faster than the ARM)
Linkstation Pro/Live 1 & 2 = 400MHZ ARM9 128MB
The Slug is cool, I use mine as a Solaris JumpStart server.
Cost about GBP55 plus another GBP55 for the 160G USB disk.
I even had to install a full build environment on it so I could fix a bug in the tftp server.
I used it to install a whole bunch of Solaris machines, including Solaris 8, 9, 10 and 10x86
http://www.pbase.com/image/87845116
http://RED.com offers a similar packaged drive, optomized for the extremely high data rated generated by their signature product, the RED CAMERA.
The the $17,500 (body only) camera outputs adobe compatible RAW images at 60GB/second. That's a datastream of almost half a terabit.
The wonks at red have also finessed this high data rate into a CF system, perfect for short takes, and already widely adopted by the TV news Crowd.
While high density electronic storage will never replace film (FUJI promises to make 35MM film "forever",) tape is already yesterday's product.
--- paris icon just cause in the disco legend
I have a couple of these - one as a server with a large USB2 disk attached, plus it runs DHCP/DNS/ntp/others. The other runs the Asterisk PBX software which provides a decent one or two line home service in conjunction with some ATA boxes. The server unit recently clocked up over 400 days continuous uptime, ended only by an extended power outage that exhausted the UPS battery.
Or you could do what I did - buy an old Pentium laptop off eBay for a few quid, slap in a new hard disk and a CardBus Ethernet card (also from eBay) and install your favourite Real Operating System (NetBSD in my case). A mobile Pentium MMX will run fanless (5.5W TDP for a 233MHz Tillamook). Plus you get an integrated console device (ie. screen and keyboard) and UPS (ie. battery, if there's any life left in it at all) for free :-)
Glad you like the Omnima. One of the reasons I tried to make this happen was my frustration with the price of industrial embedded systems. Linux systems should be available to all, for hardly any more than the cost of a DVD, and that's what we (more-or-less) managed with the Omnima. It would have been much nicer to do the same with an NSLU2 as the hardware base, however the quantity discount for the Omnima boards was just a lot more favourable. We've just put in an order for 1000 more, so keep those orders coming!
PS: You know, REG should do an article on Omnima - I still can't quite believe how it's all taken off...
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