My pitch for OpenSolaris w/ ZFS as music storage

Computer Audio Asylum

Music servers and other computer based digital audio technologies.

Posted by Jim Doyle (A) on April 21, 2010 at 19:59:01

In Reply to: My 1st Post - Need help to decide on a Music Server posted by sashua on April 21, 2010 at 12:02:07:

You have two independent problems to solve: The storage system and
the playback system. For storage, I am against NAS commodity boxes or
Windows machines as they are not robust enough for a high reliability environment. The best I've found (for free) is the OpenSolaris operating system. OpenSolaris provides a high-integrity file system called ZFS. It does software RAID (striping and mirroring) on commodity disks and controllers. It does checksumming and integrity scans as well as sector soft-error remaps. It's incredibly easy to use when you have a drive failure and need to resilver your replacement disk. Linux and MacOS do have RAID options, and you can buy RAID controllers for use with Windows, but at a price.

You need to be realistic about the temperatures you run your drive at. Summer temperatures are BAD for HBA's. If your basement is dry enough, you're storage server can live there.

You'll need to periodically watch the error logs on your storage server... You'll get some early warning that a drive is about to die. It's always best to keep an unused spare drive somewhere, spundown and powered off, for when the day comes.

FYI- My home storage server has about 1000 albums on it, plus family photos, plus scanned tax records and other things. I use Gigabyte motherboard with a 45W AMD CPU and 2 GB core. I'm using two Seagate 1.5TB drives. OpenSolaris 2009.06 with ZFS and configured to serve music shares via CIFS, FTP and NFS. I simulated a drive failure and tried out first hand how easy it is to respond to a drive emergency outage. It's way better than Linux.

-- Jim

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - My 1st Post - Need help to decide on a Music Server - sashua 12:02:07 04/21/10 (11)

RE: My 1st Post - Need help to decide on a Music Server - DBB 08:02:57 04/23/10 (0)

A practical suggestion - Not to be read by computer geeks! - cawson@onetel.com 16:33:53 04/22/10 (0)

RE: My 1st Post - Need help to decide on a Music Server - Roseval 09:58:43 04/22/10 (0)

My pitch for OpenSolaris w/ ZFS as music storage - Jim Doyle 04/21/1019:59:01 04/21/10 (2)

RE: My pitch for OpenSolaris w/ ZFS as music storage - ThomasPf 12:39:49 04/22/10 (0)

RE: My pitch for OpenSolaris w/ ZFS as music storage - Tony Lauck 09:19:02 04/22/10 (0)

I wouldn't call a computer down and dirty - hermanesque 13:07:59 04/21/10 (4)

thanks, I really feel the love BTW I am the new and improved Herman - hermanesque 20:20:48 04/21/10 (1)

RE: thanks, I really feel the love BTW I am the new and improved Herman - Mercman 07:35:49 04/22/10 (0)

Hey Welcome Back Hermie!!!! - Dynaudio_Rules 15:19:20 04/21/10 (0)

Welcome back Herman, (nt) - Mercman 14:49:52 04/21/10 (0)

Follow Ups

My pitch for OpenSolaris w/ ZFS as music storage - Jim Doyle 04/21/1019:59:01 04/21/10 (2)

RE: My pitch for OpenSolaris w/ ZFS as music storage - ThomasPf 12:39:49 04/22/10 (0)

RE: My pitch for OpenSolaris w/ ZFS as music storage - Tony Lauck 09:19:02 04/22/10 (0)

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