Transform G5 into a NAS?

[mknabster]

I'm looking into either purchasing or building a NAS as a backup for my media center, and i was looking at the Lacie 5Big, as well as transforming my G5 tower into a storage server. Now the drives need to be seen at all times by my Windows media center, which, right now with my home network, the Windows and Macs have a difficult time seeing each other over the network for some stupid reason. They do see each other when i don't need them, but when i do, they don't work. In any case, I would like to set one up, for remote access outside of my network as well. I was looking at the Sonnet G5 Jive to add 3 more drives to the unit, but i don't know what i would use to run the server, should i use OSX server, or FreeNAS, or something else? Any advice or opinions? Thanks

 

[goMac]

To be fair, the G5 is a good NAS like a tank is a good car for driving to work. It'll suck down a lot more power and be more expensive to run than a real NAS. As you're finding, it's harder to setup and maintain as well.

If you're going to go this route, I'd suggest OS X Server instead. Leopard Server was pretty good. It'll give you better share settings, and it has a built in VPN host to get back into your network. You can shoehorn all that stuff into OS X Client, but Leopard server should be cheap enough now that's not an issue.

No idea on your Windows clients seeing the Mac issues. Seems like a network configuration issue. Are you connecting to the Mac from the Windows box via IP address? Probably the easiest way.

 

[mknabster]

After speaking with more and more people, it probably wouldn't be best to use computers as a server with how much power they would draw. So i'll probably go the NAS route as it is, just need to find one in which i can turn the RAID off. I'm not sure either, I have a nice amount of machines, they're not all on at the same time, but when they are, the Windows machines have no problem with each other since i have them all on the same homegroup, and the Macs that are in my basement wired in don't have a problem communicating either, but my wireless MacBook Pro has the hardest time communicating with everyone. No clue why, i have all the sharing settings in place, and it does work sometimes, but most not.

 

[-hh]

I'm in the process of (finally) replacing my G5 with a Mac Pro and have been planning to go the Server (various flavors) route for it for awhile.

I found that OS X Server "Tiger" OS was a very cheap buy awhile back, although I'd bet that today, it might have fileserver issues with Lion's newer AFP transfer protocols.

Insofar as Power (and the Sonnet G5 Jive), I've been running my G5 with four (4) disks installed for a couple of years ... based on my UPS's power consumption display, it pulls around 200W with the disks spinning...YMMV as to what portion of which is from the fans If I had a cold, damp spot in the basement that could use some heat circulation as a dehumidifier, it would probably be a good match.


-hh

 

[kdogsup]

Go FreeNAS.. I have a FreeNAS server setup on an HP Microserver N36L with 8 tb of useable space on a ZFS pool. AppleShare works great to Snow Leopard and Lion. All-in-all, the setup (with 5x 2TB SATA drives) ses like 60 watts.

 

[Intell]

Go FreeNAS.. I have a FreeNAS server setup on an HP Microserver N36L with 8 tb of useable space on a ZFS pool. AppleShare works great to Snow Leopard and Lion. All-in-all, the setup (with 5x 2TB SATA drives) ses like 60 watts.

FreeNAS doesn't exist for PPC Macs.