Re: PostgreSQL server embedded in NAS firmware?

On 6 September 2012 23:40, Andrew Barnham <andrew(dot)barnham(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Scratch that. An immediate show stopping pitfall occurs to me: the necessity
> to match CPU/OS Architecture between primary server and replicate target.
> Doubtful that there are any consumer NAS products out there running linux on
> 64bit/intel

Hi

I have a super cheapskate rig along those lines at home, doing
replication among other things: I used an HP Microserver (not
marketed as a 'consumer NAS' exactly, but the same general idea:
a low cost black cube with drives bays, SATA ports, a small
amount of ECC RAM and a low power dual core amd64 CPU). I run
Debian GNU/Linux and have a bunch of PostgreSQL databases,
backups and virtual machines on it. My goals were: cheap to buy,
cheap to run, reasonably reliable, quiet, small, inoffensive to
the eye. I filled it up with 'green' 5400RPM drives that I had
spare from another project, configured software RAID arrays with
XFS on top, and put it on a shelf to run headless. A friend has the
same box but runs FreeNAS on it so he can use ZFS and swears by
it (he also added a 4 x 2.5" adaptor to be able to reach the
maximum of 8 drives, which I think requires adding a controller
card, whereas I used the 5.25" bay for a 5th 3.5" drive). The
machines were going for around 150 GBP when I bought, and I added
some RAM. Last time I measured it it was drawing around 50W (a
bit more when busy, a bet less when idle), which works out to
under 50 quid a year to run at London retail electricity prices,
comparable to a light bulb. This is surely about the slowest
database hardware money can buy, but handles my hobbiest
databases (~1TB for the largest) and a bunch of streaming
replicas and backups from remote servers just fine. I haven't
checked, but I would expect it to be the slowest build farm
member...

Thomas Munro