Topic: Boosting File Storage

[John Sequeira]

I have a very modest box serving as my e-smith gateway (133MHz  - 48M/6GHD).  I've had a great experience with it so far,  and I'd like to use the -bays a lot more and up the storage capacity.  The server is really a desktop machine with limited room for expansion inside.  I was considering getting a firewire adapter,  and stacking some firewire/IDE enclosures on top,  but the box is maxed out on PCI slots.

What I would like  to do instead is use my W2K workstation to host the firewire card and external hard drives,  then serve up the excess capacity via the e-smith web and ftp servers to the outside word.

If I got the addition storage online up and running on the workstation,  is there any problem using something like smbmount to extend my i-bay storage capacity?

Is there a more elegant way to do this that's cheaper than NAS?  (using network storage virtualization, maybe?)  


JS

[ludmilla]

Hi,
have the same "problem". at the moment we have 5 e-smith boxes and two failover server (simple linux server with heartbeat running) for the storage. the e-smith server mount the shares for www, ftp via nfs. after gigabit ethernetcards getting cheaper and cheaper i replaced the 100mbit cards.
it´s running without problems and without speed lost for 4 month.

greetings
ludmilla