Network needs to allow the backup of 4TB of data.
Network needs to allow software development, c#, mobile app development, web site devleopment
Network needs to allow streaming of media to all parts of home
Network needs to allow remote desktop access
Network storage doesn't have to be extremely speedy, it just needs to work.
I have been working on the best way I can up the network, and I have finally completed it, and it rocks!
Here are my specs:
(HTPC)
1GB Nvida 9500GT
AMD x6 1100T black edition
8GB Memory
13TB Storage
addonics eStata 5 Port multiplier
Motherboard with Marvel 8132(?) eSata
1 Cisco e1000 v1 wireless-N flashed with dd-wrt ($24 refurb at compusa!)
1 WRT54GL flashed with dd-wrt
I started with a networking configuration with my routers that already works, without having the hda installed yet:
modem --- router 1 (e1000 - AP) ---- router 2 (wrt54gl - AP)
I chose Windows 7 Ultimate (192.168.1.5) as my base with vmware workstation.
Why windows 7? This whole project started out as a media center. I'm waiting on getting my cablecard so that I can use it with windows media center without a set top box. Windows 7 is the only OS that allows this
I installed as many hard drives as i could into the windows7 machine. I only use one of the drives for booting windows. The rest I do not touch or format in windows. With the port multiplier, I have a small drive drive rack that contains 4 2TB drives. This port multiplier allows my esata marvell chipset to split 1 esata upto 5 sata ports, though at a cost of bandwidth reduction (150MB/s i think?), which is okay. Remember the goal is to have it work, not so blazsing fast. I also replaced my default termsrv.dll with the windows terminal server dll to allow multiple remote desktop connections to not disturb anyone watching netflix, etc.
I installed ubuntu as my development server. I wanted to keep home media separate from development as much as possible. I used a 20GB virtual disk and did a full install. This machine will have the host address of 192.168.1.7 (i set this for static now, it will be dhcp with a static ip on the hda when installed), with addresses 192.168.1.20 - 192.168.1.100 for web site development. after configuring apache 2 and the network addresses, i went to my windows7 machine and added the websites that i develop into my windows hosts, for easy access (http://website1, http://website2). i set up the ftp server, phpmyadmin, etc.
Now the fun part.
I Created a 70GB amahi virtual machine, and installed. This machine has the ip address of 192.168.1.6 static.
Install went smooth.
Then i started to reconfigure all the ip addresses in http//hda that I use for my servers:
192.168.1.1 - router1
192.168.1.2 - router2
192.168.1.4 - printer
192.168.1.5 - windows7
192.168.1.6 - amahi
192.168.1.7 - ubuntu
The reason i have 2 routers is because I have a few network adapters that are wireless-N. I dont want any mixing or matching of speeds on the routers, so i Have my main access point ssid: "router-N" (router1) and a secondary accesspoint ssid: "router" (router2). Router 2 has the ethernet from the switch side to the switch side of router1. I connect my win7 to router2, (theyre both in my server closet with a 35ft hdmi connect to my tv in the tv room).
Router settings: (this is where dd-wrt kicks ass)
192.168.1.1 (router 1, connected to modem)
Under setup:
router ip:
192.168.1.1
subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 0.0.0.0
LOCAL DNS: 192.168.1.6 (<-- amahi)
network address settings: DNS Forwarder
192.168.1.6 (<--amahi)
192.168.1.2 (router 2, ethernet to amahi, ethernet to router 1)
under setup:
connection type: disabled (used as an AP that hands out ip address from wherever 192.168.1.1 is getting them from)
router ip:
192.168.1.2
subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
gateway: 0.0.0.0
local dns: 8.8.8.4 (google's dns i use.. its nice, fast and public, this is the important part)
network address settings: disabled
also make sure firewall is off,
save settings on booth routers and reboot them.
they should now connect to amahi and amahi should hand out ip addresses. you can test this by firing up a dhcp machine like a laptop or something, connecting to the network and seeing if amahi is working correctly. in my case, i connected to the network, viewed the status of my network adapter, and the gateway was 192.168.1.1 and my dns and dhcp were 192.168.1.6 which was correct. and the internet worked, duh.
Now for greyhole set up.
Originally I was looking into getting a plug in for windows home server 2011, but I read many great things about greyhole.
So, now to use all those blank drives I set up on the windows machine.
I allowed amahi's VM physicial access to the drives. To do this, view your connected drives in windows:
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools \ storage \ diskamangement and take note of where it says disk0, disk1, etc.
Now, in VMware, add a new hard drive to your vm guest OS and use the 'use physical disk' option and create 1 for each of the hard drives you are going to use in greyhole.
Now, go to amahi and format the drives as ext4 (or whatever).
Now,
su root, and type hda-diskmount, then you're going to want to copy and paste the "UUID=9d972abc-1639-44df-a60e-668618d40236 /var/hda/files/drives/sdb1 ext4 defaults 1 2 " or whatever it tells you, to /etc/fstab
after you've done this for all your newly formatted drives, type mount -a
for more info on this part, read:
http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Adding_ ... o_your_HDA
Now go back to greyhole and make sure the storage amount is close to what you just added up. Youll also see all your drives in http://hda / storage if you did it right.
Network complete, and rock solid.
* note: I also use 'allway sync' to sync between my development pc (a random pc i have windows on) with my \\hda\development share. Though, I noticed it does make both machines chug at times, but i only have it sync very late and the process is interruptable, so i can stop it at any time and it will resume for a set time after im idle.
sorry for all the typos and not so detailed info. If anyone really needs me to write something up and draw pictures, I'll be glad to.
Oh one last note. I gave both VM's 2 cores and 2048 GB of ram each, I might scale my dev server to just 1 core, I'll find out as testing goes along.
I'm going to set up my xboxes to see if i can stream to them and use amahi shares. I have 1 in each room that i want to use as a media extender. I'll update as I go along.
