I had always been longing to have a home backup server, but didn’t get that much time (and of course budget) to do so. But just a few days ago, I decided that it’s just about time that I set up one once and for all. There are a lot of NAS servers available out there, but they are quite costly. Though they have this cool features such as multimedia streaming, web interfaces, and multiple users management, I still can’t justify the cost compared to the flexibility of using a linux box can offer. Looking at all those NAS servers’ feature list, I don’t see anything that I can’t do with a linux box, so I decided not to go for a dedicated NAS server.
I have this old Pentium 4 PC which I don’t use that often, and this is a great candidate for the home backup server that I had always wanted. Not only can this machine host my backups, but it can also host services I need for work (another thing I don’t want NAS devices), which are usually java application services (e.g. app server, message broker, etc.).
Basically here’s my setup:
Pentium 4 2.0Ghz
1GB RAM
1 x 80GB IDE HDD
2 x 250GB IDE HDD
I initially installed Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Server Edition and setup the OS on my 80GB IDE HDD and RAID 1 (mirroring) on my 2 x 250GB IDE HDD during the installation process. Setup was a breeze, and I was up and running in less than an hour. After my first login to the server, I used the “mdadm” tool to check on my RAID array and noticed that it was on the syncing process. This took several hours to complete so I had to leave the server running until the RAID array had completed synchronization. After synchronizing I then tested the RAID array by simulating failed drives in the array. Here is a good tutorial to help you with RAID array management and faulty disk simulation – http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html
Then I installed and configured Samba so I can have network shares accessible by all PCs and laptops within my home network. This is something that may require some amount of linux administration skills which I am pretty competent with, but for the beginners, Googling around for Samba tutorials makes things easier. After setting up private and public network shares, I decided that it’s time to move all my files from my MacBook, iPod and external USB drive onto my new home backup server. Aphilo also started moving her important files from her laptop. This again took some time, since the transfer speed was quite low which only averages between 1-2Mbps. I then thought that there might be something wrong and as far as I can see it might be the network cable from my server to the router that might be slowing things down. So I drove to the nearest mall to buy some CAT5e cable (gigabit network cable) that might somehow help. I don’t have a gigabit router yet, but if budget permits I might be able to acquire one soon. At least I have the cables ready. 
So when I used the new network cables, transfer speed became significantly fast at around 10mbps, but then again this is still quite slow considering I have a 100mbps network cards attached to my server and laptops. It seems like auto-negotiation doesn’t seem to work and I still didn’t have much time to look into this, so for now I have to live with the 10mbps transfer speed.
Having a home backup server isn’t really enough, if you are somewhat paranoid like me. There are still some chances that your home backup server would get corrupted or your RAID array would completely fail. Though this is really less likely, I still think having an off-site remote server for your most important files would add some significant degree of data protection.
I have this 100GB storage space fro Rsync Palace that costs around $15/month and I think it’s really cheap considering how useful it is on backing up your most precious files. So lastly, I placed all my important files in one directory located within my RAID disk, and then created an rsync script that would synchronize my files between my home backup server and my off-site remote backup.
So there it goes. I am now confident about not losing my important personal and work files and somehow this helps me to sleep more soundly at night. 
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