OS X Server: Help with storing User directory on TS-509 NAS

[stark]

I currently run Mac OS X Server 10.5, and store my User directories on one of two hard disks in my PowerMac. I purchased a QNAP TS-509 Pro specifically to transfer my User directories to the NAS, so that when a user logs in it automatically mounts the NAS share over AFP, and stores all the user's files on the NAS. The fact that the User directory is now on a NAS should be transparent to the user.

As I am new to the workings and administration of a NAS, can someone explain to me how this can be done? How do I set up the NAS, copy over the User directory, and mount the NAS as a volume under OS X Server so that users can store their files on the NAS?

Thanks for any help.

[schumaku]

G'day,

It is - certainly in a pure OS X server environment - possible distributing home folders to other servers, being AFP or NFS. SMB is only workable fir Windows systems.

Why ever, the process to do this configuration as documented by Apple by creating a shared domain for user accounts on the accounts server (your OS X server), setup an auto-mountable share point for home folders on each home folder server (your QNAP in this case), and finally create the user accounts on the accounts server (assume these already exist in your set-up).

To achieve this goal requires certainly more effort than simply setting up the QNAP Turbo NAS, adding some users, and configure some shares. Then, very likely, it would require the NAS authenticating the users to the LDAP directory, similar to what is actually supported for Windows File Sharing with an Active Directory only.

Potentially there are some guides to achieve this set-up on the net.

Regards,

-Kurt.

[stark]

Thanks Kurt, for your reply.

To achieve this goal requires certainly more effort than simply setting up the QNAP Turbo NAS, adding some users, and configure some shares. Then, very likely, it would require the NAS authenticating the users to the LDAP directory, similar to what is actually supported for Windows File Sharing with an Active Directory only.

Potentially there are some guides to achieve this set-up on the net.

Can anyone point me to such a guide?

Overall, I'm a little uneasy about the complexity involved in setting up this NAS. I thought the NAS would be similar to an external firewire disk that I use on occasion, that I could simply format it in HFS+ and use it just as another OS X Volume. Unfortunately, it is more involved. I realized that the NAS also has a notion of users and authentication. Eg: Suppose I have Mac OS X Server accounts user_x. user_y, user_z, and I want to use the NAS as my mounted user directory, would I have create users user_x, user_y, user_z on the NAS as well? Would they have to share the same passwords? Would it be possible, instead, to set-up the NAS so that it acts just like an external firewire drive?

[rayscope]

I would use the OS X GlobalSan iSCSI Initiator from http://www.studionetworksolutions.com (free) to mount an iSCSI LUN FROM THE TS-509 to the PowerMac Server as a local hard drive. Once iSCSI is setup as above, you can then setup Automount Shares for User home folders on the iSCSI LUN (this will appear as a locally mounted Hard Drive on your PowerMac Server... provided by the TS-509 over the network using iSCSI). With this setup, all User management is handled by Server Admin & Workgroup Manager... NOT the TS-509 User management.

[stark]

I would use the OS X GlobalSan iSCSI Initiator from http://www.studionetworksolutions.com (free) to mount an iSCSI LUN FROM THE TS-509 to the PowerMac Server as a local hard drive. Once iSCSI is setup as above, you can then setup Automount Shares for User home folders on the iSCSI LUN (this will appear as a locally mounted Hard Drive on your PowerMac Server... provided by the TS-509 over the network using iSCSI). With this setup, all User management is handled by Server Admin & Workgroup Manager... NOT the TS-509 User management.

Thanks rayscope ! This sounds like a great solution. I downloaded the OS X GlobalSan iSCSI Initiator and installed it. After starting it up in System Preferences, I see that there are Portals, Targets, Sessions, and Preferences. I gather that I have to configure iSCSI on the TS-509 first in order for the NAS to appear as a Target drive. Can someone point me to a guide to doing this correctly? Not being familiar with the NAS, I'm a little fearful of making a mistake. This is the first NAS I've ever bought, so I'm a little skittish

[rayscope]

See the Manual for QNAP Turbo NAS Firmware Version 3.2.0. Section 3.2.5 iSCSI, starting on page 57.

Download from <http://www.qnap.com/download_detail.asp?pl=1&p_mn=104&ct_name=Manual>

[stark]

See the Manual for QNAP Turbo NAS Firmware Version 3.2.0. Section 3.2.5 iSCSI, starting on page 57.

Download from http://www.qnap.com/download_detail.asp?pl=1&p_mn=104&ct_name=Manual

Thanks. This is very helpful. One last question, if I may. I'm reading through the manual and notice that I have a choice of creating

iSCSI Target with a mapped LUN
iSCSI Target only
iSCSI LUN only

I take it that I want to create an iSCSI Taget with mapped LUN, as per your earlier description (I want to make sure that I'm making the right selection). I'm a little confused about CHAP and mutual CHAP authentication though. For my purposes should I select CHAP or mutual CHAP? Would I then use my Mac OS X Server Administrator name and password for the designated CHAP user name and password? Many, many thanks.

[rayscope]

Use CHAP authentication only. Disable Mutual CHAP.

Please let us know how things go

[stark]

First, I want to thank rayscope for his excellent suggestion to use the OS X GlobalSan iSCSI Initiator. It worked like a charm! I installed 5 2Tb drives into the NAS and set it for Raid-5, formatting the drives as ext3. The formatting took over 12 hours to complete. With the iSCSI Initiator installed, Mac OS X saw the NAS as one big logical device which I could then format again using the OS X's native Disk Utility. I formatted the NAS as HFS+ so that it would appear to the OS as just another drive in the file system. The Disk Utility formatting also took over 12 hours.

Next, I went to Directory Admin in OS X Server, and set the User home directory to the mounted NAS drive in place of my usual disk drive, then started up Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the contents of my old Users directory to the NAS. As I had 650Gb of data, Carbon Copy Cloner took over 30 hours to complete. Afterwards, I ran a 'diff -qr /Volumes/NASDrive /Volumes/OldDrive' to see I could detect any copy errors, so that I could manually re-copy any files that failed to copy over correctly (the diff took about 20 hours). I didn't find any noteworthy errors, after skipping over the contents of .Trash and Cache directories, so finally I had the TS-509 NAS working properly under OS-X Server.

Many, many thanks to rayscope! I now have a much more reliable storage device for my User data. Though I used 5 2Tb drives, the overhead of Raid-5 parity and logical HFS+ formatting left me with 7.14Tb capacity. That's a large chunk to sacrifice, but I think it's well worth it.