Gizmo 2 becomes my fast NAS

My Gizmo 2 has CentoOS 7 installed on a miniSATA disk from Samsung. Through USB3 I have connected 2 x NexStart MX 2.5" enclosures that each contain 2 x 1TB SSD 840 Evo from Samsung.

I will create two volumes, a really fast one and a very secure one. The enclosure comes with hardware RAID that is currently configured to RAID 1. So each enclose provides 1TB of disc space right now.

The fast volume will be made of 2 x 700GB and then secure one, for backups, utilizing the rest.


Keep the yum repos updated

• yum install -y yum-cron
• chkconfig yum-cron on

I need Vim enhanced

• yum install -y vim-enhanced
• echo "alias vi=vim" >> ~/.bashrc
• source ~/.bashrc

A bunch of tools I always install

• yum install -y bind-utils net-tools traceroute nmap dhclient 
• yum install -y system-storage-manager
• yum install -y nano bash-completion wget curl lsof deltarpm rpm-build yum-utils attr screen git
• yum groupinstall -y "Development Tools"

Let's look at the USB drives

• yum whatprovides lsusb
• yum install -y usbutils libusb
• libusb actually enabled the USB 3 ports

Install software RAID support

• yum whatprovides mdadm
• yum install -y mdadm

Check disk configuration

• Using lsblk this is how I have all my disks configured

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    0 111.8G  0 disk
├─sda1        8:1    0     1G  0 part /boot
└─sda2        8:2    0 110.8G  0 part
  ├─cl-root 253:0    0    50G  0 lvm  /
  ├─cl-swap 253:1    0   1.5G  0 lvm  [SWAP]
  └─cl-home 253:2    0  59.3G  0 lvm  /home
sdb           8:16   0 931.5G  0 disk
├─sdb1        8:17   0   700G  0 part
└─sdb2        8:18   0 231.4G  0 part
sdc           8:32   0 931.5G  0 disk
├─sdc1        8:33   0   700G  0 part
└─sdc2        8:34   0 231.4G  0 part

Configure RAID

• Edit /etc/mdadm.conf

DEVICE /dev/sd[bc]1
ARRAY /dev/md0 devices=/dev/sdb1,/dev/sdc1

DEVICE /dev/sd[bc]2
ARRAY /dev/md1 devices=/dev/sdb2,/dev/sdc2

• mdadm -C /dev/md0 --level=raid0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1
• mdadm -C /dev/md1 --level=raid1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2

Formatting & mounting

• mkfs.xfs /dev/md0
• mkfs.xfs /dev/md1 -f
• mkdir /mnt/fastvol
• mkdir /mnt/safevol
• added lines to /etc/fstab

/dev/md0     /mnt/fastvol                       xfs     defaults        0 0
/dev/md1     /mnt/safevol                       xfs     defaults        0 0

• mount -a

Check disk configuration again

• Using lsblk this is how I have all my disks configured

[root@giz-node-1 ~]# lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda           8:0    0 111.8G  0 disk
├─sda1        8:1    0     1G  0 part  /boot
└─sda2        8:2    0 110.8G  0 part
  ├─cl-root 253:0    0    50G  0 lvm   /
  ├─cl-swap 253:1    0   1.5G  0 lvm   [SWAP]
  └─cl-home 253:2    0  59.3G  0 lvm   /home
sdb           8:16   0 931.5G  0 disk
├─sdb1        8:17   0   700G  0 part
│ └─md0       9:0    0   1.4T  0 raid0 /mnt/fastvol
└─sdb2        8:18   0 231.4G  0 part
  └─md1       9:1    0 231.3G  0 raid1 /mnt/safevol
sdc           8:32   0 931.5G  0 disk
├─sdc1        8:33   0   700G  0 part
│ └─md0       9:0    0   1.4T  0 raid0 /mnt/fastvol
└─sdc2        8:34   0 231.4G  0 part
  └─md1       9:1    0 231.3G  0 raid1 /mnt/safevol

Source for RAID using mdadm

• https://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/Installation_Guide-en-US/s1-s390info-raid.html