Hello!

I'm in the middle of building a "Super" Backup server.  It will do the following:

Run BackupPC for file-level backups
Provide NFS share(s) for VMware snapshots
Provide CIFS share(s) for Windows snapshots and Clonezilla
Contains a removable SATA tray
Manage all of this from a GUI

I am currently doing each of these features on various different BackupPC servers already, but in each case it was done manually, by hand, and from the command line.  For this iteration, I would like to wrap a GUI around it.

In the case of BackupPC, it has a GUI and I will continue to use it.  However, *many* of the functions I would like to have the user perform do not:  NFS shares, CIFS shares, users, network settings, etc.  However, these are *EXACTLY* the standard function that a NAS does, and there are 1E6 of these already built.

So, my question:  is there a NAS GUI out there that can be added on top of "standard" Linux (preferably RHEL, but very willing to consider others) that will add most of these functions?  For example, something like the GUI for an Iomega NAS would be perfect.  (I thought about using them as the hardware and software base and adding BackupPC to them, but there's no built-in removable drive, and USB is awkward and slow.  Plus the Linux environment is... minimal.)

I would prefer staying based on a generic Linux install, but I've also thought about using a NAS-based distro as the base (such as OpenFiler).  In the specific case of OpenFiler, the current version in a bit of a bad place at the moment.  There is much concern that the base OS, which is based on rPath, will not be available for free users for much longer;  in addition the current beta version (2.99) has some known critical bugs in iSCSI (which I use), and there have been no updates since April.  So, it's not my favorite base to build on...  (Reference:  https://forums.openfiler.com/viewtopic.php?pid=26228)

And I'd vastly prefer to stay with Linux, which eliminates FreeNAS and Nexenta.

Many of the Linux-based NAS systems are designed as firmware for dedicated (and often vastly inadequate) hardware:  NSLU2 falls into this camp.  I am not running this on an embedded device:  It's a full-featured PC-based architecture.

I'm also willing to consider generic Linux system management tools such as webmin, but I'd prefer something more focused on NAS-type functions if I can get it.  It's been years since I've looked at Webmin, but a quick glance seems to show that it hasn't changed much:  it's little more than textareas with chunks of the configuration files dumped into them.  I'm hoping for something more polished if I can get it.

Like I said, I'm looking for the general interface provided by every NAS I've ever seen.  Of course, each of them is specific to their device.  I'm hoping there's a version out there for "generic" Linux.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions in this regard?

Thank you very much for your help!

Timothy J. Massey

Out of the Box Solutions, Inc. Creative IT Solutions Made Simple! http://www.OutOfTheBoxSolutions.com tmassey AT obscorp DOT com		22108 Harper Ave. St. Clair Shores, MI 48080 Office: (800)750-4OBS (4627) Cell: (586)945-8796

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