I wanna build one of these... http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01...cloud-storage/


Usually I hate hearing about these consumer grade commodity hardware type solutions, but this one seems well done.

 

Have you put more memory in it? I expanded mine to 1GB; when I did my expansion from 4x400GB to 4x1TB disks, it went much quicker than reported on the net.

 

I've got 1GB running in it.

 

I just added this to my "to do" list. Awesome for large capacity storage where I/O speed isn't critical (windows home server NAS, log server, file server, etc...)

 

Bumping this thread back up.

It looks like Netgear now has "Pioneer" (diskless) versions of the Nvx and Pro. The Nvx Pioneer can be had for <$800. The Nv+ is still around 500. I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the $300 for the extra speed. Right now I'm thinking it is. Thoughts?

 

What are you going to use it for?

 

Home use which will consist of storage of personal documents (legal, financial and others), pictures (probably the main reason for this), media, etc. It might also be used to allow family to access some of the pictures I take, since I'm always too lazy to send CDs.

I want a central place for us to store files with redundancy. We have a couple of laptops and a couple of PCs, but the PCs are old and will likely be replaced with one new one. I will also be looking into off-site backup options for the PC. I've heard good things about www.carbonite.com.

Eventually, I plan on adding all of our CDs and DVDs to it, but maybe on an external drive(s) so I don't eat up the RAID capacity for that.

 

You probably don't need the extra speed then.

 

Probably not, but doesn't mean I still won't get it.

 

If it's not a big extra expense for you, then go for it. I'm just saying the NV+ will perform adequately in your application.

 

It will, but it is an older setup/technology. if you have the money, get the newer stuff.

he's gonna love having the pictures in a central place. My wife no longer has to bug me about giving her pictures I took.

 

I just saw an old post on slickdeals and might have gotten lucky.

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1667191

ReadyNAS NV 1 TB (2 x 500GB) RND4250 for $329.99

ReadyNAS NV 2 TB (2 x 1000GB) RND4210 for $499.99

It appears Fry's was closing these out last week. They are sold out online, but you might be able to find them in store. Call ahead to see. I have one of the 1 TB models on hold at a local store.

http://www.frys.com/search?search_ty...readynas&cat=0

 

Just bought a ReadyNAS Duo and I'm not real happy with the performance. Turns out there's a issue with transfer speeds on some machines with Vista and wireless.

 

I'm bringing this thread back, I need to re-evaluate my current server situation. Currently I have a huge pc in a closet serving up full HD files to 2 tvs in the house. This works fine here, but I'm probably moving in sept into a condo and space will be at a super premium. I need a solution to save space.

I was considering one of these:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/c...lXG!1873112786

But I despise HP, and would honestly be concerned about data integrity. Does anyone else make a similar solution? Would like space for 4 drives. In the condo it will be right underneath the tv in a custom built cabinet so smaller form factor the better. Also needs to support the bandwidth required to stream 2 hd vids to separate tvs.

My other thought was to go Mac mini, and just attach a drobo type box to it, but I'm semi concerned with bandwidth and read/write speeds. Alternatively if there was a case someone knows of that would hold 4 drives and a tiny mobo I could just build another small server. Ultimately my priorities are as follows.

1. Quiet
2. 4 full size drive bays
3. Form factor
4. Bandwidth for streaming
5. HDMI out/esata/fw800

 

The HP MediaSmart is the hands down best WHS out there. They've added lots of neat features that I wish was available in the actual OS, mainly I'm talking about Mac Time Machine support. I would however wait until the next version of WHS "Vail" comes out, it's going to be really good! It should be out in the fall this year.

The HP WHS is a headless PC and has no video out.

Check out my WHS thread

https://acurazine.com/forums/technology-16/windows-home-server-thread-773798/

 

Hopefully HP updates the hardware to go along with WHS. iirc the current hardware is getting a little long in the tooth.

 

I'm sure they will. The next version of WHS is going to be 64bit only while the current version is 32 and there is no upgrade path for upgrading a 32bit OS to 64bit, it will require a clean install.

 

I watched a few vids on this last night. Looks very promising, hopefully it launches on time. I also checked out some of the off the self whs servers and for the most part they are not super enticing, I think the hp is actually the best.

 

It is

 

I figured I'd bump this thread instead of making a new one or hijacking Scrib's thread.

My boss is looking for a NAS that is designed to be hot swappable but be heavy duty. He plans to be swapping drive A LOT! So he doesn't want a device that yeah it's hot swappable but is gonna break cause it wasn't designed to be abused like he plans on doing. I mentioned drobo, I'm gonna bring up the drobo elite since it's VMWare certified. He's I guess looking for the Panasonic Tough Book of NAS's. Any recommendations?

 

Micronet.

http://micronet.com/

 

how do you use your micronets? how often are you swapping drives? which model do you have?

 

We have one older Platinum and three of the previous versions of the MaxNAS (ours have eSATA., not iSCSI).

We travel with the MaxNAS ( I think ours are actually called 'RAIDBank') and have them set up with 4 1.5TB drives. When doing large data collection, we travel with two or three enclosures, and spare set of drives/trays for them. When we fill one, we power it down and insert the 2nd set of drives (in order) that have already been pre-formatted and BAM, second 5TB volume...

We don't pull single drives very often, as there really is no point in it unless one fails.

Is your guy looking for a box to hols a bunch of single volumes that he can pull frequently to move them around? If so, he doesn't need one of these, he needs a bunch of eSATA or FW800 externals...

 

I guess my question is why does your boss plan to pull drives frequently from a RAID bank?

It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Best thing to do would be to configure 4 drives RAID5 and one a single volume, and then when he wants to remove data, copy it from the 4 drive volume to the one single drive volume and remove that drive. Otherwise, your RAID controller is going to spend a lot of RAID controller time rebuilding the RAID... Not very efficient and you may lose some redundancy during the constant rebuilding (not sure, someone who knows more could probably answer to this).

 

I think his plan is to start hosting a lot of our clients servers in our rack downtown on top of Vmware vsphere. So we have many SMB clients ranging anywhere from architects, lawyers, doctors, to fast food chains, apartment complexes, debt collectors. We encourage all of our clients to do backups and most of them do with two disks rotating them so one is on-site and the other off-site.

So if we start hosting their servers downtown they can't do their backups to external drives. I think he wants to get drives for each of our clients that are hosted and put them in a hot swappable device do some sort of rotation for external backup drives. So yeah we wouldn't be doing RAID arrays just using the device as a container for the drives that we'll be swapping often. I think that's what he wants.

 

That sounds like the absolute least efficient way to do what he wants to accomplish.

Do the clients physically handle their own backup drives or do you do it on their behalf?

At the easy end, get each client a FW800 drive bay box and let them come in and hook it up to a hub and do whatever they want. At the most manageable end, offer a value add to the service you provide by purchasing a Ultrium (or smaller capacity if the total data set is smaller) tape drive and backing EVERYONE'S data up for them. Let them know you will keep 14 days, 30 days, etc...

OR, you could simply purchase a single 2-4TB RAID and host their backups FOR them, en mass.

 

How many virtual machines are we talking about here?

 

We're not telling our clients that are all over the bay area to drive over to our rack which is in a big server farm downtown with thousands of other servers that aren't ours and have them find our server swap the drives themselves.

 

They're branching off and starting to do a little hosting cause it's a good continuous revenue stream. The problem with VMs is that you don't have direct access to USB ports so you can plug in a USB drive do the backup of a VM and then switch. It's more complicated than that. So we're trying to work on a solution for each of our clients VMs.

 

I have to think a tape library or sizable RAID that each VM can see would be the best bet to back up the client's data.

Alternately, you could (although it would be a bigger data set), back up the VMs themselves assuming the client's data is stored within the VM and not a separate data volume...

 

We're using Symantec Backup exec to make an image of our clients servers that are old. This image contains all the data across mulitple volumes. Then we use VMWare converter to convert the backup exec image into a working VM. Then we load said VM into vsphere make sure everything works and then host it downtown.

I'm not sure if he wants multiple clients backups on a drive. IDK, I could be way off. I'll ask him if I see him tomorrow.

 

so if i get that HP media smart WHS. or that infant readyNAS.

what could i do with it?


ideally what i want is a box, that can hold at least 2TB of data (the more the merrier)

the box must have redundancy (raid 1 or 5 etc)

the box has to be able store movies and music and

i would like to be able to watch the movies and and listen to the music from the box via my PC or PS3 or xbox360.

i would also like to be able to access the box away from home via my iphone or ipad or laptop etc. so i can watch movies and and listen to music away from home.

 

WHS provides data duplication but doesn't do RAID, it does it's own thing. It can do all of the above except for streaming to iPad remotely. If you setup a VPN and used an app like file browser I believe it would work but not out of the box.

 

came across a D-Link 323 NAS diskless unit for under $100 after rebate... anyone have experience with those? or should i save my money?

 

No experience but the reviews I've found indicate that you are probably getting what you paid for.

 

what about the drobo FS?
http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo-fs.php



i dunno what i need/want... but all i know is im running out of space. ive got 30GB left in my 1TB raid..

 

Seems pretty flexible -- you can mix/match drive capacities like in a WHS.

If you want speedy data transfer -- WHS has it all over the purpose-built NAS devices, including the Drobo FS.

http://www.nas-pro.com/nas/drobo-fs-speed-test

And if you roll your own, you can put it in whatever case you want, so drive limits are much higher than any consumer grade storage units, including the HP SmartMedia.

 

Late to the game but I use the D-Link DNS-323 with two 2 terabyte drives setup as a Raid.

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=509

 

For the drives you put in it, does it matter the grade?
What I mean for straight up file storage with HD movies and whatnot, Should I be putting in like western digital blacks or would green be enough?

 

I have a D-Link 323 for personal files, pics, and streaming movies to my TV.

I love it.