Comments on: How I learnt to stop worrying and love hate the NAS http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/ Sakura is a Good Girl Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:18:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Jaymz http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/#comment-7642 Jaymz Sat, 23 Jun 2007 00:44:51 +0000 http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/#comment-7642 Vista, Server 2003 and OS X 10.4.9. Not only does the Samba service drop out - the AFP server (for my Macs) does as well. I've actually fixed it by manually setting its' IP address, instead of using a DHCP reservation, and I haven't had it drop out on me yet. Vista, Server 2003 and OS X 10.4.9. Not only does the Samba service drop out - the AFP server (for my Macs) does as well.

I’ve actually fixed it by manually setting its’ IP address, instead of using a DHCP reservation, and I haven’t had it drop out on me yet.

]]> By: wild http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/#comment-7614 wild Thu, 21 Jun 2007 12:54:36 +0000 http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/#comment-7614 You know, it's funny you mention those problems with your NAS. I'm just curious, have you tried it with Windows XP as well? Because a lot of these cheap NAS units actually just run an embedded version of Linux with Samba doing the file sharing duties. And as I just detailed on <a href="http://itspudding.com/blog/archives/51" rel="nofollow">my own blog</a> (shameless plugging!), Samba and Vista don't play well. I don't get any dropouts, but speed is capped at around 5Mb/s. On a gigabit network, that's not so swell. I've actually registered for the WHS test myself, because I may as well see what the other side of the fence is like. If it turns out to be as awesome as you say it is, I might stick with that and Vista, rather than having to go back to XP just because of slow file transfers. You know, it’s funny you mention those problems with your NAS. I’m just curious, have you tried it with Windows XP as well? Because a lot of these cheap NAS units actually just run an embedded version of Linux with Samba doing the file sharing duties. And as I just detailed on my own blog (shameless plugging!), Samba and Vista don’t play well. I don’t get any dropouts, but speed is capped at around 5Mb/s. On a gigabit network, that’s not so swell.

I’ve actually registered for the WHS test myself, because I may as well see what the other side of the fence is like. If it turns out to be as awesome as you say it is, I might stick with that and Vista, rather than having to go back to XP just because of slow file transfers.

]]> By: Jaymz http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/#comment-7372 Jaymz Thu, 14 Jun 2007 07:03:06 +0000 http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/#comment-7372 <p>The benefit of WHS is it's easy to use, has redundancy methods other than RAID, it's great for storage expansion in future, and has the best damn backup system I've ever seen in terms of restore capability, minimizing storage space, and the amount of time the backups take to do on the client. I wish Microsoft had a business/corporate version of this, because it'd shit all over our LiveState backups at work.</p> <p>The builtin TS Gateway, and secure https access to your box at home is all manner of awwesome. My only problem is the slow media access in Media Center. As I said, it's not an issue in other apps (but media access isn't an issue in Media Center on my NAS). I'd heartily recommend it to anyone, and I'll probably continue to run it myself.</p> <p>However, my little NAS that could has so far been proven all manner of awesome. I guess the final decision comes tonight when I rebuild Heracles as a home server once more.</p> The benefit of WHS is it’s easy to use, has redundancy methods other than RAID, it’s great for storage expansion in future, and has the best damn backup system I’ve ever seen in terms of restore capability, minimizing storage space, and the amount of time the backups take to do on the client. I wish Microsoft had a business/corporate version of this, because it’d shit all over our LiveState backups at work.

The builtin TS Gateway, and secure https access to your box at home is all manner of awwesome. My only problem is the slow media access in Media Center. As I said, it’s not an issue in other apps (but media access isn’t an issue in Media Center on my NAS). I’d heartily recommend it to anyone, and I’ll probably continue to run it myself.

However, my little NAS that could has so far been proven all manner of awesome. I guess the final decision comes tonight when I rebuild Heracles as a home server once more.

]]> By: wild http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/#comment-7360 wild Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:50:52 +0000 http://www.respectsakura.org/2007/06/12/how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-nas/#comment-7360 <p>Well, I was considering trying out the RC of WHS, but after hearing about the stuttering problems, I'll probably just stick with my Linux setup.</p> <p>Really, the only reason I'd want WHS is for the fancy pants interface. But past that, my Linux box currently does RAID 5 across 3 250Gb disks, with a couple of other single drives thrown in for good measure. It also does basic web and FTP serving for file transfer between my home and work networks, or in case I need to send someone a file without relying on the slow and nasty MSN file transfer or an e-mail attachment.</p> <p>It also does music streaming via Icecast and Music Player Daemon to any ogg-capable player and shares its entire file storage with anyone connected to the network. Quite possibly my favourite thing about this is that I've forced Samba (the Windows file and printer sharing server for Linux) to just provide anyone who connects guest read-only access to the shares by default without prompting for a username or password, much like other Windows XP shares. But I can specify a username and password in the Users section of the XP control panel, it will give my PC write access to the shares. In fact, I just have them all mounted as network drives.</p> <p>Until WHS can do proper software RAID (5, preferably) and volume spanning similar to LVM, I don't think I'll be touching it. Linux was a little bit more work to set up, sure, but once I got the configuration right (which wasn't exactly hard thanks to the Gentoo Wiki giving walkthroughs for most of the apps) it's just been a set-and-forget job.</p> <p>Just another alternative to WHS or a dedicated NAS box. :)</p> Well, I was considering trying out the RC of WHS, but after hearing about the stuttering problems, I’ll probably just stick with my Linux setup.

Really, the only reason I’d want WHS is for the fancy pants interface. But past that, my Linux box currently does RAID 5 across 3 250Gb disks, with a couple of other single drives thrown in for good measure. It also does basic web and FTP serving for file transfer between my home and work networks, or in case I need to send someone a file without relying on the slow and nasty MSN file transfer or an e-mail attachment.

It also does music streaming via Icecast and Music Player Daemon to any ogg-capable player and shares its entire file storage with anyone connected to the network. Quite possibly my favourite thing about this is that I’ve forced Samba (the Windows file and printer sharing server for Linux) to just provide anyone who connects guest read-only access to the shares by default without prompting for a username or password, much like other Windows XP shares. But I can specify a username and password in the Users section of the XP control panel, it will give my PC write access to the shares. In fact, I just have them all mounted as network drives.

Until WHS can do proper software RAID (5, preferably) and volume spanning similar to LVM, I don’t think I’ll be touching it. Linux was a little bit more work to set up, sure, but once I got the configuration right (which wasn’t exactly hard thanks to the Gentoo Wiki giving walkthroughs for most of the apps) it’s just been a set-and-forget job.

Just another alternative to WHS or a dedicated NAS box. :)

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