Warning there be geek questions afoot.
I'm finding myself in need of a way to do proper backups of my computer systems (one laptop & one desktop) and storage space for media files.
Eventualy looking at streaming media to the living room, for now I just want all my media off my PC's
I've been poking at the idea of a NAS device but have some very specific needs:
1) I must be able to do backups wirelessly to the NAS device from my laptop.
2) It must play nice with my Bell router/modem combo, a Bell 2 wire 2701HG-G Gateway modem / router combo.
3) Hot swapability of drives is also a key need
4) Web based access to my NAS device would be desirable from outside the home as well, both using the laptop and my iPhone.
Any suggestions?
NefCanuck
(06-16-2011, 09:44 AM)NefCanuck Wrote: [ -> ]Warning there be geek questions afoot.
I'm finding myself in need of a way to do proper backups of my computer systems (one laptop & one desktop) and storage space for media files.
Eventualy looking at streaming media to the living room, for now I just want all my media off my PC's
I've been poking at the idea of a NAS device but have some very specific needs:
1) I must be able to do backups wirelessly to the NAS device from my laptop.
2) It must play nice with my Bell router/modem combo, a Bell 2 wire 2701HG-G Gateway modem / router combo.
3) Hot swapability of drives is also a key need
4) Web based access to my NAS device would be desirable from outside the home as well, both using the laptop and my iPhone.
Any suggestions?
NefCanuck
Avoid Thecus
While the pricetag may not be as "kind" as a opensource NAS device. I think WHS (Windows Home Server) devices to be top notch. Especially for those of us who don't care much for geeking it out. I geek it out enough all day at work when I come home I just want my stuff backed up!. WHS does just that.
I have 6 computers at home backed up seamlessly. 5 wireless and 1 wired. One of the wireless is a 802.11B. The nice thing about WHS is that you backup only delta blocks, and you can easily access a point in time for your computer without having to do much setup.
On top of this you have the storage aspect where you can store files, choose redundancy for those files as you wish. Files you don't care about can use up less space if you don't want redundancy while others you can store on more than one disk to ensure you don't loose them.
That and I can access all my files on the road without any troubles.
Acer Easystore is a quick solution with WHS included and hot swappable drives.
^^I'll back Kevin's suggestion, just because I have no time to play with this crap anymore. If it was me, I'd build a box with quasi-hardware RAID and FreeNAS and have at it. But, for everyone else, WHS on a decent box should be enough. Just make sure your storage disks are RAID 1 or RAID 0+1. RAID 5 is nice, but it takes up too much room. Twin 1TB drives in RAID-1 (mirroring) is enough for most.
Check it:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?s...omoid=1338
Drop in a second 1TB drive, RAID it and call it a day.
That acer box is pretty decent. Though, you should be aware of a couple disadvantages of specialized hardware.
- if anything breaks on it, you'll have trouble repairing it.
- Consumer NAS boxes (anything under $500) don't have the lifespan all that storage space may imply.
- Hot swap capability is nice, but when a drive fails, it's not a bad idea to do a reboot and check the machine over (clean out the dust, etc).
one thing many folks overlook, but you may want to make sure of.
- make sure that it supports SMART notification via e-mail. You need to know exactly when a drive starts to fail. 23 sectors going awol doesn't seam like much until 90,000 disappear on your redundant drive the next day. You get a notification, replace the drive ASAP... in fact, shut the machine down until you do. Granted, I have 4 drives, so it's more likely I'll have multiple failures, but it happens even with fewer drives. Blame consumer-level high-density drives.
I've been running freenas for nearly 3 years now, I've gotten it down pat pretty good too... It doesn't do some of the fancier WHS stuff like differing levels of redundancy, but I can swap out any part, so the ongoing cost of running it is cheaper, and it's infinitely expandable. I could build one for anyone who's interested, but it won't be as cheap as that Acer box, and like I said, it doesn't do all of the WHS stuff either. So you have to weigh the benefits and disadvantages of whatever you're looking for.
I personally love my freenas box, but WHS is nice and simple.
My recommendation: If you have some old hardware kicking around, I'd give Freenas a go, but if not, a consumer NAS is the easier route. Just be aware that nothing is perfect and even NAS servers have bad days.
I see, but that begs the next question, would I be better off getting a NAS drive without built in drives and then just grabbing whatever drives I want or am I better of doing the "all in one box thing"?
I'm leery of the latter only b/c of failures, I'd much rather be able to swap drives out as they die without all the drama.
Since I have a Technet Premium subscription (Or whatever the hell they call the top level sans delivered DVD's these days) I have access to WHS whenever I want it.
NefCanuck
Get one with replaceable drives.... you'll need to replace drives eventually -- guaranteed.
Okay seriously looking at the ACER solution, seems the upper limit on the drives in there is 2TB each (Total of 8TB if I swap the drive out that's in there for a 2TB on) but that should hold me for a while.
Now comes the next question, I have a Bell Router/Modem combo, anyone know if a NAS drive will play nice with it?
NefCanuck
It's a network-enabled appliance, so as long as it's connected in the manner you expect, in this case a cabled network connection, you're golden.
In some cases, these NAS boxes have "default" IP addresses that need to be reconfigured. Or, sometimes, they're set to obtain an address via DHCP (automatic assignment of IP addressing). You'll want to check the manual for it when it arrives before connecting it to the network.
Of course, there are a few of us IT heads around here who can help out at that stage, depending on what the initial configuration is.
In a nutshell, there's no reason to expect why it wouldn't play nice.
My WHS works fine with my rogers router/modem. The only thing I had to do was open up the right ports. What I also did was give the NAS box a fixed IP address instead of DHCP.
Ah okay then, "extra" pay week in July, so I can afford to do this (Yeah I'll probably be asking about IP addresses, etc. knowing how Bell likes to "customize" the hardware they give their customers)
NefCanuck
Nef, take a quick look at the Synology brand of boxes out there. Linux based, and plays nice with Windows and Mac. I'm using two on my corporate network at work, and so far no issues. Support from the company has been good, and firmware updates are regular. They make solutions from 2 drive up to 5 drive, and rack mount units. They all come naked, and you add the drives you want (check their website first for compatible drives). Canada Computers carries quite a few different ones.
http://canadacomputers.com/search_result...&x=41&y=11
-Ryan
(06-20-2011, 09:48 AM)NefCanuck Wrote: [ -> ]Ah okay then, "extra" pay week in July, so I can afford to do this (Yeah I'll probably be asking about IP addresses, etc. knowing how Bell likes to "customize" the hardware they give their customers)
NefCanuck
That's actually easy to get around. Your router will be configured to issue addresses within a certain range (likely 192.168.x.100 to x.150 or x.200). You just claim an address that lies outside of the range (like 192.168.x.15 or somesuch, where X is the 3rd "octet" or number in your addressing). examples are 192.168.0.100-200 or 192.168.1.100-200 as valid address "pools". Your laptop will have an automatically-assigned address. You can find this by opening a command prompt with CMD in the search/Run box - this opens a black Command Prompt screen. Then, type "ipconfig" and pressing enter at the black Command Prompt screen gives you your current IP address.
As for accessing it from outside, as Kev mentioned, that's a different ball game. You'll need to decide on the "how", whether FTP or another method, and then modify the router settings to reflect this. We can tackle that after you're up and running.
Okay I'm making note of all these details (and oddly enough there is a Canada Computes recently opened up not five minutes from my place by car)
Have to see what they want for drives, I may as well buy two drives with it off the bat & RAID the sucker (yeah I'm paranoid LOL)
NefCanuck
It comes with one drive already, so you'll only need one more drive. I'd recommend buying the extra drive right off of NCIX or whatever retailer you're getting the NAS from as it'll be significantly cheaper than a big box store, even.
Went the Synology route and dumped two WD 2TB "Green" drives in it.
So far I've managed to figure out how to set up the RAID 1 array (It's working away as we speak on the formatting) but some of the other functions are eluding my grasp.
Can't get the email notification to work (I enter all the info but test emails go no where)
Couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do to get the SMS notification to work.
I hooked it up to the Bell router and let it assign an IP address to it, that was a bad plan, but the software didn't make it clear what I needed to do to change it (and I did the firmware updates)
So... now what?
NefCanuck
Which model did you get? What version of DSM are you running on it?
There is an external 'reset' button on most of them, you should be able to restore it back to factory defaults easily. I had to do it to one of the ones I had at work once (another guy thought he was the admin and forgot the passwords on it).
I bought the DS411j and DSM 3.1 according to the browser (ATM I'm setting up the RAID 1 array (at 20% ATM)
NefCanuck
Technically you shouldn't need to statically set the IP address on it. Does the Bell modem allow you to do DHCP reservations? Just set a reservation for it, and go with that.
As far as the e-mail connection not working, you'll need to have it relay to an SMTP server, which would be on Bell's side. Bell's server would have relay shut down for non-authenticated users, so you'd have to assign it an e-mail address that Bell know's about. I haven't touched the SMS portion yet, since I use e-mail (on my own internal Exchange server) and SNMP.
Okay before I go to bed let me try and remember what I filed in on the email notifications.
I left "require a secure connection" unchecked (I also tried it checked, same results)
I gave it the information regarding the outgoing server
I gave it my bell login information (username and password)
I told it to send the test email to my sympatico address and my work address, zippo
I think it has to do with the whacky Bell/MSN thing, but if it works in Outlook 2010 it's gotta work here I would think :hmm:
NefCanuck