If you are in need of network storage, there are many options. Perhaps this NAS storage solution from ThinServer Corp will be suitable.
One of the essential needs for just about anyone today, is the need for storage space. What is even more essential is that storage space become available when needed. A sad reality of today's computing environment is that projected disk space utilization is often not calculated properly. As a result, many companies need storage sooner than they expect.
Another reality is that adding disk space is not necessarily cheap or easy. Very often, storage companies charge a huge rate for their products because their solution often involves complicated hardware purchases that give you the option of more expandability than is often practical. Or sometimes the lowest storage capability is often far more than a company needs.
This is where the concept of Network Area Storage (NAS) comes into play. The whole idea behind NAS is that when you need extra space, you can just get the NAS system on the network, do some quick configurations, and be done with it. Expandability is important, but the most important function is to get disk space now.
Additionally, a NAS system is for storage and only storage. It does not have to be connected to an existing server, as is often the case with high-end storage solutions, in order to make its storage available to others. You don't want powerful graphics; you don't want superior sound. You want storage space through a network connection and that's it.
ThinServer Corp, probably most popular for its ThinServer range of appliances, is one of several companies that offer low-cost NAS solutions. In this case, they have provided me with the ThinServer NAS.
Some Features
This is meant to be a complete NAS solution, and it has a lot of the functionality to prove it.
The ThinServer NAS handles several different file systems, including Windows, UNIX NFS, Apple, and Novell. It also handles the necessary networking protocols, such as TCP/IP, Appletalk, SNMP, and IPX.
Additionally, it also handles disk quotas. Disk quotas restrict how much space a user can take up on a system. This is the bane of users who think that they can throw whatever crap they want into a directory, but it is a God-send to administrators who need to keep such people in check.
Being SNMP-compliant, the system can alert any SNMP-aware system, such as HP OpenView, to informational, warning, or critical messages that might arise.
One very nice feature is the ability to access the shares on the system through a web browser as well as an FTP client. So, you can access the shared areas with nothing more than a web browser.
Setting Up
If you're a UNIX bigot, you'll be very confused by what to do if you don't RTM (Read The Manual). Although the system runs on FreeBSD, the login prompt has been removed. I got confused very early when I plugged in a keyboard and monitor, turned it on, and never got a login prompt.
Everything is done from the required Windows client or through a web browser. The management station is tiny (maybe 10 MB after installation); however, since this is a FreeBSD solution I would have thought that some kind of X Windows interface would be available, particularly since there are some IT shops that don't do Windows.
According to ThinServer Corp, an X Windows client is planned, so that's welcome news for those who manage their systems through UNIX workstations or servers. Unfortunately, the only web browser that is allowed for management is (you guessed it!) Internet Explorer. So, until ThinServer Corp comes out with their X Windows management client or they convert their management interface to Java, you're stuck with the need for a Windows PC in order to manage the system.
The NAS server requires two things: a DHCP server so that it can get an IP address and a Windows station for the client piece or IE. A monitor and keyboard are not required and would be quite useless even if you did have them available.
Installation of the client is simple. Put in the disk and run SETUP.EXE.
As soon as the installation is finished (which took maybe three seconds on my system), I needed to identify the IP address range for the management client to search for the NAS system as well as a unique name since this management station can manage several different NAS systems. Again, it took maybe five seconds to scan a range of 20 IP addresses until it found the server.
From this point on, the client or IE are all that are needed to manage the system.
From here I can find out just about everything about the system. Ironically, the main management screen displays the IP address, firmware version and build date, subnet, number of processors, and system RAM, but nothing about the capacity of the hard drive that's installed. Considering that NAS is meant to be storage and only storage, I would think that hard drive information, including total, used, and free disk space, would be listed there as well. As an administrator, that is information that I would want to know immediately to warn me of any pending storage problems. Unfortunately, that information is several clicks away and can only be accessed by going through their web interface.
Initial Configuration
The easiest method is the Quick Setup. This is where the system is initially configured with information such as the system clock, which can be synchronized with an NTP server if available. It also allows the changing of the admin password, NAS name (as opposed to a default name like NAS0040ca294db4), and IP and DNS server addresses if you don't want it to be on DHCP.
The Quick Setup is also where the supported file systems and network protocols are defined. In this case, the system defaults to Windows file system support only. Since I have several Sun Microsystems workstations, I also enabled NFS. I also enabled HTTP and FTP.
This is also where RAID volumes are set up. Since the LE only has one drive, the only viable option is RAID 0. At this point, the system started formatting the drive, which was quite fast. The one point on this that some die-hard, nit-picking system admins might not like is that RAID-0 and RAID-1 configurations will use the entire available drive. RAID-5 requires this anyway, so for that type of configuration it's not a big deal; but for the micro-managing system admin, you're just going to have to deal with the fact that you can't micro-manage these machines.
After all of this the system (or at least the StorTrends server software) needed to be restarted. Each time the system must be rebooted, you're stuck for about four minutes while the browser counts down. I certainly am not one to condemn those who prefer to be better safe than sorry, but four minutes to restart a UNIX process seems a bit strange. No big deal, however.
Detailed Configuration
The first order of business when the network and volume configurations are finished is to add users. As expected, the ThinServer Corp solution is Windows-centric by allowing Windows domain connectivity for user authentication. It does not have any connection capabilities to NIS or LDAP.
Regardless, I added a group and a few users, one user for Windows, one for UNIX. This was very easy and straight-forward.
I then added some shares, one for Windows and one for UNIX. By default the system implements a Share0 for Windows and a Volume0 for NFS, but unless you plan on giving all of the users access to everything on the disk, this is obviously not a good idea.
As soon as I added the Windows shares, I fired up My Network Places, went into the proper domain, logged on with the appropriate user account, and the shares appeared immediately. I also tested the ability to access shared to which my account did not have access, and as expected I was unable to gain access.
The UNIX share capability is rather awkward. Whereas ThinServer NAS allows multiple shares for Windows, UNIX clients can only access the entire volume. I find this to be awkward because it is not uncommon in environments where UNIX is the main file server to have several file systems shared out for the same reason why there would be several different Windows shares -- to give individuals share access to authorized individuals, or in the case of UNIX authorized workstations. My only guess as to why ThinServer Corp does this is that they are relying on the UNIX file system permissions to determine who should and should not have access to the appropriate files.
The filing convention for UNIX systems is rather odd as well. The share that I had to mount was /volumes/vol0/root. That's certainly not the first path that I would have guessed, but it is specified in the manual and can also be seen with the appropriate command.
At this point I started to make some Windows shares and place files on the server under different user IDs. I can't say that I ran into any problems. I made sure to create separate individual shares during the process and I assigned one to each of the users that I had created. As expected with Windows authentication, I was prompted for a user ID and password and password to access that specific share and encountered no problems. Attempts to access other shares resulted in prompts to re-authenticate.
One thing did ring out as a problem, and that when mounting the ThinServer NAS from a UNIX workstation. Although mounting was easy enough, given the unusual pathname as I mentioned earlier, being able to access the entire volume created some unusual circumstances.
When I logged onto my workstation as a general user (not root), I had full access to all of the Windows shares without any problems. The two Windows shares that I created were wide open with UNIX permissions 777 (read/write/execute for everybody), meaning that there is no security as to who can access various shares. If a UNIX workstation is granted permission to access the files, then anyone who uses that workstation can access the files.
Interestingly enough, my one UNIX account (local to my workstation with no connection to the ThinServer NAS other than the user name) and the user ID that I created for one of the Windows shares were identical. When I wrote files to that share, the user ID matched. So, it appears that there is some user ID connectivity between the systems. The second Windows share had an associated user account that was not, however, a valid UNIX account. Instead, the owner was the next sequential user ID number.
So, I don't know if the fact that I had a user account of the same actually mattered. The ThinServer NAS system might actually associate the first created user with UNIX user ID 1001, and the next ThinServer NAS account with UNIX ID 1002.
Now, I will be fair to the folks at ThinServer Corp.
There are many entry-level NAS manufacturers out there who don't even give NFS a first thought, so that puts ThinServer Corp a step above a lot of them.
ThinServer Corp has a number of similar solutions that are far more powerful, including multi-disk RAID solutions that would allow an organization to have multiple volumes that are far more capable of providing secure storage for a heterogeneous environment.
The web interface is really nice in that it allows users to access files through a web browser. This is handy for those who are logging in outside of the network, but still need access to files on the NAS server.
Upgradability
Although I did not test this function, upgrading this system should be a cinch. This is in effect a PC with the proprietary ThinServer Corp software. According to the folks at ThinServer Corp, all that is needed to upgrade the hard drive is to buy a new hard drive, plug it in, and reinstall the software by booting from the included CD-ROMs. Obviously, backing up and restoring is up to you.
According to the documentation, other expandability hardware, such as RAID or SCSI controllers for additional disk space, can be added; however, that goes beyond the scope of this review.
Value
So, what is the value for this solution? To be honest, I will not try to answer that question. The value will be different for every person who reads this, because each person and organization has a different skill level and a different approach to data storage. You are also getting the ThinServer NAS proprietary software, which is what makes this system shine. You really can have the system up, running, and configured in less than ten minutes.
The ThinServer NAS solution is not burdened with a bloated operating system; it allows remote connectivity via a web browser or their client within two or three minutes after turning the system on; the cost does not suffer from an additional Microsoft Tax for using a Microsoft operating system; the system runs on the far-more-stable-than-Windows FBSD; the software allows immediate Windows, UNIX, Apple, and Novell connectivity; the user's guide is so easy to read and follow that a chimpanzee can use it; and the ability to upgrade to even the new 320 GB hard drives is a great benefit for future expansion, should it be needed.
Compare that to a Windows storage solution where you have to deal with operating system issues, no remote manageability out of the box, security issues, file system issues, no UNIX compatibility, the need for people who are experienced with Windows file sharing, security, and management, and the Microsoft tax, among others.
So, you can judge the value of the ThinServer NAS for yourself. For what it gives, the cost might be higher than some would like. But if you need to get a NAS solution up and running in the least amount of time possible in more than just a Windows environment (or even for sole Windows environments), this system is an exceptional value.
Conclusion
This system impressed me in many ways once I finally got the hang of using it (and got past the concept of not having a UNIX login prompt). I've been administering UNIX and Windows systems for many years; but when it comes to a stand-alone workgroup solution, this is the easiest system I've worked with. The fact that they actually have a user manual that is user friendly is unusual in this day and age, so that was a refreshing change.
If your company is in need for a quick storage solution at minimal cost and minimal time involved in management, then the ThinServer NAS should a solution to give strong consideration.
|
