NASLite Network Attached Storage

Since the Server Elements website was launched just over two months ago, there have been approximately 5000 NASLite image downloads. Based on that, we assume there are a good number of NASLite servers in operation. We thought that it will be nice to know how and where people are using NASLite.

In addition to satisfying our curiosity, knowing how and where NASLite is used will help us to improve the product to better fit your applications, especially when used in a business setting.

So, please tell us how you use NASLite in your environment, which version best suits your needs, what type of hardware you are running it on, etc.

Thanks.

Hello,

Ok, here is it:

I have found an old P2-500 with 256MB Ram.



(The Coffee Cup holder is not Standard Equipment, sure

And, if you know by yourself, never have enough Diskspace !
So, i saw your project and thougt "you made my day!".
Found different Types of HDDs, screw them in, place the Disk in Slot and boot.
Aditional Diskspace in just a few minutes. Without many hours of configure Hardware, RTFM stuff and googeling problems. Just working!

I don`t have so much wiches. If WLAN is build in so that i can place a Barebone next to an Accesspoint and have additional Space would it be great, but if i would not have it i won't die.

BTW:

SCSI Support for more Disks or second IDE Controller would also be a nice goody, but also not so important then the stability of this system!

NASLite has solved a big problem for me. I have 5 PCs on my home network and I use them to backup each other. As the people in my house never seem to use the same PC twice in a row it was getting a bit difficult to work out what backup was where. Also with 5 digital cameras in the house I needed a central backup place to put all the pictures we were accumulating.

I had a spare 120GB drive waiting to go into one of the network PCs and a garage full of v/old PCs that were "too good to throw out". They are mostly 133MHz P1s.

I dropped the drive in one with 32MB of RAM. Added a 100Mb LAN card and was away without any problems. When the fan in this old PC dies I've got 4 more just like it ready to step up to fill the shoes. The whole setup lives in the garage so I don't have to worry about any fan noise.

I'd like to have something to do automated backups on specified network folders. I'm not sure a CDROM version would help me given the old hardware I've got as they won't boot from the CD. I'd still need a floppy to kick off the process. It would be nice if I could boot from a flash ram card using an IDE adaptor.

I'd like to know if NASLite shuts down the drives when they haven't been accessed for a while.

Overall I think NASLite is great. I guess I'd be happy even if it wasn't upgraded.

Many thanks.

Peter

NASLite is perfect.

I threw a couple of disks in an old Dell, along with a PCI NIC and booted the floppy. After a few mintues of config, I was dumping files like a mofo.

In addition, it resolved a netbios name resolution problem I was having since I don't have any "real" windows servers on my LAN.

So far I've "sold" about three more NASLite servers to friends and I have one or two friends who own businesses that are testing it.

The only improvements I can think of would include the ability to turn on Samba's print sharing to allow a printer connected to the NASLite box's printer port to be accessed via the network, and maybe the ability to manually set the port speed of the NIC (my cheap switch keeps auto-negotiating 10mb, half duplex instead of 100/full).

But all in all this thing is very, very nice.

I'm testing NASLite in a home enviroment. A mixed Linux/ WinME /WinXp network, and it works fine. This is the SMB version.

If I like what I see, (I do so far) I'll reccommed it for a NAS unit at work (small network of 9 PCs).

I have already reccomended it to several other consultants who are also testing it, and I will be giving a presentation of it to the local Linux SIG in 10 days.

I'm going to test NASLITE on my home network... actually the FS is a big box with very fast (and expensive) drives .. But it lacks capacity .. So I'm going to buy two cheap 120gb hda (just to start) and put them into a very old P133 64Mb with a 100mbit ethernet ... Performances are not an issue here (100 mbit backbone with 802.11g wireless network for the clients) so I'll buy cheap drives (2Mb of cache) ...

I hope to post ASAP a few pictures of my NASlite

-s-

PS i'm pushing it between my collegues and friends .. it's really COOL!!!

Well, for the last two weeks I've switched from the SMB to the NFS server. All's fine, except of course that I can't access it from WinDoze w/o d/ling a NFS client. No matter, it's only for testing, and I have plenty of Linux boxes on the net.

If I get a bit of time, I'll put together another box - OK, all I have to do is install the drives and NIC - and put both boxes up.

A lot of my time these days is being taken up by the cutest baby in the world, so I have a good exchuse!

Tim

Thank you very much for your software! My dad is using a rig (533mhz, 30gb) for his photos and I'm using the same rig... well... for "stuff". Junk stuff mostly. Here it is.

I suppose it’s only fair that I add my 5 cents to this thread!

I work in a law office with about 8 computers in my department. I’ve been using naslite for about a month now and am pretty happy with it. The disks are accessible by all and are scanned for viruses remotely by my Norton. We mostly store a ton of PDFs on it for other departments to use. We have lot of forms and standard paperwork, now all in PDF format on the naslite server. The web directory is very nice for that indeed.

All in all, the small cost of the floppy is negligible considering the fact that we didn’t have to go through IT for a server. We used an old PII desktop with a set of 120G drives in it.

Thanks for an excellent solution to a common problem.

This is the greatest thing I have ever tried. It does exactly what ya’ll say it will with exactly the hardware you said it would.
The setup was easy and except for a couple reboots to get the config right it was simple.
Talked my cousin out of an AMD 500Mhz box with 64MB and off we went to the races.
I HIGHLY recoment this for anyone in need of inexspensive storage

I have been using NASLite on an AMD K6 233 Mhz computer with 48 megs of RAM and two 8.4 gigabyte hard drives. The computer is a cast off from one of my friends. I use it as backup server on my Windows network at home. Yesterday I tried out a Linksys Ethernet wireless Bridge (802.11b) and it connects to my network without any problems (WEP is on!). I teach computing at a local community college and I have started mentioning NASLite to my students.

What I like about NASLite is the simplicity. Yes, additional features like print sharing and security would be nice but the K.I.S.S. concept is cool! Show an MCSE tech a server running off a single floppy and watch the expression on their face!

Check out sbootmgr. It'll allow you to boot from a CD when the BIOS is too old to know how. You can use it to create a boot floppy, which will then bring up a boot menu and allow you to boot from any hard drive partition or CD-ROM drive.

Do a search on Google for sbootmgr:

http://www.google.com/search?q=sbootmgr


In keeping with this thread, I'm not currently using NASLite; mainly anxiously awaiting the print server feature. I've tried NASLite. Talk about easy to set up! Love it. Kudos to the Server Elements crew.

Greg

Hy,

as i told up in this thread I have build a Terabyte Server. This ones was also mentioned in the last Edition of 'ct, Heft 26.
It runs perfectly.

To minimize the lags given through ext2 instead of ext3 (Journaling) I plugged it into a APC USV 700 if there was a poweroutage