NASLite Network Attached Storage

NASlite-2 USB and CDD v2.03 are planned for release this month (11/06) provided no problems show up during testing. Aside from the usual code cleanup and general maintenance, v2.03 will include 2 major improvements as follows:

1. The Network Status page will now show current connections, listing all connected clients and associated services. This feature was deemed important by a number of people and is a considerable improvement over similar facility in the v1.x products.

2. Storage disks can now be designated as daily mirrors of local or remote storage disks. The mirror event can be set to execute at a given hour once per 24-hour period. Daily disk backup mirroring appears to be an extremely valuable feature that many people using NASLite-2 can benefit from. The mirroring transport agent obviously is rsync, so remote mirroring should be of reasonably low network bandwidth requirements.

After v2.03 is out, all efforts will be concentrated on HDD. It is important to note that if the primary goal is to install NASLite-2 on a CF and boot via IDE, then NASLite-2 USB is perfectly suited for the task. We’ll update the manual to indicate that. Meanwhile, refer to the following for details:

http://www.serverelements.com/phpBB2/vi ... php?t=1339

The primary focus of the HDD version is to allow the safe installation, booting and administration of a fixed disk that in addition to the OS also holds a data partition. That is a departure from the usual approach of separating OS from data. The number of requests however is making the need for HDD a clear one.

I hope the above is informative and provides some insight on the current state of NASLite-2.

YES, definitely ! Thank you. Regular informative updates like this would be great ...
Georg

Great update, number 2 is going to satisfy a lot of users I am sure of that, a option that NASlite needed. who needs sotware raid?

I personaly do not like the idea of software RAID but if it were to be included I think that only RAID0 and RAID1 one should be included in that support. RAID5 is to big on hardware and I/O requirments. Also it has always seemed a bit flakey to me.

Mike

I think the initial post describes a daily backup so I guess the backup will happen once each 24 hours. Raid will have to be real time, and that’s not what Tony described in his post. We’ll wait and see when it comes out, but I’m all for it if I can set a daily mirror of some of my more valuable stuff. It will help me sleep better at night.

Mirroring also implies real time - what's decribed in the original post is "scheduled synchronisation"

Assuming that you are running genuine WindowsXP you can have that now, using Microsoft's "SyncToy" part of their PowerToy's collection.

Going by Tonys comments it will be a backup of a local or remote storage disk or disks on a NAS server once in a 24 hour period. and not a mirror a xp machine. But you could use rync from within xp to perform a xp back up to the nas then mirror that on the nas or nas's

And using RSYNC to perform the task is ideal on the nas. the first backup may take some time to copy the data but the second time you backup it should only copy the changes to the files that have altered. depending on how rsync is setup.

Well, that is absolutely fantastic news!

I am (ok, I was) contemplating whether to use OpenFiler or NASLite-2 for my NAS box project, and just registered to the forums to post and ask if a backup/snapshot method of the aforementioned kind could be possible.

I am going to have two identical disks in the small NAS box, with the first one being used as normal and the other one "idling" (hopefully S.M.A.R.T. keeps it hibernating) for most of the time, except for a daily backup.

The local NAS backup feature was the only thing that kept me wondering if NASLite-2 would be the right solution for me, now the choice is clear

Most appreciated!

The only thing S.M.A.R.T. will do is indicate that one or more parameters has changed or crossed a particular threshold, it won't "hibernate" a drive that is not in use.

A change to the original scope as outlined in my initial post, v2.03 will be delayed slightly while we add yet another item that some may consider invaluable when troubleshooting.

In the System Status pages, NASLite-2 will now display process activity details that can be used to monitor resource usage by all currently active processes. That information can be useful in both tuning and troubleshooting. It also illustrates the efficiency of NASLite-2 as well as it's process and resource management abilities.

Such information will also be made available in the Administration Interface and will provide a positive feedback of resource status.

Anyway, the code is complete and is undergoing testing prior to release.

As always, thank you all for your patience.

Is USB 2.03 out yet (I can't be sure what version you get from the from the 'buy product' page) ?

- Thanks

Doesn't look like it.

http://www.serverelements.com/history.p ... Lite-2-USB

That's funny, because when I follow this link it brings up a page that describes v2.03. I'll go the purchase page now and buy it - thanks.

Timing is everything, isn’t it?

V2.03 was released couple of hours ago

I posted that on Monday, today is Wednesday. We just released v2.03 an hour ago.