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PostPosted: Fri Feb 25, 2005 11:52 pm 
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And where can I download the NAS+ pdf Manual?


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 1:42 am 
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NASLite+ does not support JFS.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 6:01 am 
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You can request a manual in email.

I'll take the time to answer your recent email question here, the answer would be no, NASLite won't allow you to use 64 firewire drives and support the power management your asking for.

>realname: Art Doyle
>organization:
>email: artdoyle@xxxxxxxx
>comments: Is there any way I can get unlimited (well 64 disk) >expandability via Firewire with full disk standby support (spindown and >hibernate)?
>media: Dvarchive.org site


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 11:00 pm 
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That's unfortunate.

IBM's JFS is very robust ....and fault tolerant storage is desireable. JFS is at least as good as NTFS - possibly better.


A scalable storage system (64drives) would be very popular with those who own video archives. At present - no such product exists.


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PostPosted: Sat Feb 26, 2005 11:57 pm 
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Ralph wrote:
You can request a manual in email.

I'll take the time to answer your recent email question here, the answer would be no, NASLite won't support the power management your asking for.

>realname: Art Doyle
>organization:
>email: artdoyle@xxxxxxxx
>comments: Is there any way I can get unlimited (well 64 disk) >expandability via Firewire with full disk standby support (spindown and >hibernate)?
>media: Dvarchive.org site


Well, here's a rationale for power management:


We just "retired" a Rebyte NAS (http://www.rebyte.com) and excessive power appetite was one of the factors involved.

A 3W EPIA motherboard , two high efficiency drives, and a high power factor power supply were used on this project. Despite this - power use stubbornly clung to 53W.

Now 53W doesn't sound like much, but in an "always on" environment it represents $49.68/yr . @ a 5% cost of capital, that translates into a $994 liability....and I'm betting that a Windows solution would be <1/10th that figure. Flushing $994 vs $94 ...... hmmmmmm.


Your NAS design would likely be superb running on an old 300mhz Thinkpad equipped with one of those new Seagate Momentus drives - *if* you could curb Linux's power appetite.

Windows once had this same problem. Thinkpad power consumption is 23W using standard 98SE. It drops to 12W when you add software to enable processor sleep. Use Windows 2000 on a Thinkpad and the power drops to 12W without activity. It drops to < 1W (beyond my measuring tools) when you place this same unit into standby.

If none of these money arguments hold any sway with you - consider your personal impact to the resources available to the youngsters who may actually need those kws we're throwing away here. APM represents almost zero pain - and a lot of good.


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 4:36 pm 
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Although power conservation and energy savings are good things, I will hazard a guess that most people don't want their file storage systems (at least in a business/production) environment spinning up/down all the time.

In my application, I expect my systems to be on-line 24 hours a day/7 days a week. I still do not trust Windows to run non-stop without failure.

Just out of curiousity, what is your application? If maximum speed isn't a factor, you could look into some of the 4200 RPM drives available on the market--they should have significantly lower power requirements. Possibly consider the VIA EPIA boards as well--they are very frugal on power, and some don't even require active cooling.


--lgm-


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:04 pm 
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levi wrote:
Although power conservation and energy savings are good things, I will hazard a guess that most people don't want their file storage systems (at least in a business/production) environment spinning up/down all the time.

In my application, I expect my systems to be on-line 24 hours a day/7 days a week. I still do not trust Windows to run non-stop without failure.

Just out of curiousity, what is your application? If maximum speed isn't a factor, you could look into some of the 4200 RPM drives available on the market--they should have significantly lower power requirements. Possibly consider the VIA EPIA boards as well--they are very frugal on power, and some don't even require active cooling.


--lgm-



We're already using the Epia motherboard, and the our next disk will be that 100MB Seagate Momentus notebook drive. (on order).

I'm not enthusiastic about using Windows in such a role either - but I'm also not very happy with the alternatives. Strip away the hype from either camp - and their "emperors have no clothes".

In 2005, an efficient shared network drive should exist.


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:18 pm 
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Misread the first time around about the EPIA board. (Read EPOX for some reason, must've been subconscious).

I was looking at the Hitachi Endurastar J4K30/N4K30. ~4200 RPM, excellent MTBF ratings. Downside? Capacity.

As for having the drives spin down to save power, I'd be concerned with repeated start/stop cycles putting too much wear and tear on the drives, but that may be me just being overly paranoid. I've got the mindset that with uninterrupted power the drives would last a lot longer being continuously 'on' than starting and stopping every 5,10,15,20 minutes (or whatever you set them to).


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:38 pm 
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levi wrote:

As for having the drives spin down to save power, I'd be concerned with repeated start/stop cycles putting too much wear and tear on the drives, but that may be me just being overly paranoid. I've got the mindset that with uninterrupted power the drives would last a lot longer being continuously 'on' than starting and stopping every 5,10,15,20 minutes (or whatever you set them to).


I sure wish more definitive data existed on the true envelope of disk drives....and your concerns are valid.

There still remains a need to get these "power sinks" under control. A server here, a server there, and pretty soon you're talking "big problem".


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 5:54 pm 
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At least where I am, power consumption isn't a huge issue. I try to buy energy efficient monitors, and turn on power-saving features on workstations just for the sake of doing it, but 9 times out of 10, my users complain about how long it takes for their 21" FD trinitrons to come back on and have one of the IT people set it so the never go off, likewise for their towers and suspend/hibernation settings.

They prefer convienence over saving on the electric bill--but hell, they pay my salary and sign my paycheck, so they get what they want.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 01, 2005 3:41 pm 
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levi wrote:
At least where I am, power consumption isn't a huge issue. I try to buy energy efficient monitors, and turn on power-saving features on workstations just for the sake of doing it, but 9 times out of 10, my users complain about how long it takes for their 21" FD trinitrons to come back on and have one of the IT people set it so the never go off, likewise for their towers and suspend/hibernation settings.

They prefer convienence over saving on the electric bill--but hell, they pay my salary and sign my paycheck, so they get what they want.


true, but why not save where we can? In a small office environment a disk set to spin down after 30-60min is not going to go to sleep during the business day, so mid-day spin-up latency isn't a real concern. If you're like most small or medium offices... by 7 or 8 pm no one is left working and that's 12 hours of running power you can save.

between disk and processor standby, a hybrid solution would be great. Full power m-f 8-6, and interruptable 60 min standby nights & weekends.. so if someone does need to work odd hours they're fine. with that kind od profile the disks shoulnd't have more than 1-2 power cycles per day on average, and the ~12hrs/day of reduced processor and disk standby transfers over into cooling as well (hey, every little bit helps)

just a few extra cents.


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PostPosted: Tue May 29, 2007 5:56 am 
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I agree fully. Spin-down after 30-60 mins would be perfect.

Any plans to incorporate APM features?


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