NASLite Network Attached Storage

Well, last night I gave the NASLite presentation at the St. Louis LUG (Linux Users Group).

For the most part, I think it went fairly well, but I of course got a lot of questions thrown at me.

The questions seems to be mostly of 2 varieties; 1) Why can't it do xyz? or 2) Why would I use NASLite instead of pdq when it's limited in this or that feature?

Most of the first type of questions were answered by "because it runs from a floppy, and there's no room." People wanted SCSI support, SATA support, support for more than 4 drives, CD support, and printer support to be added.

While it may be possible to do that in the future with a seprate driver disk that loads subcequent to the boot floppy (this is me speaking, not Tony!) you'll still have the problem of what to do if you need to remotely reboot.

In all seriousness, added features will probably have to wait for a CD version.

For the second question, I had to reiterate time and again that NASLite is for a home or small office, not the large enterprise.

Most small offices are running peer to peer networks, (many still in Win 98), or saving files to a central server w/o any permissions set up. Often, the storage solution for a small office is "We put a big hard drive in Joe's computer, and he's going to leave it on all the time."

Don't laugh, I've been told to do just that by budget crunched small businesses!

One of the LUG members had already started using it, and gave positve support, and many others reported that they would give it a shot.

After the presentation the head of the Gateway Open Technology Expo asked me to do the presentation again at the GOTExpo next month, so I guess it wasn't too bad!

Tim

All things considered Tim, I think the response you got was to be expected. It’s only natural for people to expect features. I guess it’s the way we are trained to respond when a product is presented to us.

It’s obvious that you clearly see the purpose of such a product, but for the benefit of others, I’ll attempt to explain the reasons for NASLite and it’s design rational with hope to shed some light on “Why can't it do xyz?”.

The goal for the NASLite project was very specific. Simply put, NASLite should facilitate the deployment of an anonymous LAN file server offering maximum performance with a minimum of time and financial investment. NASLite should also be as easy to use and administer as possible, so users with little or no computer experience can deploy it and benefit. This goal was used to define the scope of the project.

The final package targets retired PCs that can be put back to work. The bootable floppy leaves all 4 standard IDE ports available for storage. The configuration is reasonably intuitive and automated to isolate the administrator from the technical details. Hardware support is reasonably complete and overall operation is very reliable. The associated manuals are intended to help one through any remaining areas of confusion.

Your scenario, "We put a big hard drive in Joe's computer, and he's going to leave it on all the time." is exactly the target for such a product. I know that quite a few people without any Linux/Unix experience use NASLite. That alone justifies the value.

All this is not to say that NASLite can’t be improved. It can and it will, but the scope will remain. We are working on other, more advanced solutions that will address many concerns and requests, but those will result in different products. NASLite will remain as compact and as automated as possible.

I'll be doing presentations on NASLite at the Gateway Open Technology Exposition (http://www.gotexpo.org) on both Sat. Sept 18th, and Sun,. Sept 19th.

I've been using NASLite since early on - June, I think, - and it's been flawless for me. However, I have read of other people's troubles, and have injected them into the presentation also.

Does anyone have something they think NEEDS to be included in any NASLite presentation? I know you don't have copies of my presentation, so you don't know what is and isn't there, but if YOU were doing it, what would you include?

Tim

Last Saturday and Sunday I gave presentations on NASLite.at GOTExpo - the Gateway Open Technology Exposition.

Of note, Saturday's presentation had Dr. Fredrick Berenstein in attendence to see this fine product. (Note I did not say fine presentation). Dr. Berenstein is the CEO and CTO of Xandros, the premier desktop Linux distro. I'm glad I was using my Xandros box, and not one of the others to do the Open Office Presentation on! Dr. Berenstein is also a partner in Linux Global Partners, a venture capital firm specializing in Linux products. Tony, if you get a call from him, I want to come on staff!

Questions were generally well thought out and, due to having done the presentation previously, generally anticipated.

One of the guys who had seen it previously has already reccomened it to a client.

And, Tony, your CD passed muster. It was used to create floppies for several people who wanted them. And no, I did not let anyone make copies of it.

Just spreading the word on a good product!

Tim

Not to toot my own horn, but to show you what others think on NASLite, this is a blurb from http://www.moslug.org about the recent GOTExpo.

" AnotherGOTexpo (GOTe) has come and gone. Those that were not able to make it missed quite a show. Saturday, we had the fun stuff of getting the last little niggly bits for Sunday, and the training provided by capable folks in the areas of administration, networking, security, and web development. Tim Dreste presented an excellent demonstration on implementing NASLite in a production environment and Rick Berenstein (CTO, Chairman of Xandros, inc) held court in the room designated for the installfest handing out fresh copies of the latest Xandros distributions and keeping us entertained with stories about making inroads on the desktop and corporate environs. Saturday evening, I was invited to the keynote dinner where Rick explained the future of Xandros and what needs to be done to make GNU/Linux systems a viable alternative on the desktop.

Sunday, we played with getting both the installfest and the lanparty networks fine tuned and then the fun began. Tom Kirk showed up with a vanful of boxes and proceeded to get a NAS server up and running beating it into submission somewhere around noon."

Some people obviously liked NASLite.

Tim