NASLite Network Attached Storage

v1 has been a relentless performer. Don't have v2 yet but thinking hard about it. Any opinions? How does it compare to v1 aside from the new hardware support?

I was waiting for the CDD but will have to do with the USB for now.

Got my CC ready and will be heading to PP on your confirmation

Well, for me it was the RAID (5) support. I just received my new 3ware 8506-12 card and am hoping that this will work good for me.

Hi there. I'm also wondering if I should update from NASLite+ to NASLite-2. My current setup is "JBOD" (just a bunch of disks). As I'm not experiencing any issues related to NASLite+ and my performance appears to be acceptable for my requirements (streaming video to GeeXboX, mp3s to my Audiotron), I'd also like to know "why should I upgrade"?

Comparing NASLite+ and NASLite-2 (from the Server Elements website), it appears that NASLite-2 has these additional features:

1. RSYNC exported file systems

(in addition to others supported by NASLite+)

What does this mean?

2. Support for SATA, SCSI, USB and FireWire connected fixed disk drives

(in addition to IDE, of course. note that NASLite+ only supports IDE)

3. Support for multiple IDE, SATA, SCSI, USB and FireWire interfaces

Is this just the same information as #2? If so, why the redundancy? If not, what's difference in this statement?

4. Dependable hardware RAID support

A big change over NASLite+. I'm sure this is why a lot of users will update, or have updated to NASLite-2.

5. Remote NFS volumes re-export

What does this mean?

6. HTML-based status report pages

This is listed as a feature of NASLite-2 but not NASLite+. Is the web interface of NASLite-2 different/updated?

7. Limited ACPI support

What does this mean?

One last thing. I seem to recall that NASLite+ only supported a total of 4 IDE disks (could be wrong). I don't see anywhere in the NASLite-2 documentation (PDF or website) where it says how many hard drives are supported. Please advise, as this would be a new feature that would interest me.

modul8r,

1.
Rsync: say you got 100 files on you pc and they are 50mb each audio mpeg etc and you want to back these up to your nas. if you use rsync on the first run it will copy all the files to the server. then say you alter a few files on your pc then run rsync again, it will only copy only the changes you made to the files and not copy 100 50mb files.

2. this refers to the actual disk drives.

3. refers to extra cards to allow more of the above.

4. skipped

5. if you run two servers you can add the remote option. this will allow you to see the contents the remote server HD in the web status page and if you browse your workgroup you will see it listed as if the hd was connected to your main server.. a little like if you mapped a HD.

6. APCI if you press the power button it will power down the nas correctly rather then just cutting the power, handy if you got little ones who find a button and press it.

I remember Tony saying if you can power it you can run it. But i have no idea on the max amount of HD's someone has used.

RSYNC will replace the changed part of a large file, without having to re-write the entire file. If you had a 100 MB file and changed 2 bytes, then other backup programs would re-write the entire 100 MB, whereas RSYNC would locate the changed bytes and replace their sectors only. I have not tested or used this though, so I am speaking only from what I've read.

I think NASLITE+ can have more drives, if you install another ATA controller, but ceratinly the facility offered by NASLite2 is much more flexible.

What facility?

Can I get an "official" answer on how many HDDs NASLite+ supports, compared to NASLite-2?

"NASLite+"/"+ for USB Flash" supports up to 4 IDE drives.

OK, that goes along with the manual so that makes sense.

What about NASLite-2? I don't see anywhere in the manual where it mentions how many drives are supported. The 4 IDE drive limit mentioned in the NASLite+ manual is not in the NASLite-2 manual, so I deduct that more drives are supported now.

I'm currently running NASLite+ with 4 IDE drives. If I can put more IDE drives in my box (attached to a PCI IDE controller card) with NASLite-2, that would be reason enough for me to upgrade.

Your right the max amont is not listed, if I had enough drives i'd test myself. adding another pci ide controller with give you another 4. and if you go for a raid controller even more!

My original post was kind of an opinions request. Now that I have my own opinion of what I got for my money, I’m happy to say it was cash well spent.

I got the USB and it does work as advertised. Immediate improvement over v1 was the ability to use raid and external USB and firewire drives. Did the USB/firewire thing, but then I found out I can get the same general idea using the remote storage, so I got an old decommissioned p133 with 3 ide disks and used it with a freebie NASLite-NFS floppy accessible by all my windows machines via my v2. The cool thing about it is that all shares are accessible from a single point, yet I can take the NFS down for maintenance or whatever. Once it’s back up, I can access the drives again. I wish v2 wouldl remount the remote disks if they change, but that’s not really a problem.

This naslite v2 thing may not have many bells and whistles but when it comes to storage, it sure is scalable. You can have lots of storage from different places or machines. It also seems to remotely mount and reexport normal Linux NFS exports, although one has to keep the permissions in line.

Aside from damn good performance it’s like a Lego. One can build with it and it seems to fit all over the place. I like that. The remote storage idea is almost like storage area network. Well, kind of anyway.

I like it!

This sounds interesting and is not an area that I had looked at yet.

Do I understand correctly, that I can somehow "join" my NASLite+ PC which has 3 ATA drives to the NASLite2, which is running a RAID 5 array, and have the combined storage appear as one? Can I graft the disks from NASLite+ into directories under the NASLite2 space?

Where is this in the manual?

This just keeps getting better and better.

Can I also join an non-NASLite Samba server too?

There is a section in the manual called Remote Storage or something like that. That's where the process is described. Basically what happens is if you have an existing naslite server with NFS exports, naslite-2 can be configured to mount those on boot. Then you can see both the local disks and the NFS mounts by mapping Shares or just the remote mounts by mapping Remote.

I did try it with fedora and was able to mount the drives but had problems with permissions on the fedora machine. Te fix was to dedicate UID 98 and GID 98 to naslite thus allowing somewhat transparent movement of files. I was also thinking that it is possible to control access permissions manually on the fedora exports to essentially control remote access of those files via naslite-2.

Anyway, it is definitely a new toy to play with and I can think of plenty to do with it. A step-up from v1 for sure.

I'll make my question easier to answer, about how many hard drives are supported in NASLite-2.

My current plan/requirement is to only add one additional IDE hard drive to my NASLite+ box (which has 4 IDE drives, currently).

Considering that, perhaps these two questions be easier answered:

1. Can NASLite-2 support 8 IDE hard drives (using the 2 onboard channels, as well as a PCI IDE host controller with 2 additional channels)?

2. Can NASLite-2 support 8 IDE hard drives (using 2 PCI IDE host controllers with 2 channels each)?

NASlite v1.x supports up to 4 IDE disks as made available by on-board IDE controllers. NASLite-2 on the other hand can handle as many disks as one can properly interface given available IRQs and controller types. Theoretical limit is 128 volumes as handled by the NASLite-2 kernel, but one will run out of IRQs long before that.

Hope that helps.

This helps very much. Thank you for clarifying.

Considering that with NASLite-2, one can now use PCI IDE controllers (and the mobo in my NASLite+ box is limited to ATA/66), the speed increase is alone enough to warrant me upgrading, as all of my drives are ATA/133.

Plus, OfficeMax recently had an "up to 50% off all WD drives" sale, so I picked up two 250 GB drives for $55 each! Those will definitely be added to the box bringing me into the 1 TB club.

(Hopefully my power supply can handle the new additions).