NAS remote access questions

[Ducky]

Exactly.



I don't think MobileMe would work without having my Mac on--I want to have access to at least at TB of storage, so any online storage that MM allows wouldn't be enough.



I read your advice--thanks, that does help. I'm pretty good at following directions and getting things working, my main question was whether I could use a NAS without a computer. If anyone has any recommendations of good NAS hardware, please weigh in.

PC World seems to think these are good choices.

Building your own would be easy enough, but would require you to have an old computer laying around available for use. If you wanted to, you could head to Microcenter's website and purchase one of their cheap deals on older hardware. This won't get you better power usage, but it is more configurable. If you were to use this approach, here are some tutorials on building your own NAS device (included are FreeNAS, OpenFiler and NexentaStor.)

FreeNAS How-To's

OpenFiler graphical install.

OpenFiler text-based install.

Tutorials and Demos for NexentaStor

I'd suggest buying an appliance. You don't seem to fit the need for building your own, unless you want to learn a bit while you set this up.


However, if you grow past a TB, you may want to consider building your own with several arrayed 1.5TB drives to get you as much storage as you need. We can help if this is what you choose to do.

 

[Christian Klippel]

Building your own NAS also has the advantage that you can use it for more than "simply" a NAS. Personally, i like these small Intel Atom boards. That would enable you to use it as a media-center as well for playing music and videos, for example. I'm using such a thing myself, and when the drives spun down for sleep, it takes about 12 Watts or so.

Greetings,

Chris

 

[Ducky]

Building your own NAS also has the advantage that you can use it for more than "simply" a NAS. Personally, i like these small Intel Atom boards. That would enable you to use it as a media-center as well for playing music and videos, for example. I'm using such a thing myself, and when the drives spun down for sleep, it takes about 12 Watts or so.

Greetings,

Chris

Danke, Herr.

 

[Ducky]

As a side note, for you Linux (Ubuntu, in this case) users out there, here's a how-to to create a NAS solution for your local machines, and you could then use an SSH connection to access from outside (or any other service you want to run on your linux box...)

http://www.howtoforge.com/using-iscsi-on-ubuntu-9.04-initiator-and-target

Specifically it does this:

This guide explains how you can set up an iSCSI target and an iSCSI initiator (client), both running Ubuntu 9.04. The iSCSI protocol is a storage area network (SAN) protocol which allows iSCSI initiators to use storage devices on the (remote) iSCSI target using normal ethernet cabling. To the iSCSI initiator, the remote storage looks like a normal, locally-attached hard drive.

 

[GreNME]

Hey, in that list given by Ducky, the (HP) MediaSmart, the (Netgear) ReadyNAS, and the (Buffalo) Linkstation appliances have gotten good words from those I've talked to. Of those three, the Linkstation ones have gotten the worst scoring because they promise a lot, and while they deliver a lot of good stuff they don't manage to deliver everything. All of them are reliable, pretty easy-to-use devices for the home user, though. Also, for the Windows users out there, they all come with a consumer-level backup software-- not exactly on the level of the professional software, but plenty enough for backing up your documents. Granted, Windows and OS X (and, technically, Linux) come with backup systems of their own, but the ones that come with the appliances are pretty click-thru and simple.

 

[Ducky]

Hey, in that list given by Ducky, the (HP) MediaSmart, the (Netgear) ReadyNAS, and the (Buffalo) Linkstation appliances have gotten good words from those I've talked to. Of those three, the Linkstation ones have gotten the worst scoring because they promise a lot, and while they deliver a lot of good stuff they don't manage to deliver everything. All of them are reliable, pretty easy-to-use devices for the home user, though. Also, for the Windows users out there, they all come with a consumer-level backup software-- not exactly on the level of the professional software, but plenty enough for backing up your documents. Granted, Windows and OS X (and, technically, Linux) come with backup systems of their own, but the ones that come with the appliances are pretty click-thru and simple.

That's good to know about the devices. I build my own rigs, so I know almost nothing about what is a good one and what isn't.

 

[GreNME]

Another good thing (for you) is that several of the newer appliances can act as iSCSI targets, have limited print server abilities, and some can even have USB drives plugged into them. One or two out there can even be daisy-chained (though, with storage, I don't recommend it unless you know what you're doing).

 

[Ducky]

Another good thing (for you) is that several of the newer appliances can act as iSCSI targets, have limited print server abilities, and some can even have USB drives plugged into them. One or two out there can even be daisy-chained (though, with storage, I don't recommend it unless you know what you're doing).

For me, or for the OP?

I generally stay away from daisy chaining physical appliances and use one machine with an array of drives in a zpool.

 

[GreNME]

For you, and I meant the iSCSI part. The daisy-chaining is only good for someone who adds extra appliances, and if they know better than to span disks that way.

 

[Ducky]

For you, and I meant the iSCSI part. The daisy-chaining is only good for someone who adds extra appliances, and if they know better than to span disks that way.

That is an interesting aspect. I may incorporate that into some future design of the home network....which never stops evolving...

 

[funk de fino]

I am using a Buffalo Linkstation Live 1TB drive for this and its pretty good so far. Took a wee while to get the setup right in my router for the webaccess but it works like a dream now. It also syncs with Itunes and allows me to use a wireless music server system in the house with multiple zones as well as being a print server and also having the USB option as well. It has an autostart option (for attached PCs) but this does not work with webaccess AFAIK so you have to leave it on if you are travelling. Not sure the speeds are up to what they claim though.

There seems to be issues with the amount of passwords you can have for webaccess on one machine though. My works VPN and webmail webaccess passwords have to be entered as my webaccess password for the Linkstation for some reason. Cant quite figure it out in that regard.

 

[jimtron]

Anyone have any thoughts on Logmein? I tried their free version, and it was extremely simple to setup for remote access . The fact that it was so easy scares me a bit though; I wonder how secure it is.