Slashdot Mirror
Iomega's New Unix (Optional) NAS Appliance
Tora writes: "Zip disk maker Iomega
has released a sexy new 1U Network Attached
Storage server
with an option
for either Unix or Microsoft Windows as the OS.
Their previous NAS offering was Windows-only; it is nice to see
both OS options available, although they do not yet have pricing up
for the Windows version."
Mmm. Boy I hope these aren't susceptible to the click of death. Ah yes, the reliability of the zip disk..
air and light and time and space
I'm sick of being tied into a MS-centric NAS box. :)
You're paying royalties to Microsoft through the NAS manufacturer, since you're technically getting an custom OEM version of Windows 2000 to run the machine. Saving a little cash just makes it even sweeter.
Sorry Bill, I don't want to have to line your pocket on _every_ product I purchase.
Iomega's New Unix (Optional) NAS Appliance
:-(
But I was told that Unix is like a dark, moldy basement and I need to find a way out through Windows.
Slashdot v2.0
The click of death has already been mentioned but a few years ago I bought 10 Iomega IDE tape drives for some workstations (the network was P2P and I was inexperienced). I had a %50 failure rate on the drives. They would snap the tapes as soon as you loaded them. I would RMA the drives get new ones and some of those would do the same thing.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
they do not yet have pricing up for the Windows version
...
I know the price: too much!
If you're right, noone replies
Life sucks.
I guess the Article about SlashDot's new paid advertisement plan isn't a joke then.
When it starts making a repetitive 'click' sound, you're pretty much screwed.
I'm sure that would affect pricing if it was Unix or Linux based...
Unfortunately, times have been tough for Iomega. They haven't posted a profit for several years. On a related note, they haven't come up with a decent new product for several years. Instead of innovating, they tried to get into the business of producing cheap, commodity devices (like tape drives and CD writers) that nobody was interested in buying. Coupled with the Click of Death problems, this new strategy backfired and sent Iomega into the red - where they have remained ever since.
And that brings me to my story: I talked to my buddy on the phone a few weeks ago, and he said that morale is low at Iomega. The company has been slashing jobs and pay every quarter, and he has had to lay off many of his subordinates. He said that the NAS idea is a last-ditch effort to squeeze profits out of a dying industry, and that Iomega's business plan is to sell the NAS devices at a loss (to stay competitive with the big guys) and to sell overpriced support contracts to try to stay in business. For his sake I hope it works out, but for all intents and purposes Iomega is dead. But nobody said that mormons have any business sense anyway, so I don't blame them.
While I find it really sad that this day and age that they need a Unix (Wich probably covers most Modern OS's Today (From Linux, Solaris, ... , OS X) ) and a Windows version (a group of OS's Made by one company). But Server Apliances are a good thing for companies. It allows a clean way to get your server information done without having more PCs and Servers around. Use a Cobol Server for Web Services, Use this Iomega device for sharing your network. And with a lot less work then with actuall servers at near the same cost (Unless you buy the cheapo PC stuff that you have to replace every month). Plus most of the time these Server Aplinces uses the correct tool (OS, Supporting Software, etc) for the right job. Alowing it to be more dependable and by not letting us mess with it and make it do more then it was designed, assures that it runs more securly then most servers. And gets people away from those Windows server farms and allows more open standards.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I always thought the point of NAS was that it used standards like TCP/IP and a web interface specifically so it wasn't linked to one specific OS. I'd expect any NAS device to be useable with any platform that supports a browser and IP networking, so just how was the older NAS device Windows-only? Was it using NetBIOS or something?
Hmm, Raid 5 in hardware, with speeds approaching, what, 40mbps? 60mbps? 80mbps?
Yet 100bT networking with a throughput of what, 10-12mbps? GigaE options would let them have 100-120mbps, at least...
GPL Deconstructed
Appletalk is supported so I assume that OSX is also supported via NFS? Anyone. I was not quite sure.
Let's face it, home users are going to start needing additional space outside of their desktop PC's in a few years. Music, video, and information will eventually overflow their older PC's, and many people won't want to buy a new PC, yet they'll want 24 hour access to their data.
:-).
Anyway...my point, and I do have one, is this: The company that can make an affordable ($200) NAS and make it SIMPLE for ANYONE to use, will succeed. THe cheapest out there (last time I checked) is @$400, and is a paltry 40GB. Sell 100 GB of storage for $200 or less, and people will buy it. I rolled my own NAS for not much more than the cost of a new HDD, but I have mad skillz that the average consumer doesn't (ability to scrounge and build a PC for close to nothing)
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
It seems as though there should be an open-source software package that would allow you to take an old computer case, throw some disks, a NIC or three and a RAID card in there and have your own, poor-man's NAS device. All you'd need would be some sort of slimmed-down linux distro optimized to serve files and with some sort of web front end for configuring NIS/Samba shares.
With 160GB IDE drives running for about $225 and IDE RAID cards similarly cheap, this seems like a natural nitche for linux to be in. Sure, it's not enterprise-ready and won't be as scalable as a SCSI-based system, but it would be perfect for a massive PVR or small-business file server.
Anyone know of such a project?
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
I'm sure this will work great, until it starts making a strange clicking noise...
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
First STFU Katz p...
What's that?
Oh.
errrr... sorry.
If the click of death happens in a data center and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
I had the same effect with my rest-in-peace Jaz drive when it broke - the machine became slow and unreactive. Connection timed out... Or is the site simply /.ed? ;-)
MS haters just skip past this post....
Anyway, what is the compatibility of this thing with MS SQL server. last I checked, there was only like one or two NAS devices that could support SQL databases on them.
I'ld love to have a cheaper solution of having SQL database files on a network device, without sacrificing reliablity...
Does anybody do anything with SQL Server and a NAS device currently?
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
First, head to pricewatch.com.
Pick up two 160 GB drives for about $200 each, an Athlon 1.4 GHz mainboard combo for about $140, a full-tower case with redundant power supplies for about $200 (or a *U rack unit), an Intel 10/100 ethernet card for $20, and the rest of the pieces/parts can be had for less than $100 with frugal shopping. Total cost for twice the storage of Iomega's lowest-end offering (which is $2000): about $860. With the remaining money you're saving, pick up a solid tape drive and practice religious backups (or step up to SCSI). I'm sorry, but I'm tired of paying a premium for "brand name" crap. I have the feeling a lot of other folks on this list are, too. Heck, for the Windows guys, spend the remaining money on a full version of your favorite Redmond OS. Rinse, lather, repeat -- and be satisfied with the fruits of your labors.
Even superheroes once were losers
"Iomega's business plan is to sell the NAS devices at a loss"...
You might want to tell your buddy to remind them to get people to sign a contract if they're going that route!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
...all embedded and/or otherwise non-interacting technology: you plug it in, you get the storage. Who cares what OS is on? As long as it doesn't crash.
Which is the key criterion: doesn't crash.
I'd rather be locked in than locked out.
You have a typo on line 4. HoWEver should read h0w3ver.
After suffering reliability problem with Zip and Jaz drives, why would I want to risk buying another Iomega product? In this case, it's twice bitten, thrice shy.
This is the essential problem that Iomega faces--anybody who has bought their products in the past won't buy them in the future.
What about the cost? TCO
They are light on the details. What speed drives? What kind of internal controller? Anything in this box redundant or is all my storage gone when a power supply fails? Things like that are important, and they don't seem to mention it when I looked. I also question buying something like this from someone that makes nothing else even close.
We use the Compaq TaskSmart 2400N NAS. Yes, it runs Win2K but it's rock solid and very good. It's built around a normal Compaq server so we already have spares. It can do up to 10TB in Cluster config. It uses all standard Compaq drives and parts which can be shared among other systems. Plus, you can manage it from Insight Manager. It also exports out to NFS for UNIX clients.
It seems anyone that needed 1/2 TB on a NAS would already have other servers and would be better served going with their vendor's answer, assuming they had a good one.
Those guys that have a buttload of dysfuntionnal 1GB JAZ drives?
....
:).
Those same guys that brought the BUZ video editing card that ended up with no good drivers and being just another expensive scsi card since the video part wasn't working half decently? (yeah I got one)
Those same people that had loads of trouble with their portable cdr drives?
Those same people selling the infamous Click! and never took off and left you with an expensive useless piece of
Hell, at the price they sell their stuff, I'd still go with my solution: IDE based, for performance, 3ware board with loads of drives. You get linux/windows support. Medium storage, good performance, Adaptec board with 4 drives, and POS version, well if you thought about getting NAS (which is a tad too expensive in my opinion) you don't need to consider a POS solution
Anyways, with their track record, I'd go with a Maxtor NAS or any other company before Iomega, and even if there would be only Iomega in that market, I'd make my own solution with off the shelf parts before trusting my data to them, Did that mistake too many times already.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Maybe I'm drinking the NetApp coolaid, but what is the reliability of IDE drives in these situations? I have a Cobalt NasRaq, which was quite nice, but limited to 60 gigs. And while it has never failed, I would never use it as a primary file server. Anybody have any experience using stuff like this as opposed to the very expensive redundant nas products?
Now that is the click of death!
I was looking at getting a NAS device for a new project. I ruled out IDE based, mainly for performance reasons. I looked at Dell's (Windows based) which are exactly the same as their servers except they cost (literally) thousands more, for less of a configuration. I was not about to go out and pay 3k for "managment" software (especially when every system that was going to access was Linux based, it seemed kind of odd). I ended up just getting a decked out system for less money, installed Linux on it and am some what happy. I would like to manage it like an appliance, complete with a web and/or java interface. I couldn't find a existing Linux distro for such a thing (striped down fit in like 20mb, or even CD based). If something like that existed, people could chose the HW they want (be it Pentium w/ 16mb of ram or Dual Athlon 1ghz with HW RAID), instead of being forced to pay thousands for pretty simple software.
I am slowly converting my disproportionate-to-my-skills collection of computers to laptops instead of ridiculous boxes (ridiculous to move, lift, find room for, etc) and awkward monitors.
...)
... glad I only had 5 minutes of Easter dinner to play with. I was jonesing for a 300GB RAID array transparently available to me, but Nope. Let's see Iomega come out with *that*.
In the tradeoffs that come with laptops, large hard drives are usually one of the sacrificed items. (Yeah, largish ones are available, especially largish in absolute terms, but in relative terms, 'real' hard drives are going to be larger, faster and cheaper for a while yet
I tried importing video last night (first time for everything) onto my iBook, and watched alarmingly as the "available space" dropped inexorably
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
HAHAA another april joke hahah
But I bet it's hackable, like TiVo. Why not buy a cheap one and upgrade the drive?
sulli
RTFJ.
practicalOS -- reaping the benefits of open source for windows users
It can suffer from the click of death, AND the blue screen of death! Double bonus!
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Compaq's NAS boxes do NETAPP-like snapshots. Very good boxes, but they do run Windows 2K.
Well, at least Iomega has the foresight to give the customers the options.
_ __
After all, not everyone in the universe has been sucked in and assimilated over to Windows.
The funny thing though is the fact that most of the people using these appliances are looking for quick plug it in and forget solutions or they would load a cheap PC with a bunch of big drives and roll their own.
It would be nice to see a review comparing the Unix to Windows install of these machines. Which tends to work better -- I would think obviously that the Unix version would be more stable and the configuration UIs would be standardized so that the choice would make Unix the logical choice for most.
_______________________________________________
ACK
This is what is needed. Disk space is getting huge right now. Floppys don't work for backups anymore :)
Not many people can afford a DLT library to backup their 200GB of data.
The way it's looking, a hotswappable drive might be the cheapest backup solution in the long run...yikes!
Hmmm... My experience with Iomega would not lead me to trust them for online network data. Unreliable storage can cost a lot more than the amount you might save up front.
What's the big deal anyway? There are plenty of inexpensive *nix NAS devices; for example:
http://www.snapserver.com/
Slightly off-topic - the DHTML is b0rked in mozilla; a quick search at :) http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/slashdot/index.html?id =134931 is the one, anyway... ) Yes folks, you can file mozilla bugs against the "tech evangelism" component to sic the mozilla wranglers onto the site's designers and get them to fix non-standard HTML for the non-IE world's benefit. (Remember when sites were designed only for Netscape, and we used to complain that they should test on mionirty products such as IE? Ah, happy days...) </ot>
bugzilla.mozilla.org shows no-one else has logged this so I've done so myself. (Hmmm, actually I was just searching against the URL to find the bug I just logged and it didn't turn up... oddness... ) (And now I get the error "Sorry, bugzilla links from Slashdot are not allowed." heh!
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Does the device follow any standard protocol?
I can just imagine it. As evening approaches, first just one starts to click. A bit later, another responds and clicks back. Then another joins in. Pretty soon, you have a whole chorus going.
The poor admin will be afraid to open the door.
They're alive, I tell you.
What does it matter whether the NAS runs Linux or Windows ? I've never used NAS devices, but I'm just assuming it's a big networked hard drive, right ? Why would it need a user-oriented operating system ? All it needs to do is read and write bits from network to disk and vice-versa, with a little management on the side. It doesn't need a full blown operating system to do that.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Raidzone (www.raidzone.com) also makes Linux-based NAS products. They're (for the obvious reasons) many times less expensive than NetApp, and easier to customize the configuration (just add new rpms) but aren't nearly as slick in a few regards.
Snapshots are the biggest way in which NetApp is much better. Raidzone supports it's own "snapshots", but it implements them with a series of gigantic find-based cron scripts that can (on a large filesystem) bring your NAS to it's knees, and it maintains them more like incremental backups than NetApp's snapshot concept.
Basically, each snapshot 'bucket' contains -only- files that have changed in the last time increment. If you delete a file that hasn't been changed in longer than the longest snapshot bucket, you lose. I'm not real thrilled with this, but don't have a better linux snapshot implementation without messing with the hardware or the kernel. Anyone know of anything more NetApp-like?
[My opinions are my own and no one else's]
I love the way they try to word it in the casual slashdot-style. Actually, I hate it. Slashdot has taken a major step down in my estimation!
...you want to put your database devices on network drives. Why do you intentionally wish to deliberately impede the I/O thruput to your database devices like that? That goes against everything that good database server administration is all about. If you're that much of a performance mascochist, then why don't you simply just put all your data onto USB-attached external hard drives instead?
The *only* NAS device even remotely worthy of holding cooked files for any active database engine would be the NetApp units.... and only then if you link them back to the database engine server via *dedicated* switched full duplex GIGABIT ethernet segments.
You need software capable of controlling disks, using the network, providing some sort of configuration ability, and implementing NFS and SMB.
The easiest way to accomplish this is to use an OS and associated software that can do this already (ie: Windows server or UNIX w/Samba).
Network Appliance took an OS and stripped it down to the bare minimum required to do what the NAS needs to, but they spent considerable time and money doing so. Most people are willing to take the extra/unused functionality of a full OS rather than design their own, new, NAS OS.
[my opinions are my own. They definately aren't my company's.]
We returned our Maxors within a week. Total junk. During pre-production testing, one of them crashed hard enough that it wouldn't boot up again and the other one lost a disk and was running a disk short after a reboot.
Not to mention the interface was slow as shit and didn't load most of the time.
And don't get me started on the Maxtors....
As far as 3ware goes, they discontinued their ide raid line. You want to use an end of life part for your precious data? Insanity....
We moved all the data off several 3ware based machines after one of them age 800 gigs of customer data. Soon we'll be a 3ware-free shop.
Maxtor running win2k, 3ware under Linux. Both were trash. Avoid like the plague.
-Been there, done that
I'm sure with Iomega's legendary reputation, there's an ulterior meaning for NAS:
No
Apparent
Support
What happened with firewire?
It seems like it could have been a really good solution for something like this, at least for somwhat local (but portable) storage. Throw in a firewire hub for cheap and you can get more clients onto the dumb thing.
Considering I've been seeing firewire cards at Best Buy for $29.99 now at least the hardware to connect is cheap, faster than 100BT and barely more expensive.
Besides the R&D costs, you now also need to provide software support to your customers. Additionally, when the next generation of hardware arrives, you have to port and debug your little OS all by yourself.
Implementation is much easier and cheaper in both the short and long run with an off-the-shelf OS solution.
What you might gain is performance and stability, but will you gain enough to offset the fact that you now have to charge $20k for what could have been a $10k wheel in order to cover your SW development costs?
To the price-performance leader go the customers... sometimes.
[my opinions. Not anyone else's.]
Yes indeed, there are absolutely no NAS solutions out there that don't lock you into a Microsoft-centric solution.
How'd this get +4?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Is there any site/publication that reviews NAS units? My company is looking at using them heavily in a mixed NT/Solaris setup. We have run into some problems with the windows based units, and it would be nice if someone could tell us ahead of time which units suck, and which, well, don't.
W
SQL Server does not support NAS because it's got some serious latency and performance problems in comparison to SAN.
s /q 304/2/61.asp
e ID =23166
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/article
http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Articl
http://www.sqlteam.com/item.asp?ItemID=128
There's almost no way you can get the performance you need with a NAS. Avoid NAS for the near future, and go with SAN. And don't listen to NetApp... they claim they can support database access, but they can't.
The rock-stable FFS file system used in
FreeBSD now has snapshots. There's no
reason to run *linux anymore and risk losing
your data due to *linux instability.
If they're smart, they'd stay the heck away
from *linux and run the technically superior
BSD.
you can do snapshots on linux with lvm.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
+H@nK5 a l0t, 1 49reE 1T'5 +0O 5imPLe, 8U+ mE tHInK$ IT sh0Uld b3.:
|-|0\/\/3\/3r
+o 8e 4C+U@lly L3370!!1
|-|uhU|-|\/Hu|-|\/|-|!1
Surely you jest. IDE is TERRIBLE. You want latency? You want a system tied up in I/O? By all means...go with IDE.
SCSI is still the only solution for speed. IDE is a bad joke that needs to die and has no place in serious servers.
Lever 3 Hacker gains "Mad Hardware Skillz" and can scrounge and build a PC for close to nothing as a standard action.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
COD happened YEARS ago. Like OVER 5! I have had two Zip drives myself and can't say anything bad about them. One was the SLOW parallel port one that got knocked around cuz I took it back and forth to work. For the last two round of PC upgrades at work, all machines have had Zip drives installed. Zips in a user base af about 1500-3000 computers. I talk to the PC guys alot (I am mainframe/UNIX dude). I have heard NOTHING about Zip drive failures. Creative Labs Infra CD-ROM drives sucked and I heard about it too (especially since my boss had one...thing would suck the tray back in immedeately after ejecting it). Over 1500 drives in service with not much failing...it either means they just work, or they ain't using em. The Iomega COD think comes back every time Iomega releases a new thing. Yeah they made mistakes, but I think they have done well. Yeah, the clik disk/HipZip did suck, but only cuz it took them too long to develop it and by the time the 40 MB disks came out, CF cards were well above the 40 MB mark and cheaper then they once were. I just got a 128 MB CF card for my camera and it was only about 90 bucks (could have had it for 80, but I was lazy). Clik was just too little to late and Iomega ain't the only company to do this. This bash Iomega because of a problem 5 years ago is getting a little freaking old.
Gorkman
Fuck Iomega. Zip disks have been stable in price since Kurt Cobain was alive and kicking - ten cents a megabyte, last and every time I checked. Zip disks were slow and expensive even when they were introduced.
Remember the parallel port drive? That piece of trash was wasting my time way back before I had sideburns. Remember 2.8M floppies? Backwards-compatible 100Mb floppies? They're gone, and the parallel port Iomega drive lives on.
Now they're coming out with a storage server. What are they supposed to be, some sort of market leader in storage solutions? Give me a break. This company has been nothing but marketing hype from day one.
I've got a couple machines here, and i just network 'em together. No real reason to get a NAS, although personaly I would like one
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
and yet the only real question I have about this shit is what will Jay Z think of it?
the NetApp snapshot is actually a bunch of pointers to the storage locations on disk. so, only the memory of the pointer is necessary to retain the information. nice product.
Why not NAS servers for the home and home business?
Several things are coming together for the home consumer. Hard drives are becoming cheaper and larger. Networking equipment is becoming very common and very cheap. Broadband is becoming more available. Have a NAS somewere out of the way and store all those MP3's,Porn,Movies somewere while freeing up space in the computer.
I've been hearing way too much positive stuff about win2k. Everyone seems to excuse windows 2000 by its stable, and nice. Come on, this is a Unix site, and we don't need that kind of nonsense. If you can make a good device on win2k, you can make a better device on Linux, period.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
As best I can tell, please tell me if I'm wrong but that is almost exactly what EMC does for their NAS products. The processors are PowerPC, I think, but they use their own OS and controlling software. Hitachi has an excellent Storage primer, its very basic and written for nontechnical stock analysts (in pdf) here. Unfortunatly it hangs the conversion tool. It also crashed at work under Winn 98 (fine under Win2k) when printing at about page 185. The link is to the file which is quite large (about 6 megs). I found it to be rather useful but somewhat basic. Also, EMC usually charges at least $100k for their wheel. Veritas sells just the software. I would doubt its cheap, but probably less than writing your own comparable product.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
You can get removable plastic drawers for disk drives for about $25, in which you mount whatever flavor of disk you like. When you want to change disks, just pop the drawer out and pop in a new one. They're typically 5.25" outside and hold 3.5" drives, and of course $25 has gone from "trivial percentage of the disk price" to "non-trivial percentage but still $25" :-) The latest price I saw for disk drives at Fry's was CD-Rs are the new floppy-disks - they cost less than $0.25 on sale, drives come included with your PC, and they're big enough for a single application but not really enough to back up your whole machine frequently. (If the drive's not included, they're cheap and fast.) DVD recording standards are still changing, and I'm not buying one for a while, but if you've got a standard that works for your PC and your TV's DVD, go for it - 4MB or so drives are big enough to be reasonably practical for backing up most systems.
External drives - they're *really* convenient for home. Firewire costs more than IDE drives, but not *too* much more, and you can get firewire boards for your PC for not too much money and impress your Mac-addict friends with your broadmindedness. USB1.x is slow (fine for MP3 jukeboxes, semi-ok for cameras, still really boring for actual disks), but USB2 rocks out and you should be able to buy USB2 shoebox disks at reasonable prices pretty soon. I've seen some Firewire-shoebox-add-your-own-IDE-drive boxes in the store, so you can buy one to start with and upgrade it as the disk-drive market continues to get bigger and cheaper.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Of course you have to climb through the broken Windows to do that.
AS per usual something hal;f decent and we can't get it in the good ole United States Of Europe.
wow.. must be the states..
i just paid $250 can for a 60 gig IDE, never mind 160.. fuck me..
this blows. let's all go eat.
yup.. that's it.. that's me.. oh well.. i c.. yeah.. and it was full of digital video in about 3 hours..