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Personal File Server For The Masses
prostoalex writes "California-based Inspiri is coming to the market with Mirra - a personal file-server with simple backup solutiion, remote access as well as file-sharing capabilities. The $399 device comes with 120 GB hard drive, front-mounted USB ports and Ethernet interface. There are some pictures of Mirra on the corporate Web site. The founder of Inspiri, Tim Bucher, according to the corporate documents, had an interesting career, having worked at both Apple and Microsoft, while the VP of Engineering in this company used to work as acting CEO of Apple's Newton business group."
For $400 bucks, I can buy a bajillion CDs and back up that way.
And go out to dinner with the wife, and maybe get some drinks.
And a new puppy.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
So the bigwig at the company used to work for apple but the site says that his new appliance will only work with a WinXP machine?
What's that about?
> used to work as acting CEO of Apple's Newton business group.
A recipe for success, obviously.
How on earth did they ever get modded to +1... Someone must be on drugs with the mod points...
I bet that this can be replaced with a pentium 1 + ethernet card + Linux/BSD. It doesn't take a whole lot to be a file server.
Save a little money. Just get a 120 GB IDE hard drive and an old box with Linux.
It's all about the ethernet...
...to the EXXTREME! (but with extra Is)
Snap servers have always been more expensive than they should be. At cdw a comparable box would cost you $857.78 for the Snap Server 1100 120GB.
For over a year I've been using old P2's and debian to make large 1TB+ network storage for just around $1000. That's 8X more than what the Snap has for around the same price.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Yeah, I'd expect that from a clearly white and heterosexual individual such as yourself.
I for one, welcome our new Gay Nigger overlords.
...like the point of this? It's 400, pretty big in size, and all it does is store files? For 400, you could get a bare-bones system running Red Hat or something and shove in near half a terrabyte. Or just get tape backups and save a gazillion dollars. I think it's too soon to feature a product like this, as the people aren't ready and the entreprise can surely spend the money more wisely.
A blog like any other.
With its 4 usb 1.1 ports that run at a whopping combined throughput of 11mbps. I can add 4 external hds that end up having the same throughput as my old floppy drive.
Is this an Ad or an article?
Cant we do this kinda thing on our own?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
$400 is a bit steep. I just built a computer for one of my relatives. Pentium 4 Celery, 1.7GHz, 256MB DDR RAM, 30G hard drive, keyboard, optical mouse, nice small form factor IWILL case. Total cost was $369 with shipping from newegg.com. A larger hard drive would not have cost much more, and I got a whole computer minus monitor.
So the question is, how much will people pay for a convenience? It just seems most people interested in having their own file server would be the crowd of people that would just make their own.
Your average home user would probably not need or even know exactly what a fileserver/backup solution would do for them.
Still though, we will see what happens. I think at $300 it would be a much more attractive solution.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
and can I get a shell on it?
Anything powerful enough to act as a decent fileserver for me, by which I mean able to tunnel rsync through ssh at a decent rate, is fast enough to run inetd servers of BSD games or host a MUD.
I won't buy machines that are crippled. Does it do more than an $80 120gb hard disk dropped into a $5 PC with an ethernet card?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Let's create a personal memory server, a personal graphics card server, a personal processor server, etc. Putting everything you need into a PC case is for the wimp!
s/solutiion/solution/g is the solution!
Having been looking to put together a HTPC, that case looked awfully familiar. My guess that it is just an EPIA (mini-ATX) system that you can buy, already assembled, for around US$400. And that is for a 1GHz C3 processor, otherwise the system would cost about US$350.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
I'm sorry, but being head of the Newton group is not necessarially a mark in your favor.
And, even more interesting, ended up with Linux:
Because the Mirra server is built on a Linux software platform, the files stored on the appliance should be safe from worms and viruses that attack Windows-based servers
Link
If you can build a Linux box and use it as a file server, you are in the a rarified 1% of the population.
This is for everyone else...
"Mirra ... remote backup for the Gangsta!"
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Most people can't. This is for them, not us.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
The Mirra appliance is expandable through its four USB 1.1 ports, and Ispiri plans to release hard disks and other devices for the server in 2004, Mandeberg says.
The image make it look like the size of a tower which could take internal IDE hard drives. It seems like the wording of this may be misleading, because who in their right mind would use a USB 1.1 external hard drive on a file server? If that is the case, who are they marketing this too?
Sound waves should be free!
- It's linux and I can muck around.
- It's got WiFi.
- Setup to handle printing for my home net.
Been there done this. There must be dozens of these kind of devices on the market already./charles
Please mod last article up
Just pray that they don't get any of the Newton's marketers...
Do you have ESP?
They seem to be a little behind: seen today at my local computer store: 160G, Ethernet and USB2.0, SMB file server, $289. It's about the same size as your regular desktop disk enclosure. Don't remember the brand name, however. Didn't do NFS.
I'm not sure what this phrase means. "Something for the masses" is usually a euphamism for "mass produced item sold at walmart stores that takes no intelligence to use."
/plug
Now computers and extra equipment usally are not for the masses if they requirme more thought than pointing and clicking. When you start mentioning things like (from the article:) Mirra comprises three pieces: hardware, software, and service, you start start losing the masses. If I were to say this to my grandmother, mother, sister, brother, father, etc they would all think I was talking about some slothing line and laundry service.
For those of use that are not part of the masses and know how to install an operating system, There are may great linux distros that do everything that is offered in the article for much cheaper. Look at E-Smith for a great solution for home/office/small business, or even school districts. It's free for the developer release and it even runs on those old Pentium 233 machines that are laying around.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
seems like they are hosting their website on a mirra. it is already /.ed . on a sunday!!!!
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I wish they had included support for WebDAV
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
And it runs Linux! So its a box built by a guy from apple that runs linux thats only compatable wiht XP. Ow, my head...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
bound for heaven or hell? GET REAL, GET REAL. Tell the man, who sent you... to me.
...then they need to stop running their corporate site off of their backup servers! (the PCWorld review still works fine - PCWorld isn't that stupid)
How come nobody is yelling and screaming about the automatic updating? If this was microsoft everybody would be up in arms that this machine phones home. Other than that I agree with everyone...anyone who actually needs this could/would do it themselves. The one nice feature is the automatic version control...I'm not sure how you could implement that too easily.
-1 new 120 GB drive: Roughly $120
-1 "old" unused computer: Roughly $0
-1 copy of GNU/Linux: Roughly $0
-Some metres of ethernet cable: Roughly $15
TOTAL: Roughly $135
$399-$135=$264.
Tell me again why I should buy this?
A company building something that lots of us have been building for years. I guess all the WinSheep will love it though...
Karma: Good. I'm hoping in the same way as pizza is 'good'...
The thing is, I doubt most folks have the skills to cobble together the box itself. And many who do simply don't have the time or desire to screw with it - especially when 120GB of online storage is $400. You or I wouldn't buy this, but we're not the market - and 400 bucks is pretty good price when you consider most folks would end up paying $200 just to get a 120GB drive installed in their existing machine, or even a $399 e-machine.
But the "Inspiri" service is the killer app. Because you can run a stateful firewall and still get your files from a relatively secure home network by authenticating through their service. If the system works as advertised, that's a really nice feature. No need to configure "pinholes" or setup a DMZ on the home network or even know what any of that crap means. All they need now is a "matching" firewall appliance and they got a potentially killer business model: protecting home networks against intrusion while allowing plug and play telepresence.
And if they would just market it in Hong Kong and Japan and plug up all those leaky high speed home lines they might actually make the internet a better place. Very nice.
Because the Mirra server is built on a Linux software platform, the files stored on the appliance should be safe from worms and viruses that attack Windows-based servers, Mandeberg adds. While stored files may be infected with electronic vermin, the Mirra server itself is not vulnerable to most of the common infections.
I be ole Bill is fuming right about now.
I want to get my hands on one of these! I've got fairly decent storage as it is but this is such a cool concept, that if the drive away is truly at or under 3 bills, it's a winner with the working tech crowd... and hey it's a Linux device so that puts tux in even more corners of the gadjet guy's (or gals) homes.... Several of my fellow associates in the IS department are intrested in Linux but still do not have enough initiative to do more than install it but many of them do have a Tivo and I figure the same crowd would be intrested in a Mirra.... The Mirra site is slashed pretty bad, I wonder how easy it will be to update the Mirra software, and if they will make a cluster package for people who have a lot of data they want to keep online (aye Matee!)... Good find prostoalex!
If they're using Linux, they need to make sure the source code is available under GPL terms. I hope that's the case - has anyone bought one and does it include source code or a written offer for source code ?
I'm on HP's Open Source review board, and one of the things we make damn sure of before shipping any HP product with GPL code in it is that the product includes source code or an offer for the customer to get it.
That's the really important thing all these embedded Linux using compaies need to understand.
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
At first I scoffed thinking what's the difference between this and a usb hard drive. But then I said ok lets at least read about it. I was surprised that it ran Linux (That screenshot threw me off) which provides some security (I'm sure it can be hacked to run some sort of AV program though) and that you can request your files if you're away.
My only problem is not with the unit itself but the fact that requesting large files will be a pain for many users due to the bandwidth restrictions on users to the standard 384/128k (SBC) and 768/128k (Verizon) requesting a large file will still take some time.
With computer prices as low as they are today you could spend 400 bucks on building a new Athlon based PC, slap your favorite *nix variety on it and you can do much more than serv a file or two.
Later,
Phil
It is unlikely anyone would ever want this for use with Macs. MacOS X already has Apache for file serving, and you'd have to be an idiot to spend $400 for a CPU with a 120Gb drive when you could get a 120Gb Firewire drive for backups, that would only cost about $175.
Now the question is, why would ANYONE need this product?
An old PC will use a lot more electricity and generate more heat than this device (the Mirra is "low power, energy efficient" according to the web site). After a few years, the cost of electricity for that old PC might add up to the cost of a Mirra.
An old laptop might be good (and the battery backup would be useful), but I'd probably build a PC with a low-power board like a Via Eden/Epia.
The Mirra has automatic file versioning. Is there a way to get that from Linux, apart from setting up CVS or similar software? There's also the remote-access feature (with the ability to bypass firewalls), and some other neat features. You could set up most of that yourself, but if that's what you're thinking, you're not in their target market anyway - convenience is a major feature of this device.
From the picture in the pcworld.com article, it looks like a standard system that has been around for quite a while, a Falcon CR51.
The standard box, which they sell at Fry's, includes a VIA mini-ITX motherboard, with a VIA C3 processor.
It's a decent system, but the fan on the power supply is VERY loud. Hopefully they've addressed that.
I like the concept. A simple file server that I could even stick at my Parent's home to save digital pictures, documents, etc. But, it should be a small/silent device; maybe the form factor of a 5.25" firewire enclosure. Or, make it a bit bigger, and put two drives in a RAID configuration for file server reliability..
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
It looks exactly like a Pug Server. They are probably using the same min-itx case.
Actually both. I see Computing Appliances based on SBC's, slimmed down to what's absolutely needed(1). With true PnP with it's varous siblings (NAS, NTP, etc). All backed by VAS (value added services) that are nice to have, BUT don't break the system in its absence.
(1) Software (for whatever reason) can be easily added by the vendor, or the customer. Customer can browse a catalog of "services" and functions. Need an E-mail server? Click "purchase and install". Need Groupware "ditto". And it all works together (no more vendor round-robin when problems show up) This is what the computer should have been all along. Transparent and easy.
But it would take a great deal longer to set up and get working than this device which requires you to a. Plug it in. b. Turn it on. c. Give it a name.
Not to mention the fact its targetted at the general population who could care less about what operating system its running and just want the thing to do as its advertised. Which is back up files and make them easily accessible in little time.
-
That's what I want to know. SMB? SSH? (probably not). NFS? What services is it actually running?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
"Your average home user would probably not need or even know exactly what a fileserver/backup solution would do for them."
And this is why geeks make lousy businessmen.
The word you're looking for is "Marketing" were you not only address a present need, but you create one as well.
Put on your thinking cap. What things can one do with a personal server? How would they improve one's day to day life?
Well let's see. People regularly generate lots of data (files of all kinds). They could have a (reliable) central spot to backup, instead of files scattered all over the place. What about centralized E-Mail, or other apps? MP3 or Picture Repository?
Why would anyone want this over another hard drive if there is no advantage to data security?
Say, for example, you have an old tower, a couple of 80GB IDE disks in it (no scsi), and one spare PCI slot. The whole thing is worth well under $1000, so is there a tape drive (or other hi-cap backup device) that would be suitable for this?
You can get Seagate Travan drive on ebay for about $200, but they do 10GB native, which makes for something around 10 tapes for a complete backup - not very practical.
There are internal IDE/EIDE AIT drives with decent capacities, but they are in the $1000 range.
So, do people:
Maybe this should be (or already was?) an Ask Slashdot...
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. E. Tufte
I already have 3 fileservers. They're all of my PC's. What's the point of this? The files are already on your PC, just share what you want to share. This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
I like the 'well just set linux up' on whatever machine.
Hmm, lets see, do i have a good portion of a weekend to waste sitting in front of a monitor... or just buy a little box I can plug in and thats it, and you know, go do other more interesting stuff.
Which to recommend, which indeed.
-
I might be missing the point, but isn't putting your important data on the same appliance as the firewall missing the point?
Ok "the masses" to me means people who aren't overly computer literate, but are interested in transporting data from home to work or wherever.
As for backup, usually that is handled automatically at work. At home maybe all they would need to do is backup documents and email.. which will fit on a cd. And besides, relying on one 120gb HD as a backup makes no sense. If you want incremental backups... it won't last long. And you need removable media to store somewhere else.
As for the "computer saavy" person. Christ.. It'd be much cheaper for me to simply carry around an HD on it's own, open the friggin case and plug it into an IDE channel.
It's essentially a barebones VIA MiniITX motherboard with (most likely) an EPIA-10000 1Ghz processor and a case (that's usually sold as a bundle). I've seen these online for about $180.
The dimensions are 5.3" (W) x 12" (H) x 10.2" (D).
I belong to the ______ generation.
Do what I do, store files on your local machine, sync to network storage, and once in awhile buy a new HD and store the old one someplace safe. I burn really important files - source code and the like - to CD on odd intervals.
It isn't ideal, but it's good enough for my purposes (and most others, I assume).
These little boxes are great for that. Just don't use them for primary storage is all.
..don't panic
And there in lies the problem. Geeks are all about seeing how many "things" they can get their computer to do. How about getting our computers to do one one thing. and do it well?
That's what Computing Appliances are all about, as opposed to regular "do everything including the kitchen sink" computers.
People want computers, so they can do a job, not play around with it for the sake of playing around with it.
Let's say you've been migrating to your laptop, and your old desktop is getting kind of superfluous. Perhaps you are still using it for a backup repository and as a web site. But it's getting kind of dated and stale, because you are on your third laptop since you started migrating. But it works ok for what you are doing with it. At some point it will fail and not be worth repairing. What do you do then? Buy the latest and greatest new desktop when you are doing everything on your laptop? Hardly.
This is just the device you need. It is the perfect base station for a laptop computing lifestyle! Not more capable than it needs to be, and far easier to use than a full up desktop PC or Mac. And it provides a permananent presence on the web for you, plus the ability to get at all your files if you should need them while traveling or just away from the office.
I want one to go with my PowerBook G4!
ThosEM
and forward to those lisp fanatics.
why not just buy external firewire/USB HDDs? Cheaper. Same deal.
what else would you use ?
The web site makes no mention of the monthly running charge to retrieve your files over the internet and to share with colleagues and customers. I'll bet it's at least $50/month.
So, lessee, Charter Cable in our area wants a minimum of $200/month for "commercial" broadband access, that being their generous nonprofit rate, plus this. Yessiree, it's affordable. And yes, Charter has the monopoly on broadband access.
I bougt one of these exact cases w/ a Cyrix 933mhz to be my OpenBSD 3.2 firewall. Uptime is about 190 days so far. Usually load is at 3% or less and used memory is 34 megs. Only caveat is that the powersupply fan is surprisingly loud. The box w/ motherboard and chip, nothing lese was $120 at Fry's. The box is actually a Falcon PC.
This guy is way out there
The martian does not offer the service this one does, by which the devices pings out through the firewall to a central server so that the user can connect to their NAT'd box and get files remotely.
thats what their angle is. dont have enough admin skills to install samba on your linux box? buy our box and plug it into your ethernet network. Need a DNS server? there's a box for that too. Google sells its search server in a rack mount box. just plug it in and go. if unix was made of many command line programs that could be piped together, the thinking at this company is that server should be purchased in pieces - one service per piece. I hate to think of the wasted coal exhaust or force of a mighty river that is slowed a bit for each 400W the power supply that is powering a cpu/mobo/hd to be idle 99% of the time.
when i first read the article, judging by the specs i thought they were describing a product that was esentially an iPod with out the mp3 player. that would be somewhat interesting.
Damn! think about the usefulness of that?!
plus, ideal for off site backup, I take pictures of my son with my digital camera, it's all stored on a maxtor external that my wife knows to grab in an emergency (fire) but this allows me to know I'll still have them if the house burns down.. one complaint, if it won't do ntfs/user permissions, I can't back up my porn at my moms house....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
When I asked my mom if she'd prefer the external storage that lost all data once every few years or the one that you could replace wearing parts on, just like a car... she said she'd take the latter.
Without some means of real backup or at least mirroring, all of these devices are recipies for heartbreak and angry customers. Why would you like to build a product that you would be pretty sure of failure in about two years with loss of tremendous amouts of data?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Has anyone noticed that the Mirra software is just another Trojan Horse. Well it acts like one, in my opinion.
It phones home.
It gets unattended software updates.
It accepts remote commands to upload the users' files, bypassing firewalls.
Why would one trust a third party with sensitive or private data without checking them out first?
I think services like this, although hugely useful, have significant privacy risks. Somebody will hack this service eventually - who will have your data then?
I am surprised nobody has raised this so far.
News for nerds. ADVERTS that matter?
...
I mean, who fucking cares?
Oh wait, since they got bought out by OSDN no doubt
So the bigwig at the company used to work for apple but the site says that his new appliance will only work with a WinXP machine?
What's that about?
Market share.
You know how to spend your mod points.
I did.
I got an Apple Beige G3 Desktop (266MHz, 256MB RAM) system for $50 from my father's Employer.
Bought a 120GB WD1200 Drive (Drivezilla). And a A-CARD ATA/66 IDE Card.
Installed OS X. Installed Samba with Fink. (later upgraded to 10.2 where Samba through fink wasn't needed).
That's all.
AppleShare for connecting my Mac OS 9 System. SMB for my wintel boxes.
Could share a printer if I wanted as well.
SpamAssassin and pop3proxy.pl (aka SAproxy) allows it to serve as a spam filtering proxy server.
Usermin (part of Webmin) for changing password.
Apache with mod_DAV allows for WebDAV support when on the road (very cool I might ad).
Works like a charm.
I would rather have 20 GB for $100 than 120 GB for $400. When can I expect a Linksys/Netgear/D-Link clone of this?
MORTAR COMBAT!
http://www.ximeta.com/netdisk_portable.html
You can also rig up some RAID thing with 'em.
I don't know, for the price, I'll stick to a much larger [then 120GB] external FW400/800 HD. If I need to have multiple machiens write to it i can just make it a shared drive. But my preference, not the best for everybody.
"It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
Way to much babble from /.'rs about how they can build their own cheaper.
- This is for the masses where (masses="total population" - geeks). It isn't 4 u.
- It does the backups automatically by just selecting files from interface integrated with Windows explorer.
- It keeps the last 8 versions of the files
- You can access your files from anywhere on the internet. Even from behind a corporate firewall cause it authenticates thru their server.
Can your crappy home built server do all that (without spending a few weeks writing scripts)?
I wouldn't buy one, but I think it is cool.
I was at Ispiri for a few months. Fun company...
;)
Anyway the box runs Debian with a Linux 2.6 kernel running a number of custom patches.
Not sure what filesystem it runs. When I was leaving I pushed for a ext3/XFS kernel as they were planning on going with ext2 which would obviously cause huge problems in the field.
There was some talk about using ZeroConf for config (easy setup). Don't know if this made it in or not.
Anyway.. I wonder if I could score one of these now
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Thats got to be the biggest feature - it auto-updates itself and reconfigures as needed.
:|
Although linux is secure - it sure goes downhill when people forget to patch their machine
As much as I'd love one touch backup (ok, maybe not.) I'd rather go for the Tritton ASA1120 It's currently "on order" at buy.com for 358.99, does the usual cable/dsl routing, has a 4 port switch, 120gb drive, vpn, and even has some "real" firewall abilities. My guess is it's running openbsd or something along those lines... Anyone know for sure?
Let's compare...
An 8-pack of 750 MB zip disks: 6 GB for $100.00
$400.00 gets you... 24 GB forever
x-drive online storage is 2 GB for $29.95 per month
$400.00 gets you... 26 GB per month
Yahoo! Briefcase is 100 MB for $35 per year
$400.00 gets you... 1.14 GB per year
with Mirra, $400.00 gets you 120 GB forever.
Mirra beats all of the above storage options, despite the fact that online storage tend to be more expensive than portable media storage. This could make a whole slew of storages irrelevant. Of course, free software on your OS that serves as FTP is probably the cheapest. A peer-to-peer network of encrypted personal backups could be great for future harddrive backups.
(btw, having trouble logging in...)
Not it doesn't. Mandrake 9.1 takes under 30 minutes to install from cd, and a matter of a few clicks on configure. Then you're done, though every once in awhile you should use the pretty graphics and MandrakeUpdate program to keep the bad guys out.
Oh, and you get: an ftp server, smb, sftp, ssh, httpd with CGI support, pop3/imap4, and postfix for smtp. This translates into working filesharing, a webserver, the ability to add files remotely, using multiple well-explained technologies, an email solution, and it costs you a) bandwidth, b) your least favorite pentium-or-better computer, c) 3 cd-rs, and d) an hour of your time (max). If you buy it at Best Buy (like a lot of people I know), it costs you $30, the computer you were going to throw away, and an hour of your time.
When you tell people they are buying a web server for $30, it makes following a few pictures to install Mandrake very easy.
Just my experiences,
bja-SPAM-ME@NO-MORE-illinois.dyndns.org
Both Macs run Debian Linux, and between the two I have a working "personal server" complete with:
Web Server
File Server
Web Based Email Server
Streaming MP3 Server
with more features to be added as needed.
All this on less than 100Mhz (collectively).
The whole point of this project was to cobble together something that was a little unique and forced me to learn Linux better. It was also an attempt to bring back a bit of enjoyment to my computing experience in a day when everything is done for you and everyone who can "point and click" considers themselves an expert.
www.brownsauce.org
Why not buy a complete prebuilt computer for that much? Like such [outpost.com] ? I guess they're targeting the lazy people... like me...
and it runs on linux (from flash). Not just a fileserver for XP! Why waste time on an x-MS-er? Pointleeesss, dismiss and move on.
I've sold a few of those to small businesses with really good success.
I take an old P2 300, drop in a 120GB disk and install Linux, Samba and Webmin. Give the users their home directory as an "M:\" drive and use Webmin's automated backup tools to backup their home dir every night.
Using webmin, you can even walk a non-technical user through a restore over the phone.
I usually charge around $400 for one of these setups and it's a good deal for them and a nice easy project for me.
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
Of course, now I can't find it. But it was USB2.0/Fwire interface, dual HDs with hotswap carriers, and built in hardware RAID 0/1. $600 for one with 2x120GB, which makes it a MUCH better deal than this one IMHO.
'Course, it ain't a "fileserver", and, I can't find the damn thing anymore! It was on backorder anyway. I'll post back if I can dig it up.
Not the one I was thinking of, but good enough by means of comparison:
http://www.miglia.com/store/index.html
Check out the "MediaBank". 629 euros for one with 2x120GB IBM (*cough* *wheeze* *die laughing* HDs), or 449 euro without.
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If an off-site user has properly authenticated to the Mirra service at the Ispiri host, and requests a file, the service makes the request when the Mirra next touches base. The advantage of this approach is that the connection is initiated by the Mirra server inside the user's router or firewall. This means that no firewall or router reconfiguration is required to allow an external server to get information from within the network. It's an approach that minimizes user effort and security risk.
Great....someone hacks the protocol, and a remotely controlled server running proprietary software hands them the keys to my network?I'm not sure about the no router or FW reconfig -- my stupid Replay TV box never did work behind my FW...it couldn't understand a proxy (unless it was setup as transparent). Of course ReplayTV has in their contract that they can download any update they want that may disable any feature they want like Tivo has done in the past. Now some company wants me to put a file-server on my network that is designed to regularly ask them for instructions to execute on itself behind my FW -- with it designed to understand and work through a FW? Why does this make me uneasy. ([shhhhh, just close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears and all will be well; this isn't the opendoor security breach you are looking for....])
Huh, wuh...sounds secure to me!
-l
"a personal file-server with simple backup solutiion, remote access as well as file-sharing capabilities."
/Dread
Is it me, or _IS_ there no backup solution? Or is the box the "simple backup solution" for _another_ fileserver?
If it is, is it any good? I hesitate to put my RAID 10 MPG's on anything lesser, and call that a BACKUP.
It should have RAID. I have a PUG (www.pugservers.com) and it works great!
it's for your neighbor. Or your uncle, your Mom, or anyone else who DOESN'T have a closet full of overclocked Celeron 366 motherboards
They could just hire the guy with "a closet full of overclocked Celeron 366 motherboards" as it were, have him build a comparable system for a reasonable fee... and have it be both upgradable, possibly cheaper, and probably more effective?
from the pictures it looks lot like it is a "Falcon" EPIA format case. (idot.com, logicsupply.com and many others). So basically all he did is whip up a little VIA SFF pc, stuff Linux and a big drive in it. I've been wanting to build one of these for a while. The case is about 65 bucks at most places. The 1 ghz "Nehemiah" motherboards are cool, complete with proc for about $169. Couldn't find specs on the Mirra anywhere, I wonder which mb the Mirra has?
This sig kills fascists.
I've got a painful lesson on MaxAttach 3000, in which one of the hard disk died recently. I have no way to revive it, because it's running FreeBSD and a proprietary version of JFS, and there's no way to download the source OS from Maxtor, even it's licensed under GPL!
Also, there's no way to copy the content out because the disk are configured in a way that even PartitionMagic 8 can't recognize it! So I don't believe in device running 'Open source/GPL' software, because there's no way you can gaurantee they'll publish their source code.
Apple should just add a hard disk to their Airport base stations . Add rendez-vous and iDisk-like management to it, and you have a sweeeet, cheap, easy-to-use and completely unobstrusive personal web server ('cause there's no way I leave that 90-dB G4 on 24/7).
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
...try putting in an easy-to-use backup system for your parents gigs of photos and video. it's not easy...
Since those are Mini-Itx form factor cases I suspect that Inspiri put a Via Epia board inside.An Epia 5000 can be bought at Ebay. Then get an hd (160 GB are cheaper per GB nowdays).
The price will be lower than 300 bucks.
Epia 5000 have the lowest power intake, which should be considered if the box is to be run 24/7. But the prices on ebay seem to allow an M10000 to be had for not much more. The Epia M10000 has the advantage that one can change it to a media box for the living room (like Tivo), since it is fast enough for Divx and has TV-Out. This way one could have everything in one box. By putting mldonkey on it it could even run as a server for filesharing 24/7 while one could access mldonkey from everywhere using its http interface.
Much more for much less money without having them spy on your data. Sometimes it pays to be geek ;-)
You could go with a NAS appliance from someone like Iomega or even Snap. I have installed a small Snap Server into a client's practice (less than 30 users) and they are quite happy with it - as am I so far. No major configuration hassles, no need for tons of M$ licenses, etc, etc. Iomega even offers a Unix-based NAS if memory serves.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
"P4 Celeron" is an unofficial term for an Intel Celeron processor using a Pentium 4 style core, as opposed to an Intel Celeron processor using one of the P6-core (PII and PIII derived) Celeron designs.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Easily.
- ssh, samba, and nfs allow me to get to all of my files anytime I want from anywhere I want.
(and for those quick to assume, no nfs and samba are not available outside of my home network, with the exception of ssh tunnelling).
- a simple cron job with tar does all of my backups for me, to a separate HDD
(took me all of 30 seconds; plus, if I wanted to store multiple versions, wouldn't take but a few minutes to write a script for that)
The pro's of my "crappy home built server":
- much more flexible. If I want more space, add a HDD. According to the article, Mirra will be releasing add-on HDDs for the appliance "soon". How much will these cost over the standard cost of a HDD, assuming you have to have one from them?
- Also, if I want a file immediately, from anywhere I have access, I can get it. With the Mirra appliance, I would have to request the file from Ispiri, wait for the box to connect and upload the file, then get the file from Ispiri.
- It's a fileserver. Not a backup appliance, which is what the Mirra sounds like. Even if the Mirra is a true fileserver, it sounds like CIFS is the only method of access; so if you want NFS, AFS, etc., you're SOL.
Woah. You just lost me at "mobo".
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
I seem to be the only one, but I don't want an overclocked high-end machine buzzing along under my desk. I'd prefer a decent quiet and environmentally friendly little file server, which doesn't get on my ears or my electricity bill.
Alas, like with motorcycles, there doesn't seem to be any demand in this direction.
Prove me wrong! Do you have or know of such a thing?
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
Woah. You just lost me at "ssh".
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
My Mom and Dad never back up their pr0n.
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
FreeBSD isn't licensed under the GPL.
But if you do find a product like this running GNU/Linux, and not distributing the source code, please let FSF know at license-violation@fsf.org. We've seen it before on products just like this one, and we'll get you source code.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Forget about the fact that you could do it cheaper on your own.
...How is this device a "backup"?
...If it at least copied its content to a web space so I could recover it later, that would be a different thing.
Forget about the fact that this is targeted for the "masses", which don't include geeks.
It's a computer with a hard drive inside. Hard drives fail (and IDE are more prone to failures that SCSI)! That's one of the reasons you perform backups!
Who can guarantee me that two weeks after I'm using that thing the HD doesn't die?
Simpler solution then this (if you have only 1 machine, which is most folks).
(1) USB HD (120Gb are around $200)
(1) license for Second Copy 2000 ($20)
Hook the USB HD up to your system, install SC2000 and configure it to keep 8 versions of files.
If you have an older HD laying around, USB HD enclosures are around $50-75, which might mean that you can do it for under $100.
The personal file server is a nice idea, but unless they're doing RAID1 (preferably with a hot-spare), I can't see it as being any better then leaving the files on the user's machines. (Better 2 small baskets then 1 large basket.)
Getting to your files from outside your firewall sounds good... until you realize that what you can do, a hacker can do twice as easily. Better to carry CD media, DVD media, USB key-fob, USB HD, iPod, or just get a laptop and carry that around.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Da Blog
http://www.e-smith.org/
Looks like it does all the same things plus apple file sharing.
E-smith has a user/developer community at http://www.e-smith.org/bboard/index.php
E-smith has a nice nice list of developed add on packages at http://www.e-smith.org/cgi-bin/contrib.cgi
and they're backing up to what? a centralised disk outside of their pc or a partition on their single disk? or are you assuming that joe sixpack has a home network? jesus, some people.
I'm not exactly one of the "masses" but for $399 and not much effort, I've got a 120GB server. My time is valuable to me and although I'd like to, I'm not going to throw a box together and install some distro or another. Like I said I'll buy that.
This parrot has ceased to be!