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Snap Appliance Snap Server 1100 NAS Device
~*77*~ writes "While taking up considerably less space than a shoebox, this little device seamlessly allows users to add additional storage to any network in less than five minutes. Today we review the Snap Appliance 80GB Snap Server 1100. This compact NAS (network attached storage) device has many great features including: 5 minute installation, a compact web and ftp server, or simply a network share. Most importantly it works in a network mixed with Windows, Netware, UNIX, Linux, and Macintosh machines... "
we use a snap server at my work (sorry I don't remember which model off hand) but it was very easy to setup. It runs a custom version of liunx, and you can ssh to it. We already have a samba server but needed more space for a few people. So I edited the snap's smb.conf and added passwd server = archives1 and used the snap server's adduser script to create the users we needed, and the users use \\snapserver\username in windows to access their home directories to store more files. They use their username and passwd from archives1, so I didn't have to add them to samba on the snap server. very cool
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Their older produdcts didnt do this.. and made it a royal pain to manage.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think we need to see more of this sort of thing. Not only do network drives allow for easy transferring of data, but having a drive that can be easily moved from network to network has vast possibilities. Albeit, many of those possibilities lie in the realm of warez...
http://www.snapappliance.com/ is the company's website -- one might get more info out of it than the listed source. I visited as soon as the link went up and it was a slow load.
I work with several NAS appliances daily and the easiest to administrate is clearly the SNAP servers. Although we use Dell branded ones that work just as well with unix/novell/linux/mac/windows so the product discussed isn't very "unique" so to say. And it's been in the market for quite some time...
But I guess it's good for those that havn't discovered the advantages with snap's yet.
My only experience with this is bad - SNAP uses two regular IDE drives, in RAID-0... A customer bought one, and one of the drives died.. I suggest a new slogan:
"Twice the storage, half the reliability!"
Actually the 2200s and up do support RAID-5. As well as plain striping or mirroring. What's special about it is that it's a fire and forget zero administration solution for a small workgroup scenario. They also come with a great warranty, wherein I had a server replaced free of charge even though its warrant was expired (as mentioned in above post).
The whole idea is you're paying for a solution you can install and forget about. Can't say the same about full blown fileservers.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
I have the Snap 2200 model running on my Windows network at work.
It is more or less a pair of IDE hard drives with a hardware RAID. You can run them mirrored for half the space (aka 240G becomes a mirrored 120G) or as a single drive for full space.
The SNAPs can interface directly to a windows domain controller for user login security. Very slick, took about 20 minutes to get it up and running from zero knowledge.
This is the second SNAP device we have had, the first was a 40gig model a few years back. THis is also the second SNAP i've had fail. The first lasted two years before the cooling fan on the CPU inside failed and caused the device to lock up under any kind of normal load. Since the unit was out of warranty and the fan was too small to find a "home brew" solution we opted to upgrade. I have since removed the drives from the old device and passed them down to desktop machines.
My current SNAP (the 2200) just this week lost the secondary mirror disk. The unit has only been in use for 5 months and has seen very little usage day to day. Thankfully I was running in mirror mode (and had tape backups) so no data was lost. The unit locked up when the drive failed but after a reboot discovered its error and reported the failed disk on the admin info screen. I simply FTPed the data off the remaining drive and called their tech support number.
Snap's warranty service seems well structured, after 10 minutes on the phone and sending the consultant a couple log files I was issued an RMA number and instructed to send the unit back, once received they would ship another. If I needed immeadiate replacement I could give them a CC# and they would ship that day.
The only bad part about this is that I had thrown the box away...Keep the box, they require 2 inches of solid foam, or 3 inches of bubble wrap else you void the warranty...no peanuts.
SO if you are planning on either the 1100 or larger keep the box, run in mirror mode, and keep the units well cooled.
I like snaps and will continue to use them, I feel as though I may have just found the 1 in 5000 bad drives.
Apple free since 1990!
Mini-itx Motherboard (Fanless, Very Small) ~$115
80GB HardDrive $70
Gigabit NIC* $25
Pretty Case $100
Linux Free*
Total ~280-305
*Optional
^Requires Initial Work (Maybe there is a handy Distro for this type of thing I don't know?)
BTW Newegg.com says they will carry mini-itx soon so prices may get much better in the US.