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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... "
I have a Ximeta 250GB Netdisk and it works great for me. Sure it is not NFS and requires its own drivers- but it works for me.
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 ----
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from the ask-me-again-when-you-have-a-250-gig-version dept.
From the article:
Key Features:
250GB, 160GB, or 80GB Capacities (reviewed item has 80GB capacity)
I guess I shouldn't fault Taco here. I'm sure he's busy fending off job offers from the Times, Post, WSJ, etc.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
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.
Why do so many reviewers feel the need to photograph shipping boxes and packaging materials? Are you reviewing the product or the shipping department?
'Same speed C but faster'
Dear Small Time Reviewer,
As you get too big for your britches and feel the need to post your 2-bit "review" (read: advertisement) on slashdot so you can get click-throughs and display money, please, for the love of God and all the 1s and 0s, use a reliable hosting company, and not your own l33t site off of your cable modem. When a story doesn't even have a post yet, and you are slashdotted, its time to seriously re-evaluate your how large you thought you were.
Sincerely,
TickleMeOzmo
(on behalf of the slashdot community)
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
We've been using SNAP servers for a while now at work... Mostly pretty good experiences to report. The little boxes run some BSD derivative, support SMB/NFS/FTP/WWW/etc access to the files stored on them, and some can even run Java Servlets. They can even use a NetWare or Win NT/2K Domain to handle logins and security. We normally use them for small remote offices that don't justify a full server or for storing large rarely accessed files like aerials of the parish. Much better than storing them on a few hundred CDs that have to be tracked and stored properly.
My only real complaint is backup can be annoying due to a lack of tape drive or any real backup feature on the device itself. You'll have to write some scripts or make use of an external package on another machine to get some sort of backup procedure going.
They seem to use normal IDE drives, so they WILL eventually fail. However, Snap Appliance went ahead and replaced one of our 1100s free of charge when the drive developed errors and the software update applied incorrectly while trying to fix it. This was despite the fact that the server was no longer under warranty.
All in all, beautiful little boxen.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
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.
Does this look like a cut and paste from a sales brochure to anyone else? Any particular reason this non-revolutonary product is getting a free ad?
Need spam filtering software for /. now ... :(
You're paying for a preconfigured, RAID-capable, networked storage device that requires one switch to turn on and is fully administered from a webpage. That means convenience, low power consuption and a small footprint. For some people, those factors are more important than pure size.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I'm wondering what's the point of such a small drive as NAS? Is it when all your machines are filled up with HDs and you can't add any more? I mean, 80GB? There are firewire drives that are more than double that size.
Am I missing some crucial point here?
I understand that to add more storage you might have to take a server down, etc.. But I guess when I see how much my company uses disk space, a 80GB anything would be filled probably within a month - seems like you would have money better spent on bigger drives.
For over $500, and $800+ for the 160GB, it seems overpriced.
For me to reach out and buy a server device like that, it's missing one thing: backup. If they included, say a DVD+/-R/RW drive, the price is still high. Is there something special about this drive? A RAID-5 hidden in that little box? Somehow, I doubt it.
Design for Use, not Construction!
I have 34 at work (2x4100s and 1 4200 plus a 2000 which has been upgraded to 240GB) plus I have bought 3 for my home (2x2000s with 240GB each plus an 1100 with a 120GB disk). They are great. Robust, reliable and easy to use from either Windows, Linux or Macintosh (either OS9 or OS X).
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
To me this seems like the ideal candidate for a community-built project. More and more of us utilize servers at home and sometimes it might be just better to attach external storage-subsystems than building newer and bigger computers.
When I built my HomeServer the first option I was investigating was to modularize everything. However I had to discover, that this is not a good position: The stuff on the market just did not fit my needs: To expensive. Too "smallish". Too "touch-the-market" of AOL users. So I ended up with a ATX VIA board and a C3 Nehemiah CPU with a 3ch ICP Vortex S-ATA controller, a 2nd NIC and WLAN card.
However, I wonder, why the community does not create some own inventions, custom-tailored for private users and, most importantly, not limited in possibilites, due to fear of support-problems with AOL users.
A community built NAS could consits of a small embedded computer, with onboard hardware RAID own cache (min. 4ch S-ATA) and come with a good case. Cases have been built by the community. Embedded systerms also. So, why not ? :-)
Best would be to offer the board and driver/software and let customers build their own beast. Maybe with syste-boards, that can be combined to offer more power.
Anyone ? :-D
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
-----------------------------------------
Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt
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!"
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!
They had the base for appliances like these in their portfolio with the Cobalt line, but they dropped the ball a few years ago.
Where's that at, anyway? While anyone can "deploy" SMB servers (either canned, home-grown, or otherwise), it doesn't make any sense at all to just add a bunch of new shares willy-nilly, fragmenting your overall storage capacity.
What WOULD make these kinds of devices make more sense would be iSCSI and the ability to dynamically expand an existing volume to use the new space over the network. I know there are some expensive SAN systems that can do this now, but iSCSI would make it a lot less expensive, using an existing or dedicated IP network to connect the devices instead of expensive fiber channel fabric.
I've always wondered why there isn't a Live-CD/Knoppix type distribution for this kind of thing: ie. Something will boot an old PC taking up space and present whatever disks are in it as a file store on a network (w/user management, and RAID/LVM etc. if it wanted to be fancy).
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.
I have an 80GB Snap Server at work, and I dislike the thing throughly. It only picks up a random 80% sampling of our Active Directory users every time it's rebooted, which means we have to run it with no file security. Snap's helpdesk claimed this problem would be fixed by installing the new "Snap OS 4", which at the bargin price of $100 offered "Complete Windows 2003 Server ADS compatibility!" But, I protested, we were only running Windows 2000, and it says Windows 2000 compatibility on the box ...
After much cajoling, the helpdesk admitted that wasn't strictly true, but Snap OS 4 would make it so, and add a glorious weath of new features into the bargin. So we sighed, and bought it.
Needless to say, it's now picking up about 70% of our Active Directory.
The moral of the story is: Don't buy hardware from companies that charge $100 to patch something that should have worked from the get-go.