User Mode allows you to restrict
access to specific shares based on user and
group accounts. One additional benefit that makes
this worth using is that each user is given a
private home share on the ReadyNAS that
is accessible only to that user and the ReadyNAS
admin for performing backups. Unless you need to
integrate the ReadyNAS into a business or corporate
network using Domains or Active Directory, skip the
Domain Security Mode section.
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Advanced Control in FrontView allows you
to fine-tune the settings made with the
Setup Wizard, and access the "Power User"
settings of the ReadyNAS NV+ Let's
start with Network section. |
Along
with the regular settings we've seen before,
you can Enable VLAN and Jumbo
Frame support. |
While
most people will never need a WINS server on
their home network, it's certainly nice to
know that the ReadyNAS can step up to
the plate and do the job, should the need
arise. |
Chances
are, if you have broadband in your home,
your Internet router is already acting as a
DHCP server, automatically assigning IP
addresses to all your PCs and printers on
the network. If not, here's where you can
configure the ReadyNAS NV+ to assume
that role. |
Additional tweaks to the Bonjour and
UPnP services can be performed here. |
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Under the Volumes menu option,
click the RAID Settings tab under the
Volume C tab to access the controls
that allow you resync your RAID volumes and
blink a hard drive's LED. |
The USB tab is where you configure
any external USB hard drives or flash
drives. |
Click the Backup menu button and
you'll be taken to the Backup Listing
tab where ReadyNAS Backup Schedule is
show, and the Backup Button logs can
be viewed or cleared out. |
The ReadyNAS NV+ can be scheduled
to back itself up to an external USB drive,
another NAS, FTP Site or server—or even to a
share on the ReadyNAS, which can be
off-loaded afterwards. |
Scroll down the window and you can select
additional backup options here. |
Most NAS units only allow you to
configure one user or group at a time. Not only does
the
ReadyNAS NV+
allow you to create up to five users or
groups at once, but you can assign individual
disk quotas on the ReadyNAS for them.
Users can even receive an E-Mail when they're
getting close to their quota limit. Now you can take
a break from nagging your kids about keeping all
their downloads under control, and let the
ReadyNAS do the nagging for you!
Based on your particular network
environment and needs, you can either leave the
Standard File Protocols that are checked by default
as-is. Or uncheck the ones you know won’t be using,
and check the ones you will. The ReadyNAS
Streaming Services allows you to use your
ReadyNAS NV+ as a stand-alone server for music,
videos, and photos from networked media devices and
digital music players like the Slimdevices
Squeezebox with just a few mouse-clicks and
without having to tie up a PC for the task.
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System settings, you can select which events
trigger system warnings and alerts. Unless
you are specifically told to do so by
Infrant Technical Support, you're better off
leaving this section exactly as you see it
here. |
ReadyNAS also supports SNMP. Unless
you're using the ReadyNAS in an
enterprise network environment, you can
leave the Enable SNMP service box unchecked. |
In the
event that either your firewall, ISP—or
both—are blocking alert messages from the
ReadyNAS, here's where you can side-step
the issue. |
The
Performance tab is where you can tweak the
performance of ReadyNAS and external disks.
As you can see, there are trade-offs between
performance and data integrity. Read the
description of each option and choose
wisely. |
Language and Unicode for User,
Group and Share names are set here. Leave
as-is unless you plan on, or are using the
ReadyNAS NV+ outside the United
States. |
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check for and apply any new firmware updates
for the ReadyNAS NV+ directly from
Infrant's website, by clicking his button. |
If you've
manually downloaded a firmware upgrade, you
can browse to the firmware image file's
location on your hard drive, upload it into
FrontView, then verify and install it. |
...Or,
you can download and install
firmware upgrades automatically. |
If you'd
rather avoid the power and reset button
trick directly on the ReadyNAS, you
can perform a Factory Default here.
Again, make sure you've backed up anything
on the ReadyNAS drives that you don't
want to lose, as the Factory Default
operation wipes the hard drives clean,
destroying any data on them. |
The
ReadyNAS can be scheduled to power itself on
and off, and spin down the hard drives after
a certain period of activity. |
Using the ReadyNAS NV+ as a
network print server is as easy as plugging up to
two USB printers in back of the unit, and clicking
the Refresh button on the Printers page under
FrontView. Printers will be displayed with a share
name that reflects the make and model of the
printers, under the USB Printers tab.
Computers on your network can connect
to ReadyNAS-shared printers either by
clicking on the Browse button in RAIDar, which opens
an Explorer window that shows all the data and
printer shares on the ReadyNAS. Or through
IPP (Internet Protocol Printing) over HTTP. The
quickest and easiest way to do that is through
Apple’s Bonjour (provided you did not disable
the Bounjour Discovery Service on the ReadyNAS).
Macs have the advantage here, since Bounjour is
native to the OS X operating system. Fortunately,
Windows PCs can take advantage of Bounjour with a
free version for Windows, which can be downloaded
here.
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shutdown, reboot, and perform drive
consistency checks on the ReadyNAS NV+
at the Shutdown tab under the System
menu. |
Click the
Status button and you can monitor the
vitals on your ReadyNAS NV+ on the
Health tab. Note that you can also
recalibrate the unit's cooling fan, which
should only be done at the request of
Infrant Technical Support if you're having
fan-related issues. |
You can
view the ReadyNAS Event Log here. |
If you
have a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply)
with a USB port, it's a good idea to put it
to work protecting your ReadyNAS.
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My APC
SmartUPS 1000 UPS. |
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SmartUPS 1000 uses a USB port and monitoring
cable... |
...which
I am now going to connect to one of the USB
port on back of the ReadyNAS+. |
See the
UPS indicator at the bottom of FrontView?
Watch what happens when I hover the mouse
pointer over it... |
...and
then double-click it, which brings me back
to the Health page. Note the entry for the
UPS now... |
...and
under RAIDar. In the event of a power
outage, the UPS will continue to provide
power to the ReadyNAS+ and
gracefully shut it down if the battery
runs out. |
Clearing a stuck or unwanted print
job from the ReadyNAS print queue is as easy
as checking the box next to the print job and
clicking the Delete Print Job button. Keep in
mind that only the printing function on
multifunction printers is supported when connected
to the ReadyNAS.
X-RAID: Breaking the Price and
Scalability Barrier
Shopping for a NAS that will fit your
budget and your current and future storage needs,
can be quite a challenge. A NAS with four disks in a
RAID 5 configuration gives you the most storage
space and redundancy, but it’s obviously the most
costly solution. An external drive, whether it
has USB, Firewire, Ethernet or eSATA connectivity,
is the most affordable solution. But, at the end of
the day, it’s still a single hard drive with no
redundancy to protect your data when it fails, and
no expandability when you need more space. A
little costlier than a single external drive,
dual-drive units that support a RAID 1
configuration, gives you protection when one
drive fails, but still no expandability when
you need more disk space.
You could buy a NAS for the cheapest
price you can find, maybe a barebones unit without
drives. If you shop around online, you can get a
pretty good deal on a pair of hard drives supported
by the vendor and set them up in a RAID 1
configuration, and add one or two more later for a
RAID 5 configuration when your budget permits. But
then you’d have to back up all of your data and
delete the RAID 1 array. Then add the additional
drives. Then create the RAID 5 and wait for it to
finish rebuilding and resyncing itself (which can
take at least 3 or more hours). Then recreate all of
your shares and assign the users rights to them.
Then finally restore your data to the shares
from your backup (another hour or more).
Let’s assume that you are able
to start off with, let’s say four 250GB drives that
will meet your needs for awhile. What happens when
your data outgrows them? By now, you probably know
the agonizingly familiar drill:
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Back up all of
your data from the NAS |
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Removing the old drives
from the NAS |
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Install the new drives
and wait half a day for the RAID
configuration process to complete |
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Re-creating your shares,
re-assign the users access rights to
them, and restore the data to the shares
from the backup. |
Wouldn’t it be great if you could
just start out with a few drives, add more as needed
while automatically maintaining the protection of
RAID redundancy and doubling or tripling the total
capacity of your RAID array in the background—while
retaining all of those network shares you set up and
your data? And be able to seamlessly upgrade to
larger disks in the future in the same manner? Well
X-RAID lets you do just that!
Identical to RAID 5 in redundancy,
X-RAID is Infrant’s patent-pending Expandable
RAID technology that allows you to add drives to
the ReadyNAS as your budget—or needs permit.
Unlike conventional RAID, volume management under
X-RAID is automatic and takes place in the
background:
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With a single disk, the
volume is non-redundant and has the
capacity—and weaknesses—of a single disk
configuration. Meaning that if the disk
goes bye-bye, so does all of your data
on it. |
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Turn off the ReadyNAS,
add a second disk, then turn on
the ReadyNAS. The second disk is
processed in the background and becomes
a mirror to the first disk
(during processing, you can still access
the ReadyNAS and your data). The
capacity of the volume remains the same
as with a single disk, but your data on
the mirrored volume is protected if one
of the drives fails. |
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Turn off the unit and add
a third disk. When turn it on,
the third disk is processed in the
background while allowing you
uninterrupted access to the ReadyNAS.
Only this time your volume capacity
doubles while maintaining data
redundancy for protection. |
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Add a fourth disk
and your capacity triples while
maintaining data redundancy for
protection. Reboot the ReadyNAS
when you are prompted to do so. During
the boot process the data volume is
expanded, which could take 15-30 minutes
per disk (or more). You cannot access
the ReadyNAS during this time until the
process is complete. |
When you’re ready to replace all
of your drives with larger ones for more storage
space, shut down the ReadyNAS and replace the
first disk with the new larger disk. Power up the
ReadyNAS and X-RAID will resync the data from
the removed disk to the new, larger disk. Depending
on disk capacity and the amount of data stored on
the volume this could take 5 hours or more, and
you’ll be alerted when the process is complete
through the LCD Display, FrontView, or E-Mail (if
you have E-Mail alerts enabled).
After the first drive has finished,
turn off the ReadyNAS again and replace the
second disk with a new larger disk, then turn the
unit back on. The process will be the same as with
the first disk you replaced. Repeat this procedure
for the third and fourth disk. Keep in mind that you
can still access the ReadyNAS and your data
stored on it. When the final phase of integrating
the fourth hard drive is complete, you will be
notified and required to reboot the ReadyNAS.
Once it reboots, the volume expansion process will
begin, adding the additional capacity from each
disk. Again, this process can take several or more
hours depending on disk size, and you cannot
access the ReadyNAS or your data on it while
this is going on.
Let’s say that you replaced four 250
GB drives with four 500 GB drives. When the
expansion process is complete, your X-RAID volume
will have increased 750 GB (250 GB x 3 drives with
the fourth drive reserved for redundancy); and your
data will be right where you left it.
How cool is that?
X-RAID is also optimized for
large file sequential access, which makes it
ideal for streaming video, music and other media
files. The only drawbacks to X-RAID are that it
doesn’t support multiple RAID volumes, or
configuring one of the drives in the RAID array as a
hot-spare.
Flex-RAID: Industry-Standard RAID
Made Easy
Flex-RAID
is Infrant’s nickname for their implementation of
industry-standard RAID volume technology which,
along with X-RAID, is also included the ReadyNAS
product line. Flex-RAID supports RAID 0, 1 and 5
with all the usual advantages (and disadvantages):
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* RAID Levels
Simplified |
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RAID level 0
provides the best write performance
of all the RAID levels as it stripes
data across all disks so that data can
be written to all disks in parallel.
Unfortunately, it is not redundant,
so if one disk fails the entire volume
will fail. RAID level 0 can be
configured with one or more disks, and
its capacity is the size of the smallest
disk in the RAID set multiplied by the
number of disks in the set. For example,
a four disk RAID 0 will yield the
capacity of all four disks, assuming
they are identical in size. |
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RAID level 1
consists of 2 or more disks, all disk(s)
other than the first being an exact
mirror of the first. RAID level 1
can sustain disk failure up to the
total number of disks in the RAID set
minus one. For example, a two-disk
RAID 1 volume can sustain a one-disk
failure and continue running. A
three-disk RAID 1 volume can sustain up
to two disk failures. If a disk fails,
the data is retrieved from the surviving
disk. Unfortunately, RAID 1 capacity
utilization is not optimal in a
three or more disk configuration. The
capacity is limited to the size of the
smallest disk in the RAID set. |
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RAID level 5
provides the best balance of capacity
and performance while providing data
redundancy. RAID 5 provides
redundancy by striping data across three
or more disks and keeping the parity
information on one of the disks in each
stripe. In case
of disk failure, the surviving disks and
the parity disk are used to reconstruct
the lost data, providing that data
transparently to the user application.
Upon replacing the failed disk with a
good disk, the reconstructed data is
written out to the new disk, and when
the reconstruction (or sometimes
referred as re-sync) process is
complete, the volume returns to a
redundant state. The capacity of a
RAID 5 volume is the smallest disk in
the RAID set multiplied by one less than
the number of disks in the RAID set.
For example, a four disk RAID 5 set will
provide the capacity of three disks,
assuming all four disks are identical in
size. |
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* Courtesy of Infrant
Technologies |
When it comes to volume and RAID
configuration, Flex-RAID is the exact opposite of
the “autopilot” configuration of X-RAID. Flex-RAID
gives you complete control over the volume
management process. Using FrontView in Advanced
Control mode, you decide the volume size,
RAID level, how much space to reserve—or not—for
snapshots, and so on.
You can designate one of the drives
in the array as a Hot Spare. In the event of
a disk failure, the hot spare takes over,
eliminating the performance degradation that
normally occurs in a redundant RAID array when a
drive fails. Flex-RAID allows the creation of
multiple volumes that can each have a different
RAID level, snapshot schedule and disk quotas.
What you gain with this additional
flexibility, however, you lose in convenience and
downtime compared to X-RAID if you ever need to
upgrade the ReadyNAS to larger disks, change
RAID levels or resize volumes. However, if you’re
using the ReadyNAS as a general-purpose
server to store and backup files of various sizes
from small to large, Flex-RAID might be a better
choice for you than X-RAID.
