From pmui at groundworkopensource.com  Tue Oct  7 08:20:55 2008
From: pmui at groundworkopensource.com (Peter Mui)
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 08:20:55 -0700
Subject: Reminder: Ganglia Get-together at Wednesday's Monitoring SIG (Oct 8, 7PM)
Message-ID: <FEC131AB5AB5954F9EAC19E9C08DEB8C021FD9E3@sfexchange.groundwork.groundworkopensource.com>

(Hi: Just a friendly reminder of the BayLISA Monitoring SIG, Weds, Oct 8 2008, 7PM. See the meeting announcement pasted below: feel free to post it and/or forward it along to anyone else who might be interested. Many thanks, and hope to see you there!)
 
=================================================
BayLISA Monitoring SIG XVIII (October 8, 2008): Ganglia Get-Together, Q&A
 
Bernard Li, Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belon, and other members of the Ganglia Project Team (www.ganglia.info) will be on hand for impromptu Q&A on monitoring using Ganglia ("It's not just for grids and clusters!").  Spike Morelli from Linden Lab and Jonah Horowitz from LookSmart will also be on hand to provide background and insight on real-world Ganglia implementations.
 
What:    BayLISA Monitoring SIG XVIII: Ganglia Get-Together, Q&A
Who:     Anyone interested in IT monitoring issues and tools (newbies particularly welcome!)
When:   Wednesday, Oct 8  2008, 7PM
Where: GroundWork Open Source, 139 Townsend St., San Francisco
How:     139 Townsend St. is very near AT&T Ballpark. It is one and a half blocks from the CalTrain Depot. Take the MUNI N or T or trolley to 2nd and King (ballpark stop) or take the 30 or 45 bus (among others) crosstown. Free evening street parking can probably be found, and there are several fee-based parking garages around in case of parking difficulty.
Cost:     Free!! 
 
Piping hot pizza, a variety of high-fructose corn syrup fizzy drinks (and other drinks too), and a potpourri of snack foods provided by GroundWork. We'll open up the doors at 6:30 or so and start the formal part of the meeting promptly at 7PM.
 
RSVP (not necessary, but helpful): Peter Mui, pmui at groundworkopensource.com, 415-992-4573, www.groundworkopensource.com
=================================================
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From david at catwhisker.org  Thu Oct  9 14:45:54 2008
From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill)
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 14:45:54 -0700
Subject: [wollman@csail.mit.edu: Research position paper just published]
Message-ID: <20081009214554.GA41015@bunrab.catwhisker.org>

FYI.  I just started reading the paper, so I don't yet know how good it
is.  But at least one major player has made it quite clear that the
trend toward increasing the number of cores in a CPU will be increasing.

----- Forwarded message from Garrett Wollman <wollman at csail.mit.edu> -----

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 16:54:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Garrett Wollman <wollman at csail.mit.edu>
To: developers at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Research position paper just published

Folks might be interested in "The Case for a Factored Operating System
(fos)", MIT-CSAIL-TR-2008-060, which was published today at
<http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42894>.  It comes out of a long line of
research into many-core processor and software design.  (It's a dozen
pages long and presents nothing concrete, which is presumably why it's
a TR and not a journal article.)

-GAWollman
(notwithstanding the warning below, feel free to forward this message)

-- 
This mail is for the internal use of the FreeBSD project committers,
and as such is private. This mail may not be published or forwarded
outside the FreeBSD committers' group or disclosed to other unauthorised
parties without the explicit permission of the author(s).


----- End forwarded message -----

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
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From sigje at sigje.org  Mon Oct 13 14:32:20 2008
From: sigje at sigje.org (Jennifer Davis)
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:32:20 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: BayLISA October Event - THIS THURSDAY - October 16, 2008
Message-ID: <20081013142442.M95676@slick.sigje.org>


Hey folks,

It's that time of month again.  BayLISA will be meeting this Thursday at 
7pm.  It should be a very interesting set of presentations from Zimbra who 
have a lot to update since their last presentations.

For those of you who are not familiar with Zimbra, they are more than an 
Exchange replacement.  They have innovative ideas about how email should 
work in the enterprise.

There will be 2 tracks, one on the updates and future of Zimbra, as well 
as some instructions on how to really personalize the email experience for 
the individual using zimlets.  The other presentation will be mostly 
focused on the trials and tribulations that the engineering team have 
discovered in deploying Zimbra in a large scale deployment.  These issues 
are less to do with Zimbra itself, and more to do with any kind of large 
scale deployment that one might do with an application.  Anyone actually 
interested in deployment of Zimbra will have the opportunity to drill the 
guys who write and use this application.

Please rsvp to rsvp at baylisa.org.  Please pass this on to anyone you think 
might be interested.  As always, BayLISA meetings are open and free to 
anyone interested in attending.  We will have pizza, and soda so come on 
down after work and relax with your fellow systems folks.

Location: Yahoo! Inc, Building E, Classroom 9-10
Time: 7pm-10pm
Directions: http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/address.cfm
If driving, please park in front of Building E.  Follow the directions up 
to the left on First Avenue.  After making the
left on First Avenue, turn left into the parking lot in front of Building 
E.
Pizza and Beverages available at 7pm, meeting starts at 7:30pm.


--
Jennifer Davis



From sigje at sigje.org  Wed Oct 15 21:14:19 2008
From: sigje at sigje.org (Jennifer Davis)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:14:19 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: BayLISA Thursday October 16, 2008 
Message-ID: <20081015211204.I63770@slick.sigje.org>


Don't forget!  It's BayLISA time:
Zimbra Architecture for Large Scale Deployments: Zimbra Collaboration 
Suite (ZCS) is used by customers ranging in size from Digg to Red Hat to 
Stanford University to Comcast Cable; in this presentation, a Zimbra 
engineer will discuss how ZCS has been designed to handle deployments from 
dozens of users on a single server, through several millions of users 
distributed across hundreds of servers. Presenting will be Boris Burtin, 
Zimbra senior server engineer, with an introduction provided by Ramesh 
May, Zimbra product management.

I will have ;login magazines from USENIX.  I will also have the secret 
code for getting your discount to the LISA conference that is coming NEXT 
MONTH!!

If you will be attending LISA this year, please let me know.  I'm planning 
at this point to be going, just figuring out the details for myself and 
what days I'll be down there.



Jennifer Davis



From sigje at sigje.org  Fri Oct 17 12:21:05 2008
From: sigje at sigje.org (Jennifer Davis)
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:21:05 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [SAGE] Sysadmin Awards nominations, please (fwd)
Message-ID: <20081017121900.M65082@slick.sigje.org>

Hey folks,

The SAGE Outstanding Achievement Award and Chuck Yerkes Award nominee 
lists are open.


Jennifer

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:00:06 -0400
From: Tom Limoncelli <tal at whatexit.org>
To: SAGE members <sage-members at sage.org>, LOPSA Discuss List <discuss at lopsa.org>
Subject: Re: [SAGE] Sysadmin Awards nominations, please

Hey peeps!   Last call!

To make it even easier, I made a simple form:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pMPKGTBUJPN6hk6H4JtNLJg&hl=en

To help you brainstorm:
-- What's the software/utility/project that helps your sysadmin life?
Nominate the creator
-- What's the book that you recommend to all your friends?  Nominate the author
-- What's the local, national or international conference you enjoy?
Nominate the founder
-- Who is extremely helpful on sysadmin forums, mailing lists, and IRC channels?

Don't be shy!  Nominate today!

Tom


On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 10:37 AM, jane-ellen long <jel at usenix.org> wrote:
> The 2008 SAGE Awards Committee* is looking for nominees for two system
> administrator awards presented annually at LISA:
>
> The SAGE Outstanding Achievement Award goes to someone whose professional
> contributions to the system administration community over a number of years
> merit special recognition. AEleen Frisch, Tobias Oetiker and Dave Rand, Tom
> Limoncelli and Christine Hogan, and Brent Chapman are the most recent
> recipients of this award. See http://www.sage.org/about/outstanding.html for
> the full list with a short description of the reason each won.
>
> The Chuck Yerkes Award goes to someone who has provided significant
> mentoring and participation in our electronic forums (these discussion
> lists, IRC, etc.). It was created in 2004, after Chuck Yerkes' untimely
> death. Richard Chycoski, Paul Lussier, Doug Hughes, and Brandon Allbery are
> the previous years' recipients. See http://www.sage.org/about/yerkes.html
> for the descriptions of the motivation behind the award in each case.
>
> Please let us know who you think deserves the awards this year. A sentence
> or two explaining what the person has done to merit the award would be
> helpful. Send your email to sageawards at sage.org.
>
> thanks much,
>
> jane-ellen
>
> * This year's committee: Richard Chycoski, AEleen Frisch, Tom Limoncelli,
> and Lynda True.
>


From sigje at sigje.org  Fri Oct 17 19:54:40 2008
From: sigje at sigje.org (Jennifer Davis)
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:54:40 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Monitoring/metrics Round Table ...
Message-ID: <20081017194933.N50026@slick.sigje.org>


Hey folks,

I was interested in doing a monitoring/metrics user participation type 
event.  Next month we have a talk coming in from the GroundWork Open 
Source crew as well.  Anyone up for something on October 28 or 30, just a 
casual get together of like minded folks interested in talking 
specifically about the monitoring/metrics topic?

If so, please email me directly.


Jennifer


From sigje at sigje.org  Sat Oct 18 21:45:09 2008
From: sigje at sigje.org (Jennifer Davis)
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:45:09 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Metrics and Monitoring round table
Message-ID: <20081018214110.U9847@slick.sigje.org>


I'll send out further information to those people who have expressed 
interest later in the week, but we've got critical mass.  We'll be doing 
this October 30, 2008.  If you are interested, please let me know.

Next month, I'd like to get folks together for a Performance tuning round 
table.


Jennifer


From david at catwhisker.org  Fri Oct 24 09:14:41 2008
From: david at catwhisker.org (David Wolfskill)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:14:41 -0700
Subject: (Contra-?)recommendations on consumer-grade NAS?
Message-ID: <20081024161441.GC11652@bunrab.catwhisker.org>

While I expect that if I really wanted to go through the hassle, I could
build a machine & load it up with (e.g.) FreeNAS, it would be rather a
chore -- and should the slightest thing be perceived ass being not quite
right, I'd need to deal wwith it directly.

Since one of the consumers of the storage would likely be my spouse,
and she'd want to access said storage from the machines she uses --
which include those of the Microsoft persuasion -- I'd need to try to
figure out how to tell if a machine running Microsoft stuff is working
or not.  And I reallly don't even want to think about that.

So I'm thinnking that a consumer-grade, off-thhe-shelf "small" NAS might
be a good way to go.

Any suggestions or recommendations on vendors or products to choose --
or avoid?

I expect (& assume(!)) that they generally have some approach for
allowing Microsoft-based things to use their storage.  But I'd also want
to access said storage from more normal machines (e.g., running
FreeBSD).

At the moment, the main NFS server at home is a SPARCstation 5/170
running Solaris 2.6; while it does the job, the 10Mb/s NIC is a tad
limiting.

And I'm possessed of the belief that these consumer-grade NAS boxen can
be configured to allow for mirrored, hot-swaappable drives, which would
increase peace of mind a bit.

Comments?

Thanks!  I'll summarize if there's interest & something worth
summarizing.

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david at catwhisker.org
Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil.

See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
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From strata at virtual.net  Fri Oct 24 14:03:12 2008
From: strata at virtual.net (Strata R Chalup)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:03:12 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Wanted asap: shipping box for 2-u rackmount
 server
Message-ID: <20081024140312.BDJ01705@m1.imap-partners.net>

Hi folks,

Somebody tossed the box for a 2-u server that we need to ship back early next week.  Any of you folks have a server shipping box I could have or buy on short notice?

SF or South Bay ideal.  Will pick up.

best regards,
Strata
650-279-1136


=====================================================================
Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ]                    strata at virtual.net
Virtual.Net Inc                          http://www.virtual.net/
    ** Strategic IT Process Management ** 
=====================================================================   


From louisk at cryptomonkeys.com  Fri Oct 24 17:58:38 2008
From: louisk at cryptomonkeys.com (Louis Kowolowski)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:58:38 -0700
Subject: (Contra-?)recommendations on consumer-grade NAS?
In-Reply-To: <20081024161441.GC11652@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
References: <20081024161441.GC11652@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
Message-ID: <6991B53D-3952-4709-B10D-E32056E97EE6@cryptomonkeys.com>

On Oct 24, 2008, at 9:14 AM, David Wolfskill wrote:
> * PGP Signed: 10/24/08 at 09:14:40
>
> While I expect that if I really wanted to go through the hassle, I  
> could
> build a machine & load it up with (e.g.) FreeNAS, it would be rather a
> chore -- and should the slightest thing be perceived as being not  
> quite
> right, I'd need to deal with it directly.
>
I supposed I'm somewhat biased on this matter, but oh well.

I've been running FreeNAS (both production and testing) in a couple of  
environments for approx. a year now.
I've got a Dell PowerEdge 1850 (dual cpu, 2.x GHz, 4G RAM) driving a  
PowerVault 220 (SCSI attach disk array with 14x300G 10k disks).  It's  
running FreeNAS 0.62 (based off FreeBSD 6.2R).  It has a single RAID5  
volume (comprised of 14x300G disks) that is shared via NFS to our  
VMWare ESX servers and hosts VMs that build various products (the  
sanity of this will be saved for other discussions).  I am seeing  
anywhere between 200Mbit and 800Mbit network throughput, from 5 ESX  
servers and approx. 20 VMs.  Setup for this took perhaps 30min. the  
first time, and and closer to 5 the second (no experimenting the  
second time).  All done through a browser.

The second instance of FreeNAS that I've been using is of a nightly  
build that supports AMD64 and ZFS.  I've been running this for about  
2mo. now on my home system that is comprised of a core2duo 2GHz, 2G,  
7x750G ATA (connected to a 3ware controller but not using RAID).  It  
mostly stores backups, music, and pictures.  I've not seen any data  
corruption, crashes or the like.  Navigating through the ZFS portion  
of the webby took a little testing, but again, entire configuration  
was not more than 15min the first time.  It has survived several power  
outages, including one that had a very brief power on and then another  
power off.  All data appears to be intact and usable (and no fsck  
thanks to ZFS!).

--
Louis Kowolowski                                louisk at cryptomonkeys.com
Cryptomonkeys:                      http://www.cryptomonkeys.com/~louisk

Making life more interesting for people since 1977



From sigje at sigje.org  Fri Oct 24 18:21:51 2008
From: sigje at sigje.org (Jennifer Davis)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:21:51 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Metrics and Monitoring round table - Oct 30
In-Reply-To: <20081018214110.U9847@slick.sigje.org>
References: <20081018214110.U9847@slick.sigje.org>
Message-ID: <20081024181304.N58134@slick.sigje.org>


For our discussion we will be focusing on a single OS (Unix).  We'll 
determine the specific OS by attendees expertise.  Next month's round 
table will be on performance tuning, so this will specifically be about 
monitoring/metrics.  I'm sending some of these questions to the group as a 
whole to start some discussions about monitoring/metrics.

Why do you monitor?  Do you have different consumers to your monitoring 
solution? (execs, customers, oncall staff)  Who do you monitor for?
How do you choose what to monitor?  How do you not affect what you are 
monitoring?

In your role, can you influence the developers of the application you are 
supporting (is it inhouse software or external)?

How do you prevent bad activity from bringing down the service through 
monitoring?

Are there standards? best practices? Any recommended books?

What tools are available?

disk, memory, cpu, network - Does virtualization change anything?

Is there a standard way of breaking down an application to monitor it? 
What methods are in place to automate the monitoring structure?  How do 
you monitor a service that is provided to an external customer, and 
provide the customer with a mechanism to view the monitoring?

What is page-worthy?  Critical vs simple error?  When should something 
wake you up, or disturb weekend activities?


Jennifer



From aland at softorchestra.com  Thu Oct 23 00:57:56 2008
From: aland at softorchestra.com (Alan DuBoff)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:57:56 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: SVOSUG 10/23, Arduino Night, buy a kit, build a kit, bring a
 board
In-Reply-To: <alpine.GSO.1.10.0810080223170.21591@heron.softorchestra.com>
References: <alpine.GSO.1.10.0810080223170.21591@heron.softorchestra.com>
Message-ID: <alpine.GSO.1.10.0810230056270.26051@heron.softorchestra.com>

[Redirected from blw@ to baylisa@ by postmaster@]

A friendly reminder of tonight's meeting.

We have some giveaways we're raffling off.

Everyone is welcome, on all systems, OpenSolaris, Linux, and 
FreeBSD, come one come all.

Refer to my blog for latest info, and see the Wiki for info as 
well.

My blog:

http://blogs.sun.com/aland/

Wiki:

http://www.genunix.org/wiki/index.php/Arduino_Interest

On Wed, 8 Oct 2008, Alan DuBoff wrote:

> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Jen,
>
> Can you post this so BayLISA folks know about this, there was some interested 
> folks last month. I could do it if you give me access as you had suggested, 
> but we haven't done that yet.
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> When:  Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008
> Where: Sun's Santa Clara Campus Mansion
>       (SCA07 just across the road from the Auditorium)
> What:  Arduino Night, buy a kit, build a kit, bring a board
> Time:  7:30pm-10:00pm
>
> Google Maps:
> http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=4070+George+Sellon+Circle,+Santa+Clara,+CA+95054&ie=UTF8&z=16&om=1&iwloc=addr
>
> Yahoo Maps:
> http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=37.393386&lon=-121.955218&zoom=16&q1=4070%20George%20Sellon%20Circle%2095054
>
> We are planning our next SVOSUG meeting, and I have mentioned
> this idea to several folks with great response, so I would like
> to start planning early enough since this meeting will present a
> lot of options to folks attending.
>
> To learn about the Arduino if you are not familiar with it,
> please go to the Arduino website at the following link. If you
> use Mac OSX, Linux, or Windows you can get the development
> software at a link from that site, and if you use FreeBSD you
> can find the development tools inside the ports collection, use
> pkg_add or make the port. If you use OpenSolaris, we will have
> the start of the tools available which you can use. We hope to
> continue working on these to have a stable set of tools just
> like the other platforms, and we are just getting this going
> (but do have it working).
>
> http://arduino.cc/
>
> As I have mentioned at several user groups, including the last
> SVOSUG meeting, we have been planning to build the Freeduino
> which is an inexpensive kit that is sold by Modern Device.
>
> http://moderndevice.com/
>
> These kits cost anywhere from $10-$15 depending on QTY in which
> you buy them. We will have some kits, cables, breadboards, and
> other chiatchkas which can be used with boards for development,
> but for many people we have determined it could be easier to buy
> a pre-assembled kit ahead of time. For that matter, if you want
> to ensure that you have a kit, should you want to build, buying
> one ahead of time will be the safest bet. You can get the
> Freedunio kit assembled from Modern Device, but I don't believe
> we will have any of those to provide, we will most likely only
> have bare bones kits. One of the big advantages of this board is
> that it can easily be plugged into a breadboard to connect other
> devices and/or route connections. This is convenient for
> development. You can get a serial to USB cable for these also,
> but that will cost about $20.
>
> The Diecimilia is a pre-assembled board that is available from
> several places, and this design originates from Arduino, AFAIK.
> One advantage of these boards is that they have a lot of options
> you can buy and connect to them, please see the MakerShed page
> as they have a lot of stuff listed. The Arduino is very popular
> with the Maker Groups around the country. There are many options
> known as shields that plug onto the Diecimilia, for various
> audio type devices (sound, piano synth), sliders, lights, USB,
> Ethernet, serial, cables, etc...so this is a very attractive
> package for many folks.
>
> http://www.makershed.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=43&Redirected=Y
>
> Given that there are so many options, and such a diverse set of
> skills within all of the local communities, people attending
> will have to make some decisions on what model they would like.
>
> I must add, 2 people have built the kits I know, one has done it
> in 20 minutes, and another person has done it in just over 1
> hour. We will have several soldering stations, but due to time
> constraints, we will be limited on how many can be soldered up,
> hence the 15 kits we have ordered to have on hand.
>
> I like to build things, so building one is attractive to me. I
> have a kit already, but will most likely solder mine before hand
> and will use that as another data point. This is also a good
> opportunity to learn how to solder and build a kit, there will
> be folks to help you if you do not know how.
>
> There is so much information, and so many places to buy, that we
> decided to reccomend only a few online stores to purchase from,
> but you can order from many more places on the net, and the Tech
> Shop in Menlo Park often has them for sale, but there is such
> demand for them that they sell out quickly.
>
> The places that we reccomend are: (not in any specific order;-)
>
> Modern Device, both kits and Diecimilia (BBB is the bare bones
> board kit, i.e., Freedunio).
>
> http://www.moderndevice.com/
>
> Maker Store, shipping is quick but prices are a tad higher, good
> selection.
>
> http://store.makezine.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=43
>
> Adafruit Industries, ladyada has done a lot of great stuff to
> help the Arduino community, quick shipping, and good prices,
> decent inventory.
>
> http://www.adafruit.com/
>
> Spark Fun Electronics, I love to look around this site, lots of
> widgets, boards, and other goodies...
>
> http://www.sparkfun.com/
>
> If you are unsure what you think you might like, please attend
> the meeting and and see several different boards, it might help
> you decide and understand the best option to hook up one to your
> computer. You will ultimately need some type of cable, to
> connect to your computer along with the board.
>
> We will have several cool demos to represent the type of
> development you can easily do with these boards, and that in
> itself will be interesting to many people, even if you are not
> interested in doing development yourself.
>
> We hold no favorites, the kits we have available are on a first
> come first serve basis (i.e., ALL communities, SVOSUG, BayLISA,
> and SVLUG), but we haven't decided a good way to pre-sale these
> kits to people, other than taking your word on good faith that
> you will show up and buy it. We suspect the kits will go fast as
> they are inexpensive and fun to build, but I emphasize that it
>
> is safest to get a kit or board ahead of time to have it in your
> possesion. Also, building is not the best option for all folks,
> so keep that in mind. We will be available to help you if you
> are not familiar with soldering.
>
> (this is a long message, apologies for any typos)
>
>
> --
>
> Alan DuBoff - Software Orchestration
>
>

--

Alan DuBoff - Software Orchestration



From davidwmack at gmail.com  Sat Oct 25 12:35:27 2008
From: davidwmack at gmail.com (David Mack)
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:35:27 -0700
Subject: (Contra-?)recommendations on consumer-grade NAS?
In-Reply-To: <20081024161441.GC11652@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
References: <20081024161441.GC11652@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
Message-ID: <753ec7300810251235w57699f14re607dbedbdc55941@mail.gmail.com>

I purchased a Buffalo Terastore for around $900 a while back but I
didn't read the details quite carefully enough. I assumed that NAS
implied NFS. Nope. Luckily, Frys cheerfully refunded my money.

Considering the plunge in disk prices, just as well. A few months
later I built a terabyte RAID5 array (including a cold spare disk) for
under $400 on a commodity PC running CentOS4.6. With Samba, I can use
this setup with either my Unix or Windows systems. Then disk prices
went down some more and I now back up not only the RAID array but a
collection of other storage areas on assorted Unix systems onto a 1TB
SATA disk in a separate machine.

If you want an appliance type NAS system that does NFS, make sure that
they advertise that feature.

Dave

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 9:14 AM, David Wolfskill <david at catwhisker.org> wrote:
> While I expect that if I really wanted to go through the hassle, I could
> build a machine & load it up with (e.g.) FreeNAS, it would be rather a
> chore -- and should the slightest thing be perceived ass being not quite
> right, I'd need to deal wwith it directly.
>
> Since one of the consumers of the storage would likely be my spouse,
> and she'd want to access said storage from the machines she uses --
> which include those of the Microsoft persuasion -- I'd need to try to
> figure out how to tell if a machine running Microsoft stuff is working
> or not.  And I reallly don't even want to think about that.
>
> So I'm thinnking that a consumer-grade, off-thhe-shelf "small" NAS might
> be a good way to go.
>
> Any suggestions or recommendations on vendors or products to choose --
> or avoid?
>
> I expect (& assume(!)) that they generally have some approach for
> allowing Microsoft-based things to use their storage.  But I'd also want
> to access said storage from more normal machines (e.g., running
> FreeBSD).
>
> At the moment, the main NFS server at home is a SPARCstation 5/170
> running Solaris 2.6; while it does the job, the 10Mb/s NIC is a tad
> limiting.
>
> And I'm possessed of the belief that these consumer-grade NAS boxen can
> be configured to allow for mirrored, hot-swaappable drives, which would
> increase peace of mind a bit.
>
> Comments?
>
> Thanks!  I'll summarize if there's interest & something worth
> summarizing.
>
> Peace,
> david
> --
> David H. Wolfskill                              david at catwhisker.org
> Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil.
>
> See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
>


From hso at nosneros.net  Sat Oct 25 22:48:05 2008
From: hso at nosneros.net (Holt Sorenson)
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 05:48:05 +0000
Subject: (Contra-?)recommendations on consumer-grade NAS?
In-Reply-To: <753ec7300810251235w57699f14re607dbedbdc55941@mail.gmail.com>
References: <20081024161441.GC11652@bunrab.catwhisker.org> <753ec7300810251235w57699f14re607dbedbdc55941@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20081026054805.GM23392@nosneros.net>

On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:35:27PM -0700, David Mack wrote:
>If you want an appliance type NAS system that does NFS, make sure that
>they advertise that feature.

Many people have very positive things to say about Infrant ReadyNAS (now
NetGear) if you are trying to buy (instead of build):

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASNVPlus.aspx 
http://www.readynas.com/

It supports NFS, AFP, SMB, FTP, HTTP, rsync and some media streaming
protocols.

It resizes and re-allocates space on the fly as you add disk. If you
by larger disks, it uses RAID to rebuild as you swap each disk and when
you swap the final disk (if you move from say 4x500 to 4x750) it
increase storage after the final swap to N-1 automagically.

Also, there is an ssh module that you can put on the gear so you can
get shell.

One could definitely do worse.

-- 
Holt Sorenson
hso at nosneros.net
www.nosneros.net/hso



From Brent at greatcircle.com  Sun Oct 26 08:37:04 2008
From: Brent at greatcircle.com (Brent Chapman)
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 08:37:04 -0700
Subject: (Contra-?)recommendations on consumer-grade NAS?
In-Reply-To: <20081026054805.GM23392@nosneros.net>
References: <20081024161441.GC11652@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
	 <753ec7300810251235w57699f14re607dbedbdc55941@mail.gmail.com>
	 <20081026054805.GM23392@nosneros.net>
Message-ID: <2f8b0b640810260837t5502738ep911ab79e75c45ca5@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 10:48 PM, Holt Sorenson <hso at nosneros.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:35:27PM -0700, David Mack wrote:
>>If you want an appliance type NAS system that does NFS, make sure that
>>they advertise that feature.
>
> Many people have very positive things to say about Infrant ReadyNAS (now
> NetGear) if you are trying to buy (instead of build):
>
> http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASNVPlus.aspx
> http://www.readynas.com/

I've had one of these at home for the past year or so, and it has been
just fine.  A couple of my home Macs back up to it every night (one
via Retrospect, the other via SuperDuper!), and I keep my music
collection on it.  I blogged a review of it after I'd had it for a few
weeks:

http://www.greatcircle.com/blog/2008/01/09/great_little_so.html

> It supports NFS, AFP, SMB, FTP, HTTP, rsync and some media streaming
> protocols.

My biggest complaint is that it doesn't support ssh, and thus doesn't
support rsync-over-ssh.

> It resizes and re-allocates space on the fly as you add disk. If you
> by larger disks, it uses RAID to rebuild as you swap each disk and when
> you swap the final disk (if you move from say 4x500 to 4x750) it
> increase storage after the final swap to N-1 automagically.

Yes, adding disk to it was painless: open the front door (don't shut
it down), slide the disk in, close the door, wait a few hours while it
initializes the new disk and redistributes the RAID, and then "boom"
suddenly you've got more free disk space.

You can set up multiple users, groups, and logical partitions.  Access
control (which filesharing protocols are active, and which
users/groups can do what via those protocols) is on a
per-logical-partition basis.  So, for example, I have 4 logical
partitions set up on mine, largely for different access control: a
"music" partition that anybody on the LAN can read, a "family"
partition for my wife and I, and a logical partition for each of the
two companies that I'm currently running out of my house (with
different access controls on each, for the different people involved).

You can also have the box automatically set up a logical partition for
the private use of each user that you define.

All the logical partitions draw from the same pool of free disk space;
you don't have to size them when you create them (though you can
impose quotas or size limits on them if you want to).

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have any support for LDAP or
anything like that; you have to manage users and groups directly on
the box.  (This might have been added in a later release than I'm
running, I don't know; I'm still running the release mine came with a
year or so ago, v3.01c1-p6, because it works and I didn't want to mess
with upgrading.)

One cool thing about it is that the disks do NOT all have to be the
same size; it will make the best of whatever disks you give it, to get
the most space out of the set while preserving the RAID
characteristics.

Another cool thing about it is built-in support for monitoring a
number of UPS makes/models via USB.  So, if you plug it in to a
supported UPS, and connect the UPS to the ReadyNAS via USB, then the
ReadyNAS will notice when the UPS goes active (and log it, and email
you about it, if you've got email alerts for logs set up), and when
the time remaining on the UPS drops below some threshhold, the
ReadyNAS will do a clean shutdown of itself.

Yet another cool thing about it (though I haven't actually tried this
yet) is that there's a USB port on the front panel that you can plug
an external disk into, and it will automatically make a copy of
everything from the RAID onto that external disk (assuming it's big
enough); you can then put that external disk someplace safe for
off-site storage.  (I don't think it does any encryption of the copy
it puts on the external disk, though, so you still need to keep it
someplace safe from unauthorized access.)

> Also, there is an ssh module that you can put on the gear so you can get shell.

I wonder if that gets you rsync-over-ssh as well?

> One could definitely do worse.

Yup.  If you don't want to waste time tinkering with a do-it-yourself
solution, this is pretty good.  Amazon has a 1 TB unit (2x500GB
drives, and 2 empty drive bays for future expansion) for a little over
$900:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000R99GJ0/greatcircleassoc

(They have plenty of other configurations available as well, and you
might find better prices elsewhere; I just included that link to give
folks an idea of pricing.)


-Brent


From Brent at greatcircle.com  Sun Oct 26 08:37:04 2008
From: Brent at greatcircle.com (Brent Chapman)
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 08:37:04 -0700
Subject: (Contra-?)recommendations on consumer-grade NAS?
In-Reply-To: <20081026054805.GM23392@nosneros.net>
References: <20081024161441.GC11652@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
	 <753ec7300810251235w57699f14re607dbedbdc55941@mail.gmail.com>
	 <20081026054805.GM23392@nosneros.net>
Message-ID: <2f8b0b640810260837t5502738ep911ab79e75c45ca5@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 10:48 PM, Holt Sorenson <hso at nosneros.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 12:35:27PM -0700, David Mack wrote:
>>If you want an appliance type NAS system that does NFS, make sure that
>>they advertise that feature.
>
> Many people have very positive things to say about Infrant ReadyNAS (now
> NetGear) if you are trying to buy (instead of build):
>
> http://www.netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNASNVPlus.aspx
> http://www.readynas.com/

I've had one of these at home for the past year or so, and it has been
just fine.  A couple of my home Macs back up to it every night (one
via Retrospect, the other via SuperDuper!), and I keep my music
collection on it.  I blogged a review of it after I'd had it for a few
weeks:

http://www.greatcircle.com/blog/2008/01/09/great_little_so.html

> It supports NFS, AFP, SMB, FTP, HTTP, rsync and some media streaming
> protocols.

My biggest complaint is that it doesn't support ssh, and thus doesn't
support rsync-over-ssh.

> It resizes and re-allocates space on the fly as you add disk. If you
> by larger disks, it uses RAID to rebuild as you swap each disk and when
> you swap the final disk (if you move from say 4x500 to 4x750) it
> increase storage after the final swap to N-1 automagically.

Yes, adding disk to it was painless: open the front door (don't shut
it down), slide the disk in, close the door, wait a few hours while it
initializes the new disk and redistributes the RAID, and then "boom"
suddenly you've got more free disk space.

You can set up multiple users, groups, and logical partitions.  Access
control (which filesharing protocols are active, and which
users/groups can do what via those protocols) is on a
per-logical-partition basis.  So, for example, I have 4 logical
partitions set up on mine, largely for different access control: a
"music" partition that anybody on the LAN can read, a "family"
partition for my wife and I, and a logical partition for each of the
two companies that I'm currently running out of my house (with
different access controls on each, for the different people involved).

You can also have the box automatically set up a logical partition for
the private use of each user that you define.

All the logical partitions draw from the same pool of free disk space;
you don't have to size them when you create them (though you can
impose quotas or size limits on them if you want to).

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have any support for LDAP or
anything like that; you have to manage users and groups directly on
the box.  (This might have been added in a later release than I'm
running, I don't know; I'm still running the release mine came with a
year or so ago, v3.01c1-p6, because it works and I didn't want to mess
with upgrading.)

One cool thing about it is that the disks do NOT all have to be the
same size; it will make the best of whatever disks you give it, to get
the most space out of the set while preserving the RAID
characteristics.

Another cool thing about it is built-in support for monitoring a
number of UPS makes/models via USB.  So, if you plug it in to a
supported UPS, and connect the UPS to the ReadyNAS via USB, then the
ReadyNAS will notice when the UPS goes active (and log it, and email
you about it, if you've got email alerts for logs set up), and when
the time remaining on the UPS drops below some threshhold, the
ReadyNAS will do a clean shutdown of itself.

Yet another cool thing about it (though I haven't actually tried this
yet) is that there's a USB port on the front panel that you can plug
an external disk into, and it will automatically make a copy of
everything from the RAID onto that external disk (assuming it's big
enough); you can then put that external disk someplace safe for
off-site storage.  (I don't think it does any encryption of the copy
it puts on the external disk, though, so you still need to keep it
someplace safe from unauthorized access.)

> Also, there is an ssh module that you can put on the gear so you can get shell.

I wonder if that gets you rsync-over-ssh as well?

> One could definitely do worse.

Yup.  If you don't want to waste time tinkering with a do-it-yourself
solution, this is pretty good.  Amazon has a 1 TB unit (2x500GB
drives, and 2 empty drive bays for future expansion) for a little over
$900:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000R99GJ0/greatcircleassoc

(They have plenty of other configurations available as well, and you
might find better prices elsewhere; I just included that link to give
folks an idea of pricing.)


-Brent