Welcome to ReadyNAS in Business!

[snimrodd]

Hi Drew,
I wanted to get some more insights and better understand your very decisive opinion with regards to the I/O:
"I can think of Infiniband (no way), SAS (still too expensive) and eSATA. eSATA is gaining traction but nothing is as universal as TCP/IP for getting offsite, so I think your choice is to look at investing in the WAN or in local capacity."

Will the above be price related? functinoality related?
you're refeing to price - what would be the price point for such device?
ng

[dengar]

I'm referring to moving data outside of the box. In order to do an effective backup you ought to be offsite or at least in another building across the street.

These interfaces are fast, but not cost effective to build into an SMB product, nor do they meet the customer's need to move stuff offsite reliably. That's where Ethernet fits - but it isn't as fast. So, the choice is to buy WAN acceleration gear and speed it up or buy lots of local capacity and cache the data until it can be shoved through the pipe. At least, that's how I hear customers describe it.

[bollar]

I'm referring to moving data outside of the box. In order to do an effective backup you ought to be offsite or at least in another building across the street.

IMO, both choices are insufficient. If a disaster truly strikes, the backups in both cases will also be inaccessible. As I'm sure I wrote in another part of this forum, we had backups picked up daily and stored by Iron Mountain. Iron Mountain did protect the data as per the contract, but the tapes were not available for about ten days. Any business that has a risk of something like this happening, really needs to take the offsite storage equation much more seriously than is the norm.

[dengar]

Actually, I think we agree. The most effective method that I've seen is to use virtualization software with a networked storage system (either via iSCSI or NFS), then replicate the VMs offsite to another storage platform. Tape is moved into an archive only position - you aren't limited to tape speed and access when you have to recover and you can fire up any VM from your target storage system.

[gdiscenza]

It's strange to be one of the first responses with a ReadyNAS in active business use....

I have a 2T ReadyNAS 1100 attached through a Gig-E switch to a Dell PE1435.

There is a single NFS share which is mounted on the PE1435 which is our primary Samba server, essentially re-sharing the ReadyNAS space to the rest of the users.

The Gig-E switch is dedicated to the ReadyNAS and the Dell, no other traffic flows through it.

-Gregg Discenza

[heaths]

Thanks for sharing your idea here. I appreciate your idea, very excellent.
simulationcredit

[abuckton]

HI Drew,

I am actually on a call right to support right now.
It's 3:45PM Sunday and I've come into the office because the ticket that I opened on Tuesday has finally been responded to.
The first thing I've had to do was install a plug-in. I've done that.
Now I have the support operator, "Francis" asking me to put my NAS onto the Internet so that a Level 3 guy can SSH in to it.
Given that we run a Cisco firewall that is managed by an external support engineer I told him that that wasn't going to fly on a Sunday afternoon.
When I asked about a webex session (that many other IT support groups use), Francis told me that he would have to check and hung up.

My point is:
- Please get the support team professional tools - like webex/connectnow
- If you're targeting the business market, ensure that the products have the necessary management capabilities. The installation of a plugin is not something anyone else in my office would have been able to do.
- Please have the support team call back in a timely manner. I was promised a call-back at 3pm. The first call was 3:45 and they're "now checking" (it's 4pm)
- Please ensure that updates, like the one that was applied on Tuesday (from 4.2.5 to 4.2.7) dont break the iSCSI so badly that the 500GB "disk" I had can no longer been "seen" taking 4 of our Vmware guests with it. (When we signed up for this solution we were told "it will have Vmware certification shortly": Some months later we had the now hollow assurance of this URL: http://www.readynas.com/?p=3103 )

I have seen how NetApp runs their business. I like their results. But, we're only a small team here and I didn't think we could afford NetApp solutions.
After the support experience we've received from Netgear, I don't think think we can stay where we are either.

Anthony
NetGear ReadyNAS PRO - 3x1TB drives.
- AFP, CIFS (and formerly iSCSI to VMware)

[mdgm]

There is VMWare certification already for NFS. iSCSI is to follow. 4.2.7 was a step towards getting that certification with some changes implemented which are required for certification.

[mdgm]

The first thing I've had to do was install a plug-in.

Was it the one mentioned in the 4.2.7 Release Notes to revert back to the way iSCSI is handled in 4.2.5? See: http://www.readynas.com/?cat=47

[yoh-dah]

HI Drew,

I am actually on a call right to support right now.
It's 3:45PM Sunday and I've come into the office because the ticket that I opened on Tuesday has finally been responded to.
The first thing I've had to do was install a plug-in. I've done that.
Now I have the support operator, "Francis" asking me to put my NAS onto the Internet so that a Level 3 guy can SSH in to it.
Given that we run a Cisco firewall that is managed by an external support engineer I told him that that wasn't going to fly on a Sunday afternoon.
When I asked about a webex session (that many other IT support groups use), Francis told me that he would have to check and hung up.

My point is:
- Please get the support team professional tools - like webex/connectnow
- If you're targeting the business market, ensure that the products have the necessary management capabilities. The installation of a plugin is not something anyone else in my office would have been able to do.
- Please have the support team call back in a timely manner. I was promised a call-back at 3pm. The first call was 3:45 and they're "now checking" (it's 4pm)
- Please ensure that updates, like the one that was applied on Tuesday (from 4.2.5 to 4.2.7) dont break the iSCSI so badly that the 500GB "disk" I had can no longer been "seen" taking 4 of our Vmware guests with it. (When we signed up for this solution we were told "it will have Vmware certification shortly": Some months later we had the now hollow assurance of this URL: http://www.readynas.com/?p=3103 )

I have seen how NetApp runs their business. I like their results. But, we're only a small team here and I didn't think we could afford NetApp solutions.
After the support experience we've received from Netgear, I don't think think we can stay where we are either.

Anthony
NetGear ReadyNAS PRO - 3x1TB drives.
- AFP, CIFS (and formerly iSCSI to VMware)

Anthony, I apologize for our mess-up. I'll get someone to respond to you with a solution to your problem.

[abuckton]

A big thanks to mgdm!

I was sitting here waiting for support to call back (they didn't) when I read through the link that mdgm sent through in their first post about the "iscsi toggle"... so I installed it. A reboot later and Presto - I can see the contents of the iSCSI drive!
So these are in the process of being copied off the NAS

Thankyou to Yoh-dah too for his support. I have been reading through the Forum and noticed just how much you contribute to this community. I hope that Netgear recognises your value.

To re-iterate my original posting: My core point is that the Netgear storage solution may be fine for technical users and home users, but for the less technical "business user", there still appears to be a number of product functions and business processes that need to be re-worked. The product is fine when it does work, but its the handling of the situations when it doesn't work (and ensuring those which cause it to stop working dont occur) that differentiate SOHO, SME and Enterprise...

Regards,

Anthony

[mdgm]

A big thanks to mgdm!

I was sitting here waiting for support to call back (they didn't) when I read through the link that mdgm sent through in their first post about the "iscsi toggle"... so I installed it. A reboot later and Presto - I can see the contents of the iSCSI drive!
So these are in the process of being copied off the NAS

Your welcome. You should still be able to use the iSCSI targets using the old 4.2.5 iSCSI on your ReadyNas and wait for a newer version of iSCSI to be released. I believe the toggle just adds/changes/or removes about one line of code (if it's anything like the fix using SSH that I think yoh-dah posted when 4.2.7 was in beta).

If a new version of firmware breaks something it can be good to take a look at the Release Notes. If you don't automatically upgrade you may wish to take a look at Release Notes and look for forum posts about the firmware before upgrading in the future. There's usually some limitations and some known issues that aren't seen as big enough to stop the release of a new version, but which may be seen as serious by some users.

[dengar]

Anthony - just caught your post. Please accept our apologies. Both Yoh-Dah and myself are working to up the level of support for business-class products like the Pro, something NETGEAR is still learning.

Drew

[abuckton]

Hi Drew,

No need to apologise. The good news is that we now have all of our data "back" and we're still running with the "iscsi toggle" - it's working fine.

I'm glad you've said that you're learning, I guess that's the direction that I wanted this to go. I rather focus on my problem providing some input on how others might not have the experience we did.

A key piece of feedback for you is that after the Support guys asked me to expose my NAS's SSH port to the internet and I said that I wasn't able to, I never heard from them again. I don't know if the ticket is open, or even if I was simply splash into the "too hard basket". Some follow up and feedback is really required - even if its just an email.

The whole experience was strange too. The tech spoke about "the engineer who will come in" - I never spoke to this "engineer" nor actually had a time arranged. Instead I spent my Sunday afternoon waiting ... for hours.

I am very leery of the fact that opening up the SSH on my NAS is a massive security hole. If the password was known to hackers they could completely destroy my NAS. Could I ask that you implement a change on this whole approach. We're also lucky that we happen to have a fixed IP address - we are a rarity in that regard.
To address the static IP issue, other vendors we deal with use tools like Webex and Adobe Connect/ConnectNow to take control of equipment in our office by "screen sharing". It also has the added advantage of protecting passwords. Sure I can see what their typing, but I can't see their "admin password" nor do they know my passwords - but through passing control, we get the job done.

Finally on commercials - this NAS as I've found is the heart of our IT services. I pay maintenance on other equipment and software to ensure support - do you have any plans of offer the same for the NAS? I know that Netgear's roots are in SOHO ( I remember when Nortel spun Netgear out of the Bay acquisition for that reason ) but with products like the NAS - and even some of your higher end networking gear, could I ask you to consider implementing that "piece of mind". What would be even better is that this type of support shortened my 6 day wait on support to "same day". Had the fault extended to the rest of the NAS data we would have been dead in the water...

Regards,

Anthony

[mdgm]

As a fellow ReadyNas user Anthony I reckon the SSH remote login is a bit of a security risk, but that's why you don't leave it on and exposed to the internet when support doesn't ask you to. Other methods may work but probably have their own security risks too.

What I reckon would be nice is if NetGear developed something similar to ReadyNas Remote, but a bit different. How this could work is you install an add-on onto your NAS. The NAS then connects to a secure server to facilitate the connection. The tech would then have a client that enables them to connect to your NAS using SSH without compromising security as much by not requiring port forwarding.

Possible options for increased security could be to have the NAS generate a unique code that has to be given to NetGear over the phone (i.e. just installing an add-on doesn't automatically give access). This unique code could then be used in conjunction with another code generated from your serial number (i.e. both required) one you can give and the other one that only NetGear would know.