• Network Infrastructure

    Basic Synology NAS Setup

    Over the years, I’ve setup dozens of Synology Network Appliances for customers and friends. But I never thought of doing much writing in the NAS space, be it for ReadyNAS, Thecus, Buffalo, etc. The interfaces seemed to change too fast and my focus was always on the management and connectivity of Apple devices. Slowly, over the years, small business servers have gone from being something you could make a decent living to something that should probably be hosted in the cloud. Unless you have a design requirement that just can’t work in the cloud. And for that, there are a ton of options. Today we’ll cover the basic setup of…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac Security

    Making My NAS Work in Lion

    Netatalk seems to always have some issue with OS X. Why I still use little NAS boxes for this that and the other is beyond me. I got stuck dealing with this for a little while and if you’re using Netatalk w/ a DHCAST128 UAM you probably will too. For more on DHCAST see the Netatalk page on UAM support. Kerberos and DHX2 are arguably better, but I’ve found they don’t always work right on some of my NAS boxes. This wasn’t just a quick defaults command as it was in previous instances. It’s not much of a script but the following should fix it if you’re having this issue…

  • Network Infrastructure

    NAS, Clouds & Backup

    NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices are a popular alternative to providing centralized file services to smaller environments. This includes devices such as the Seagate BlackArmor, the DroboShare NAS and the Netgear ReadyNAS Pro. These are inexpensive as compared to an actual server, they require less management and they often come with some pretty compelling features. But one of the primary reasons to buy a NAS can end up being a potential pain point as well: they require less management than a server because they can’t do as much as a server can. For example, the option to replicate between two of them. Most have NAS to NAS replication built in. However, that…

  • Windows Server

    iSCSI Target Creation

    The iSCSI Initiator that we use for connecting Windows to iSCSI targets has a friend.  It’s called Microsoft Windows Storage Server, which you can use to turn a DAS RAID in a Windows box into a LUN for iSCSI.  Good stuff.  Check out the data sheet here: download.microsoft.com/download/d/8/4/ d84b1c50-e0bb-45ba-b2f4-356f4f456a88/WUDSS%20Datasheet_Final.doc Now that’s not to say they’re the only game in town.  iSCSI Target is also a feature of OpenSolaris: http://opensolaris.org/os/project/iscsitgt/ And there’s a nifty little Open Source Project called iSCSI Enterprise Target: http://sourceforge.net/projects/iscsitarget/?abmode=1