Found Treasure, Part 1

Recently, I was contacted by a writer for the online magazine Alter Ego.  The writer was trying to track down my Dad, William, who was a comic book artist briefly in the 1950s.  Apparently, my Dad had sent this gentleman several signed covers of comic books he had illustrated (pencils & ink).  This gentleman wanted to write a story on my Dad's experiences for the online magazine.  Not knowing that my Dad had passed away, he had found me online (no, there are not many Discounts out there!)


So I began a correspondence with this gentleman over e-mail.  I answered his questions about my Dad and his career as best as I could -- after all, my Dad's comic book artist career was 20 years before I was born!  I was almost immediately interested in retrieving these authentic artifacts of my Dad.  I have a hunger for truly authentic pieces such as these.  My mother has an original cover of the Saturday Evening Post -- a famous Norman Rockwell painting -- "Do Unto Others..."

It is signed by Rockwell to my grandfather Lowell.  My mother has it framed in her home.  I've told my mother there aren't a lot of family heirlooms I am interested in -- but that is the top of the list -- by far.


And so as I corresponded with this writer I wondered how I might get my father's signed comic books back.  I thought about how much it might be worth to me.  After all, my father worked in comics only briefly -- and he never worked on any major books.  Would I pay?  How much?  $50?  $100?  $500?!?!


I would be completely surprised at his response...

Recorded on iPhone, edited on iPad!

Kelly recorded two Quarter Mexican performances this summer on her iPhone and I edited them together into this music video using iMovie on the iPad.

It helped pass the time on two cross-country flights!

My New NAS: The Thrilling Conclusion

Finally... we're done.  Here are the fruits of my search for a new home NAS solution.

The Results

I awarded 4 points for each Gold medal, 3 for each Silver and 1 point for each Bronze medal.  

I further weighted my "Most Important" criteria by a factor of 3, my "Important" critera by a factor of 2, and my "Nice-to-Haves" with a factor of 1.

Requirement	Drobo	ReadyNAS	WHS
Basic File Sharing	Gold	Gold	Gold
Advanced Media Sharing	Bronze	Gold	Silver
Storage Technology & Expandability	Gold	Gold	Bronze
Direct Backup to the Cloud	n/a	Silver	Gold
UPS Protection	n/a	Gold	Gold
Remote Access	Bronze	Gold	Gold
Automated PC Image Backup	n/a	n/a	Gold
Applications	Bronze	Silver	Gold
Flickr Synchronization	n/a	n/a	Bronze
Un-weighted points	11	24	28
Weighted points	30	58	54

Un-weighted points results favor WHS slightly -- because it's at least got a story for each of my criteria.  But when weighting gets introduced, ReadyNAS pulls ahead by a hair!

Conclusions

The Drobo is a highly elegant storage solution.  If my requirements were for a USB-based drive sitting on my desk directly connected to my workstation, I would likely buy a Drobo.  Unfortunately, the Drobo falls behind in network and more advanced features. 

I have long been attracted to the WHS platform.  And in this informal survey I was leaning heavily towards WHS.  But I want to run WHS 2011 -- and that presents two significant problems: To date, only one major manufacturer has announced a WHS 2011 box.  Unfortunately, there is no firm release date in sight for the RevoCenter -- and I don't want to wait.  That leaves me with the option of upgrading an existing, end-of-life WHS box (such as the HP MediaSmart Server EX495).  But this is not a simple task, as documented on many blogs and I'm not in the mood for a weekend project of this scale.

The second problem with WHS 2011 is the loss of the Drive Extender feature in 2011.  No one seems to understand why Microsoft did this... but it is a game-changer -- because it means if you want disk redundancy, you're managing RAID on your own.  Having managed a few RAIDs personally & professionally, I can confidently say "No Thanks!"

One of my good friends, Dave Sobel, recommended a home-made WHS 2011 box managing content on a Drobo.  This solves the Drive Extender issue, but I'd still have to build the WHS 2011 box from scratch.  This may be a compelling solution from a technology perspective, but it's also quite a bit more expensive.  And I'd prefer to keep my storage solution to a single box.  But Dave gets an "A" for creativity.

And the winner is... ReadyNAS!

The ReadyNAS is clearly the best match between features and performance.  ReadyNAS satisfies all of my major requirements (and has at least something for my minor requirements).  


So tomorrow, I will place an order for a diskless Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 and 4 Western Digital Caviar Black hard drives.


I'll let you know how it goes!

I need a new NAS Part IV

The Nice-to-Haves and Pricing...

In my previous two posts, I've described my most critical criteria for selecting a new NAS -- as well is the "next most important" criteria.  Here, we'll talk about "nice-to-haves" and wrap-up with a pricing comparison.

Automated PC Image Backup

One of the really nice features of WHS is the tight integration with Windows clients -- enabling a number of scenarios, including direct PC imaging and backup.  

Today, I accomplish this by running Acronis TrueImage Home from my laptop; I do not run it from my wife's laptop (too expensive; too much work to set up).  


For my laptop, Acronis creates an image locally and copies it to the fileshare on the NAS.  

However, just like the ability to backup directly to the cloud, I admire the elegance of a centrally managed solution.  WHS is the clear winner.

Applications

WHS is a clear winner here, with over 100 apps written specifically for the platform by an active and engaged community and professionals.  And the Windows Server heritage means it can run a lot more.  

Even though the Drobo has an app community, the ReadyNAS slips ahead with a Silver medal due to the larger community and app base.  

Although I don't think I'll run a great many third party apps, I liked the interest placed by the community.

Winner: WHS, Silver Medal: ReadyNAS

Flickr Synchronization

I've long used Flickr to manage my photos online .  The hardest part is finding the time to upload & curate my collection.   An app on the WHS platform offers  fix for this problem, syncing photos between the WHS folders and Flickr: Photosync.  That said, this is a user-provided app, and does not appear to be trouble-free. 

ReadyNAS offers an interesting alternative --  Photos II, an officially supported add-in allowing you to host your own photo site from the ReadyNAS.  That said, I've tired of the concept of hosting my own web services out of the house.  I think communities such as Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly even Facebook have rendered the "do-it-yourself" photo site concept obsolete.  But this is still a cool app I wouldn't mind trying.

No published functionality for Drobo related to Flickr (or other photo sites).  There are no real winners here, so I'm giving WHS a Bronze (nothing for ReadyNAS or Drobo).

Pricing

I performed a fairly extensive comparison of pricing across the three platforms, including the cost of additional drives: I wanted latest/greatest technology - little or no compromises.  I settled on the Western Digital Caviar Black line -- Western Digital's top performer in the prosumer internal hard drive space.  Drive specs are:

• 1TB
• SATA III
• 7200 RPM
• 64MB Cache

These drives come in under $200 each on Amazon.com.  


So I developed pricing based on 4 of these drives per machine.  The WHS box -- the HP MediaSmart Server -- is the only box I compared that included a hard drive (1).  The Drobo FS and Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Plus are both typically sold "drive-less".  So for purposes of pricing comparison, 3 additional drives were priced for the WHS box and 4 drives each for the Drobo and ReadyNAS.

The result is pretty much a push:

• Drobo FS: $1,372.94
• Netgear ReadyNas Ultra 4 Plus: $1,401.33
• HP MediaSmart Server EX495 (WHS): $1,393.97

In the next & final post, results will be announced!

I need a new NAS Part II: the Evaluation

I need a new NAS Part II: the Evaluation

My NAS failed last month, so I've been researching a replacement.  I've identified the following criteria, in a rough order of priority:

Most Important:

• Basic File Sharing
• Advanced Media Sharing
• Storage Technology & Expand-ability

Important:

•  Direct Backup to the Cloud
• UPS Protection
• Remote Access

Nice-to-have:

• Automated PC Image Backup
• Applications
•  Flickr Synchronization

I'm going to award medals for each "contest": 

• Gold (4 points)
• Silver (2 points)
• Bronze (1 point)

Ties are possible (it will also be possible to not get a medal at all)!

A note on methodology: Although I have specific hardware models in mind for each of these storage solutions, for purposes of comparison I'm going to work at the platform level (i.e. ReadyNAS vs. Drobo vs. Windows Home Server).  The only exception will be pricing -- in which I compare actual pricing of the specific models.

Basic File Sharing

So my most basic requirement, basic file sharing is, well, basic.  By basic filesharing I mean your most basic Windows CIFS or SMB/Samba-style file sharing.

I have two use cases:

1. Central file share for media sharing by other devices.  Today, that's primarily my Sonos music system -- one of my most favorite geek toys EVER (even my wife LOVES Sonos).  I also want to share other types of content with devices around the home -- namely video and photo -- but I'm not currently doing that (more on that below).

2. Synchronization/backup of personal content.  I use the very excellent Allway Sync by Botkind, Inc. to synchronize media across my laptop and my wife's laptop using the NAS as the go-between.  The end result is the same content available across the three devices.  I did my own bake-off of synchronization tools several years ago and ended up with Allway Sync.  It has given me no reason to consider switching. 

My primary use case for a "sync" tool over conventional backup software was photography (LOTS of photos) and the preference for each laptop in the household to work on photos locally (rather than over a network connection).  


We use Picasa to manage our photos and Allway Sync reliably tracks every new photo (whether it was loaded to my laptop or my wife's laptop).  It also tracks every tweak of IPTC metadata (i.e. keywords and description) allowing us to edit even photo metadata and have it persisted.

There are some anecdotal reports that early versions of Drobo FS had network performance issues.  Nonetheless, I trust that each of the three storage solutions will function equally well for my two use cases.

Advanced Media Sharing

DLNA or the Digital Living Network Alliance is an emerging standard for media sharing across a variety of devices found in the home.  DLNA support can be found in set top boxes from many television service providers as well as gaming systems such as the XBOX 360.  My vision is to use my XBOX 360 in our rec room to watch the dozens of videos we've recorded with our iPhones and point and shoot cameras (we don't yet have much content recorded with our full HD camcorder).  I'm also hoping that there will be DLNA support in my DirecTV STBs in my other rooms, but I won't hold my breath -- this may require a TV upgrade or purchase of another low-cost streaming box such as the WD TV Live.

DLNA support across my three storage solutions is a bit lumpy:

ReadyNAS claims to support DLNA natively, albeit as an add-on.

WHS requires Twonkyserver, a 3rd-party application/add-on.  Although Twonkyserver is not free, I don't have a problem with paying $19.95 for a well-regarded 3rd-party application.  That said, I'd prefer to have native functionality supported by my NAS provider.

Drobo has the weakest DLNA support, relegating it to a 3rd-party community-developed app.

So for Advanced Media Sharing, the nod goes to ReadyNAS, with a Silver Medal to WHS and a Bronze to Drobo.

Storage Technology & Expand-ability

I currently have more than 200GB of data backed up to Amazon S3.  This includes MANY thousands of pictures (and short video), music and documents.  Our usage has expanded rapidly with the advent of HD video recording on our handheld devices -- namely, the iPhone 4.  So I would like to have at least 1TB with both expand-ability and redundancy.

RAID or Redundant Array ofInexpensive Disks is a venerable technology, used extensively in enterprise applications for decades.  RAID is only recently making its ways into consumer applications as the need for reliable storage of media and personal content skyrockets.  RAID is far too complex for the average consumer to configure and maintain, so many technology companies have introduced abstractions of the standard that simplify configuration and maintenance.  

Drobo has BeyondRaid.  Netgear has X-RAID.  The original Windows Home Server has Drive Extender.  Each of these technologies does a great job of masking the complexities of data redundancy from the end-user.  I personally can't identify a specific advantage of any one over the others -- so I would rate this as a three-way tie.  

Unfortunately, Microsoft pulled Drive Extender from the new version ofWHS -- Windows Home Server 2011 -- meaning if you want to run a WHS 2011 box -- you're left to managing RAID on your own.  While original WHS boxes are still readily available, I want an upgrade path that won't require me to start managing my own RAID configurations.  

So the nod for best storage technology is a tie between ReadyNas and Drobo.

So ReadyNAS is out to an early lead:

• ReadyNAS: 12 points
• Drobo: 7 points
• WHS: 7 points

My next post will address my next series of criteria ("Important").

In Search of NAS...Part I

In my last post I discussed the failure of my four and a half-year old home NAS.  Here are the three solutions I evaluated for a replacement:

Drobo FS

The Drobo or "Data Robot" has a an extremely loyal following.  I like to think of the Drobo as the "Mac" of NAS devices.  Simple, elegant, attractive.  Drobo's claim to fame is the ability to add any combination of disks (at any time).  This not only protects your data, but allows you to mix disks of different sizes - very easy!  Drobo started with USB and Firewire-based models, but now has a true NAS -- the Drobo FS.


Microsoft Windows Home Server

I've long been a fan of Microsoft Windows Home Server or WHS.  I actually attended meetings at Microsoft in 2005 -- before we all had TeraBytes of data in our homes -- and asked the question: how do you propose people manage this onslaught of data?  The Microsoft product manager winked at me and said they'd have a solution for that soon.  That product would be WHS.  HP released a line of WHS-powered devices that were well-regarded, but never quite took off.  The product line was recently discontinued.  Nonetheless, they are readily available "new" from a variety of retailers.

Netgear ReadyNAS

Netgear now owns the ReadyNAS line and markets it to both prosumers and small businesses.  ReadyNAS offers a similar technology to Drobo -- supporting hot swappable drives of varying sizes.  Like Drobo, this is essentially a proprietary abstraction layer built on top of the venerable RAID standard.






I used the following criteria to evaluate these products:

1. Storage Technology
2. Basic File Sharing
3. Advanced Media Sharing
4. Remote Access
5. Direct Backup to the Cloud
6. UPS Protection
7. Applications
8. Automated PC Backup
9. Flickr Synchronization
10. Pricing

I'll walk through each of these criteria in my next post.

I need a new NAS!!!

So my Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ failed fabulously last month...


The ReadyNAS had served me well since it was acquired in early 2007.  In fact, I bought it before Infrant was acquired by Netgear.  I knew something was wrong when I walked into our server / fitness / music room and smelled something burning.  I called my wife downstairs and she almost called the fire department -- until we noticed the lights out on the ReadyNAS.


So my new project is what to do to replace it.


The Good News...  I lost no data.  I have a fairly rigorous backup methodology that includes synchronizing data (via the ReadyNAS) between my laptop and my wife's laptop.  Additionally, the ReadyNAS itself backed up all volumes once a week to an attached USB drive.  And if that wasn't enough, each laptop backs up to Amazon S3 nightly utilizing JungleDisk.  


So I typically have the data in 5 places:
1. ReadyNAS
2. My laptop
3. My wife's laptop
4. Attached USB drive
5. Amazon S3


So scratch the NAS, I'm still looking pretty good.

So I solicited my techie friends who came up with three ideas for a replacement:

1. Drobo
2. Microsoft Windows Home Server
3. Another Netgear ReadyNAS

In my next post, I'll walk through the criteria I used to evaluate each of these solutions for my unique situation.