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GeekNights 080204 - Network Attached Storage

RymRym
edited February 2008 in Technology
Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about N.A.S. (Network Attached Storage), but not S.A.N. () In the news, Microsoft has bid for Yahoo, and WE WON!

Scott's Thing - Superbowl Highlights
Rym's Thing - Military Fanboy

Comments

  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    Apparently, Rhode Island's Democratic Primaries are on March 4th. So I got to wait a month before I can vote for Barrak Obama. It's a shame Richardson dropped out, I would have voted for him had he made it.
  • DaikunDaikun
    edited February 2008
    The Microsoft takeover of Yahoo! reminds me of this old Penny Arcade strip.

    I gave up on Yahoo! years ago. They've done nothing new or special over the years, and all of their site's features can be accessed on other sites in far superior formats.

    Maybe if this happened 5 years ago, I would've cared, but now, not even the Microsoft merger (or a buyout from any company, for that matter) could save them at this point.
    Post edited by Daikun on
  • merry_minstrelmerry_minstrel
    Aren't combat shotguns banned by some international convention?
  • KatsuKatsu
    Aren't combat shotguns banned by some international convention?
    The only bans that I'm aware of are the national assault weapon bans enforced by some countries. As far as I know there are no international war conventions that forbid the use of combat shotguns.
  • yehakenyehaken
    edited February 2008
    Thing of note: Yahoo doesn't have the legal option of saying "no" to Microsoft's offer. Basically Jerry Yang (el CEO) has a fiduciary obligation to the shareholders to maximize shareholder value. (Otherwise he could just sell Yahoo to his mom for 20 bucks). So despite the burning hatred Yang has for all things Microsoft, he is legally barred from hoisting the finger. The offer was for $31/share (at the time of the offer the stock was trading at $19).

    It will be most interesting (puff pipe, stroke beard) if Yahoo's board votes the offer down. Because then if MSFT really wants to it can just start stacking the board with guys like Esteban Balmero (whose mustache looks a little too waxed to be real) or The Social. Well actually you have to appoint people and not personified metanouns.

    Also, you can get up to 11 Buffaloes (previously thought to be 8 until the Ithaca convention of 2002):

    For purposes of illustration:
    Buffalo the Bovine = Cow
    Buffalo the verb = Swindle
    Buffalo the city = Detroit
    words in parens are there for illustrative purposes and will be omitted in practise.

    Detroit cows (that) Detroit cows swindle (themselves) swindle (the) Detroit cows (that) Detroit cows swindle.

    Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.
    Post edited by yehaken on
  • AprecheApreche
    Yahoo doesn't have the legal option of saying "no" to Microsoft's offer.
    You just contradicted yourself. Yahoo refers to the company as a whole. We never said Jerry Yang can say no, we said Yahoo can say no if the board votes it down. Unless you think that the board of Yahoo is not part of Yahoo?
  • ChaseChase
    edited February 2008
    I was thinking of doing something like this when I get my new computer in a few weeks. This episode was actually perfect timing!
    Post edited by Chase on
  • ClassicClassic
    I was wondering, as far as backing up the NAS, would it be possible to set up a RAID within the NAS?
  • ......
    I was wondering, as far as backing up the NAS, would it be possible to set up a RAID within the NAS?
    Didn't they mention this? Raid 6 NAS with an insane amount of drives at IBM?
  • RymRym
    I was wondering, as far as backing up the NAS, would it be possible to set up a RAID within the NAS?
    It's kind of assumed and expected that a good NAS will have RAID. That is a live backup solution, but not an archival backup solution: it only protects you from one kind of problem.

    You need another NAS, or a single very large NAS, and software to provide archival backups.
  • ClassicClassic
    I was wondering, as far as backing up the NAS, would it be possible to set up a RAID within the NAS?
    Didn't they mention this? Raid 6 NAS with an insane amount of drives at IBM?
    Sorry if they did talk about it. I listened this morning on the train and I zone in and out according to how much attention I have to pay to where I'm going.
  • George PatchesGeorge Patches
    Aren't combat shotguns banned by some international convention?
    Not shotguns, but .50 BMG is banned from use on humans.

    That shotgun is wicked cool, but it looks complicated and thus is probably pricey.
  • navelfluffnavelfluff
    Just a thought about Microsoft's bid on Yahoo: Outside of the US Yahoo isn't such a big thing. Personally I have never used any of their services, and I very rarely hear any mention of Yahoo any apart from Scrym's discussions every now and then. I just thought of two reasons why Microsoft might be going for Yahoo:
    1) They are once again proving that they have no idea on how to succeed on teh internets by betting on a dying horse, or
    2) this could actually give a good synergy effect. They can use Yahoo to get a bigger piece of the cake on the US internet marked, and at the same time use MS's global reputation to promote the Yahoo services in the rest of the world.

    I'm not sure what I believe.
  • ThaedThaed
    I really enjoyed the NAS discussion. I now have two FreeNAS servers and it's given me a ton of flexibility. Rym's idea of having a separate network for a NAS is intriguing. It certainly would help with security. Of course, I'd have to buy more NICs and switches, but it sounds like a fun project. The thing I really like is that now when I build more computers, I won't spend money on big hard drives because I'll most rely on NAS storage.

    (I am tempted to buy old SAN parts and build a SAN at home just to prove Rym wrong. It would be cool, but silly as I get what I need from a NAS).
  • yehakenyehaken
    Yahoo doesn't have the legal option of saying "no" to Microsoft's offer.
    You just contradicted yourself. Yahoo refers to the company as a whole. We never said Jerry Yang can say no, we said Yahoo can say no if the board votes it down. Unless you think that the board of Yahoo is not part of Yahoo?

    My apologies--I thought you said something like "the fact that Yahoo couldn't immediately say no..." which I (mis) interpreted as meaning the company, not its board. But I thought a public company and its board are supposed to be independent? If they simply adopted the plan of prefixing the company name with the letter B when talking about the board (byahoo, bboeing) none of this would have ever happened.
  • RymRym
    Outside of the US Yahoo isn't such a big thing.
    Well, outside of the US and southeast Asia, the Internet isn't that big of a thing (yet). ^_~

    Yahoo is huge here still: they just cater to an older and less tech-savvy demographic.
  • Dr. TimoDr. Timo
    Yahoo doesn't have the legal option of saying "no" to Microsoft's offer.
    You just contradicted yourself. Yahoo refers to the company as a whole. We never said Jerry Yang can say no, we said Yahoo can say no if the board votes it down. Unless you think that the board of Yahoo is not part of Yahoo?
    Actually the board only decides whether the takeover is friendly or hostile. If MS officially announces a tender offer for Yahoo at ,e.g., $10 over the current stock price for a minimum of 51% of the shares, then it's up to the individual stockholders whether the offer completes or not. Announcing it's intent to maybe make such an offer gives the Yahoo board a chance to decide on whether to cooperate with MS or, as it seems to be the case, look for someone else to sell to for a better price.

    The board voting yes means MS can get a look at Yahoos private information which may influence the specifics of the offer. The board voting no means MS has to make do with publicly available information about Yahoo. Either way it is still up to MS to go to the stock market and say "Anyone selling Yahoo to me for the next three weeks gets $10 above current market price iff I can get 51% that way".

    The obligation of a board to maximize shareholder profit gets kind of hairy when you look at it now. Basically you'd have to prove that the board saying yes and giving MS a look at the books would have resulted in a better offer.

    Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I have sold stock in a couple of firms via this mechanism.
  • ......
    Well, outside of the US and southeast Asia, theInternetisn't that big of a thing (yet). ^_~
    Nonsense! Burden of proof lies upon you Rym.
  • RedShirtRedShirt
    I don't recall anything specific recently on shotguns in the military. US troops are using them in Iraq, they are very handy for breaching doors for example. On the other hand, I do recall complaints by Germany during WWI (relating them to being too horrible to use on humans and violating the rules of war and somesuch).
  • rhinocerorhinocero
    Also, you can get up to 11 Buffaloes (previously thought to be 8 until the Ithaca convention of 2002):

    For purposes of illustration:
    Buffalo the Bovine = Cow
    Buffalo the verb = Swindle
    Buffalo the city = Detroit
    words in parens are there for illustrative purposes and will be omitted in practise.

    Detroit cows (that) Detroit cows swindle (themselves) swindle (the) Detroit cows (that) Detroit cows swindle.

    Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.
    Are you sure about that "only going up to 11" thing? Wikipedia says it can go to any length, and that seems to make sense, since you can just keep embedding relative clauses.
  • DaikunDaikun
    edited February 2008
    Microsoft has bid for Yahoo
    Yahoo! rejects Microsoft's bid.
    Post edited by Daikun on
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve
    I worked with a client this weekend who has 6 Windows boxes networked together and twice as many displays. He trades stocks from home and runs a number of programs to assist him. The problem is that he has a number of shared drives spread out over all of his machines. Would a NAS be a good solution for him to work as a fileserver?
  • AprecheApreche
    I worked with a client this weekend who has 6 Windows boxes networked together and twice as many displays. He trades stocks from home and runs a number of programs to assist him. The problem is that he has a number of shared drives spread out over all of his machines. Would a NAS be a good solution for him to work as a fileserver?
    A NAS would absolutely be a fantastic idea for him. However, there is one disadvantage of him moving all his separate shares to a single NAS, and that is he will have a single point of failure. If he moves to a NAS, he will have to implement some sort of backup solution. I suggest using Jungledisk to make nightly backups of the NAS. I just started using it to backup this forum and such.
  • HMTKSteveHMTKSteve
    I was thinking of a good RAID based NAS. Do you think a single drive NAS and the Jungledisk is a better idea?
  • AprecheApreche
    I was thinking of a good RAID based NAS. Do you think a single drive NAS and the Jungledisk is a better idea?
    RAID based NAS and nightly backups to jungledisk. If one drive fails in the RAID, just swap it out and awesome. If the RAID fails, or if something happens that causes important data on the NAS to get overwritten, etc. he can restore the data from the jungledisk.
  • George PatchesGeorge Patches
    I was thinking of a good RAID based NAS. Do you think a single drive NAS and the Jungledisk is a better idea?
    RAID 1 mitigates the risk of hard drive failure. However, it does not mitigate the risk of a complete failure of that computer. Although, if he doesn't have the same data on each computer right now, then he's got a single point of failure on each computer. Jungledisk is nice if he only needs a little bit of storage, but he might be better served with a NAS and an external hard drive. Or you could just show him how to consolidate his data into one folder and then just copy that to all his computers and upload it jungledisk to backup in case his house burns down. Buying more things isn't always the answer.
  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    edited June 2010
    So I finally did it. I built myself a neat little nas and put it on a private backplane (as suggested in the episode) inside my room.
    Here's the setup:
    • NAS:
      Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
      1.5GB PC2-3200 RAM
      FreeNAS 0.7.1

      Drives:
      Internal USB 2.0GB Flash for FreeNAS (used an empty motherboard usb header)
      3x 160GB IDE drives in a Software Raid 5
      1x 80GB IDE Drive
    It hooks up to a Belkin Wireless N router and I can connect to that either over ethernet or wireless.
    There is also another machine connected to the router which I will use to experiment with Windows Server 2003 and DNS/DHCP.

    My only gripe with this is thus: Windows can tell which connections have internet access and which don't; So when I am connect to my home network over wifi, why do I lose the ability to access the net once I connect to the NAS network via ethernet?
    Post edited by Victor Frost on
  • TechparadoxTechparadox
    Windows can tell which connections have internet access and which don't; So when I am connect to my home network over wifi, why do I lose the ability to access the net once I connect to the NAS network via ethernet?
    Is the Belkin router connected to the Internet somehow? If not, then there's your solution. If you're jacking directly into a router that has no connection to some sort of Internet gateway then no computer on its network is going to have access to the Internet, even if the other wireless adapter on your computer could normally access the internet via WiFi to your other router. I suggest checking out this KB article if you're running XP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894564
  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    edited June 2010
    No it's not. It's in my room, where the only internet availability is through wifi. I looked up the corresponding article for windows 7 and reordered my network adapters to make it try my wireless connection first, but to no avail. I even rebooted to see if that made a difference, but it didn't.
    Post edited by Victor Frost on
  • AprecheApreche
    So I got a NAS recently. This one if you are interested.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122010

    I put two 2TB Seagate drives in it. Despite drives being expensive right now, that allowed me to get a combo deal on Newegg for $100 off, which made the drives effectively $100 each, which is normal price. Later when prices are low again I can buy one more 2TB drive to double the available storage space from 2TB to 4TB. 2TB of the space is always going to be eaten by RAID parity. Years from now if I really need it I can add the fourth drive to make it 6TB. I'd say I will never need that, but I remember when Bill Gates said you would never need more than 640K of RAM.

    I do have a few complaints. It was a pain to setup. There were errors and I had to fiddle with firmwares and resetting it a bunch before it would initialize the drives properly and such. Also, once it was working, it took a very long time (overnight) before it was fully sync'd. The only major complaint is the noise. This fan be loud, yo. I think I might replace the fan with a quieter one as some others have done.

    Other than that, this is the most amazing ever. If you have more than one computer in your house, you must get one. I'm protected from a single drive failure, of course. Most importantly, I've network mounted my Documents, Videos, Music, Pictures, and Downloads folders on my desktop and HTPC. No more transferring or shit like that. It's just always ready to go on either machine.

    My next step is to do some file organization. Then make something that periodically backs up the irreplaceable files to S3/Google Docs/etc. Maybe I will also setup some dynamic DNS and VPN so that I can access the NAS in emergency situations when I am away from home.
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