Snap Appliance Snap Server 1100 NAS Device 238
~*77*~ writes "While taking up considerably less space than a shoebox, this little device seamlessly allows users to add additional storage to any network in less than five minutes. Today we review the Snap Appliance 80GB Snap Server 1100. This compact NAS (network attached storage) device has many great features including: 5 minute installation, a compact web and ftp server, or simply a network share. Most importantly it works in a network mixed with Windows, Netware, UNIX, Linux, and Macintosh machines... "
SNAP (Score:2, Informative)
Re:SNAP (Score:2)
Robust? Robust? Something tells me you're spending too much time reading their marketing literature. Reliable...ok. Scalable...sure. But robust? This isn't coffeee you're talking about.
Re:SNAP (Score:3, Informative)
" Powerfully built; sturdy. "
Of course, it's a word (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Of course, it's a word (Score:2)
In final, the SNAP server is ROBUST. And by that, I mean it is powerfully built.
Re:Of course, it's a word (Score:2)
Re:SNAP (Score:2)
Silly rabbit.
Re:SNAP (Score:2)
On that note, I want one of my own!
Re:SNAP (Score:2)
These things really are quite convenient (Score:2)
Being able to swap it out is also helpful should problems arise.
Re:These things really are quite convenient (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bet there are a lot of people like me out there. People who buy instant pancake mix and microwave burritos.
80 GB (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a Ximeta [ximeta.com] 250GB Netdisk and it works great for me. Sure it is not NFS and requires its own drivers- but it works for me.
Re:80 GB (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:80 GB (Score:2)
Details, please!
What OS ( I assume some Un*x variant, since you mention NFS), any problems with setup? Any issues in daily operation?
I am asking because I've been thinking about getting one of these things, mainly for backup of my home fileserver. I have noticed that they had a RH9 RPM for their software, but there seems to be very little info on the net about people using it with Linux.
Thanks,
Milalwi
we use a snap server at my work (Score:5, Informative)
Re:we use a snap server at my work (Score:2, Informative)
Re:we use a snap server at my work (Score:2)
Re:we use a snap server at my work (Score:2)
admin@snap1's password:
Last login: Tue May 4 10:09:58 2004 from 10.8.5.87
Snap Servers are optimized file serving storage appliances.
The secure shell utility SSH is provided to enable easy installation of
Snap Appliance Inc. certified and sanctioned backup agents only.
Snap Appliance Inc. is not responsible for the support of installed
third-party applications and cannot be held liable for system failures
and/or data loss which may ensue from improper use of command-line or
G
Does it support SMB ACL"s? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does it support SMB ACL"s? (Score:4, Informative)
Getting more common (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Getting more common (Score:2)
Well what I find funny about all this is on most occations there are comments (which get modded up) that contradict most of the statements made in the 'article', with suggestions for better alternative routes.
So unless they (Snap in this case) make a bunch of
Snap Webserver (Score:2, Funny)
rtfa... (Score:5, Funny)
From the article:
Key Features:
250GB, 160GB, or 80GB Capacities (reviewed item has 80GB capacity)
I guess I shouldn't fault Taco here. I'm sure he's busy fending off job offers from the Times, Post, WSJ, etc.
Re:rtfa... (Score:2)
Re:rtfa... (Score:2)
excellent (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.snapappliance.com/ is the company's website -- one might get more info out of it than the listed source. I visited as soon as the link went up and it was a slow load.
wow, nothing! (Score:2)
Anyone get a copy before the server imploded?
Not for the Adventurous (Score:2, Interesting)
Please.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Please.... (Score:2, Insightful)
5 minutes? (Score:2)
Re:5 minutes? (Score:2)
This is supposed to make it easier to install a drive, not replace internal storage. It's machine-independent, so you don't have to worry about putting it on a slow machine that's processing paycheques or anything.
It's like people who argue against bluetooth because we have WLAN - they're both for different purposes, and those not appreciating those differences slam the supposedly-weaker technology into the ground.
Cost is my question. (Score:2)
Re:Cost is my question. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're paying for a preconfigured, RAID-capable, networked storage device that requires one switch to turn on and is fully administered from a webpage. That means convenience, low power consuption and a small footprint. For some people, those factors are more important than pure size.
Re:Cost is my question. (Score:3, Interesting)
An Open Letter To All Future Small Time Reviewers (Score:5, Funny)
As you get too big for your britches and feel the need to post your 2-bit "review" (read: advertisement) on slashdot so you can get click-throughs and display money, please, for the love of God and all the 1s and 0s, use a reliable hosting company, and not your own l33t site off of your cable modem. When a story doesn't even have a post yet, and you are slashdotted, its time to seriously re-evaluate your how large you thought you were.
Sincerely,
TickleMeOzmo
(on behalf of the slashdot community)
Re:An Open Letter To All Future Small Time Reviewe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An Open Letter To All Future Small Time Reviewe (Score:3, Insightful)
The real question is about Taco: Were there no better stories then this today??? How lousy were the rejected ones?
You can always try another review site. (Score:3, Informative)
I have a stupid question... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I have a stupid question... (Score:3, Interesting)
And there still is that whole web/FTP server thing as well...
Re:I have a stupid question... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I have a stupid question... (Score:2)
Re:I have a stupid question... (Score:2)
With the latest versions of Samba and OSX, you can get practically anything talking to anything. Samba 3 even supports becoming an active directory controller (as well as logging on to one, and sharing file permissions).
It's reeeally easy to get linux/windows/osx on a network talking to each other easily. It's when you want macs with OS9 on the network that things go horribly wrong very fast. Everyone else plays together nicely :)
If the snap server runs linux, which I believe it does,
Re:I have a stupid question... (Score:3, Informative)
Case in point - We have a remote office that's about ten miles or so outside of city limits. Way out in the boonies. There's about 6-8 user
Re:I have a stupid question... (Score:2)
How you can pull that off without taking the server down is quite a trick. Care to post details of the procedure?
SNAP Experiences (Score:5, Interesting)
My only real complaint is backup can be annoying due to a lack of tape drive or any real backup feature on the device itself. You'll have to write some scripts or make use of an external package on another machine to get some sort of backup procedure going.
They seem to use normal IDE drives, so they WILL eventually fail. However, Snap Appliance went ahead and replaced one of our 1100s free of charge when the drive developed errors and the software update applied incorrectly while trying to fix it. This was despite the fact that the server was no longer under warranty.
All in all, beautiful little boxen.
Re:SNAP Experiences (Score:3, Informative)
All disk drives will eventually fail, whether they're IDE/ATA, SCSI or Fibre Channel. With IDE, you lose tagged command queueing, seek performance generally isn't as good (8-9ms vs 4-5ms for the latter disks), and you don't get 15k RPM spindle speeds (7200-10k is the maximum for IDE).
But, for a single-disk unit such as the SNAP server, those factors aren't all that important.
But why so expensive? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why so much? I can get a small 80GB headless desktop from parts, and install linux to give all the filesharing / print / web / ftp server for about $200. Charging an extra $300 basically for a cute case is not my idea of a breakthrough product.
Re:But why so expensive? (Score:3, Informative)
You're paying that $300 for a motherboard, PSU, memory, NIC, CPU, R&D and labour. It's actually a great deal.
Re:But why so expensive? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've yet to meet a sysadmin (with a job) that has enough spare time to do what you describe. Your time is worth (or should be) more than the $300.
I've installed four of these units for consulting clients and they are quite happy. Most of their happieness comes from everything being up and running in 10 minutes and they now have more storage space witho
They work out (Score:5, Informative)
But I guess it's good for those that havn't discovered the advantages with snap's yet.
Re:They work out (Score:2)
Sales sthick? (Score:4, Insightful)
Man (Score:5, Funny)
mine crashed in first week (Score:2, Interesting)
What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Am I missing some crucial point here?
I understand that to add more storage you might have to take a server down, etc.. But I guess when I see how much my company uses disk space, a 80GB anything would be filled probably within a month - seems like you would have money better spent on bigger drives.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Informative)
I guess it does provide a ftp/web server, but I think I could get a suitable box set up in an hour with all those things with at least triple the disk space.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, there are offices that don't have a server and don't need one. They just need a small box which is easy to setup, easy to use and does everything they need: store some files.
Can you run a multinational cooperation with thousands of user of theses things? no. A company with ca. 10 persons that is not in the IT business? sure.
$500 and no backup? (Score:5, Insightful)
For me to reach out and buy a server device like that, it's missing one thing: backup. If they included, say a DVD+/-R/RW drive, the price is still high. Is there something special about this drive? A RAID-5 hidden in that little box? Somehow, I doubt it.
Re:$500 and no backup? (Score:4, Informative)
The whole idea is you're paying for a solution you can install and forget about. Can't say the same about full blown fileservers.
Re:$500 and no backup? (Score:2)
Certainly I'd like one of these in my house, but cannot justify cost.
In fact, I am in the process of converting an old 150mhz notebook into network storage server. If you're wanting to do something at home inexpensively and gain hacker-enjoyment, this is the solution: n
SnapServers are great! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SnapServers are great! (Score:5, Funny)
That is so much begging for an acronym.
Gee Wally, that's super but.... (Score:2)
Really, I love the idea of plugging in the device and BooMfile sharing actioning is going on. But when you need to back up the data... what do you do? Buy another one? Hope nothing bad happens to the building it's in or the device itself?
something like a usb 2.0 / firewire / scsi connection for an external tape drive or even an external HD to back it up to would be ideal. Otherwise you've got all your data in one spot, which is fine until shit happ
Re:Gee Wally, that's super but.... (Score:2)
Grr... (Score:2)
Re:Gee Wally, that's super but.... (Score:2)
This would, I'm sure, fit well into existing infrastructure.
i.e. you've got a MS domain, or Active Directory, an existing Fileserver/tape backup unit.
But if you don't have existing infrastruture, and you want reliable backup, you need to purchase a second unit to mirror to, or a system with a tape drive.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Kind of (Score:2)
I wish Sun didn't kill off the Cobalt stuff. I wish Sun never bought them *sigh*
Empty NAS? (Score:3, Interesting)
My fiance and I are getting married in Feb, and I'm trying my best to hunt down print servers and network storage so we can combine our network in a sane fashion. The print server is already taken care of for the LaserJet 6L, but we have no decent network storage solution for my external hard drive. (also have no solution for her crappy HP color inkjet, but it'll probably break before we get hitched anyways *grabs a hammer*).
-DMZ
Re:Empty NAS? (Score:2)
j/k
You're probably better off just biting the bullet on that one, and getting the best deal on a cheap NAS you can find :)
Oerfect for an open project ? NAS storage ? (Score:3, Interesting)
To me this seems like the ideal candidate for a community-built project. More and more of us utilize servers at home and sometimes it might be just better to attach external storage-subsystems than building newer and bigger computers.
When I built my HomeServer the first option I was investigating was to modularize everything. However I had to discover, that this is not a good position: The stuff on the market just did not fit my needs: To expensive. Too "smallish". Too "touch-the-market" of AOL users. So I ended up with a ATX VIA board and a C3 Nehemiah CPU with a 3ch ICP Vortex S-ATA controller, a 2nd NIC and WLAN card.
However, I wonder, why the community does not create some own inventions, custom-tailored for private users and, most importantly, not limited in possibilites, due to fear of support-problems with AOL users.
A community built NAS could consits of a small embedded computer, with onboard hardware RAID own cache (min. 4ch S-ATA) and come with a good case. Cases have been built by the community. Embedded systerms also. So, why not ? :-)
Best would be to offer the board and driver/software and let customers build their own beast. Maybe with syste-boards, that can be combined to offer more power.
Anyone ? :-D
Are there open source hardware projects? (Score:2)
There are lots of software engineers working on free (as in speech) software projects. Are also computer engineers working on free (as in speech) hardware projects?
Snap 80 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Snap 80 (Score:2)
Backup anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never understood these things. Buy a FireWire or USB disk, but don't connect one of these things to the network.
Re:Backup anyone? (Score:2)
New slogan.. (Score:4, Informative)
"Twice the storage, half the reliability!"
Re:New slogan.. (Score:2)
Re:New slogan.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I bought one of these for a client that required push-button simplicity and data redundancy. Although expensive and a little slow on writes, this thing does the job well.
crap_on_you
They suck (Score:2, Informative)
Are you all talking about the same snap! server ? (Score:2)
Reliable? IBM DeskStar IDE drives in a RAID configuration is reliable? Right...
Frequent weird permissions problems, connectivity issues, etc etc. Not just on an older model, but also a new one we recently purchased as well....
I have one (Score:4, Informative)
It is more or less a pair of IDE hard drives with a hardware RAID. You can run them mirrored for half the space (aka 240G becomes a mirrored 120G) or as a single drive for full space.
The SNAPs can interface directly to a windows domain controller for user login security. Very slick, took about 20 minutes to get it up and running from zero knowledge.
This is the second SNAP device we have had, the first was a 40gig model a few years back. THis is also the second SNAP i've had fail. The first lasted two years before the cooling fan on the CPU inside failed and caused the device to lock up under any kind of normal load. Since the unit was out of warranty and the fan was too small to find a "home brew" solution we opted to upgrade. I have since removed the drives from the old device and passed them down to desktop machines.
My current SNAP (the 2200) just this week lost the secondary mirror disk. The unit has only been in use for 5 months and has seen very little usage day to day. Thankfully I was running in mirror mode (and had tape backups) so no data was lost. The unit locked up when the drive failed but after a reboot discovered its error and reported the failed disk on the admin info screen. I simply FTPed the data off the remaining drive and called their tech support number.
Snap's warranty service seems well structured, after 10 minutes on the phone and sending the consultant a couple log files I was issued an RMA number and instructed to send the unit back, once received they would ship another. If I needed immeadiate replacement I could give them a CC# and they would ship that day.
The only bad part about this is that I had thrown the box away...Keep the box, they require 2 inches of solid foam, or 3 inches of bubble wrap else you void the warranty...no peanuts.
SO if you are planning on either the 1100 or larger keep the box, run in mirror mode, and keep the units well cooled.
I like snaps and will continue to use them, I feel as though I may have just found the 1 in 5000 bad drives.
Another market Sun missed (Score:3, Interesting)
What about iSCSI? (Score:5, Interesting)
What WOULD make these kinds of devices make more sense would be iSCSI and the ability to dynamically expand an existing volume to use the new space over the network. I know there are some expensive SAN systems that can do this now, but iSCSI would make it a lot less expensive, using an existing or dedicated IP network to connect the devices instead of expensive fiber channel fabric.
DIY (Score:3, Informative)
I was looking at DIY something like this (since I am competent in building BSD/Linux systems from scratch):
- 3.5' IDE based HDD
- 3.5' or smaller form factor embedded linux/bsd based pc
- power supply
There seem to be a number of 3.5' ff embedded pc's, something like no less than 100-200mhz seemed ideal: just needs 16-32mb ram, onboard 100mb NIC and a serial port - anything else is a waste of money. Lots of taiwanese manufacturers making these. Some have inbuild 16mb SDRAM and inbuild CF or at least PCMCIA (for a CF adapter) to put the boot image on. The current drain on these systems I've seen a few quoted at ~4W, average seems to be 5-10W. Low power
Would be very interesting to hear anyone else who has done something like this, esp. re prices and suppliers, and appropriate CPU type/speed required to service ATA-100/133 + 100MB NIC, and whether 16mb SDRAM suitable.
Something like this I guessed would set me back no more than ~UK120GBP (incl. ~50-60 for 160gb HDD).
What about raid? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about raid? (Score:2)
I've had multiple of their 60G flavors when they were big and bad. You can set them up to do RAID-0 (useless IMHO) and/or RAID-1 (there's versions with multiple drives enclosed). I believe that they have RAID-5 versions as well...
I fortunately had MULTIPLE RAID-1 Snap! servers setup -- the main device (RAID-1) and a mirrored/backup to another RAID-1 Snap! server
Live-CD distribution? (Score:4, Interesting)
Be wary (Score:2)
Cheaper Solution for Home/Small Workgroup (Score:3, Informative)
80GB HardDrive [newegg.com] $70
Gigabit NIC* [dlink.com] $25
Pretty Case [mini-itx.com] $100
Linux [gentoo.org] Free*
Total ~280-305
*Optional
^Requires Initial Work (Maybe there is a handy Distro for this type of thing I don't know?)
BTW Newegg.com says they will carry mini-itx soon so prices may get much better in the US.
Hate. (Score:5, Insightful)
After much cajoling, the helpdesk admitted that wasn't strictly true, but Snap OS 4 would make it so, and add a glorious weath of new features into the bargin. So we sighed, and bought it.
Needless to say, it's now picking up about 70% of our Active Directory.
The moral of the story is: Don't buy hardware from companies that charge $100 to patch something that should have worked from the get-go.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What are you going to do with it? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What are you going to do with it? (Score:2)
network attached storage
You add it to your network, so users can store their files on it. You can add it without ripping a machine open, and it doesn't require space in a fileserver. It's installed in minutes, and if a fault occurs can be removed in seconds.
I take it you don't administer a network :-P
case insensitivity is not a 'bug', it's a feature. (Score:2)
Don't use something designed for Windows users, then apply *nix assumptions about filename case. Windows (since 95) has preserved case, but not considered it significant. When you're doing SMB shares, those are the rules to play by. (NFS can use di
Re:Why not Gigabit (Score:3, Insightful)