One of the things that many network devices STILL get wrong in this day and age is initial connection. You have to know the special URL, and gods forbid if you have not used the 192.168.1/24 network, because that is the default for most devices. Even others that do DHCP do a horrible job of advertising where they are.

The second main peeve I have is that most network devices ship with really cheesy, I mean “64 slices of American cheese” cheesy, so called management software. Manglement software is more like it. Lets face it, most hardware shops that are cranking out the latest greatest network toys don’t invest heavily in software engineers.

I can’t say if Promise does or not, but the guys they have are at least competent. The software is easy to install on both Mac and Windows, and has a relatively small footprint for being a Java app. It launches in what they call a “Messenger Window”, I assume because it is vaguely similar to an IM client, and immediatly found my device on the network and had it ready to deal with. I should also mention that Finder did see the device at this point thanks to the NS4600 having Bonjour support baked in.

There are a few options in Messenger mode, and the only one that looked interesting was the WWW link to the web management. I logged on easy, and the menu tree was simple enough for me to understand and poke around in to get what I needed done. I am going to segue again here and say that, I thought it really silly to have an app that was essentially a bookmark for the web configuration tool. It took me some time, and some internet reading, to figure out that DOUBLE clicking on the device name in the “Messenger View” would launch a full featured app that would have let me do everything from an app. More on that later, I figured out the web way of configuring so that is what we will look at.

Setup

This was pretty easy, I assigned a static IP (I do not bother to run a DNS server on my home net, so all my network devices have a static IP), and then went to manage the disks. Configuring RAID 5 and starting the format was only a few short mouse clicks away, and then….time for a glass of wine and a cigarette, formatting 3.5 TB of RAID 5 disk took it some time. Not dinging it here, this only needs to happen once in theory, so it is fine.

After that was done, a quick check and yes, all the default folders were shared, all ready to serve to Mac, Windows, or *nix. Plugins next, the basics were enabled by default, a DNLA media server, and an iTunes server. All pretty slick.

Creating users and giving them rights was also easy enough to do, all of the tasks needed to get everything setup and ready to go was very straight forward. I had a NAS, and a media server!

Testing…testing…1, 2, 3…

So at this point I am very impressed, everything not only works as advertised, it was very easy to get working. Time for a few tests then, as I am in the profession of blowing up network devices for a living, it is a point of professional pride that I break this puppy at least once in the course of “normal” operation.

I upload the first three seasons of Trailer Park Boys to the video folder and fire up my PS3. The PS3 sees the DNLA server immediately and within seconds I am sitting back to watch an episode of Ricky, Bubbles, Julian and the rest of the gang. Streaming stutters a lot…which ends up being my WiFi connection (I need to update all my AP’s, just not gotten around to it yet, stay tuned for that in later posts ). After Plugging the PS3 directly into the Gigabit network, stutter is gone, and video plays very smoothly. Spoiler alert! Ricky and Julian go to jail.

Next up, Time Machine! The NS4600 advertises Time Machine backup support out of the box. But how…? I mount a backup folder and load Time Machine, it does not see the mount, I am not surprised. Check the documentation, ahh…they do something funny with the mount process and I have to use the app. How do I get the app window in the documentation though? I try a few things, and finally glean the small print in the documentation that I need to click on the device n the “Messenger View” and then double click to launch the app. Clumsy, and not really intuitive. This is the first real disappointment with the device or the software though, so I am not too upset. I follow the directions, go to the folder mount view, and try to mount a Time Machine folder. The little clicky box for Time Machine mount is not there. I try another folder, nothing. I try a new folder, nothing. I start trying a lot of things then, nothing. No Time Machine support. I dredge through the documentation, the Promise online support, search Google…nothing. Google let me down!!! This test is marked a failure, my ego is stoked, but I am rather pissed because Time Machine was one of the big reasons I bought the device. I have a very mixed environment on my home network, and backing up my Macs was a necessary requirement. I ponder a bit, and bet the problem is Snow Leopard. There were a lot of Java issues with Snow Leopard, and this is a Java app.

Windows backups work easy and as advertized, but it is a bit useless for me, as Windows is really only gaming for me and not much data there. At this point…

Houston, we have a problem!

Time to file a support ticket. I load the Promise support site, create an account and file the ticket. I go to bed and, after a sleep filled with packet tracing dreams, I go to work. By noon, my ticket has been updated with a request for a screenshot of the window. I moan and curse the travesty of first line support, when I get home, I try to load a screenshot on the site. The site is using IIS, it crashes trying to upload a file.

At this point I am pissed. I load the screenshot to flickr and give them a URL, I also paste in the IIS crash log. A week goes by, nothing is updated on the ticket. Alright, I call in and wait on hold, get hung up on, and then call in again and wait on hold. I finally get to talk to a support guy. He is pretty eager to get my problem solved. He says the ticket is waiting on a screenshot. I calmly explain to him that the support site crashes every time I try that, and he should use the flickr URL. He does, and has a look. He asks a few sane questions and then asks if I can hold a bit while he talks to the developer. This is good progress so I grudgingly hold again. He returns shortly and tells me the developer is out on lunch, and can he call me back later. I sigh to myself and agree, they NEVER call back.

I wait most of the afternoon for a callback, and later, check my email. The ticket has been updated saying this is a known issue and there should be software available on October 30th. Oh well, I understand that Snow Leopard is new, and that Apple did change things in the network Time Machine mounts, so this is fine.

Today is November 4th, no software posted yet, I think I will call tomorrow. In the mean time, I love the media server. Slide shows are easy, movies stream well, and my entire iTunes Library now resides on the server. Even my iTunes on Mac and PC use the mount as the primary iTunes library with no problems at all. Hopefully, I will be backing up my Macs before the year is out.

The rest of it

This has turned out to be a good investment. It will be a great investment once they figure out the Time Machne support for Mac.

There was complaints about the UI on Mac looking too much like a PC port, but honestly, it is laid out well, and easy to use. If it does not look quite like an OS X app, I am ok with that. It functions well, and is laid out well, and really, we are talking about a network device, so you cannot ask for more!

Power consumption is low, and the Wake On LAN is fantastic. I never have to wait more than a second or two for the device to wake up and start serving me media, or files, or whatever. The fact that my media playing devices all just see the device and use it is icing on the cake.

My one gripe is pretty much a non-intuitive double click. Assuming that is, that Snow Leopard support is coming soon.

I hope you enjoyed my walk through of the Promise NS4600. Tune in again for more networking run downs and walk through goodness. Next up, the PS3 Slim!

Why it took so long to get one

For a self professed network geek, I had resisted a home NAS for a long time. Home NAS boxes have been relatively affordable for quite some time now, and the market is starting to get flooded. So why, as a network geek, have I relied on mirrored drives, USB and eSATA external drives, rather than embracing network storage?

That, dear reader, is a good question. Well, it is a good question if you are non-technical, or just believe the marketing crap forced down your throat by companies like Buffalo and Netgear. Don’t get me wrong, I love both of those companies for a lot of cheap network devices they both provide to the public, but in the storage arena…lets just say it has not been favourable. Here is a short list of reasons I have resisted till now, and these reasons are not restricted to the two companies above.

1. Speed – Until recently, home NAS has been a good backup solution, and not much more. The performance for home NAS until recently have been dismal and not worth it for streaming or working off of.
2. Features – Most home NAS until now has fallen into two categories, feature laden and bogged down, or feature stripped and cheap.
3. Reliability – Many of the home NAS solutions have been two disk solutions, leaving you to stripe the disks to eek out every ounce of speed you can, or mirror and suffer hellish performance.
4. Disk Size – Until recently, disks have not been large enough to make a NAS economical, especially with any RAID that has data redundancy.
5. Price – The only way to get a decent home NAS until recently has been to pay through the nose, all of the cheap offerings have pretty much been, “get what you pay for” options.
6. Buggy Firmware – Too many issues with firmware, updates, and just instability on the devices.

That is the gist of it anyway. Too little for too much money.

At this point,  had tried almost all of them. My father in law was an early adopter, and had the Buffalo TeraStation which I mucked about with. I had tried the Netgear paltry offering,  also played with other friends NAS devices of all sorts, including the home built Linux ones. The Linux ones were somewhat intriguing, but were built on standard PC hardware, and sucked up too much juice.

I had also played around with a variety of media servers too, again, built on PC hardware, to stream to my GoVideo device. Those all failed, and I ended up with an iPod dock connected to my TV and stereo which worked quite well.

So, I consoled myself with USB 2.0, Firewire, and even, at the end, eSATA drives. Yeah, they were a pain, and no, I didn’t have a streaming server, but my data was safe.

Our hero gets a NAS

So, what has changed? Well, for starters, 1TB, 1.5TB, and even 2TB disks have arrived and entered the affordable price range. Second, Gigabit networks are prevalent in the home, and more importantly, on every NAS box. Thirdly, the concept of a “Home Server” for backups, media streaming and file sharing have become accepted at the consumer level (and leveraged by consumer devices like the PlayStation 3 and the xBox 360), and matured enough to be in firmware. I really hate to credit Microsoft here, but for me, they actually started to turn the tide in the ugly, overpriced NAS having to provide a bit more features, and provide higher reliability and compatibility.

Microsoft released the Microsoft Home Server, a stripped down Windows server that was designed to run headless on what amounted to a NAS device. The really baffling part of it was when HP released the first Windows Home Server box and provided OS X Time Machine backup support! It even won a best of MacWorld award! On a Microsoft device…which could house more disk than any Time Capsule…and in RAID for redundancy. To me, this was the turning point. As it turns out, the Time Machine support was a really HUGE factor, and HP has been reaping the benefits of it.

I toyed with the idea of a Windows Home Server, even downloaded a trial copy, bought two 1.5TB disks and turned an old Dell machine I had sitting about into my Windows Home Server NAS test device. No, it did not have the HP Time Machine support, but I just wanted to see what it did have and if the HP would be my NAS. Alas, it was still Windows, with all the bloody Activation crap, tweaky settings, and general annoyances of Windows about it. I will give it this, it did what it advertised quite well, and it never crashed on me once, but it was still not to be for me. One of the major problems is you give up a lot of disk space just for the OS, really, this should be done in firmware. You just do not need a full Windows OS running to have a NAS and media server.

My trial copy ran out, I had a couple 1.5TB disks doing nothing, and at this point I was resigned to building a low power PC for a NAS box running Linux, or gettng a few more drive enclosures. Then Netgear releases ReadyNAS, and my hope is renewed. Speed is good, four disks, Mac and PC support, Raid 5, Media servers, and even a BYOD (Bring Your Own Disk) option. Price was still high, but somewhat tolerable. I started to research and look for deals, this looked like the device for me…

Enter Promise, and the NS4600N. Cheaper, fully featured, but only in BYOD options. The BYOD was not an issue for me, I can add up the numbers as well as the next person, and even with a nearly $400 price tag plus drives, this was almost too good to be true, plus it had Time Machine support! Was this it? Had the home NAS finally produced a winner for me? I had to find out. Off to newegg.com and make the investment. Promise has had a really good track record with me on all the RAID and drive controllers I had ever bought, so I made the plunge!

The unpacking and assembly

I unpacked it, and it was almost as f I was unpacking an Apple device. Minimalistic, the device, a CD, and a quickstart guide, an network cable(CAT6), and a power cord. Inside the device door, the four drive rails and the screws. A little more low budget than Apple devices, with simple Styrofoam bracing and the device, but the minimalistic, yet elegant presentation was there.

The device itself was very Apple in elegance through simplicity. The major difference being it was black, and not aluminum or white

The Promise SmartStor (yeah, they forgot the last ‘e’, no doubt a bloody marketing moron thought that up) NS4600N arrived on my doorstep with the two additional 1.5TB drives I ordered with it. I popped the two drives I already had (with Windows Home Server partitions still on them) as well as the two new drives into it. The drive rails were easy to attach, came with all the screws, and slid in easy. Time to power it up and see what it does with the drives and the Windows Home Server partitions.

Lights, no camera, action…

I plugged the NAS into my network, and attached the power cord and turned it on. The first thing I notices was a lot of pretty blue LEDs.

I need to segue here a bit and explain to any non-network geek that, blinky lights are like crack to a network person. Any networking lab, device, hub, switch, router, gateway, etc has blinky lights. Ask any network geek and they will tell you these blinky lights are the heart and soul of a network. Any good network guy can walk into a lab or wiring closet and get a feel for general network health just by gazing into the mesmerizing display of blinking LEDs. Don’t try to rationalize it, just accept it as part of the magic that networks are.

Ok, plugged in, but before turning it on…well, I do not read documentation, at least, not first off. I assumed the big button on the front of the device was power. I pushed it…and again…nothing. I was quite perplexed, and a lot worried I had gotten a dud. I had already placed it in my network closet, a bit high up so I was trying to find another button. Opened the bay door, nothing. I grabbed the quickstart guide and had a quick glance at the device picture wth the hardware features mapped out, ahh yes, the BACK of the device. In retrospect, it makes sense as you never really use the power button except that first time. The button in the front is for one touch backups, but it was an oddity to me that with the design being something for a desktop, it would place the main power in the back.

Once powered on though, the blinky lights were lit up like the 1st of July up north, and the 4th of July down south. I am not ashamed to admit I stood there and just watched the lights for a good couple minutes before proceeding.

Stay tuned for the rest of the walk through in the next post, where I get into the actual setup and use of the device.