Re: NAS box options

["mark_harrison_uk2" <mph@xxxxxxx>]

Phil posts a good answer.

I guess that the extra things that the expensive NAS boxes do are let
you configure multiple BOXES as a single volume, and manage things
like striping and mirroring across them.

If what you want is a SINGLE "virtual big disk", and have several
NAS
boxes, this has some advantage over the "mount this disk at this
place" linux-approach, or "map this machine to this drive
letter"
Microsoft-approach.

It may well be that the lower end NAS boxes do this as well. I've
only used expensive ones, and NOT at home :-)

M.


--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, "Phil Harris" <phil@a...> wrote:
>
> > A NAS box is simply a cut-down PC, with a network card, and
> > *lots* of disk space configured as a share(s) for anyone that
> > want's to access it ?
>
> Well, commercial NAS boxes will normally have a web interface for
> configuration and will allow you to set up the usual sorts of
things that
> you would set up on servers (security, quotas etc) but for the kind
of stuff
> that we're using them for then we don't necessarily need all those
> facilities (and if you do need them then run something like Win2k
Server or
> 2003 Server and use remote desktop to administer it. (Yes, I know
Win2k
> Server / 2003 Server are expensive but being quite blunt I bet most
people
> here have copies of most of M$'s OS's).
>
> Phil