Disk/Volume Encryption

I'd like to see Truecrypt embedded into the Readynas. They have Linux versions for Suse and Ubuntu.....

Basically, Netgear is ignoring all the requests to add a basic and common feature such as Encryption
Makes me wonder why I purchased a ReadyNAS, it's a shame I am past the 10day return policy as this stack of junk is useless without encryption.

It is not being ignored. It is a considered item, but other things come first, like 3TB drive support, IPv6, etc etc.

chirpa has a thread where he has tested encryption using EncFS. See http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=29874 which demonstrates that he has had a look into it.

Doing this is unsupported, but if you have the technical knowledge to do it, you can go ahead and set it up.

We have been testing Q-Nap, Thecus and Synology rack mount units for this very reason.
With EMR & personal data now under HIPAA, HiTech and CMR-17a not having customer or
Medical data encrypted is a litigious liabilty we are no longer willing to accept.
So far Q-Nap leading on features and Interface with Synology having the best support
Among competitors.
Has Netgear stifled Infrant innovation?
To bad! We loved (sic) this product!

You could use iSCSI targets, get your server to mount them using an initiator and encrypt the data and then share that out across your network.

whcp wrote:
Has Netgear stifled Infrant innovation?

No. The ReadyNAS team is run as a separate business unit. Btw the entire x86 line, NVX, Ultra, Pro, 2100, 3200, 3100, 4200 has been introduced by NetGear.

Many new features have been added. Obviously not all can be added at once, and some remain on a wishlist for longer than others. As chirpa mentioned there are new features which are important
to more users than encryption, that NetGear can be expected to address first.

You can see many Jedi from the Infrant days still on the forums e.g. yoh-dah. It's the same guys driving the development of the ReadyNAS line.

whcp wrote:
To bad! We loved (sic) this product!

It's still a great product. If a new feature is added it has to be reliable, have proper QA testing etc. Adding encryption is a complex task requiring a range of concerns to be addressed, here's a few of them
that I can think of:

1. How to encrypt the data? (there are a range of ways of doing this).
2. How to make this stable?
3. Testing performance of various degrees of security and determining appropriate levels to offer.
4. Simple GUI that is easy to use.
5. How to integrate this feature so that you can use both encrypted and non-encrypted shares side by side.
6. Consider implications for backup of data and data recovery.

chirpa wrote:
It is not being ignored. It is a considered item, but other things come first, like 3TB drive support, IPv6, etc etc.

Some of the threads I've seen asking for 'encryption' are dated back over two years so how is it not being ignored?
3TB disks don't even have a release date and this is more important?
IPv6 is a long way from being enforced and which ISP in the UK provides IPv6 services as standard?

You need to get priorities right, more and more customers will demand encryption. It should be at the top of your list....

immy wrote:
3TB disks don't even have a release date and this is more important?

WD has just released a 3TB Green disk. Admittedly whilst this isn't something you'd want to use in a business NAS e.g. rackmount, testing it will help. Once enterprise 3TB disks are released if NetGear's got things working with the consumer 3TB disks on the consumer models, it'll hopefully be able to be quicker with qualifying enterprise 3TB disks for the rackmount solutions. People purchase ReadyNASes to have loads of storage. The use of 3TB disks is important to far more ReadyNAS users than those will use encryption.

immy wrote:
IPv6 is a long way from being enforced and which ISP in the UK provides IPv6 services as standard?

There are many request for IPv6 support. Things are moving towards the use of IPv6. IPv4 addresses are running out. It's an important feature to be added.

immy wrote:
You need to get priorities right, more and more customers will demand encryption. It should be at the top of your list....

Encryption is a nice feature, but it's not the most important. NetGear can't bring everything they want to in at once and they have to prioritise.

immy wrote:
Some of the threads I've seen asking for 'encryption' are dated back over two years so how is it not being ignored?

A few years ago, the ReadyNAS Pro was the only x86 ReadyNAS product. Sparc ReadyNAS are too slow to make it worth bothering to use encryption.

A range of features that take advantage of the Intel CPUs performance have been added over time e.g. iSCSI, Rsync over SSH to name a few.

Priority has to be placed on the core feature set such as supporting higher capacity hard drives and essential networking features over adding complex new features.

For now, there are ways you can work around there being no encryption feature on the ReadyNAS e.g. by mounting an iSCSI target using an initiator on a Windows Server, encrypting the data there and sharing it from there

mdgm wrote:
Encryption is a nice feature, but it's not the most important. NetGear can't bring everything they want to in at once and they have to prioritise.

As a Business user I can assure you Encryption is very important and anyone that thinks otherwise needs to re-evaluate how data is stored on removable media.
I have tested Encfs and it's performance in paranoia mode is abysmal:

ReadyNAS-PRO:/c/home/xyz# dd if=/dev/zero of=.speedtest bs=1024 count=500000
500000+0 records in
500000+0 records out
512000000 bytes (512 MB) copied, 2.1665 seconds, 236 MB/s

ReadyNAS-PRO:/c/home/xyz# dd if=/dev/zero of=~crypt/.speedtest bs=1024 count=500000
500000+0 records in
500000+0 records out
512000000 bytes (512 MB) copied, 51.5132 seconds, 9.9 MB/s