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ReadyNAS 1100 Unsatisfactory
I only recently learned how it felt to configure my ReadyNAS 1100's, because previously my sys-admin had been the one doing the work.
We invested in 2 ReadyNAS 1100 units a couple of years ago. One served as my backup NAS for almost 2 years. The point is, we initially configured it, and just left it alone and it worked until one day, it was not responding. The volume had failed, 2 disks at once, and never sent me a notification. The NAS was up and running, and I could login and see the failed volume, and looking in my email, I had received alerts within the past 2 months of the incident, but who knows when it went offline. In the end, after a few reboots, the power supply died, and it was RMAed. That was with 4.1.2 build.
Now, with my 2nd ReadyNAS, I have flashed to 4.1.6.
It is as slow as an i386. Why does the web interface on a device I paid $1200 for drag so much?? My Linksys routers are much snappier, not to mention my Cisco equipement (5505 and 5510 ASA devices).
On top of that, the setup seems to give no flexibility. RAIDar gives simple options, RAID 0, 1 or 5. I cannot select a pair of RAID1, and when I tried to configure a RAID 1 with 3 drives installed, but only selecting the first 2 (DESELECTING the 3rd drive) it went ahead and added it to the RAID 1 anyway. Then later, when I tried to remove it with the Remove button, it put the drive to Hot Spare status. I tried removing all drives from the C volume and/or deleting the C volume in order to start over with a fresh config, keep getting "Volume delete aborted". So in the end I had to do a Factory Default reset operation.
I have been burned one too many times by RAID5 and I really want to be able to config my 4 drives into 2 RAID-1s. I would rather I had spent my $$ on a couple of cheap 1U rack servers with Linux. I have used Dells sitting around with front-mount hot-swap SATA and U320. Yeh, it takes me the manual setup of NFS or CIFS shares, but at least I have some control over things. My ReadyNAS 1100 is the only device I own that feels like walking in mud when I configure it.
I do not like what I got for my $$ and would not encourage anyone to buy a ReadyNAS 1100. I feel like I am working with a $99 personal NAS appliance from Best Buy.
We invested in 2 ReadyNAS 1100 units a couple of years ago. One served as my backup NAS for almost 2 years. The point is, we initially configured it, and just left it alone and it worked until one day, it was not responding. The volume had failed, 2 disks at once, and never sent me a notification. The NAS was up and running, and I could login and see the failed volume, and looking in my email, I had received alerts within the past 2 months of the incident, but who knows when it went offline. In the end, after a few reboots, the power supply died, and it was RMAed. That was with 4.1.2 build.
Now, with my 2nd ReadyNAS, I have flashed to 4.1.6.
It is as slow as an i386. Why does the web interface on a device I paid $1200 for drag so much?? My Linksys routers are much snappier, not to mention my Cisco equipement (5505 and 5510 ASA devices).
On top of that, the setup seems to give no flexibility. RAIDar gives simple options, RAID 0, 1 or 5. I cannot select a pair of RAID1, and when I tried to configure a RAID 1 with 3 drives installed, but only selecting the first 2 (DESELECTING the 3rd drive) it went ahead and added it to the RAID 1 anyway. Then later, when I tried to remove it with the Remove button, it put the drive to Hot Spare status. I tried removing all drives from the C volume and/or deleting the C volume in order to start over with a fresh config, keep getting "Volume delete aborted". So in the end I had to do a Factory Default reset operation.
I have been burned one too many times by RAID5 and I really want to be able to config my 4 drives into 2 RAID-1s. I would rather I had spent my $$ on a couple of cheap 1U rack servers with Linux. I have used Dells sitting around with front-mount hot-swap SATA and U320. Yeh, it takes me the manual setup of NFS or CIFS shares, but at least I have some control over things. My ReadyNAS 1100 is the only device I own that feels like walking in mud when I configure it.
I do not like what I got for my $$ and would not encourage anyone to buy a ReadyNAS 1100. I feel like I am working with a $99 personal NAS appliance from Best Buy.
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mrjoltcola wrote: I only recently learned how it felt to configure my ReadyNAS 1100's, because previously my sys-admin had been the one doing the work.
Ok.mrjoltcola wrote: The point is, we initially configured it, and just left it alone and it worked until one day, it was not responding. The volume had failed, 2 disks at once, and never sent me a notification. The NAS was up and running, and I could login and see the failed volume, and looking in my email, I had received alerts within the past 2 months of the incident, but who knows when it went offline. In the end, after a few reboots, the power supply died, and it was RMAed. That was with 4.1.2 build.
Do you know if you have a copy of the logs from that NAS (taken from Status > Logs > Download All Logs). Do you remember/still have those emails? What were the errors they reported? I would not be surprised if the errors gave an indication that your disks were on the way out.
The PSU failing is one of the known problems that can occur with a ReadyNas. Replacing the PSU with another PSU designed for your ReadyNas or get a replacement ReadyNas via RMA as you did and things should work fine.mrjoltcola wrote:
Now, with my 2nd ReadyNAS, I have flashed to 4.1.6.
Good.mrjoltcola wrote:
It is as slow as an i386. Why does the web interface on a device I paid $1200 for drag so much?? My Linksys routers are much snappier, not to mention my Cisco equipement (5505 and 5510 ASA devices).
The 1100 is a Sparc ReadyNas and has been around for quite a while. Frontview (the web interface) should feel a lot quicker on the newer 2100 and 3200.mrjoltcola wrote:
On top of that, the setup seems to give no flexibility. RAIDar gives simple options, RAID 0, 1 or 5. I cannot select a pair of RAID1, and when I tried to configure a RAID 1 with 3 drives installed, but only selecting the first 2 (DESELECTING the 3rd drive) it went ahead and added it to the RAID 1 anyway. Then later, when I tried to remove it with the Remove button, it put the drive to Hot Spare status. I tried removing all drives from the C volume and/or deleting the C volume in order to start over with a fresh config, keep getting "Volume delete aborted". So in the end I had to do a Factory Default reset operation.
I haven't used Flex-RAID so someone else should explain this.mrjoltcola wrote:
I have been burned one too many times by RAID5 and I really want to be able to config my 4 drives into 2 RAID-1s.
If SMART+ status is properly monitored RAID-5 or the default X-RAID should be enough for most people. You should be able to configure 2 RAID-1s by deleting volumes if created incorrectly and then re-creating how you want them. You can have up to 4 volumes (2 per disk).mrjoltcola wrote:
I would rather I had spent my $$ on a couple of cheap 1U rack servers with Linux. I have used Dells sitting around with front-mount hot-swap SATA and U320. Yeh, it takes me the manual setup of NFS or CIFS shares, but at least I have some control over things. My ReadyNAS 1100 is the only device I own that feels like walking in mud when I configure it.
I do not like what I got for my $$ and would not encourage anyone to buy a ReadyNAS 1100. I feel like I am working with a $99 personal NAS appliance from Best Buy.
I use the NV+ (similar 1100 but different form factor - not rackmountable and few other differences) and it works fine. You may have had a bad experience, but there are plenty who have found ReadyNas to work fine and be easy to configure.- Based on the ReadyNAS FAQ:
» How do I configure a RAID 1 or RAID 5 volume with a spare disk?
A: After installation, delete the existing RAID volume and recreate it with one disk configured as a hot spare. Please be aware that X-RAID does not support hot spare.
If we first ignore the fact that RAIDar is such a simplistic tool that it cannot setup a RAID w/ spare for the initial install, the above FAQ answer sounds simple.
But it doesn't work!
Configuration: RAID Level 5, 4 disks
Status: Recovery 7% complete, Time to finish 9 hr 15 min, Speed 59.1 MB/sec
Trying to delete the volume results in : "Volume delete aborted"
I assume it is due to the fact that the RAID is in recovery, which it went into immediately after a factory reset and RAIDar RAID-5 config.
This is a joke. I should be able to configure RAID-5 + spare from the get go and not have to perform RAID setup twice. - Hi mdgm, I didn't see your reply before posting my followup.
I never got an alert about anything besides the fact that there was an update available. Trust me, any alerts about drive / NAS problems would have been dealt with immediately, the NAS was storing months of valuable backups from an Oracle database.
I didn't realize the Sparc version was so much slower. Now that I've had a bad experience, I am not sure whether to put these back into production, or just sell them. The purpose of using such a product is for low overhead maintenance, and everytime I've tried to fiddle with the RAID setup on these, it has resulted in a brick wall.
It seems that RAIDar starts out with an initial RAID build that could go for 10hrs+ and I cannot interrupt it to build a 3 drive RAID 5 + hot spare.
I definitely do not want a 4-drive RAID 5 because the failure I mentioned cost me a lot of time and money. It is not so much space that I need, but redundancy. That is why I prefer 2 RAID-1s or RAID 5 + spare. I just cannot seem to get there. mrjoltcola wrote:
This is a joke. I should be able to configure RAID-5 + spare from the get go and not have to perform RAID setup twice.
For most people the default X-RAID which has volume expansion capability should be enough.
Configuring RAID-5 + hot-spare from the get go I guess should be an option but it appears that it isn't? Once the volume has been created if you can't delete it, you should contact support if still under warranty (NetGear branded 1100's purchased on or after Aug 21, 2007 come with a 5-year warranty).
Some screenshots are shown here:
viewtopic.php?p=152853#p152853
I believe that after creating a volume on 3 disks (don't select the disk you want to be a hot spare when creating the volume, I think) you would then assign the spare disk as a hot-spare using the button shown in the bottom screenshot (if you wish). You could also setup RAID-1 volumes etc. if you prefer that to RAID-5.
Should work similar on the 1100 to the newer NVXmrjoltcola wrote:
I never got an alert about anything besides the fact that there was an update available.
Ok. Normally a disk failure is indicated by alerts before it fails, but this is not always the case. SMART+ is not perfect.mrjoltcola wrote:
I didn't realize the Sparc version was so much slower. Now that I've had a bad experience, I am not sure whether to put these back into production, or just sell them.
The Sparc version use slower CPUs and come with 256MB RAM. Frontview may take a while to do things, but most people will setup and then rarely use Frontview after that so it's no big issue. File transfers are 2-3x faster on the NVX compared with the NV+ (Sparc ReadyNas I use). Not sure how the 2100 compares with the 1100, but my guess is it's probably something similar.mrjoltcola wrote:
The purpose of using such a product is for low overhead maintenance, and everytime I've tried to fiddle with the RAID setup on these, it has resulted in a brick wall.
Once setup it should be low overhead maintenance. A disk fails and it can be replaced without downtime. It's only when multiple disks fail or some other hardware failure that it becomes more of a hassle to get up and running again.mrjoltcola wrote:
It seems that RAIDar starts out with an initial RAID build that could go for 10hrs+ and I cannot interrupt it to build a 3 drive RAID 5 + hot spare.
I definitely do not want a 4-drive RAID 5 because the failure I mentioned cost me a lot of time and money. It is not so much space that I need, but redundancy. That is why I prefer 2 RAID-1s or RAID 5 + spare. I just cannot seem to get there.
Hopefully once the volume is created, you can delete it and get what you want.- 1) It is not possible to setup a spare or to select individual disks from RAIDar. I am presented with RAID-Level and RAID-Flavor. No spare and no ability to specify disks. I've walked through it several times. FrontView is not running until _after_ initial setup, so its clear that it wants you to setup an initial volume, then go back and delete it to customize. This is a bad decision for product design. I must wait for hours for an initial build in order to simply delete a volume and start over. I already tried RAID-1 with RAIDar setup and it apparently mirrored 1 volume across 3 drives.
2) I tried factory reset with 1 drive, hopefully to get past the initial build faster, but the NAS did not even come online with 1 drive, RAIDar scan never picked it up.
3) Another factory reset, after replacing all 4 drives, makes it to blue light blinking stage with NICs online, and never shows on RAIDar. - 1) Ok. That is an issue. In most cases you should only have to do initial setup once, so it's not too big a deal.
2) What version of RAIDar are you using? 4.1.6 can have some issues. Try the 4.1.7 beta. Alternatively, your disk could be bad. faq.php#How_can_I_verify_that_my_disk_is_bad%3F
3) Same as 2.
If you insert one drive and then factory default, drives you add subsequently if they've been used before will need to be added while the NAS is turned on so they are properly initialised. - The disks are not bad. The NAS has done this before, it will mysteriously not boot. I had both LAN cables plugged in. I decided to remove LAN 2 and retry, now I get the Activity light and can proceed with RAIDar. Repeating a RAID-5 build because I have given up and run out of time and determination.
Thanks for your help, guys. I am still unhappy with the model, but if I sell it, it needs to be operational anyway, so I'll let it finish. - For "Volume delete aborted", can you make sure there are no pop-up blocker from Web Browser? You should get the pop-up to confirm you want to delete by type in "DELETE VOLUME".
- Hi,
We experienced the same problem.
Typing DELETE VOLUME in the confirmation dialog box was followed by the 'Volume delete aborted' message.
In our case we were using a RND4000 having local language set to dutch (Frontview).
We found out that the Netgear firmware developers possibly translated the 'DELETE VOLUME' confirmation string to the local language.
So, even when you are asked to type 'DELETE VOLUME', you have to type the translated string instead.
In our case it proved that using the wording of the 'Delete volume' button caption (the button that initiated the volume delete action) in capitals, was accepted as confirmation string. The caption of this button is translated.
That is, we typed 'VOLUME VERWIJDEREN' instead of 'DELETE VOLUME''.
Worked like a charm.
Hope this works for you too.
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