ReadyNAS 1100 Unsatisfactory

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.