Readynas OS6 future requests

I believe they chose to have a basic core that they could build upon for the next 5 years, rather than a feature-full OS that they would spend 2 years to debug. The whole OS was rebuilt and as such it was not a "enable/disable" problem but a "do it again" thing. Though I agree that since they have an on/off schedule, saying the NAS to stay off shouldn't be a tremendous task.

I totally agree on the fact that asking is a good solution. I've myself passed a list via the tech support.

Thank you xeltros. I believe this feature appears in future release.

A thing I would like to see in future releases would be the ability to Share "subfolders" ie within my Data/Pictures Share folder I have many separate Albums so would like to Share those.

Definitely rights and sharing for subfolders would be great.

Rights and sharing for subfolders is a basic missing function!! How to share a picture sub-folder under Picture folder???

The ability to select more than 1 Snapshot at a time to be deleted would be an advantage. Its very slow deleting 1 at a time, a simple check box above each timestamp/marker would suffice then hit Delete.
On the Snapshot schedule facility, add in the Option of Monthly.
Also the ability to share Sub folders as I posted before would be great.
Thanks

Lpt print server functionality, like in OS 4.x.x

The ability to set ownership and GUID for all files in a share to whatever the user wishes; this is important to maintain compatibility for backups (such as rsync) from legacy systems.

It's not nice when system upgrades omit valuable functionality found in prior versions. I was not happy to find that the print server function had gone by the wayside.

I'd like a way to schedule WoL for other devices. There is a way to do this in OS 4.2.x for backups - which is enough, but I'd prefer a separate utility/schedule as well as being able to wake the remote backup device. I use this feature now in OS4 to wake my PCs on schedule, but I need to create a dummy backup job for each PC to do it.

Finally threw the towel in our 8yr old(?) NV here (yes, the original NV, not the NV+)...during the last few months, it actually had a power supply failure which gave off smoke, and after replacing the PS - I found that it had actually corrupted data.

In any case, the new R516 with 6.2.4 arrived, and I have some feedback/future requests:

- The add on feature seems very confused right now, some users apparently complain that it makes their systems more unreliable to install some addons, there is no statement that security sensitive addons will be updated in a timely manner to address security patches/etc...would I risk installing the dns server plugin on the R516? if so, which of the apparently several plugins?
Please put together a clear policy on which addons are maintained/not maintained and if they will be removed....as it is, you have an app store with unclear policies.

- Automatic rebuild good, rebuild times...worrying. OK, I was in a rush to start and installed the 516 with just two disks, additional drives arrived later...however, I now have to wait 1-2 days for resync to finish for each of the following 4 drives? So, 4-8 days to get my 2 drive raid 1 config to 6 drive raid6? yes, I appreciate no downtime during this process, but perhaps have a way for me to add multiple drives before starting the automatic rebuild?

- Readynas vault pricing is high, but this seems to be integrated very well and have some excellent functionality. I do hate that I'm essentially paying twice for backup functionality on the 516...the free backup code and addons just don't interact well with other solutions I was considering, and I needed versioning and archive retention configured separately on each share. What is neat is that the vault autodetects all the shares, and prompts for backup settings for each. Long term, I think Vault needs to have a discount for 2-3 year contract commitments, perhaps another 20% off the current annual price..and it needs to support the largest file sizes it can..unclear what it actually supports now. Yes, archive my movie mkv's in the vault.. I plan to investigate the reporting functionality soon.

- I am still reviewing the new pc->readynas functionality from the readynas cloud...I wish it would more closely emulate how ibackup's client works..and not be focused on single directories. And, I don't need continuous backups of many directories...daily will do. Is there a new backup client also for Linux, or will linux users always be stuck with rsync over ssh to the nas?

- CPU Utilization/process list view requires logging in via ssh, didn't see this shown anywhere from the web ui?

- There doesn't seem to be anyway to prioritize some shares over others? e.g. if nas is very busy, i/o to the finance share should be prioritized over the music share? No way to guarentee a minimum amount of free space on each share, or a max size for each? or, even a min io ops/second...much like vmware does in esx for each VM. Yes, it's excellent that they all expand as needed...but I see the new interface promoting the use of more shares and it would be nice to have some way to ensure that any resource contention between shares is as the owner wishes.

- Creating users should have some way of automatically notifying those users of their new account and letting them set their own password..or I suppose this wasn't implemented because it was assumed that larger shops would integrate with existing active directory setups.

deploylinux wrote:
Finally threw the towel in our 8yr old(?) NV here (yes, the original NV, not the NV+)...during the last few months, it actually had a power supply failure which gave off smoke, and after replacing the PS - I found that it had actually corrupted data.

8 years is a good run. Hope you had a backup.

deploylinux wrote:
In any case, the new R516 with 6.2.4 arrived, and I have some feedback/future requests:

Thanks for the feedback/requests. I will pass these on.

- The add on feature seems very confused right now, some users apparently complain that it makes their systems more unreliable to install some addons, there is no statement that security sensitive addons will be updated in a timely manner to address security patches/etc...would I risk installing the dns server plugin on the R516? if so, which of the apparently several plugins?
Please put together a clear policy on which addons are maintained/not maintained and if they will be removed....as it is, you have an app store with unclear policies.

deploylinux wrote:

- Automatic rebuild good, rebuild times...worrying. OK, I was in a rush to start and installed the 516 with just two disks, additional drives arrived later...however, I now have to wait 1-2 days for resync to finish for each of the following 4 drives? So, 4-8 days to get my 2 drive raid 1 config to 6 drive raid6? yes, I appreciate no downtime during this process, but perhaps have a way for me to add multiple drives before starting the automatic rebuild?

Even if we allowed that it would still need to process one disk at a time to expand an existing array. The disks have to be synced sector by sector.

deploylinux wrote:

- Readynas vault pricing is high, but this seems to be integrated very well and have some excellent functionality. I do hate that I'm essentially paying twice for backup functionality on the 516...the free backup code and addons just don't interact well with other solutions I was considering, and I needed versioning and archive retention configured separately on each share. What is neat is that the vault autodetects all the shares, and prompts for backup settings for each. Long term, I think Vault needs to have a discount for 2-3 year contract commitments, perhaps another 20% off the current annual price..and it needs to support the largest file sizes it can..unclear what it actually supports now. Yes, archive my movie mkv's in the vault.. I plan to investigate the reporting functionality soon.

There are other backups options you can use too such as ReadyNAS Replicate to another ReadyNAS which you may wish to consider.

deploylinux wrote:
Is there a new backup client also for Linux, or will linux users always be stuck with rsync over ssh to the nas?

There isn't a ReadyCloud client for Linux. Thanks for the request.

deploylinux wrote:
- CPU Utilization/process list view requires logging in via ssh, didn't see this shown anywhere from the web ui?

This isn't in the UI. It's a difficult one as some users would find such a list confusing while experienced admins would find it very useful.

One would think that most users looking to go to these lengths in troubleshooting themselves would be comfortable with using SSH.

deploylinux wrote:

- There doesn't seem to be anyway to prioritize some shares over others? e.g. if nas is very busy, i/o to the finance share should be prioritized over the music share? No way to guarentee a minimum amount of free space on each share, or a max size for each? or, even a min io ops/second...much like vmware does in esx for each VM. Yes, it's excellent that they all expand as needed...but I see the new interface promoting the use of more shares and it would be nice to have some way to ensure that any resource contention between shares is as the owner wishes.

For prioritising I/O for different shares, I don't think samba supports this. But if it does it may be achievable by creating an /etc/frontview/samba/smb.conf.overrides with the necessary config entries. Prioritising I/O would need to be done for each protocol in use (SMB, NFS, FTP etc.) so even if there is a way for one protocol that may not solve the problem. As for quotas we don't support those at this time.