Pushing Virtual Limits

Finding a solid NAS solution for my home environment is becoming increasingly critical. My primary storage array is down to 40GB free! I will have to start culling the herd soon if I don’t find a solution soon.

With the new EMC LifeLine product series finally becoming available to the mass market I was very tempted to get one of these boxes. After reading the Storage Anarchist’s review I was practically walking around with my credit card out and ready to spend. On the face of things this is THE product that solves the majority of my needs.

Luckily I took some time to read the updated documentation before purchasing it. Here are the glaring problems:

1. No NFS support – Seriously? How could this have been released without NFS support?

2. NTFS drives attached via USB are read only. – If Debian can read and write to NTFS this product sure as heck better be able to.

3. eSata connector allows only ONE partition – I had hopes of attaching a 5 drive esata box to this and allowing the lifeline to manage it. Consider that dream shattered.

4. Don’t even think of trying to set it up with both NICs connected -

5. HDD hot plug support was in the SS4000 but it has been removed in this version? – minor problem but still it makes one wonder why.

6. The much touted hard drive spin down technology DOESN’T WORK – ( See install guide 2.2.8)

7. That bullet point about having a print server support? Get something else if you need that as that feature is “Planned for a future release”

8. USB Drives attached via a Hub? This won’t work. NPTF – No plans to fix

Those are 8 pretty serious failings. It doesn’t look like this device supports iSCSI which is what I really want. Maybe I am looking at the wrong price point here but these systems are not cheap NOR are they underpowered.

I included the manual I pulled these glaring problems from below along with a link to the Intel download site and the cheapest place I could find a bare bones system (380$). Now I am frustrated because I have a clear need but nothing that seems to fit the bill. Anyone have any ideas?

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/filter_results.aspx?strTypes=all&ProductID=2910&OSFullName=Windows*+XP+Home+Edition〈=eng&strOSs=45&submit=Go%21

http://www.pcsuperstore.com/products/Q33118-Intel-SS4200EHWNA.html/froogle/

ss4200-e_sw_release_notes-rev11