My Personal Storage Farm

Perhaps you've noticed that EMC has entered the prosumer market to a certain extent, by offering LifeLine software that hardware OEMs can offer to their customers.

A few weeks ago, I was offered the opportunity to try one such LifeLine-based product -- the Intel SS4200

I took it home, set it up, and had a blast.

I thought I'd share my impressions here, since many of you have your own personal storage farms at home.

Some Background

Like many of you, I'm the IT manager at home.  I currently have a fleet of 3 Windows desktops, 1 iMac, 2 laptops, every popular game console, and a growing collection of iPods, phones with storage, etc.

I don't like managing the stuff.  I worry that things aren't getting backed up. 

Sharing content is a pain in the patootie.  Sure, in the PC domain I can set up file shares and whatnot, but streaming content to audio systems, HDTV screens, etc. ain't happening so well.

My kids tend to get iTunes gift cards for gifts, and have been getting them for a while.  I'm guessing we've got several thousand dollars of "licensed content" floating around different PCs and iPods.

Initial Reactions

Initially, I thought the Intel device was rather largish.  Other LifeLine OEMs are building smaller units, including some that look like overgrown wall warts.  I initially thought "gee, maybe I want a smaller one", thinking mostly about that all-important WAF (wife approval factor) element.

Turns out that by the time you get four full-size disk drives, controller, cache, etc. into an enclosure, you're talking about a decent-sized unit -- smaller than a traditional deskside unit, but not by much.

I put it under a desk in the computer room.  I can't detect any noise coming out of it, just a cool blue LED glow.  As a result, it passed the WAF test.

It was a two-cable installation -- one ethernet cable to the home router, one power cable to the wall.  I powered the unit up, and popped the CD into an arbitrary PC.  After installing backup software (Retrospect), it popped me into the web interface for the unit.

I set up a bunch of shares for each member of the family, and that was about it.  Total install/config time: about 5 minutes, including my natural curiousity about cache settings, protection, etc.

The UI is dead easy.  If you're the kind of person who barely reads screen prompts (let alone crack open the manual), this is the UI for you.  As a test, I had my 12-year-old son set up a few public shares for music, video, etc.  and I didn't tell him what to do.  He did fine.

Copying, Deduping and Backup

I then went to each PC, and started copying off files (simultaneously) to the shared unit.  Aggregate bandwidth was about what you'd expect from a 1Gb ethernet interface.  I then downloaded a dedupe utility, and shot all the multiple copies I'd collected of the same song, movie, etc.

After the junk was off each PC, I set up Retrospect to back things up to the shared unit.  In a while, I'll come back and wire in Mozy for offsite backup of the (now consolidated and deduped) content library.

I also pointed iTunes and Windows Media Player at the new shared unit, and had them index everything.  Just started chugging away.

At no point in any of this was the shared unit the bottleneck, as far as I could tell.  I was, however, able to saturate the network, and the individual PC drives easily, though.

Now The Fun Begins

My kids immediately grabbed the laptops and headed for their rooms.  They had built playlists, and had turned very expensive laptops into tinny-sounding radios.  But it just worked, which was cool. 

One of my kids discovered that the Wii had a browser which could access music and videos, and now has a personal media library in his room.  He's thrilled.

What I liked was the Xbox interface, which we have attached to the big screen in the living room.  The new version of Windows Media Player (running on any PC) can stream content to the Xbox very naturally, so I loaded up some playlists and let the visualizer take over. 

For the first time, I can now access anything on our home entertainment unit easily.  I have one of those Harmony "single button remote" units, and was able to easily add macro buttons for "play from music library", coordinating TV, Xbox, amp, etc. 

Very high WAF, if you get my drift.

Video Streaming Hits Its (Wireless) Limits

We were able to get a nice video stream going over wireless, and got as far as two more, but it was occasionally choppy.  I think it's due wireless distance (not bandwidth), so I'm either going to invest in a booster, or perhaps just run hardwire to a few devices, like the Xbox.

With no one else using the wireless, I had a decent HDTV stream on the big screen.  I probably wouldn't want to try multiple HDTV streams unless I considered my wireless network carefully.

On wired devices, I was able to get 4 HD streams going without any problem.  Maybe the unit can do more, I don't know, I ran out of wired devices.

I guess I need to start looking at "n" class wireless ....

What Does All Of This Mean?

First, I was absolutely shocked about how much digital stuff I (and my family) has acquired over the years.  As I went rooting around the various local hard drives, I'd find these huge caches that someone had created and promptly forgot about.  Well over 1 TB in aggregate.

Second, for whatever reason, there was a lot of duplicate stuff.  In my case, the total came in just a bit under 800GB after dedupe.  So that's about 300-400GB of redundant copies.

Third, I now have a way to use my new 20Mb FiOS connection -- or, at least, I now have a place to put stuff I download at warp speed.

Fourth, for the first time, this stuff is protected (RAID 5) and backed up off-site (Mozy).  One less thing to worry about.

But the real winner is that me and my family really were enjoying the content for the first time.  Old home movies and pictures on the big screen.  An enormous music library anywhere in the house.  All very cool.

I can't state categorically whether or not the LifeLine / Intel combination is better, faster, cheaper, slicker, etc. than other potential solutions.

All I can really vouch for is that I plugged in the box, breezed through setup, and my world got a little better. 

And it wasn't one of those gadgets that I got excited about, and no one else was interested -- the entire family thought this was a very cool thing to have, once they saw what it did.

Are you ready for your personal storage farm?

Comments

[Bob Boerner]

I have been anxiously awaiting this device...do you have any visibility into when the Intel device or any other OEM device for that matter will be available at retail? I have been unsuccessful in locating anyone who actually has this device available for purchase (I even called Intel directly and they did not know).

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Bob -- I should know, but I don't. Let me ask around and see if someone knows something more definite.

[Leong]

So cool to hear your voice as a real customer, now we got first-hand data about user experience:)

[Calle]

Thanks for your info on this, the dedupe functionality is indeed very interesting. I will try to get my WA for this ;)

[Manu Fontaine]

The device is in production and shipping to the channels as we "speak". It should be available for sale from Intel resellers within the next few weeks.

[Stephen Foskett]

Great stuff, Chuck! We've been loving our home server since I got it all up and running last summer. I think the market might finally be ready for these things!

Of course mine is all hacked and Linux and stuff, but the thought is the same!

[Bill Ruehl]

I'm wondering how this NAS solution stacks up against a MS Windows home server as far as the ease of setup and streaming to set top devices like Pinnacle's showcenter. I guess the dedupe feature is the biggest difference. How were the file shares presented to the Xbox and Wii? Were they pushed from the NAS unit itself or did one of the other computers have to map it as a share out over your network?

[Chuck Hollis]

I fooled around with the Microsoft stuff about six months ago. The biggest problem was that I couldn't dedicate a PC to the task; so data services would occasionally be interrupted by a game crashing, or someone powering down the PC. Perfectly serviceable, though.

I used a (free) downloaded utility for the dedupe, it wasn't part of the product. Worked great, though.

The Xbox experience was best when I was running the new Windows Media Player on a PC. I don't have to do it, it was just a slicker experience. The Wii wireless browser simply found the device, displayed as a file system.

Again, I'm no expert on what else is out there. I just plugged the thing in, found it easy and fast, and enjoyed the result without too much futzing around.

[Ernie Oporto]

I've had this for years with a simple 600MHz system running CentOS/Linux as a file server. This serves music and movies to various systems around the house over cheap Netgear gigabit ethernet wired switches with wireless as an option for roaming with a laptop or the occassional visitor using an iPhone. It's very easy to set up, and other than the physical box itself, all the software is free. You can stream music to iTunes anywhere in the house using the free firefly music server or to the XBox 360 or other Media Center capable systems using x360mediaserver. And then there is always Samba for plain old reliable file sharing.

Remember that the WAF is all in the front end presentation. Like any good users, they should not care about what is going on with the backend, so anything should suffice to provide the centralized storage.

What free file dedupe software did you use?

[Chuck Hollis]

I used a free utility named "Double Killer". Simply go look for it on www.download.com. It was a bit lengthy, but worked great for me.

[Terry]

Does the Lifeline software also support MozyHome? I would like to have a product where I can select specific folders to be protected in the cloud.

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Terry -- not yet, I think they're working on it.

In the meantime, I'm using one of the traditional PCs to mount up the shared device, expose it all to Mozy, and it all just works great.

Not ideal, but workable until the client gets ported to the software.

The other thing that I haven't played with yet is that LifeLine comes with Retrospect for client PC backup (targeting the shared device). Since we're not putting any "changing data" on the PC clients anymore, I don't need that particular feature.