IT

ioSafe 214 NAS Review

Posted on by Adam Fowler

The ioSafe 214 NAS was provided to me by ioSafe to check out. I’ve looked at a few NAS units before, but generally low end devices. This unit is far from low end, having both advanced management capabilities and superb physical protection.

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“Superb” is a big call, but this NAS is fireproof and waterproof. Trevor Pott and Josh Folland tested the fire side of this here (The Register) which is rated at 1550ºF for 1/2 an hour, and the water side is rated at 72 hours with 10 foot depth. There’s a bunch of videos on YouTube too if you want to check those out. I chose not to test these specifications as I really liked the unit.

Full specifications are available here from ioSafe’s website, but here’s a quick rundown. The NAS is dual bay, and will officially take up to two 4TB SATA drives. There are 3 USB interfaces (a single USB2 on the front, and two USB3’s on the back), with the back also containing a single gigabit ethernet port and a power port. The only other item of interest is the copy button on the front which I’ll go into later.

The ioSafe 214 is ‘powered by Synology DSM’ which I think just means it has a Synology 214 inside it… which I was very impressed by. I’d pictured the web interface of the NAS as some unexciting poorly designed experience, but this was similar to using a desktop with shortcuts and programs.

Here’s the ‘desktop’ which you’ll see after logging onto the NAS via HTTP:

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I’m still impressed now after using this for a few weeks. The left hand side contains these highlights:

File Station – This lets you create and manage shares and the files/folders within

Control Panel – This opens the control panel as per the screenshot above. There’s a huge amount of options here, including setting up LDAP/Active Directory connectivity, user management, device updates, index your media located on the drives and so on.

Package Center – this is the Synology App Store. You might think this isn’t exciting, but for starters everything is free. There’s tools like Antivirus and DNS Server, but also Asterisk (want to run your phone system off this?), Mail Server, MediaWiki, RADIUS Server, Tomcat, VPN Server , WordPress and so on. This turns a basic NAS into a server with a multitude of abilities.

One extra application of note is the ‘Download Station’. This will download from a bunch of different protocols: BitTorrent, FTP, HTTP, Newsgroups, eMule (is that still used?) and a few others I haven’t even heard of before. I’m sure a lot of people leave a box on just for downloads, so this would eliminate the need for that.

On the right hand side are ‘Widgets’ – yep, just like the ones from Windows Vista and 7, and were killed off due to vunerabilities. Anyway that doesn’t apply here, these are configurable but I decided to show the connected users, storage use, system health and finally the resource monitor that displays usage of CPU/RAM/LAN.

There’s also a few other important areas a few clicks away, with the most important being ‘Storage Manager’:

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This is where you can create iSCSI LUNs and manage the physical hard drives inside the ioSafe. Creating a LUN was really easy, and they have the ability to thin provision. This means you can over-subscribe the storage – for example, you might have 2tb free like I do above, but you could create a LUN with 2TB of space, and another with 1TB. It only uses the space you actually write to, but you avoid having to guess and lock yourself in to certain LUN sizes early on. The only risk is if you run out of disk space you’ll start to get issues, and you wouldn’t realise it just looking at the LUN from a remote PC.

Personally I created a LUN that took up the whole 2TB available (1.79TB of real space) and then created another small 1GB LUN which I used as a Quorum for clustering.

Also as a quick speed test, I copied the Windows Server 2012 R2 ISO (which weighs in at 3.97GB) from a local machine to the NAS via iSCSI, and it copied over at 33 seconds. The copy averaged 115MB/s.

Copying a file back to the local host was much slower, which would be an indication of the local single spindle of the HDD, and came in at 45 seconds for the copy, averaging around 80MB/s.

The final area worth mentioning is Backup & Replication:

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Again, there are a lot of options here. This takes away from relying on a remote device such as a PC to do backups, and allowing the NAS to look after itself. You can back up contents from one area on the NAS to another, or plug in an external disk via the USB3 ports and take it away for offsite backup requirements. There’s even Amazon S3 as a backup point – not something I’d use for large amounts of data, but it’s a nice addition.

So what is the end result from all this? It’s a NAS that is easy to set up and maintain from Synology, wrapped up in great armour from ioSafe without having ridiculous pricing. This unit is ideal for a home user or small business that needs 4TB or less data highly secured – and for an extra few hundred vs a non ‘armoured’ NAS, it’s an easy decision.

Note: If you want the same features but need more drives, ioSafe also have an ioSafe 1513+ which has five HDD bays instead of two.

TechEd North America – Done for 2014

Posted on by Adam Fowler

TechEd North America 2014 is now over. You can read about the first two days of my experience here. The second half wasn’t too different to the first half unsurprisingly, and there wasn’t a huge amount of excitement in the air.

Wednesday morning started off slowly. There were a LOT of vendor parties on the Tuesday night beforehand, so maybe it was a difficult morning for many attendees. There wasn’t much to do as once breakfast was over, there were breakout sessions to attend (where you go into a room and listen to a presentation – one of the biggest parts of TechEd), but the Expo hall (where all the vendor booth are) didn’t open until 11am.

I found it difficult to push myself to attend the breakout sessions because they were all available on the next day for free via their Channel 9 service. It’s a great idea from Microsoft but many attendees I spoke to shared the lackluster of going to these too, saying they could watch them online later.

There were some highlights of sessions though. Anything with Mark Russinovich (creater of SysInternals) was highly talked about, and I attended “Case of the Unexplained: Troubleshooting with Mark Russinovich” which was really interesting to watch.

For lunch, I caught up with Nutanix to have a look at their offering over lunch. They treated me in style, by giving me a Texas-style hat and using someone else’s leg power to get me there and back:

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I learnt that Nutanix offer a well priced sever based solution that’s half way between a single rackmount server, and a full chassis/blade setup that also uses shared storage between the nodes (i.e. blade servers). I’ll definitely be looking into that further from both a writing view as well as investigating for my place of work.

After that, I explored the Expo again, speaking to more vendors. Yes there was a lot of goodies given away (generally called ‘loot’) but again according to other attendees, there was a lot less than previous years. I didn’t really try and came back with a suitcase full of novelties which my work colleagues will hopefully go through and find some cool bits and pieces to make up for my absense.

Wednesday night came, and night time means more parties. I went to the Petri meet and greet where as the title suggests, I met and greeted another bunch of great people. After that the jet lag had gotten the better of me, so I went back to the hotel to order room service and pass out.

Thursday saw the final of Speaker Idol. It’s a competition run by Microsoft in the American Idol format (apparently?) where people perform 5 minute presentations until a winner is chosen, and that winner gets to present a full breakout session at next year’s TechEd. Aidan Finn ended up winning (and he wrote about the experience here) who was highly deserving of the achievement, but so were the other presenters I saw.

I had dinner with the friendly eNow mob who make reporting and monitoring tools for Exchange, Lync and others, as a +1 to someone who was actually invited.

The closing event was held at the local baseball stadium: The Minute Maid Park.

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Not having been to an American stadium before, it was more of a novelty to me more than others. Jugglers, artists, many stadium type food stalls and a mechanical bull surrounded the outskirts while attendees took tours of the pitch itself and listened to the bands that played. Here’s the full list of everything that was available. Disappointingly I wasn’t feeling 100% due to a cold, otherwise I would have sampled some of the nachos covered in American liquid cheese – something rarely seen in Australia.

Overall I’m really glad I went (I may not have been as positive on the very long plane ride home) as I met a bunch of great people – Particularly Kyle Murley and Phoummala Schmitt who both looked out for me, as well as Trevor Pott who convinced me to go in the first place. I made lots of new contacts, and had the opportunity to say hi to tech greats like Mary Jo Foley.

TechEd North America – Half Way Mark

Posted on by Adam Fowler

It’s now Wednesday 14th May, and we’re at the half way mark of TechEd North America 2014. This is my first TechEd outside of Australia, and it’s been an interesting experience. A lot of the following reflections will be due to my TechEd Australia exposure which gave me certain expectations.

For starters, the community is really a great group. Almost everyone is very courteous and respectful which is inviting and welcoming to someone who’s traveled here by themselves. It’s very easy to just start talking to someone, as everyone seems genuinely interested to find out more about others and have a chat. For example, as I was sitting writing this, someone mentioned that I should eat something as I hadn’t really eaten much of it. We had a quick chat about jetlag, and I thanked him for his concern.

I’ve been told it’s a sold out event, with about 11,000 people in attendance, which dwarf’s Australia’s 2000-3000 headcount. The venue itself, the Houston Convention Center is huge, along with all the areas inside. The general dining area looks bigger than a soccer field to me.

The Expo area is about as big, which contains all the vendors giving away shirts, pens and strange plastic items, while trying to convince you to know more about their products. The staff are quite nice too, not being too pushy. There’s also a yo-yo professional, a magician and probably other novelties that I’ve not seen yet.

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Many competitions are going on with the vendors too. One had a chance to go bowling with Steve Wozniak and I was standing next to him which was awesome. Sadly didn’t win the bowling part though:

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There’s a motorbike to win, countless Microsoft Surfaces, headphones and other bits and pieces that vendors are using to get the attendees to come visit.

Moving onto the keynote (which I liveblogged here), the focus was Mobile first, Cloud first. There wasn’t much noise from the crowd for the whole keynote, as most were probably coming to terms with having to start worrying about Azure now. Microsoft made it very clear that Azure was THE way now, not just an option.

The announcements of the keynote were all features for Azure. Good features which others have written about in detail, but no new products or services. Not even a mention of the upcoming Surface 3 and Surface mini. No mention of Nokia either, but there was an iPad on stage to show off some Microsoft technologies. Times have changed!

There’s hundreds of sessions going on every day, so we’re rather spoilt for choice. I’ve only been to a few and expecting to focus on that more today, but they’re a bit part of what makes up TechEd and so far have been very informative. The 1 hour and 15 minute format means they don’t go on for too long, but don’t feel rushed.

Microsoft also decided to make one exam free to all attendees – the 70-409 Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center. I decided to take it and passed, which was a nice bonus.

Vendor parties make up all the non-TechEd times and there’s many going on at once – again spoilt for choice. It’s another great way to meet others and find out what’s going on for other IT professionals, while sampling the local food and beverages.

There hasn’t been a huge buzz from attendees, but everyone is still happy to be here. It’s been a good two days so far, and I’m looking forward to the next two!

 

Microsoft TechEd AU Split Up

Posted on by Adam Fowler

An interesting official announcement for Microsoft TechEd. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m off to TechEd North America next week as press, and looking forward to an amazing event. In contrast, TechEd Australia has just been announced as being broken up from a single event into multiple cities here.

From the page:

For 20 years, TechEd has been hosted as one event at a single location.

This year that format will be changing. Microsoft is excited to announce, that in 2014 TechEd will be held in multiple cities, in order to increase the accessibility to Australia’s premium learning conference for technical professionals. This new approach will provide the opportunity for more people to benefit from the TechEd experience throughout the year.

TechEd 2014. Coming to a town near you.
Kicking off in Melbourne before being repeated in Sydney, these events will retain the quality of the TechEd brand by focussing on two days of deep technical training, access to experts and hands-on technology.

On twitter there are already some negative comments around this:

People are pretty upset. The clash with Europe is interesting – you’d have to think that some amazing speakers can’t attend both because of the conflict, but at the same time there should be enough great speakers for one of the biggest software companies in the world.

The event is also cut down to two days – previously it was 3 to 4 days. So will less time, there must be less content?

The other reason I think people are upset, is that it’s often their only big reward in the year. Going off to a nice location, catching up with all your fellow minded IT people and being swept up in the conference itself. That will change by splitting it into two events.

Brisbane/Gold Coast people may not be able to go because they’re used to being able to travel locally. Sydney and Melbourne people will most likely go to their local conference instead, which takes them less away from their work. Friends and contacts people have made and see each year may go to difference conferences.

There are some upsides though. Smaller companies that only have a few staff and can’t afford to send them all at the same time can now send them separately to each event, without people missing out. I think this is what they mean by the accessibility reasons, with most attendees coming from Melbourne and Sydney anyway.

Tickets should be cheaper too, less time should equal less money.

The other interesting side is how sponsors will take this. Will they spend less because they have to spread it over two events, with fewer attendees at each event?

Although there’s negativity now (which I completely understand), it will really depend on how the events go. Then it will be up to Microsoft to weigh each option, but as it is now they’re planning for more cities in 2015. Maybe it’s about getting more exposure, and getting more people onto the Microsoft Cloud?

Otherwise if you don’t like it, you could always go to TechEd New Zealand (TechEd North America is sold out!) :)

Windows Phone 8.1 Is Out

Posted on by Adam Fowler

The Windows Phone 8.1 OS update is now available to ‘Developers’. In this case, a developer is anyone who downloads and briefly sets up the Preview for Developers app and then runs a phone update. This is actually a decent way to let people who are happy to play with an update do so, before released to the general public.

The upgrade process isn’t very exciting, but can take a while. On my Nokia Lumia 1020, there was a small 2mb update which took about 10 minutes to install, before the big 8.1 (of unknown size) update which took about 25 minutes. A very smooth process but don’t do this when you’re expecting a call.

After upgrading I had a headache, but that was unrelated. Overcoming this, I was looking at a phone that had many obvious improvements. 8.1 is a BIG update, and here’s some of the more interesting bits I found:

Screenshots – The button combination used to be Power and Start, but it’s now Power and Volume Up. They nicely tell you this when you try to take your first screenshot (say if you were writing an article):

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Notification Center – Yes, Microsoft has followed Apple who followed Google. I see this as a standard requirement for a smart phone now, and this notification screen gives you enough information. Yes, mine’s a bit blank but it shows you unread emails, SMSes and so on. It also can take you to the settings page, which for me means one less tile on the start screen.

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Another handy part of the Notification Center is the ability to turn screen rotation on and off. Now you can control it once you’re in an app, as I usually have it off for lying in bed where gravity is going the wrong way for the accelerometer, meaning my screen orientation is sideways.

Start Screen – At first glance this is no different, but under Settings > System > start+theme, there are two things you can do. First is having a photo background for your tiles, which will probably make your tiles unreadable (unless you pick the right photo that’s not very detailed), and more interestingly the ‘Show more Tiles’ option.

Turning this ‘On’ then gives you a lot more tile space, which I haven’t even managed to fill yet:

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I’m a big fan of this change, as now it feels similar to the Nokia Lumia 1520’s giant 6″ screen in terms of space used. To me, Windows Phone 8 works best when you’ve got a single front screen that both shows you everything you want to see at a glance with live tiles, as well as having all your commonly launched apps. Shrinking everything down allows this to happen.

Calendar – Before 8.1, the calendar wasn’t great. It was barely usable. Now it is great. At a glance you can clearly see what’s planned for the week, and drill down further with a single touch. It’s not flashy and pretty, but it’s functional, and that’s my primary want. You even get to see the weather forecast:

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FM Radio – Something Apple refused to put in their iPhones is now in Windows Phone. It’s hardware driven, because when you launch it without headphones plugged in, it will tell you to plug some in as that’s what it uses as an antenna. This is one of the basics that I wonder why it wasn’t done earlier.

Podcasts – I’m from Australia, and Podcasts has never been available here previously. But for everyone, this is a new app which is standalone, rather than being part of the Music hub. I added a few podcasts easily, and although it doesn’t have advanced options around when to delete podcasts, or a ‘select all’ button

VPN – There’s now VPN support! This is a big one for enterprises, you can now have your remote WP8 users connect to work resources. Not much else to say on it, but it’s a welcome addition.

Data Sense and Storage Sense – Data sense will show you your data usage on both mobile networks and Wifi, while Storage shows you what you’re using and where. If you have the ability to add external storage, this will also let you choose what gets saved where. Very good for keep track of your 1’s and 0’s.

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Games – These are no longer hidden under the Games app only, and will be listed in the full app list. Might be annoying for those who previously had a bunch of hidden games.

Keyboard – Swype is now active! There’s nothing to turn off or on, you just start swyping around and away it goes. I have to remind myself to do it, but for short messages I do find it a lot quicker to get words down. Changing your mind to spell ‘hello’ as ‘helo’ does take a bit, but it’s worth it. Early days too, as I tried to write ‘sucks’ and it really thought I was trying to say ‘sticks’ which is sort of the opposite.

Store – It looks different. I wasn’t a huge fan of the old layout, and maybe the new layout is better and I’m not used to it… but we shall see. It does have smarts built in to show you apps you want before you know you want them (called Suggestions):

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There’s a bunch of other additions in this update that I’m sure I’ve missed, so get in there and start playing!

One problem I found was that after the update, Google would no longer sync my emails. I had to remove the calendar from syncing under Settings > email+accounts > Google > untick Calendar. Without this, I was getting a sync error code of 801901F5 which may be due to this change from Google dropping CardDAV support.

Windows Phone 8.1 is one of those updates you can actually get excited about. It reminds me of the early Apple iOS updates where each update gave you some nice new features, but at the same time left you wondering ‘why wasn’t this already there!’. Microsoft is still playing catchup in the mobile world, and now 8.1 has made them several steps closer. If only the Windows App Store had more apps…