MicroNet MaxNAS 2.5TB
As the sole IT administrator at on online agency here in New York City I find myself pretty busy with two things: finding space to store HD video and maintaining the machines that will access it. Speed is always an issue considering the HD file sizes we produce. We are constantly under siege with juggling firewire drives between machines – which eats up time.
There’s nothing quite like watching one editor waiting at another’s desk for a 30GB data transfer to complete so they can both have the same material. So I can already hear you saying “You have a gigabit network, why don’t you just throw it up on that 1TB server share?” Well, because it’s ALREADY FULL. We needed a quick fix for a lot of space – fast. Enter the almighty Micronet MaxNAS.
I will confess that I have been weary of stand-alone network storage. Perhaps my age is starting to show but I really didn’t trust storage that wasn’t attached to an actual computer. Or perhaps it’s been the years of frustration of sub-par performance from external firewire drives, even from reputable brands. We already were having some relief by reviewing mini-SAS connected RAID’s. But the problem with two clients sharing over the network is that sometimes the files needed are in-use (locked) or have already been altered and overwritten – such as a template. We simply needed more central storage. With high hopes and anxious video editors, I opened the box.
Inside was a surprisingly compact simple silver box (the MaxNAS), USB, power, and ethernet cables, a color quick-start guide, keys (to unlock the drives within the MaxNAS), and a CD. The CD was actually useful with setup wizards for both Mac and PC but also because it had PDF’s of the quick-start guide, Micronet Product Line, and the full MaxNAS manual.
I immediately started to warm to it when I noticed the front LED panel and front USB2 port. Hmmm, on the back - 2 more USB2 ports (which can turn any USB printer into a network printer), a 4-pin USB port, an eSATA port. And a serial UPS port. AND TWO ethernet ports, labeled appropriately 1 and 2 (and which by the way are capable of each handling a different subnet and passing info between the two, essentially also acting as a router). AND A STANDARD POWER CONNECTOR ZOMG!!1! Ok, perhaps I wasn’t that excited by the power connector but then again maybe I was. Because – and who’s with me on this one – who really likes tracking down that proprietary power cord that inevitably gets lost?
For gear, I often like to see how intuitive the product is to use, so without reading the full manual, I grabbed the quick-start guide and dove in. It was a piece of cake to set up:
1-Plug in the ethernet cable to MaxNAS and network (wall),
2-plug in the power,
3-look at your network on your computer and find “MaxNAS” sitting there ready as you would with any other computer on your network.
There was a folder labeled “public” waiting for me so I tried a quick transfer of a document. Bing. An mp3. Bing. A small movie. Pause, bing. A mega raw HD video file. Pause, pause, bing. Too easy. I showed everyone in the office where they could start putting files and thanks to the five disc high-speed 2TB RAID-5 and gigabit ethernet speed of the Micronet MaxNAS, it began filling up in minutes without a hitch. I went to visit it’s very friendly web-administration dashboard.
The MaxNAS has a plethora of options and information available via the web interface: status of the CPU, CPU load, up time, service status (AFP, NFS, SMB/CIFS, FTP, media server, Nsync, UpnP), storage status of individual discs, status of the RAID itself, ISO mounts, network info, network printing (just plug a USB printer into it), user permissions, group permissions, batch management of permissions via a CSV file, logs, firmware upgrades, the list just goes on and on.
I was beginning to see why they call it the MaxNAS. I only wondered if problems would start to creep up. I am happy to say that with an up time of 91 days 21 hours and 4 minutes, it has been my reliable assistant in keeping work moving forward. If anyone is looking for a professional grade (and I can’t stress enough how well this hardware has performed under enormous stress) network storage (or eSATA or USB2) that is concerned with reliability and storage space (not to mention speed), look no further than the MaxNAS.
Brad Graham is the man who makes sure all the computers, servers, software and networks work properly at ScribeMedia. He's also been known to shoot and edit video. In his spare time Brad is an amateur lepidopterologist.
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