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IT’S A CLASSIC!
From STORAGE Magazine
Vol 4 No 06 - November/December 2004
TIKO Classic 340 NAS appliance
Network attached storage
(NAS) has always been a good choice for capacity expansion at the SMB level,
although it is often accused of being overpriced. The Classic 340 remedies this
by delivering a full 1TB of Serial ATA (SATA) storage and an impressive range of
features, but at a price the competition will be hard pushed to match. It scores
more bonus points, as it also brings in support for the increasingly popular
iSCSI protocol – a feature rarely seen at this price point.
You get a good hardware specification for your money, as this compact Supermicro-based
package is equipped with a 2.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor and 512MB of PC3200
memory, whilst storage is handled by a quartet of 250GB Hitachi SATA/150 mounted
in hot-swap carriers.
Although the on-board Adaptec SATA controller does provide RAID capabilities,
it’s there simply to provide connectivity and hot-swap support, as all RAID
functions are handled in software. Windows Storage Server 2003 is the driving
force behind many NAS vendor’s products, but this choice does come with a price
penalty. Tiko has reduced costs further by using a customised Linux kernel,
which fits neatly on a simple 64MB Flash memory module installed in the primary
IDE slot. Along with providing RAID-0, -1, -10 and -5 capabilities, this also
has the added advantage of leaving all hard disk space free for use as network
storage.
Installation adheres to the NAS philosophy admirably, as you just point a
browser at the appliance’s default IP address. All management access is over
HTTPS and we found the interface very easy to use. Your first task is to get to
grips with the concepts Tiko uses for storage management, as the drives are
supplied initially as single devices which can be configured as RAID groups.
Multiple RAID groups can then be placed together into Volume groups, which are
then spliced up into volumes that are presented to the network.
The biggest advantage of this system is that capacity can be dynamically
expanded by using up available space or by adding a new RAID group. You can keep
an eye on disk space and usage by volume, and group and extensive alerting
facilities can fire off an email or SNMP trap if hardware faults or failures are
detected. Real-time graphs are also provided for monitoring storage usage and
network activity.
General security features are very good, as the 340 supports Active Directory
and ACLs (access control lists). CIFS/SMB, NFS and AFP file-sharing protocols
are supported, so Windows, UNIX, Linux and Macintosh clients can access the
appliance, and you can apply disk quotas at the group and user level to control
storage usage. Backup options extend to disk snapshots, plus full or incremental
backups to a locally attached tape drive - although no scheduling tools are
provided.
The iSCSI options are limited, but it does make target configuration very easy,
as all you do is select a drive or group and use the Export function in the
management interface. This only takes a few seconds and we then logged on to the
appliance remotely, using Microsoft’s iSCSI initiator software, where the
targets appeared to our test server as high capacity local drives. CHAP
authentication isn’t supported and all iSCSI parameters are predefined, but
small businesses looking to implement a simple IP SAN won’t find it any easier
than this.
The Classic 340 is an impressive NAS appliance which delivers a top-notch
package at a very competitive price. Along with a very high capacity, it offers
good storage management and monitoring facilities, plenty of security and all
presented in a compact well-built package.
Product: Classic 340
Supplier: Tiko Computer Corporation Ltd
Telephone: 01923 222101
Web site: www.tikocorp.com
Price: £1,895
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