Redfern Place

In a recent post on my Photography Blog I mentioned that I recently installed a NAS on my home network. In this post I want to go into more detail about the why and how.

So why? I keep and move a lot of data around the computers in the house. We have a PC in the family room running Windows 7 Media Center. Our entire DVD video collection and CD music collection is available from this machine. I also create a lot of large photography related files (RAW images, multi-layered processed image) that I need to keep and protect.

Up until recently I relied on individual drives on each machine to hold the data and external drives connected to the computers for multiple redundant backups. (I lost some pictures a few years ago that I really miss, so backups are a priority now.) The movie and music files on the Media Center were not protected or backed-up. A single drive failure would result in having to re-rip all my DVD’s and CD’s. Any data sharing was accomplished by sharing the drives on each computer.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I’d like to consolidate an organize the data in a more protected environment. For home networks this is most easily accomplished by installing a NAS device on the home network. I talk about the NAS a little later.

I also had been using 100Mb network switches on the network. If I was going to move gigabyte of data around the network I didn’t want to do it at 100Mb/s, or about 10MB/s, or about 100 seconds for a 1GB file. Streaming multiple HD streams to different computers was out of the question. I needed to do two thing. Find an install a NAS and speed up my network.

Speeding up the network was easy and inexpensive. I simply replaced two 100Mb/s switches new Gigabit switches. All the hardwired PC’s in the house already had Gigabit Ethernet Ports. I picked up 1 D-Link DGS-2205 5-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch and 1 D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch. Both of these switches support up to 9KB jumbo frames (important for moving large chunks of data around the network quickly). Both switches are part of D-Links new green line (they conserve power by turning off circuits when attached devices are powered down).

The 8 port switch is installed in my office between the Linksys WRT54GL Wireless-G Router(running Tomato firmware, which I highly recommend) and the rest of the internal network. The wireless router is a 100Mb/s device and would be a bottleneck on the network if any gigabit devices had to pass through it, but it does provide the wireless connection for several devices including laptops, wireless printers, and android phones, none of which would benefit from being connected to a gigabit device.

So the network topology looks like [Internet] <--> [Cable Modem] <--> [Wireless Router] <--> [8-Port Gigabit Switch]. All the computers and devices in the office are connected to the 8 port switch, as is the 5 port switch (which is physically located in a recessed panel box in the laundry room). The 5 port switch connects network cables that are wired to several other rooms, including the family room housing the Media Center PC. These D-Link switches are unmanaged, meaning they have no user interface for managing their function. They are quite simply plug-and-play devices.

It is obvious from the numbers that a gigabit network can move data 10 times faster than a 100Mb/s network, but seeing the improved performance on your own network is still quite impressive. Not only do files move so much faster, but other network activities suddenly become very snappy. One such activity, for me, is using RDP to manage the Media Center PC from the office. RDP over gigabit is almost like being on the native monitor (but don’t try to play video or games over it).

A fast network deserves a fast data management device. A gigabit network can theoretically move almost 100MB/s. I wanted a NAS device that could get as close to possible to this performance level (and still be affordable). A friend of mine setup a ReadyNAS NV+ a while back and has been very pleased with it. It isn’t overly fast topping out around 35 MB/s average read/write. He pointed me to a newer model called the ReadyNAS NVX Pioneer. Some key features on this unit:

• This unit advertises data access performance of up to 75MB/s. In practice I see in the mid-60MB/s range.
• X-RAID2 – This is Netgear’s expandable RAID-5 configuration. Each drive can be replaced with larger drives to build capacity, and additional capacity is available immediately (not requiring all drives to be of the larger size).
• Another advantage of the ReadyNAS line is the extensibility and availability of additional plugins to add functionality
• There is a very active development community built around the ReadyNAS line.
• Built in backup features.

This was the unit for me. The until is delivered without any hard drives installed. You have to bring your own drives to this party. The ReadyNAS website has an extensive list of drives that have been certified for the unit. I chose to install 4 Seagate 1.5 TB SATA Hard Drives for a total capacity of 6TB, and a functional capacity of 4.1TB in the X-RAID2 configuration (an expandable RAID-5 mode). The RAID-5 configuration provides a comforting level of protection against drive failure. If any single drive fails, it can be replaced without powering down the unit and without loosing any data. The ReadyNAS has many built-in features to alert you far in advance of most drive failures (by using the SMART features found on better hard-drives).

The extensibility of the unit was a very important factor in choosing this device. I’ve recently installed a subversion server, websvn, and the mantis bugtracker on it to aide my software development projects. Now all my source code is managed and protected as well. All of these service are also available to me when I’m away from home and protected behind an Apache authentication firewall. It’s a really nice unit. The ReadyNAS is essentially a Linux computer specializing in providing NAS functionality. For the intrepid nerd, you are granted full access to the root account on the computer (voiding your support from Netgear, of course).

The one downside of the ReadyNAS is it’s noise level. It’s not obnoxiously load, the fan is controlled and kept at a reasonable level. But it’s not really quiet, ever. It’s loud enough that I will be looking at relocating is to the laundry room (aka server closet) soon from it’s current home under my desk.

For my photography work, all photographs are downloaded from the memory cards directly to the NAS. Lightroom and Photoshop read the files directly from the NAS. The device is as fast as any typical internal hard drive so there is no performance advantage of keeping local copies of the files on my workstation.

I have two 750MB USB drives attached to the ReadyNAS that serve as redundant backup drives for my most important and irreplaceable files. These files are automatically backed up from the NAS to the USB drives once week, or on demand by simply pressing the backup button on the front panel of the unit (or via the web interface). It’s a very convenient backup solution.

So there it is…my latest solution so storing, protecting, and sharing data on the home network.

I threw together some ingredients tonight that seemed to go together pretty well.  This could easily be made vegetarian by leaving out the bacon.  A pretty economical dish that I think is pretty nutritious too.

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 red onion, cut in half and sliced into half moons
1 strip of bacon, trimmed of fat
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp (give or take) red pepper flakes
1 bunch kale
swirl of red wine, we used merlot, to deglaze the pan
1 can tomato sauce
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 can garbanzo beans, drained
1/2 to 3/4 lb. spaghetti or vermicelli

Heat a pot of water big enough to boil you pasta.

Saute the red onion in the olive oil a few minutes to soften a bit.  Add diced bacon and saute a bit longer, caramelizing the onion and browning the bacon up a bit.  Lower the heat down and add the garlic, red pepper flakes, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper.  While they become fragrant, remove the woody stems from the kale and chop.  Add to pan and saute until it begins to soften, a minute or two.  Add the tomato sauce, tomatoes and garbanzo beans.  Reduce heat to low and simmer with a lid.

While the sauce simmers, add the pasta to the boiling, salted water.  When the pasta is done, add to pan with sauce and toss.  Top with basque sheep’s milk cheese or parm.

1 medium yellow onion – chopped

3-4 cloves garlic – minced or run through a microplain

1 red bell pepper – chopped

1# ground turkey, white meat

cumin

chili powder

1/8 – 1/4 tsp cinnamon

chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

1 15 oz can pumpkin

1 15 oz can diced tomatoes

2 15 oz cans kidney beans – drained

Lightly carmelize the onion and red bell pepper.  Add garlic and wait a couple of minutes, but don’t let it brown.  Add ground turkey, a palmful of each:  ground cumin, chili powder, cinnamon & salt and pepper to taste.  Toss around pan until turkey in starting to brown up and spices are fragrant.  I diced two chipotle peppers and added them at this point with 1-2 tablespoons (give or take) of adobo sauce.  Use more or less chipotles and sauce to taste.  Let chipotles saute a bit with the rest of the ingredients, then add the can of diced tomatoes and the can of pumpkin puree.  Stir everything together and reduce the heat to a simmer.  If the chili seems too thick, add chicken stock or water to thin it out a bit.  Add kidney beans and let simmer low for about 30 minutes.  Taste to check seasonings and adjust salt and pepper as needed.

Top servings with the usual chili toppings – avocado and cilantro are great on this with cornbread on the side.

The vultures returned this evening during dinner. I jumped up from the dinner table, grabbed the camera and snapped off a couple of pictures while they were soaring around right outside. This time I did not have the teleconverter on the camera, but they were much closer than this morning. Click on the picture the see a larger version (100% crop).

Soaring Vulture

This morning saw a pair of vultures and a lone hawk. One of the vultures took perch on the top of one of the trees for a photo-op. The Hawk took perch in another tree.

Photographed with a Canon 1D-MkII using the 70-200 f/2.8 USM IS at 200mm with the Kenko 1.4x Teleconverter. I need a longer lens for this kind of picture. These crops are 100% and barely good enough for web display. There’s no hope of getting a decent print from these.

Kevin and I made up this delicious pizza tonight.  Really tasty!

• 1 bag of prepared pizza dough (we used whole foods raw dough)
• 1 chicken with spinach and feta sausage (again, from whole foods in the meat counter)
• 2″ piece of garlic and herb chevre
• sliced artichoke hearts
• fresh basil
• tomato
• kalamata olives

Work the dough out into whatever shape you like, round or rectangular works well.  We worked ours out really thin and baked the pizza on a silpat over a pizza stone, which came out really crispy.

Warm up some olive oil and add a couple of cloves of fresh, slightly smashed garlic.  Don’t brown the garlic, just have the oil warm enough to get the cloves bubbling.  The oil from the garlic will infuse the olive oil.

While the oil is cooling, remove the chicken sausage from the casing and brown.  Brush a light layer of your infused olive oil over crust.  Sprinkle crust with sausage, crumbled chevre, a generous portion of torn basil leaves, the sliced artichoke hearts and sliced kalamata olives.  Use the toppings lightly, combined their flavors are potent.  Bake in a 425 degree oven for 10 – 15 minutes, checking after 10.  Remove from the over when the crust is brown and crisp.  Top with fresh sliced tomatoes.

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Spent the day today photographing the birds that were frequenting the feeder during this cold winter day. All photos were taken from inside the house with my Canon 1DMkII, the 70-200/2.8 lens with a 1.4x teleconverter, and some heavy cropping in Lightroom.

 

I walked out on our front balcony tonight to watch Yvette shoveling snow off the driveway (she’s the best wife ever) and saw the amazing stand of trees on the other side of the cul-de-sac lit up with the neighborhood kids out playing in the circle.

A panorama constructed from 16 images. Click on the image to see a larger version.

 

It’s going to be several days before we thaw out.