NAS

Network Attached Storage Devices, Now it's personal!

Disclaimer: this is not meant to be an advertisement for the product, but uses the product to highlight an alternative view of server technology, and how it might be deployed.

I recently worked on a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo with a 500 GB HDD bought new for AUD$400! Now that was a good deal (mid 2009). It contains many features found in "Big Iron" servers but is obviously designed for small office, home or personal use. I managed to get it to work with a Mac Mini (PPC) but took some time due to default IP address difficulties and having to reconfigure a DMZ on a LAN to get access to it.

What do you get? You get a processor with managed fan!, iTunes streaming server, CIFS server, NFS server, AFP server, HTTP server, HTTPS server, FTP server, a Bit Torrent Server all of which may be simply turned on or off, and a few others in a relatively small box that has a 10/100/1000 Mb/s Ethernet connection, and 3 USB ports. It will automatically pick up an IP configuration from a DNS or you can lock in a setting. Setting an admin password also requires providing a default e-mail address for notifications. it can also be configured to work as a Time Machine backup.

You can't connect a monitor or a keyboard: strictly remote management. It is an excellent device to "practice" web based server management on.

By default you connect an external USB disk drive to the front USB port it will automatically proceed to backup the internal Backup share and may be configured to provide other scheduled backups. It can also share a USB printer queue (for both WinOS clients and MacOS clients) if a USB printer is attached to one of the 2 USB ports on the back. it contains a system clock able to be automatically synchronised with a time server. e-mail alerts can be generated if: the fan goes hot, a disk fails or is full, space quotas are exceeded or if the NAS shut itself down. It can be optimised for Macs and journaling. The system also generates an activity log.

It would also be an excellent learning information provider(LIP) set up to be managed remotely by a teacher using FTP and Web access. All management functions such as shares, (that can be added 5 at a time) are via web pages and reasonably straight forward. Working through the pdf manual helps with some of the more esoteric features.

Here's the really big kicker. It has 2 hot swap SATA bays (with one 500 GB drive installed) implementing a mirror drive. To make the mirror work you just plug in a second drive. Even more interesting is what Netgear call X-RAID. With the system running I put in a 1TB drive and allow the mirror to be automatically generated. I then pull out the original 500 GB drive while the system is running and then replace it with a 1 TB drive (it now has 2 x 1 TB drives). The mirror will regenerate with a base of 1 TB rather than 500 GB.

The system software is still being actively upgraded and it seems that Netgear are willing to consider new "features". The current (Oct 2009) OS release is 4.1.6. I was able to upgrade the system image on-line in about 15 min without a hitch! it only required one restart (to be expected). All settings were retained.

Finally, it would be interesting to consider purchasing 10 of these instead of ONE Big Iron Server. Or, let's scale that: 40 for 4 Big iron Servers. Highly redundant, high reliability, and highly parallel, easily configurable etc, etc. Makes you think a bit, or at least it should! It runs on 35 W max (via a bog standard 240VAC to 12 VDC sealed power brick) with two installed drives. We could run it off a solar panel.

How the post IWB experience may work

The “next best thing” will not be IWBs. They are the last best thing of the old paradigm. We have some way to go... eventually eliminating IWBs. But that is another story. The mythical slate, a collaborating communicator (“collaboractor”) device will make it obsolete.

IWBs should be seen as just a presentation device.. nothing more nothing less. The IWB presentation device is interactive in an elementary fashion (I guess students are interactive, and teachers are interactive too). What startles me about IWBs is claims made about their utility appear to be artificially inflated- there are rumblings that all is not well. Whether this is from people not being able to effectively use the technology, or that IWBs are just more of the same is difficult to differentiate.

If we are to persist with the centuries old paradigm of students watching the same thing at the same time, in lock step fashion we may as well use cheaper alternatives. Just because two or three or a few (it gets crowded out there with more) can play at the same time does not alter the paradigm. Nor does having specific software that “works with IWBs”.

The real educational paradigm shift- has yet to take off. The elements are there. Pioneers have experimented with these methodologies but have been stymied by overwhelming conservatism - of which IWBs are but the latest impediment to change. It still promotes synchronous behaviour- worse than everyone reading from textbooks(notice plural here). Watch students communicate with technology in your classroom- they do it effectively, without an IWB.

Students will use very savvy personal technology: the mythical “slate”- not netbooks! These slates will connect to the Internet, and other slates very easily, and other resources (such as printers, scanners, storage managers-NASs) in its active near field, just like mobile phones. These devices will tell you that you can use them- much like Apple’s Bonjour technology. This near field will be topologically defined and not limited to spatio-temporal nearness. For example the student’s enrolled school will be “closer” than say the Google portal, meaning accessing information from their school will be easier than from Google, no matter where they are located. Similarly, exchanging information with their teacher, and fellow classmates will be” closer”, than with other members of the school.

The slates will actively assist the user to find, massage, de-construct, re-construct and construct information. Making a short video- of more than MMS proportions will be no more difficult than typing prose- of more than SMS proportions. Constructing a slide presentation will be very easy and probably easier than constructing prose. The result will be easily sent to other slates in its active near field. Collaboration will be more powerful and natural than working individually.

The best example I can think of currently is the OLPC project. It is an incredible project. They have set their sights on not only revolutionising education but also educational technology. Their paradigm is based on “Personal Connectivity”.

A “class” will be formed when a number of students bring their slates spatially close to the teacher’s slate. They then “team up” in similar fashion to Bluetooth “pairing”. From then on while the slate is activated for that “class”, information can relatively freely flow between students and the teacher and students-through the internet if need be. Automatic notification takes place, automatic publish and subscribe takes place and the usual interactions between students and teachers take place. SMS, MMS, e-mail, and IM are primitive by comparison. All interaction will be via video conferencing- directly from the collaborcator.

They would be able to appropriate a storage node- something similar to what we call a server, but very much easier to use, looking something like a NAS device, except that the NAS device would be assigned to the class. Who controls and manages the NAS?- the teacher AND the students via their slates. While this may sound much like today’s server-client system, it is not because the NAS is managed by the members of the class/group/team. There is no ‘supervisor’ other than the teacher. The role of the technician is to maintain the NAS operational- but not to set permissions etc. Other class NASs would allow varying degrees of access, defined by their class/group/team. This model has fundamental implications for how education can be conducted.

Almost all of the technology I speak of currently exists but is not set up in the way described and some of it is expensive in terms of requiring things like servers and large amounts of off line storage to be configured differently from the traditional model. Most importantly, the NAS device is not critical to the operation of the class. It only provides a means to intelligently aggregate information, and rapidly distribute information. It would act a proxy (at a much higher level than the current meaning of the term). For example a student could ask and agent (an application running on it, to find some information overnight- that is search and recompose for local storage (a micro-Google engine). The next day the student goes to school and during the appropriate time (eg. at the beginning of the lesson associated with the request, the NAS informs the student of the results (using ‘push’ technology) or the student requests to browse the information. The student selects interesting information and tells the NAS to wipe the rest. The remainder of the period is spent working with the selected information.

But maybe the student “goes to school” means joins the class from home!

Support for this “inside out” paradigm does not yet exist. Permissions (I listen to anyone, I listen to a select few, I listen to nobody, I speak to one, I speak to a few, I speak to anyone) are decided by the user of the slate- just like using a mobile phone. Server technology will be at the core of the personal slate with any application able to publish(server) and subscribe(client) to near field actors.

Where this leads is anyone guess, except an IWB will not be in sight.

What should a netbook (Collaborcator) do?

We are being told a netbook is not a cut down notebook- but that's what we are currently offered. There is some debate about this- the hardware is currently physically smaller but the silly way in which users are forced to interact with it and the retrogressive connectivity suggests that designers and manufacturers are very short sighted in what a netbook, or what I will now call a Collaborcator might be and how it might work. "When all you've got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail..." We have to take a fresh look.

Firstly, a netbook, (Collaborcator) should be adapted to communicate with us naturally. Haptic, and Oral/Aural are currently neglected sensory modes of humans. Secondly, here is my take on an (incomplete) spec list for a Collaborcator (not an emasculated notebook).

• Min 2 GHz processor with integrated video controller, touch screen controller, sound controller, communications controller (a bad spec basis- it tells me nothing about functionality, but that's what people seem to understand)
• Colour Screen - Touch screen - 10" 16:9 widescreen. (Ditto!), Actually I prefer to say A4 page display.
• No moving parts except ON/OFF switch and flash memory module expansion socket. (No exception!)
• ALL I/O including software updates/changes via wireless. NO USB, NO Firewire, No etc... (No Exception)- Interestingly we have the Mac Book Air!
• Sealed Battery that lasts 6 hours - Using induction charger technology.
• No user access to the Operating System - its in FlashRAM or ROM. For the user the OS does not exist. What is an OS? The iPhone gets tantalisingly close.
• works seamlessly off-line and one line connected to a server (possibly through the Internet), automatic sync functions when connection established in the background, with high error tolerance and automatic reconnect/restart built into the protocol.
• let your fingers do the walking and your voice do the talking- it will talk to you!
• optional: pen, joystick (real- not dinky versions), keyboard, environmental sensors

Software - capability extensions

• A very simple integrated functionality work environment that AppleWorks 4 would do proud.(Hey there is/was even a Windows version!). AppleWorks 4 had a lot of functionality, and common sense approach to integrating the offered modules: Draw (tragically done in most modern software), Paint (not too bad in some modern software), Wordprocessing (Good in most modern software), Spreadsheet(done well in modern software), Database (done well in modern software) and Presentation (done well in modern software). But do we need all that bloat for students? For its size NO current software remotely puts a scratch on AppleWorks 4-6.

• Uses the OpenDoc paradigm to integrate functionality. For those who have not heard of CyberDog and OpenDoc ...well you've not understood what integration really means- it, and Superpaint defined the meaning of plug-in. OpenDoc even had GANTT Chart functionality. This technology was so powerful, ceasing its development was one of the conditions Microsoft put on investing in Apple when Apple nearly became extinct.

• Seamless connection to a server and integration with web technologies. A connection paradigm based on permissions granted/refused by the user on the Collaborcator (not a gateway). This is the opposite to a thin client paradigm. The server is a kind of resource access node (one might call it a service node- or server for short!).

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What should a modern Collaborcator (FOR EDUCATION) have?:

• background OS - Whoops, no OS.
• Cyberdog, or more appropriately OpenDoc, like integration of functional modules
• The following modules - and NO MORE unless considered optional and dynamically (un)loadable

• • LANGUAGE:Web page composer as easy to use as a word processor- including Blog and Wiki in the same module (iWeb) with voice recognition
  • COMMUNICATION: Web Interface (like Web browser/ Video Conferencing facilities/ BitTorrent like) - why Chat when you have video conferencing? Store and forward video conferencing (ie. video e-mail, like the mythical Knowledge Navigator).
  • ART: Draw Module + Paint Module - in the one module (like the old Superpaint(Nice!))
  • MATHS: Spreadsheet Module + Database Module + Algebra (or a reductive integration of the two + Algebra)
  • MANAGEMENT: Calendar Module with Time management (with Gantt chart functionality - like from OpenDoc) and iCal
  • ART: Still image/Video file composer (iMovie + iPhoto) - with image capture
  • SCIENCE: Direct connectivity with environmental sensors including Accelerometer, GPS, Compass, and be able to detect and measure the fundamental units -Time, Mass, Length, Temperature, Light Intensity-Colour, Count (Mole). Oh? The sensors would be connected via wireless!
  • a recordable, attachable, too easy to use, scripting tool seamlessly common to ALL modules- much like Automator (derived from AppleScript) in Mac OS X.

A work pane for any of these can be opened up in any other pane. Eg. a video work pane in a spreadsheet pane, a Gantt chart pane in a web interface pane or a database pane in a paint pane. A datalogger pane in a web composer pane, a scripting pane in a drawing pane... and the list of permutations goes on....

While most of this already exist, it is pitifully fragmented, full of inconsistent interface functionality, and with a huge duplication of code base. It's time...