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Hardware

OS for SNAP server? Upgrading a SNAPserver? 15

Posted by timothy from the snap-snap-snap dept.
baboonia asks: "I have a 10GB SnapServer appliance. I'm trying to upgrade it to a 40GB drive. Does anyone know what OS SnapServer uses? It looks like some kind of proprietary flavor of Linux but DriveImage 4.0 and Norton Ghost 6.5 don't seem to like it. (DriveImage supports LinuxSwap and Linux Ext2 but sees the drive as Unallocated.) Has anyone figured out how to move contents of a SnapServer to a larger physical drive? I'll buy you a donut if you can help me out ..."

These units look like a great idea, but since hard drives tend to get larger at a faster rate than people buy new servers (even server appliances) it would be great to upgrade when 10GB is as small as it is today. Have any readers figured out how to do this?
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OS for SNAP server? Upgrading a SNAPserver? More

OS for SNAP server? Upgrading a SNAPserver?

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  • SNAP upgrade (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @12:04PM (#81052)
    The OS on the SNAP server is BSD based with a modified filesystem. The os itself is NOT stored on the drive, it's stored on flash memory on the motherboard. You can upgrade the drive buy just replacing it with a bigger one and formating it using the web management tool. Copy the date off the old drive to another machine first, then copy it back after the bigger drive is installed.

  • Two drive Snap!server (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @06:56PM (#81053)
    I beta-tested and retained a Snap!server when they were being introduced by Meridian Data, before they sold it to Quantum (or Quantum acquired them or whatever). This was the original two-drive model but only came with a single 4GB drive. Eventually my curiosity overcame the innate usefulness of the device, and I took it apart to see if I could add the second drive myself. It was very straightforward, and worked as expected after preparing the drive with the Snap!server web administration utilities. Later I got around to upgrading the BIOS and software to 2.x. After that I replaced the original 4GB drive with a 10GB model (after backing up naturally). Again went without a hitch. Now at the current 3.1.603 software, 1.1.0 hardware and 1.2.180 BIOS I am somewhat curious how big a drive the device would recognize (or indeed if it would take another replacement drive at all). FWIW, the original documentation claimed the drives were formatted FAT32, but the 4GB drive was not readable in a Windows machine after transplantation.

  • Your SOL Dude! (Score:3)

    by Llama Keeper ( 7984 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @03:06PM (#81054) Homepage
    One of my clients has several large NAS boxes, both Quantum SNAP and Maxtor maxAttach boxes. (Note that they are they same company now!). When I was talking to the level 3 tech support about our box that crapped out I found out that the snap has a proprietary Journaled file system, you can't do anything about upgrading the thing, or in our case if the OS craps out getting your data back can only be done under warranty by Maxtor/Quantum, or via a data recovery center. My honest opinion of these devices is that they are great appliances, very easy to use and my mom could pbly install one, but their hack potential is just about zero. I tried upgrade a 30 gig single drive model to 80 gig, and was totally unsuccessful. My engineer contact said that the OS is housed on the drive and that trying to ghost it would move the locatation on the drive thus confusing the OS. Sorry dude, you are out of luck!

  • I have a buddy at work that says he did it, email me and I'll see if A.) He's telling the truth and B.) How to do it.
    No promises, but he's a smart kid.

    ----------------------------------
  • Ok, so I talked to him and he said he didn't have time to fool around with it yet. But now I'm wondering... We have a drive duplicator that can do sector by sector copies, and even expand volumes to fill it. I'm wondering if I hooked the snap hdd up to it and try to expand it to a 40gb drive if it would work. Think it's worth a try?

    ----------------------------------
  • Yeah, give it a shot. What have you to lose?!
    Bagpuss
    Your friendly cloth cat
  • I Told You So.
    It's what I think when my clients come back to me after realizing NAS as a scalable solution doesn't exist. Rarely is there uprgrade ability in a NAS unless you buy the REAL expen$ive pieces like NetApp... Then you might as well just bend over and hand 'em your wallet.
    The scalable answer is a SAN and no, they don't have to cost an arm or a leg.. We build 'em here with quality parts, the same stuff you get from Dell, without their pretty name all over it. I understand the questioner my not need a the huge capacity a SAN may give, but this is just another way to illustrate the point that NAS is a band-aid (at best) on a 5" gash when it comes to large capacity customers.
  • You mean like the ones covered by a previous Ask Slashdot? http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/12/17/003255_F. shtml

  • I like HTML, really I do... (Score:3)

    by ArcticChicken ( 172915 ) on Monday July 16, 2001 @02:00PM (#81060)
    Sorry about that:

    Upgrading Quantum Snap Server Capacity? [slashdot.org]

    I think the general consensus was it's not worth it.

  • I did it! (Score:4)

    by flyman ( 222396 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2001 @06:47PM (#81061)
    I have a Snap 2000 that I upgraded from 20Gb (2 x 10gb drives) to 60Gb (2 x 30Gb IBM drives) and it was quite easy. The box complained at first about the missing setup, but then allowed me to format like new. The hardest part was getting the case off.
  • If it does turn out to be legit and the process isn't too complicated, post it back here for the rest of us to see. I was thinking about getting a SNAP server and I'd love to be able to upgrade it if I do...

    Thanks! :-)

  • Rather, it is an integrated solution using a patent pending technology for RAID access that implements high speed caching and optimized writes, thereby eliminating the slow performance seen in many other RAID 5 solutions.

    Sounds a little like RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 to me. No magic here.
  • And that they're unpredictable....
    I noticed a few other peopls had posted about "odd" things their snap servers had done. Ours has crapped out on us twice here... first time was a replacement by quantum, latest time was just a few hours of downtime. But correct me if I'm wrong... isn't the point of a RAID system so taht I don't have downtime?

    Anyway... before I turn into a troll, here's some useful information:
    As far as the filesystem/RAID info, Quantum isn't saying much... Last thing I read on the web site was something to this effect:

    Q: Are you using Software or Hardware RAID?

    A: um, neither. we are using a proprietary, patent-pending system with all kinds of whizzbang things :)

    Ok, here's the real text:

    Question:

    Generally RAID systems use either a hardware RAID controller, or a software-only RAID system. Which is used by the Snap Server?

    Answer:

    Snap Server, the award winning line of Network Attached Storage (NAS) servers from Snap Appliances, Inc., utilizes a revolutionary method of RAID management that has sparked both questions and praise from customers and reviewers alike. The question as to what kind of array Snap Server uses is one not easily answered. In fact, Snap Server is neither a hardware array nor a software array. Rather, it is an integrated solution using a patent pending technology for RAID access that implements high speed caching and optimized writes, thereby eliminating the slow performance seen in many other RAID 5 solutions.

  • The OS is definitely BSD-based [zdnet.com], but it looks like replacing drives [snapappliances.com] is to be done only by authorized VARs and/or field techs. Which, of course, means somebody has to reverse engineer their upgrade process before end users can do so themselves. Think of it as a BlessSnap floppy

  • I remember reading an article some time ago, regarding SNap appliances, and they were intially running on a FreeBSD OS.

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