Re: Guardian OS units
 

Got 2 4400's running Guardian OS 4.2.054 SP3

One still has the original 120gb IBM hard drives in a RAID-5 configuration.

The other had 2 bad 120gb drives, so I picked up 4 new Seagate 400gb, 7200rpm, 16mb cache, ATA-100 drives for about $100 each and configured them as a 1.04 TB RAID-5 array. Nice for storing all that HD video content I record from TV via my DViCO FusionHDTV5 RT Gold ATSC HD TV tuner card. :D

I kept the 2 120gb drives from the one unit as spares for the other unit, but I ran all 6 drives thru a full Spinrite 6 scan and installed the best 4 of the 6 back in the 4400 before building it out as a general purpose file server for the whole family to use. Decided not to spend the money on new drives for this one at the moment. Probably gonna wait until I burn up 3 of the 120gb drives and my degraded RAID-5 is hanging by a thread, then pick up 4 new drives in whatever capacity is going for a good price point at the time so I can make it the new, higher capacity multimedia server and turn the old video server into a general purpose file server.

I got these 2 units for a really smokin' deal. I probably shouldn't say how much because it might engender some real animosity and spawn a few hater posts. ;)

Only downside is that the maintenance agreement with adaptec ran out shortly after upgrading to Guardian OS 4.2.054 SP3 and I can't really justify the cost of renewing it just to get OS updates, so it looks like 4.2.054 is where I stay. :mad:

Re: Guardian OS units
 

ok, Update...;

SNAP4500
GuardianOS Version: 4.4.049 SP2
Model: 15000
Hardware: 05.03.00
Server Number: 432306
BIOS Version: 3B02
JVM Version: 1.4.2_13-b06


so, what do I have, a SNAP4500 ?? or a 15000 ???

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Same thing, for the most part. In fact, I am going to be selling one soon. The difference is the CPU speed, amount of memory, and most important, the Interface Card (optics). That is a $700+ Interface Card.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Count me in, we have in our office a 4200 with 4-160GB Drives. The scrap pile in NJ has a bunch of 4200s and 4000s. That project is coming up soon.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Just joined the forum.

I've recently acquired a guardian 4400 with 4 x 185Gb IBM Deskstar (deathstar?) drives.

These drives show up as 169Gb.

I have tried putting in Seagate Barracuda 500Gb drives, but they are also shown as 169Gb... Anyone know what's going on? my OS version is 2.2.008


cheers

Dan

Re: Guardian OS units
 

The guardian OS on hot swap treats the drives as failed and auto rebuilds the array. Cold swaping only transfers the OS.

You were in RAID 5 config so it treated it as a failed drive. If your going to upgrade the OS, now is a great time to do it. So you can have a clean install through the recovery console.

You need to break the array down to single disk, disable any AV or snap shots prior to this. Since you already have an os on the new 500g drives you will need to erase (quick is fine using the utility that came with the HD) the all but drive1.

Remove all drives except drive 1
Power down and install a new (clean) HD in drive 2, reboot.
Watch the leds on drive 2, once the units is up and the os has been copied to it (approx 5-7min), power back down and remove drive 1 (orig). You can use the admin gui to confirm if you like. It only takes <30sec to transfter the OS.
Move drive 2 to 1 and reboot.
Now if drive 1 was a 500gig you will need to erase it too. Not required but makes life easier.
Once the unit is up you can now hot swap the remaining drives (2-4) and setup your array.

I hope this helps you. You really need to upgrade the OS to V4. If you are going to do that, just force the unit in to recovery mode and do a clean install from there.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Thanks for your post.

I didn't get any CDs with my unit, so i didn't want to risk losing the OS and having a brick. (I didn't know how the drives were set up).

I had already followed the swap plan that you mentioned (albeit without breaking the RAID first).

I haven't seen any downloads available for the Guardian OS - it seems i need to purchase a support contract with adaptec which sounds expensive...

Re: Guardian OS units
 

I have tried taking one of the new 500Gb drives out and looking at them using a PC based partition utility.

It (as i expected) reports the partitions as Linux based.

The LAST partition is only 169Gb, so i deleted it and recreated it to fill the rest of the drive. Once that drive was inserted into the Guardian 4400, the drive shows up as empty, but with 475,855MB available!

So it seems like i've solved that problem. I am now filling the drive with rubbish to check that the 4400 can read/write all the way up to 500Gb...

In the meantime - i'm still looking for updates...

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Hmmm. I've only managed to get 1 drive recognised as 500Gb... The others are still showing up as 169Gb - even though i've prepared them in the same way. I've tried to do it the way blue68f100 has suggested, but the 2nd, 3rd and 4th drives still only show up as 169Gb.

Does anyone know where i can find an updated operating system??

Re: Guardian OS units
 

You need to confirm that a RAID5 array does not exist. If so this info is saved on all HD's. The only way to remove it is to remove the array to release the space. Which you should beable to do it through storage gui. A raid 5 array on Guardian OS is writer across all drives, incase of failure. You do not want to erase them using a linux format. Format to a std pc FAT32, NTSF or use the quick erase utility that came with the drives. If it reconises the drive as being used it will not use it as a clean HD.

I have not seen how v2 OS looks like, I started on v4. Yes, Adaptec wants everyone on a service contract. But I thought you could buy the OS without a service contract $600?, could be wrong. Did you contact Sales or tech support?

There is NO FREE OS upgrades for the Guardian OS. You may find something on BT, but don't know. Since it is Copyrighted material, anything you find is illegal. This is one reason guardian OS units are expensive to maintain and mainly Corporations are the owners, deep pockets. If you plan on using it as a FTP server, there was a user that came through here awhile back that had his hacked and was forced to completly reload. The newer 4 version is more security minded.

You only need to keep one working HD to boot a Guardian unit, And preferable clean.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Dango99, send me an e-mail and let's see if we can get your unit showing 4 x 500 GB drives (so as not to clutter up this thread). Also, where are you located?

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Big thanks to Phoenix32!!

After several hours on MSN, he got me sorted.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

You're welcome. I am happy to see another Guardian Snap owner up and running.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Do these instructions also apply to the 4200 I am trying to increase the capacity of a snap server I have at work and want to know if I can install 4 x 500GB Hds please help.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Yes, it applys to all Guardian OS Units. It must be down to a single HD and capable of booting without any errors. I do not have NetVault running, so it may need disabling too, if it was shipped with your unit. If it encounters a problem it will drop into the recovery console. If you have the GSU, you can drop into the recovery console and do a clean install using the GSU. You will still need to swap your new drives in after using the recovery console for a clean install.

Some back ground. The GuardianOS is well design to recover from most any issues, by the use of snapshots and normal backups. AV causes a problem if it's not shutdown properly or have file corruption, preventing it from being shutdown. With snapshots disabled, it releases the drive info from flashram/bios. So it will not drop you into the recovery console during a cold boot. When a HD is replaced while powered down it will only transfer the OS, even if there is a raid structure. But then again you have a broken raid and it now knows the new drive, even though you did not hot swap it. Once the OS has been trasfered over, move the drive to position 1. hot swap the rest of your new HD in, once the disk leds go out your ready to build you new array.

If you hotswap drives you transfer the existing file structure over with the same capacity as the original drives, or new hd if clean. The reason for the cold boot file transfer is to get a clean system with only the OS.

It's always nice to have HD pre loaded with the OS, but you still must disable Snapshots and AV or it will drop you in to the recovery console.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

thanks this a great forum

Re: 14000 HD Sleds
 

I know this is probably the wrong place to post, but you can redirect me.

I have a Snap Server 14000 Guardian OS (lastest version 4 something with latest SP) I have all 12 HD Sleds but 8 of the HD have failed. I want to remove the old HD and place a new HD into the sled (preferably a much larger 300gb or 500gb drives). What types of hard drives fit into the sled? I have tried Maxtor ones but the IDE and power slots dont quite line up and therefore I cannot get it seated into the sled. It looks like the drives used to be Western Digital. Will any WD drive work or do I need a specific series or product line to properly fit?

Any suggestions?

Re: 14000 HD Sleds
 

There are 2 different sleds used in those units. I don't know why you would want Maxtor's, they have the highest failure rate in the industry. I think WD will work. WD does not make a Raid Edition drive larger than 320gig, th elast time I looked. These are great HD and are design with Raid in mind, have a min seek time. These drives are actulally heaver than a std HD, design for 24/7 servers. I have the 250gig in my 4500 and they work great.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

14000 is another I have not touched or seen... Sorry, I got nothin'...

Re: 14000 HD Sleds
 

I've emailed Adaptec concerning this unit. They said that the max HD is 250GBs x 12 on these units. Of course, they never tell you if you can go bigger. This limitation might be because of the power supply's ability to be able to run all 12HDs larger then 250GBs as my guess. Who knows with Adaptec. Anyway, just my 2 cents. The sleds are the same in the 12000 and 14000 both having to types of possible sled types. One HD has an offset and the other doesn't. Depends on the type of sled you have. But this is a good guide for you. Check to make sure all the sleds are the same. I would guess they would be , but you never know. See picture for the two types of HDs for the two types of sleds.

bitor

Re: Guardian OS units
 

I have an 85 Gig 4000 series snap server
a 360 Gig 4000 series snap server
a 1 terbyte 4500 snap server
and 2, 2 terabyte 520 snap servers
My 4500 and 520 snap servers are running the guardianos verion 4.44.045 SP3.
I contacted Adaptec about updating to the latest version of the guardianos but they want me to pay for the update. I have only had my last 520 snap since may of last year. They do not support OS updates for more than 90 days from what they are telling me. That seems wrong. I told them that I would never buy another snapserver from them again. I have bought and used snapservers since they were owned by Meridian Data but I will never buy from adaptec again. :nono:
I do have guardianos up to the version stated above.

Poma5

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Sorry to hear that Adaptec has bent you over. You're not the first. It's a great product with very very bad rip off support. If they keep this up...nobody will want new products from them no matter how good it is. It's just to bad.


bitor

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Hello, another Newbie here.

Recently inherited a working 750GB Snap Appliance Snap Server 4500 with GuardianOS 2.4.040 running a Pentium 4 3.06GHz CPU with 533fsb, two Gigabit Ethernet cards, and the SCSI card, with 496MB RAM.

Runs fine but want to use it as a repository of all my iTunes and Apple TV music and movies. Some of these have long files names, and this early version of the GuardianOS doesn't support AFP 3.x, so can't go beyond 27.3 filenames of of MacOS 9.

I have to buy new drives to have any hope of reliability for the next 4 years or so, and hope to upgrade to four 500GB or 750GB Barracudas. That's enough grocery money all by itself, so I was really disappointed when I called Adaptec to find out how to upgrade to 4.4.049. $720!!!!!! Can't afford that, so am looking for ways to avoid having to rename 12,000 songs and movies to conform to 27.3.



slpken

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Welcome to the forum.

Selling of Copyrighted Material is not allowed.

These are commercial grade units so expect prices to follow.

You can setup iTunes to point to a mapped drive.

Buy good drives like the WD RE drives. Stay away from Maxtors.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Connect to the Snap using SMB instead of AFP.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Use NFS to connect to your snap server, that should preserve your filenames.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

I just acquired a Snap Server 520 for one of my clients. Very nicely priced little open-box unit with 4 250GB drives. Spent most of today poking around trying to figure it out, reading through the manuals, setting up the configuration, etc.

Am trying to figure out how it handles file ownership and permissions... who gets to access files I create on it, and how?

I have a ReadyNAS 1100 on another site. That box has been quirky enough that I wanted something a little bit more stable and solid for these folks. Has some nice features, in that each user gets their own automatically secure home share, which can also be mounted via NFS on external servers. Trying to figure out how to do the same thing here...

Re: Guardian OS units
 

Snap servers are able to pull user lists from an NT domain (or Samba PDC), or are also capable of participating in an active directory domain. If you don't have a domain, "local" users can be added manually to the server.
Disk space can be carved into one or more volumes, then the volumes divided into one or more "shares". Example create a single volume called "volumeA" then create on that volume a share called "share1" then goto the security tab and find the share you created (share1) click on the "access" button and add whatever domain or local users and groups. Users and groups can have full access, or read only access and can access the files and folders via afp, smb, nfs, ftp. (All dependent on how you set the server up).

Here is a link to the adaptec admin guide http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support...gos_ug_pdf.htm

Re: Guardian OS units
 

One thing you need to be aware of.

The def snap share gives every one root access. I would suggest creating a new share without this everyone having admin rights.

Use the security guides to setup the initial shares and users. I always create a share called users. Then I add users shares to that tree with user only have access to his/her share. This prevents a users from browsing share they to have have access rights to. Any uses with root access cnan browse. This is the resason you want to setup the tree properly. Then you can add a shared drive for all use as needed.

You may also need to setup the Raid5 array before any of this can happen.

Re: Guardian OS units
 

any chance in hell you still have these? :)
I've got a SnapServer 4400 (well 2 of em) running 4x180gb deathstars, one os 3.2 the other 2.6 and i'd love to upgrade the OS on both of em if the price is swinggable (the closer to free the better)