3. Basic Configuration

The ReadyNAS docs are much better than those that came with the Buffalo TeraStation and include Getting Started, Disk Installation, Quick Install and detailed User guides. All can be downloaded and are worth checking out if you're considering a purchase.

The ReadyNAS comes set to look for a DHCP server and grab an IP address. You can either run Infrant's RAIDar discovery agent (available in Windows Mac OS X and Linux flavors!), or check your router's DHCP client list. In my case, I used Jim Buzbee's trick of pinging the X.X.X.255 address of my LAN (in my case, 192.168.3.255) and found the ReadyNAS IP among the ping return messages.

Once you find the IP address, enter http://ipaddress/admin/ into your browser. You'll need to OK a couple of security certificate warning boxes that pop up - because the ReadyNAS admin interface uses a secure (HTTPS) connection - before you can enter the default login info and get to the Welcome page (Figure 5). Note that multiple admins can log in simultaneously with no warnings thrown.

Figure 5: Welcome page
(click image to enlarge)

The admin interface uses fixed-sized frames, and seems to require a full 1024 by 768 screen in order to not end up with a horizontal and vertical scrollbarred mess that can cause you to miss things. The main reason for the frames seems to be the virtual LED panel at the bottom of the screen, which is intended to provide an at-a-glance reading of system health.

My other complaint is that the interface is s l o w w w w , taking around 5 to 6 seconds (!) to move between screens. Infrant says this sluggish behavior is due to all the real time data they constantly query, but they also acknowledge that speed could be better and told me this might be addressed in a "future" release.

Infrant's RAIDiator OS is very full-featured, providing one of the most extensive feature sets I've seen in a NAS product. Infrant actually does a decent job of describing each feature and its benefits in its RAIDiator description, so I'll focus on the highlights and let screen shots do most of the talkin'.

Contrary to my usual method of diving right into detailed settings, I recommend you use the Setup Wizard which is presented upon first login. There's so much in the ReadyNAS, that it's easy to miss something or get lost. The wizard hits all the main functions, including Services, Security and Share setup, so you can tweak things or just see what's available.

One thing I recommend you do during your Wizarding is to enable email alerts. The ReadyNAS' alerts are the best I've seen, with clear English (or Japanese, Korean, or Simplified / Traditional Chinese) messages of all major system events such as impending quota violations, share changes and hardware problems.

Since my ISP requires SMTP authentication, most email alert functions in products I test don't work. But the ReadyNAS has its own little SMTP server, which faithfully delivered the test message sent by the handy Send Test Message button.

Figure 6: System Performance options
(click image to enlarge)

One screen the Wizard doesn't hit is the System Performance tab shown in Figure 6. Most of the options are self-explanatory, but the Jumbo Frames feature bears a little explanation. For received data, i.e. write, the box auto-detects the frame size (up to 9k) and sets itself accordingly. But for send data, i.e. read, jumbo frames are not used. Infrant says they designed it this way "in order to minimize compatiblity issues".