NAS aggregation or virtualization?

[iamnemo]

My setup:

I have six (6) D-Link DNS-323 NAS (v1.07 firmware) and a XP Pro computer connected to an 8-port unmanaged gigabit switch which is itself connected (for internet access) to my router (WRT54G) which is the DHCP server for my network.

Everything works fine except for the "wake-up" problem mentioned below.

Now my question is:

I would like to see the six DNS-323 units as a single file system in XP Pro, i.e. one drive letter with each NAS as a folder under root. I believe this is known as NAS/file aggregation/virtualization.

What are my options for doing that (preferably software only). Thanks!

Wake-up problem:

Sometimes one of the DNS-323 doesn't "wake up" when accessed and I have to reboot it.

Thanks! Iam

 

[thiggins]

iSCSI might do what you want, but the DNS-323 doesn't support that. At least not with factory firmware.

Sorry, but I don't know anything about the "wake up" problem.

 

[iamnemo]

Thank you Tim for your time. Somebody else also suggested iSCSI but, as you wrote, I need to install another firmware in my DNS-323. I might do that if nothing else works. Thanks again! Iam

 

[iamnemo]

FYI: http://forums.anandtech.com/message...ORDFRM=&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

 

[00Roush]

My setup:

I have six (6) D-Link DNS-323 NAS (v1.07 firmware) and a XP Pro computer connected to an 8-port unmanaged gigabit switch which is itself connected (for internet access) to my router (WRT54G) which is the DHCP server for my network.

Everything works fine except for the "wake-up" problem mentioned below.

Now my question is:

I would like to see the six DNS-323 units as a single file system in XP Pro, i.e. one drive letter with each NAS as a folder under root. I believe this is known as NAS/file aggregation/virtualization.

What are my options for doing that (preferably software only). Thanks!

Wake-up problem:

Sometimes one of the DNS-323 doesn't "wake up" when accessed and I have to reboot it.

Thanks! Iam

Well you can do this using local disks in XP by setting a drive to map to a folder instead of a drive letter. For now I have not figured out if you can do it for network mapped shares. I do think it is possible without resorting to special software but I would have to do more research on how windows maps drives. For the time being you could create a local folder with links to your six different NASes that would act like what you are describing. It really depends on why you need things setup this way.

00Roush

 

[00Roush]

I think I might have found it... it is called DFS. The program is dfsutil and is part of Microsoft's support tools. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...76-9BB9-4126-9761-BA8011FABF38&displaylang=en I believe you can use it to map network shares to local directories among other things. So far I have not tested it out though.

00Roush

 

[iamnemo]

Thank you for your reply about DFS. I am looking into it. Trying to figure out if:

1) it can run under XP Pro SP3 (not a Sever edition);

2) if it can control non-NTFS disks.

Thanks again for your help!! Iam

Another thread about this with some very valuable info: http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=7445.new