Unibrain FireNAS Portable review

Like the NAS (network attached storage) devices in our recent group test (see Enterprise, issue 98, p193), the FireNAS Portable can provide shared storage on a local area network without the need for a host server. However, unlike the purely Ethernet-based products featured in that group test, Unibrain's device also supports FireWire networking, both for access and later expansion.

The FireNAS is a small silver cube containing a 1.26GHz Pentium III-based server and two or four EIDE hard disks. These provide 240GB or 480GB of storage space, with optional striping on both models plus RAID-5 on the four-disk version.

The pre-configured support means you only need to plug the FireNAS into the LAN and switch it on. That said, it's possible to fine-tune the operating system, configure users and set limits on the amount of space each is allowed, using either a standard Windows Terminal Services client or via a simpler browser-based management interface.

It's on the networking front, however, that the FireNAS stands out from the crowd. The interfaces at the back of the unit include both 10/100Mb/sec and Gigabit Ethernet ports plus those unique FireWire ports. These can be used in two ways. The first allows client computers to connect to the FireNAS Portable via an existing FireWire network at up to 400Mb/sec - at the same time as other clients attaching via Ethernet.

The other use is as a mechanism for daisy-chaining FireNAS servers together without affecting network bandwidth on a host Ethernet LAN. Used this way, the FireWire ports can provide out-of-band connectivity for up to 63 FireNAS devices, with no extra software required.

I experienced no real problems with the FireNAS and I was particularly impressed with the speed of the FireWire interface. That said, few PC networks will be based on this technology and the Unibrain software is most likely to appeal to companies with Apple hardware where FireWire connectivity comes as standard.

Author: Alan Stevens