Should I use a NAS?

[EvilChookie]

Firstly, Mezzmo is an awesome product. Love it!

I recently had a hard drive failure, and I'm now looking at the most cost efficient manner to introduce a) redundancy and b) more storage capacity to my network.

My first thought was a NAS to store all of the files, and a reasonably beefy computer (I have a 3.2ghz Phenom II x4 /w 8GB of RAM that currently does the transcoding quite comfortably) to stream across the network (gigabit ethernet, all around the home). Would it be reasonable to assume that if the NAS was setup with RAID 5 and dual gigabit that it would provide sufficient throughput while streaming to the Transcoding computer?

Do any other Mezzmo users have any experience using a NAS in this fashion? I'm considering a QNAP or a Netgear ReadyNAS as they seem to receive quite favourable reviews all around.

[Paul]

Using a NAS drive is quite common for many Mezzmo users and Mezzmo works well with them. Mezzmo will read your files from your NAS drive and stream/transcode them to your DLNA/UPnP devices in your home.

I don't have any recommendation on NAS brands, so perhaps some other Mezzmo users can help.

Just a helpful tip if you do get a NAS & have some problems with Mezzmo accessing files on it: Make sure your NAS drive is not in sleeping mode, and that Mezzmo and Mezzmo media server has full read access to your NAS drive. You may need to set up a guest account or user account names on your NAS drive with the same names as that you are using Mezzmo on your Windows computer.

[EvilChookie]

Thanks Paul! I'll probably go with something along the lines of http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=162 (for anyone who is interested) and just load it up with a few 2TB disks - that will give about 5.5TB of usable space in RAID 5. Should see close to 100MB/s transfer rates (assuming this review is accurate: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31358-new-to-the-charts-qnap-ts-459-pro-reviewed)

And yes, I will keep an eye on it sleeping :)

[JohnM]

I can tell you that the Synology DS1511 works very well. I have mine loaded with 5-3TB drive in a raid 5 array. It streams well to 4 devices as well as acting as a dns/web/blog/mail server.

[wrodriguesjr]

I'm using a BlackArmor Storage (a Seagate NAS) and I have some problems.

I could add a folder located in my NAS into Mezzmo. Then, I could see the files mapped on Mezzmo. But, when I was trying to see this folder in my SmarTV or Bluray, this folder appeared like an empty folder. This is a different behavior when I choose the files listed on my main Hard Drive or on a External Drive.

Thank you,
Waldir.

[Paul]

Hi Waldir,

See this FAQ to fix this problem - http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/4597-FAQ-Accessing-files-from-external-computers-and-NAS-drives-on-your-home-network

[wrodriguesjr]

Hi Paul,

I saw the link you passed to me and I followed the instructions to try to configure Mezzmo (running over Windows 7) to work with my Seagate BlackArmor NAS, but I had no success.

- The Windows Credential was already created (my NAS is named BLACKARMOR and there was a credential with this name).
- I went to Windows Services and I configured the Logon properties to use my Windows account. I did this procedure to 2 services named "Mezzmo" and "Mezzmo (Escritorio)", where "Escritorio" is the name of my computer.

After I do this, I added a folder into my Video session in Mezzmo. Inside Mezzmo software, I can see all video files inside this folder. But when I try to play these video files over DLNA in my Bluray, I just can see an empty folder.

I changed the permissions in my NAS to give Public Access to Video Share Folder, but this action had no effect too.

Could you please help me?

Thank you,
Waldir.

[Paul]

Hi Waldir,

Please send us a set of logs and we'll see what's happening. Turn on logging (see http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/419-FAQ-How-to-turn-on-diagnostic-logging) and restart your Mezzmo server. Reproduce the empty folder problem on your device and then stop your Mezzmo server and exit Mezzmo. Zip up all the logs and email them to us at support [at] conceiva [dot] com.

[wrodriguesjr]

Hi Paul, I sent an email with logs and other informations.

Thank you.

[Paul]

Thanks - we'll get back to you after we have analysed the logs.