1.016: emc lifeline 1.1 - new and improved!
Back in January, I covered EMC's announcement of the EMC LifeLine storage software for SOHO storage platforms (see gotta getta life (line)). Back then, I described the 1.0 version of LifeLine as it was deployed on the Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-E and I compared how the LifeLine features stacked up against my home storage requirements.
Shortly thereafter, I did acquire an SS4200-E for my home use, and it has pretty much lived up to my expectations. Mine has 4ea. 1TB SATA drives in it which I have it configured as a 3+1 RAID5 group, netting just over 2.7TB usable (the "1TB drives" are actually closer to 900GB raw). Over the past several months, the SS4200 has truly become the "lifeline" of my digital footprint, acting as the primary repository for all of my digital music and video files, as well as the backup target for all of my home computers and laptops and for my photographs (primary photo storage is on 250GB USB drives for portability).
Aside from a nagging glitch that prevents the included Retrospect HD from being able to completely back up my primary Vista Ultimate (64-bit) laptop (can't get access to a few non-critical files for some reason), I've been totally happy with the system.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that the LifeLine 1.1 upgrade was available (since July 3, 2008, apparently).
A quick login to my "SS" admin console, click over to Setup/Upgrades, and the process was underway - fully automated upgrade. When the box rebooted, the admin console next explained that I needed to upgrade the admin software itself (and the included Retrospect client). After a couple more clicks, I was up and running the new software - short, simple and painless.
Wanna know what's new in LifeLine 1.1? Read on...
inside lifeline 1.1
Despite the simplicity and speed of the upgrade process, there is quite a bit that's new in the LifeLine 1.1 update. And although the update is available to all existing customers, the new data sheet hasn't been released just yet. I did check with marketing before writing this post, and they said it was OK.
So, if you want to know what's new in LifeLine 1.1, you've come to the right (and for now, the only) place!
Like I said, there are many enhancements in LifeLine 1.1. For many, I'm sure the most significant is the addition of NFS support. In fact, I suspect this was probably the most-often requested feature (I mean, come on, Lifeline's core OS is Linux, after all). With 1.1, the NFS service can be enabled and then individual shares can be configured to allow NFS access. As you would expect, this allows for a broader range of clients sharing the box, and it also enables cross-platform file sharing. Client integration now also supports Macintosh and Linux clients in addition to Windows, but any client that can access an NFS mount point or CIFS share can natively access LifeLine-based storage.
A lot of work has gone into the area of access control and security. LifeLine 1.1 now supports user groups, simplifying setting up access controls for large numbers of users. And in addition to basic Windows workgroup-based sharing you can now integrate your LifeLine 1.1 server into your Microsoft Active Directory domain. And there's a new downloadable Event Log that records the 1,000 most recent events (host or FTP logins, device status, etc.).
LifeLine 1.1 is a little bit greener as well, in that it now enables the power savings features of the SS4200-E hardware so that drives will spin-down when not in use. Given I'm not actually playing music or editing photos 24x7, this is a very practical feature. There's also an option to dim the blue LEDs on the front of the unit, but I haven't actually checked to see if this works on my hardware - even if it does, it isn't going to save a noticeable amount of power, I'm sure.
There are a couple of rather interesting features that I'm not sure have all that big of an impact. On the surface they look more like "gee, wouldn't it be cool if" features that really have little real end-user demand. There's now support for Bluetooth file upload from any Bluetooth device (with the appropriate profile support, I suppose). The data sheet draft I saw says you can "Sync contact, upload pictures, backup emails...using your Bluetooth-enabled phone, pocket PC or Blackberry." Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything that lists supported Bluetooth dongles, which I assume are required because the management screen tells me that my hardware doesn't have native Bluetooth support. And if I had it, I'm not yet sure what I'd do with it (perhaps the dev team will drop me a comment with an explanation).
The other unexpected addition addition is native support for UPnP Video Surveillance cameras. Apparently you can hook up one or more of these cameras to the storage server and have it automatically collect your surveillance repository. I suppose this could be useful, and once I figure out which cameras are supported, I may give it a try. Hopefully I can limit the amount of disk being used for this though - after less than 6 months with the device it's already more than half-full.
I may need to start planning for an upgrade to the new 1.5TB drives Seagate recently announced.
The last two interesting features are the ability to configure the system for RAID 0 (unprotected), and the new embedded content-based search engine. Now, I seriously hope that the new-box install default makes it as difficult as possible to configure the box without benefit of RAID 1 or RAID 5 protection, otherwise there are going to be some Very Unhappy People once they learn (the hard way) that a single drive failure effectively means you lose everything in the box. Personally, one of the primary features I required for my home storage server was that it offer RAID5 to protect my data...I've simply had too many drives fail (wear out) over the years. But given this is a consumer product, I'm sure there will be those who willingly risk their data in return for every last byte of capacity - I just hope the do so with full awareness of the risks.
The search engine I like a lot - it makes it much easier and faster to search through my 30,000+ music and video files than it would be to use a client-based search. Unfortunately, the search engine apparently doesn't understand Retrospect backup file formats, however, so I can't use it to find the various generations of a file that has been backed up. The Retrospect user interface forces you to select the desired backup date before you can select files; it would have been a huge win if content-based search had offered an easier way to find all the various versions of my files.
what's still missing (imho)
As I mentioned back in January, LifeLine 1.0 didn't then fill all of my needs and expectations. Unfortunately, the same is still true today in three areas: no remote backup/replication integration, no de-duplication, and no TiVo support.
The first two are pretty straight-forward: I want Lifeline to seamlessly integrate with Mozy, automatically backing itself up in the background so that I don't every have to worry about losing my precious MP3 collection in a fire or flood. Given this week's announcement of a similar offering for Iomega external drives, I remain hopeful that this is in the pipeline - it seems a natural extension of both product lines to do so. And I'm switching over to FIOS this weekend, so I should have a pipe large enough to back up my server in a reasonable amount of time (I'm getting the 20/5 service, and the 20/20 isn't too much more expensive if I ever need it).
As for de-dupe - well, huge honkin' SATA drives may be relatively cheap, but I have multiple clients being backed up to my LifeLine server, so I'm paying the price of storing multiple copies of the exact same files. I'd be happier if the system could compress and de-duplicate everything I stored on it, even if it only saved me 20% of capacity (more would be even better). And although this one might not be seen soon in a home storage appliance, I'm convinced that it is inevitable...LifeLine has the opportunity to take the lead in this space.
The lack of native TiVo support is my biggest gripe - specifically, I really want integrated TiVo-to-Go/Comeback support built into the box, similar to how the Windows Media and iTunes servers are built in. Without that, I have to use TiVo Desktop to move files between my TiVos and my storage server.
Good news here is that Lifeline 1.1 corrects a Samba configuration parameter that now enables TiVo Desktop v2.5 to use a SS4200-based share as the target "My TiVo Recordings" directory. That means I can now use TiVo Desktop to download shows/movies from my TiVo directly onto my server so that I can delete them off of my TiVo's to reclaim space.
Bad news is that latest (very buggy) version of TiVo Desktop v2.6 doesn't allow the use of network shares any more, so my enthusiasm for the Lifeline fix was short-lived. Well, actually, I've reverted back to TD v2.5 so that I can store my .tivo files on my storage server until TiVo fixes Desktop.
But it would be so much simpler if LifeLine would implement the necessary TiVo support directly.
The good new is that there are several new / reinvigorated Linux-based implementations of the TiVo-to-Go functionality that could provide a jump-start on an implementation. A good place to start might be with the java-based galleon or python-based pyTiVo. In fact, I'll probably implement one or both in my home later this summer, using Lifeline as my storage platform and my old NSLU2 as the server platform - a challenge made simpler now thanks to NFS support in LifeLine 1.1 - WOOT!!
how to get lifeline 1.1
If you are a current SS4200-E owner, the upgrade process is pretty much automatic (if you're one of the early Beta sites you may also need updated boot firmware - you should have gotten an email from the Beta team with instructions for performing that upgrade before the LifeLine upgrade). All you need do is go to the Setup tab of the Administration Console, select Upgrade, and follow the simple instructions.
And if you don't yet own an SS4200-E, they are available through most standard channels, including Amazon.com: SS4200-E with Retrospect or SS4200-E without Retrospect (my advice is to get the version with Retrospect if you don't already have it - if there ever IS Mozy integration, I'm willing to bet it will be integrated with Retrospect). Oh, and don't forget that these prices don't include any disk drives - you'll probably want at least 2 SATA drives to get started.
I understand that new systems will be shipping with LifeLine 1.0 SW for a while longer, but you can easily upgrade to the latest software as I described above.
So that's about it for now...I expect that there will be more EMC LifeLine announcements later this year, but for now, all these new features are enough to satisfy most of my needs.
And yours too, maybe!
technorati tags: 
Barry - my question - how does someone GET one of these?
I know how to do it as an EMCer (the internal ChannelEMC discounted link), but what about the world at large? I'm sure we can link to an OEMed version somewhere, right?
Posted by: Chad Sakac | July 21, 2008 at 10:09 AM
Try here: SS4200-E on Amazon.com.
Posted by: the storage anarchist | July 21, 2008 at 08:14 PM
Does the Lifeline team have an email/location to put items on a wish list? I would like to see a bit torrent client added (both ReadyNAS and Synology have a bit torrent client included in their latest release). I would also like to see a later version of busybox. As well as an included package manager. And finally a webserver -- I know it already runs appweb but I am talking about apache along with php, mySQL, and perl.
Posted by: Dan Long | February 12, 2009 at 04:57 PM
Oh yeah, you mentioned RAID 0 -- I just did an update and do not see RAID 0. I am curious as to where you saw that? Is it available with just 2 drives? And any idea why the Lifeline only allows 2 or 4 drives? Why not do raid 5 with 3 drives? Is there a users group or such for EMC Lifeline?
Posted by: Dan Long | February 12, 2009 at 05:00 PM