What Operating Systems does the raid support?
SCSI Host Configurations: Multiple Simultaneous Operating Systems Support including Windows NT 3.x/4.0, Windows 2000, Netware 3.x/4.x/5.0, OS/2, SCO Unix, Linux, BSD Unix, MAC, Sun Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, SGI IRIX and Digital Unix. Supports all SCSI host adapters that adhere to ANSI SCSI Specifications ANSI X3.131-1994; SCSI-2, ANSI X3T10/1071D SCSI-3 Fast 20 (Ultra SCSI); ANSI X3.301/2-1998. Commonly used Host Bus Adapters include: Adaptec (except MAC), ATTO, Q-Logic, Symbios (LSI), FORMAC and Infortrend (2101).

Fibre Host Configurations: Multiple Simultaneous Operating Systems Support including Windows NT 3.x/4.0, Windows 2000, Netware 3.x/4.x/5.0, OS/2, SCO Unix, Linux, BSD Unix, MAC, Sun Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, SGI IRIX and Digital Unix. Supports all Fibre Channel devices that adheres to the ANSI standards ANSI X3.269-1996 and ANSI X3.230-1994 will be compatible. Commonly used Fibre Host Bus Adapters include Emulex, Q-Logic and ATTO. Supports Industry Standard Open Systems Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters, MIAs, Hubs, Switches and Management Softwares.

PCI Host Configurations: MS-DOS (ASPI), Windows 95/98, Windows NT 4.0 (for x86 and DEC Alpha), Windows 2000, NetWare 3.x/4.x/5.0, OS/2, SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare, Sun Solaris (for x86 and SPARC) and Linux

NAS/Ethernet Configurations: Windows NT 4.0, Netware IPX/IP, Unix (NFS) & MAC.

UDSS with NAS Virtualization Engine: Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Unix (NFS).

Can I boot from the raid?
PCI-SCSI, SCSI-SCSI or SCSI-Fibre: Yes. Legacy RAID Subsystems can be used in conjunction with any internal disk or raid subsystem, or can also be used as the only storage system attached to the server. The server can be configured to either boot from an Internal Hard Disk/Raid and use the External Raid for Data Storage, or be configured to boot from the raid with both Operating System and Data residing on the raid subsystem.
NAS/Ethernet: No.



How does the NAS (Network Attached Storage) RAID control Security?
First, a user account is established for each user who is to have access to the Legacy NAS RAID. A user is added to the Legacy NAS RAID Users List in the Users Permissions Utility. The Users List has a total of 1000 slots. If you have more than 1000 users who need to have access to the Legacy NAS RAID, you should enable user autodeletion. (It is not as sinister as it sounds. No users are harmed during the autodeletion process.) That’s the Remove Inactive Users option in the General System Utility. When this option is enabled, a user is automatically deleted from the Users List when he or she logs off the Legacy NAS RAID. User autodeletion also works when NDS, Bindery, or Domain integration is in effect. However, if User Quotas (a Permissions Utility) are enabled, user autodeletion is automatically turned off.

Most admins find that it is easier to manage users and assign users access privileges to shares when they are grouped together into, well, uh, groups. If you’re thinking Groups Permissions Utility, you’re right on the money. You can define up to 125 Groups in the Legacy NAS RAID Groups List.

Users and groups are assigned access privileges to a share in the Share Permissions Utility. Click on the name of the share, then click on the Assign Access Rights link. The Users List and the Groups List will be displayed. Click on the checkbox in the Access column next to the name of each user and each group you want to have access to the share. The level of the access rights given to the checked users and groups will be based on the attributes that have been assigned to the share. Obviously, if it is a public share, access rights need not be assigned. Everyone who has access to the Legacy NAS RAID has access to a public share. And if a share has been set to hidden, it will not display in most directory listings, effectively restricting access to only those individuals who know of its existence.

One more thing, if you enabled user autodeletion, your share access privileges should be assigned on the basis of group membership only. Obviously, if a user’s name appears in the Users List only when he is logged in to Legacy NAS RAID, you cannot be sure you will be assigning access rights to all the users who should have them. Some of the users may not be logged in at the time you are assigning access rights.

How does the NAS (Network Attached Storage) RAID integrate with Bindery and Domain?
Bindery and Domain integration is set up in the NCP Server and SMB Server Network Utilities, respectively. First you have to identify the Bindery Server in the NCP Server Network Utility and the Primary Domain Controller and its IP address in the SMB Server Network Utility. Then you have to decide whether you want to leave the Auto Create Users and Groups options enabled (the default setting).

When the Auto Create Users and Auto Create Groups options are enabled, user names and the names of the Bindery and Domain groups are then automatically added to the respective lists as users log in, but only after the user names have been authenticated by the named NetWare Bindery (NCP server) or Windows Domain (SMB server).
This can be a real timesaving feature, particularly for populating the Users List. In addition, since only the users who have actually logged in to Legacy NAS RAID are added to the Users List, you avoid the problem of adding users who will never use the file storage space, or forgetting a user who will.

The way the group names are added to the Legacy NAS RAID Groups List is slightly different depending on whether the environment is NCP or SMB. Under NCP, the names of all the groups in the NetWare Bindery are added to the Legacy NAS RAID Groups List.
Under SMB, when the first user logs in to the Legacy NAS RAID, after the user has been authenticated, the names of the groups to which the user belongs are added to the Groups List. When a second user logs in and has been authenticated, his group memberships are checked against the Groups List and any groups that are not already in the Groups List are added. This process continues as subsequent users log in.

Under both NCP and SMB, as users log in for the first time, the Bindery or Domain authenticates their user names. After authentication, their names are added to the Legacy NAS RAID Users List. New user names are checked against the groups in the Groups List to determine which groups they are members of. New users will automatically inherit the rights of the groups to which they belong, relieving the admin of the responsibility of having to go into each user’s profile and assign access rights to the shares to which he is to have access. It’s much easier to control share access on the basis of group membership.

There is a potential, albeit slight, downside to this whole business of autocreating groups, both under NCP and SMB. The Legacy NAS RAID Groups List has a limit of 125 groups. In a very large workgroup or department with an extensive network, it is possible, though not likely, that this limit could be exceeded. If there are more than 125 groups defined in your workgroup or department, you might want to turn off Auto Create Groups in both the NCP Server and SMB Server Network Utilities. Determine the groups you want to have access to Legacy NAS RAID and manually add the names of those groups to your Groups List. You will ensure that only the groups you want to have access to the Legacy NAS RAID will be in the Groups List.

User and group authentication has been discussed here as it relates to new users and the autocreation of the Users List and the Groups List. However, you should be reminded that users logging in to a Secure System are authenticated by a NetWare Bindery, an NT Domain, or the Legacy NAS RAID every time they log in to the Legacy NAS RAID, whether or not the Auto Create options are enabled. In addition, NetWare Bindery integration should not be confused with the NDS integration features on the Legacy NAS RAID. Specifically, Auto Create is a feature of NCP and affects the NetWare Bindery—it does not affect how NDS works.

How does the NAS (Network Attached Storage) RAID integrate with NDS?
If you are using Legacy NAS RAID under NDS, you have the advantage of managing users, groups, RAID groups, and shares using the NWAdmin utility of the Novell NetWare NDS service. You can also use the utilities in the Administration Toolbox in the Legacy NAS RAID Web browser interface. NDS integration is set up using Legacy NAS RAIDView, as described in Chapter Five, Managing with Legacy NAS RAIDView. Users and groups in the NetWare Directory can be given rights to shares on the Legacy NAS RAID using NWAdmin. The process of granting rights to users, groups, or branches using NWAdmin is as follows:

1   Double-click on a Legacy NAS RAID volume  object to display all of  the directories in that volume.

2   Right-click on one of the directories  and select Details from the popup menu.

3   Click on the Trustees of this Directory button. You can add trustees to or remove trustees from the selected share.

Legacy NAS RAID tracks 125 groups and 1000 users. When an NDS group is granted rights to a share, it is added to the Groups List and takes up one of the 125 slots. When an NDS user is granted rights to a share, the user is added to Legacy NAS RAID’s User List, taking up one of the 1000 slots.

Now, here’s the trick. As mentioned earlier, when a user becomes a member of a group, he inherits all the rights assigned to that group. When the user logs in to Legacy NAS RAID, he takes up one of the 1000 user slots in the Users List. But, when he logs out of the Legacy NAS RAID, his name is removed from the Users List and his slot is freed up. The most effective way to manage Legacy NAS RAID security under NDS is to use NWAdmin to create several groups that are given access rights to specific shares, and assign users to the appropriate groups. Do not give individual users access to shares. Under this setup, the 1000-user limit will be reached only when 1000 users are actually logged in at one time.

You should be aware that when a user logs out, or when you remove rights from a user or group, it can take up to 30 minutes before the user or group is removed from the Legacy NAS RAID Lists.