Activation or periodic online check?

For me "activation" is something you do once. It usually requires an online connection these days, but that's not too much a problem if you only need to do it once: You move the storage appliance to a less secure environment with internet connectivity, activate, disconnect and move it back.

But it looks like DSS-lite wants to check your license every time it boots and perhaps continuously. But I don't want to give my home storage server permanent internet connectivity and I don't want to loose my data, because open-e's validation server isn't available "enterprise class" (difficult if you don't make money on the service).

I also believe there is a difference between "online activation" and "usage tracking".

I've used the ISO demo in the past and I really liked product. But since the "home" version was discontinued (wasn't iSCSI and NAS either) and the entry level €700 was a bit too expensive to my taste I had basically gone back to using CentOS 5.1 and the Berlios iSCSI TGT with Samba to do the job, even though it's a lot more hassle to "administer" on a family father time budget.

When this offer came out I thought "It's Christmas again!", but the risk of loosing your data after January 31st, because the hardware changed too much or because the connectivity to the verification service is lost, is simply too big to offset the ease of administration.

Why don't you do a €99 version without the online-dongle and add a €149 version for 4TB?

I tend to convert my "game stations" into home servers once they grow older and have their place ursurped by newer hardware. That's a gradual process and involves components (nics, disks, cpus even motherboards) moving individually rather than as a whole. And as the hardware ages, chances of it failing increases. Not a really problem, usually with Linux (much more so with Windows). But when you tie licenses to hardware I might as well be using Windows and StarWind.

BTW. Versions that work with 512MB or even 256MB would be nice, too.

Hello abufrejoval,

It seems that you’ve been playing with system for a while and you like everything except the price… I don’t know about market prices??? But I am testing the LITE version and I love it…

remember it’s a free version that come with support, unlike the Centos 5.1.. At some point I like Centos 5.1 but so far I prefer using this open-e sw. I talked with one of the guys in open-e and they told me the 4TB is cheap… so we can jump and use it …

I believe the "home" version used to run at around €250. It's actually not that easy to find end-user prices, but what I found puts the entry level version at €900.

For me that's not cheap. It's more expensive than buying dedicated hardware (e.g. Buffalo Terastion) which *includes* the functionality. Of course the open-e software is likely to perform better, but since I plan to run this on older or low-power hardware at home, power saving features may be more important than sustaining 50.ooo IOPS.

I don't need support in the sense of installation help.
I don't need upgrades or fixes if the system is robust and stable in the first place.
However, I need to be able to trust a filer or iSCSI target, that any data I've put there, I'll be able to recover as long as the hardware isn't broken. That's why RAID functionality and the ability to replace every bit of hardware (not necessarily with exactly the same hardware, because commodity PC parts have a very short product cycle and replacements may be impossible to obtain) is absolutely mandatory. And it has to work even if there is currently no internet connectivity.

Given the current limitations of the DSS-Lite version I just don't see how anyone could use it for anything but DEMO purposes. But then it should be called DEMO not FREE. Calling FREE Edition is simply misleading. FREE implies a gift, but even gifts have value. If a gift self destructs or a gift leads you to put trust where it doesn't belong, it actually become s a trojan: "Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis!"

I dont know what prices you are getting... But the 900 you are talking about is for the thier 16TB version. and the 4TB is much much cheaper than this...

I believe this version does not mean to be installed in very high usage production environment. ITs LITE, its just a flavor of their system. Get 2 versions of LITE back them up, and what else u r looking for?? If you are looking for a SW that last so long, support (I blieve their forum guy is been asswering all type of technical questions not just how to install, and upgrade..etc) and come in a cheap price and is upradable.. Will this will be in different earth, not in this earth.. everything have pros and cons...