[NCLUG] WD MyCloud NAS Details

[Maxwell Spangler]

Recently I helped a friend buy a NAS for her home and this weekend I got
a chance to go exploring.

http://www.amazon.com/Cloud-3TB-Personal-Storage-WDBCTL0030HWT-NESN/dp/B00EVVGAC6

The WD MyCloud 3TB is a consumer-grade, home-oriented NAS that consists
of a plastic chassis, embedded computer running Linux and a single WD
RED drive for storage.

The physical case is about the same size as a large external enclosure.
It's small, low-power, and quiet.

The use of the WD RED drive helped me recommend this product to her as
I've got 8 in production and like the a lot.  They're low-power, quiet,
high-capacity, dense-capacity and fast when it comes to large streamed
reads or writes (like ISOs, movie files, etc.)

The embedded computer is a dual core 1.3Ghz ARMv7 processor with 256MB
of RAM and a single gigabit ethernet port.  It has a USB 3.0 expansion
port for more storage.

The software environment is Debian Linux 7.0 for ARM.  From my brief
look around it appears to be about 1/3 stock Linux components just doing
their job, 1/3 Linux components configured by WD for product-oriented
operation and 1/3 proprietary software that differentiates the WD
MyCloud from other commercial NAS units and a Linux NAS unit I might
build on my own.

It has a nice, user-friendly web administration screen that lets one
monitor it, configure users, configure shares and enable/disable various
services including ssh.

Every time a vendor ships something with Linux and lets me ssh into it I
smile.  Mainstream products running Linux using Open Source and Free
Software represent the hard work, patience and determination of the
whole community working for 20+ years to push a rock up a hill.  Welcome
to the top of the hill.

Here are some observation during a little light exploring:

* Apache for the web access

* Samba for CIFS file sharing

* Software RAID to mirror two 2G partitions, presumably the Linux OS.

* NFS likely present but not supported by WD.   This would be nice in a
Linux engineer's environment.

* Ext4 for the storage file systems.

* sar is present so I can monitor CPU use

* dpkg used for packaging instead of anything proprietary

* iptables present for firewall

* Even vim present? that's nice of them.

* Twonky DLNA media server

* Apple-compatible DAAP server for iTunes Server

* afpd for Netatalk / Apple File Protocol.

* Smartd installed but no explicit configuration present

* OpenVPN installed for connection to WD for remote access

With ssh access and your Linux engineering abilities, this is quite an
opportunity to make the box do what you want it to do.

One of the things I found compelling about this device is WD's support
for remote access.  Based on what I saw with OpenVPN, it looks like WD
sets up a VPN link to their computers by reaching out from the MyCloud
to WD.  You can then use software on Mac, Windows, Android and iPhone to
connect with WD's servers and, presumably, reaching through that VPN
have access to the data on your MyCloud from home.

This feature, which I didn't expect to find, turned out to be a key
"want" from my friend after she learned about it.  It only makes sense:
she wants to use storage on this device like her own personal DropBox.
While any kind of opening to remote access invites more than zero
opportunity for intrusion, I think WD has done a good job putting
something in place that's secure enough and gives users what they want.

I didn't benchmark the box, but from what I saw, she was able to copy
files at a speed satisfying to her experience and meeting numbers which
looked similar to what I get on my home brew Linux servers.

Overall, I really like this box.  At $179, It's $46 more than just
buying the 3TB WD drive alone.  For that $46 you get an external
enclosure, embedded computer and a configured Linux environment with
some really good features.  I can't build something cheaper or build and
configure something faster than just buying and configuring one of
these.

I'd actually buy two: a primary and a backup.  That single NAS drive is
going to fail at some point and it'd be nice to have a second one with
everything I need at a price for both at less than $400.

Hope this helps someone!

Disclaimer: I don't get anything from anybody for posting this.



-- 
Maxwell Spangler
========================================================================
Linux & Open Source Systems Engineer
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
http://www.maxwellspangler.com/