7
Copyright © 2011-2019 by Highly Reliable Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
1 Introduction
The NetSwap/RAIDFrame Plus is a removable-media network-attached backup system connecting via
Gigabit Ethernet using either iSCSI or standard Network Attached Storage (NAS) networking
protocols. 10 Gigabit Ethernet is available as an option.
The NetSwap/RAIDFrame Plus family consists of the NetSwap 200 series (single removable bay, 1
internal disk, and RAID), the 2 or 4 bay 2U rack-mount NetSwap 400 series (2 or 4 removable bays
and RAID), the 2 bay NetSwap 300 series mini-tower (2 bays and RAID), the 8 bay 4U rack-mount
NetSwap 800 series (8 removable bays and RAID), and the 2 or 4 bay RAIDFrame 2000 and 4000 4U
rack-mount (2 or 4 RAIDPac removable bays and RAID). With the exception of the RAIDFrame plus,
all NetSwap models can be equipped with either the High- Rely Classic or MPac media bays.
With the NetSwap/RAIDFrame Plus backup system you can choose one of two sharing modes for each
disk: iSCSI or NAS (Network Attached Storage) connecting over Windows Networking(SMB/CIFS)
and NFS. Windows networking is also called (SMB/CIFS) which stand for “Server Message Block/
Common Internet File System”. NFS stands for “Network File System”, which is often used in
Unix/Linux and for virtualization platforms like VMware.
It is possible to have both Windows networking (SMB/CIFS) and NFS networking turned on at once
for each disk. The NetSwap/RAIDFrame Plus's internal (NetSwap 200 series only) and removable
drive's are available as a simple Windows network share and as a NFS export point (folder) – basically
as Network Attached Storage (NAS) with a removable drive.
In iSCSI mode the NetSwap/RAIDFrame Plus cannot simultaneously share the disk as a NAS device
since the entire removable hard drive is dedicated to direct connectivity. A given machine (server) will
directly connect and use the entire removable drive. The NetSwap/RAIDFrame Plus's removable drives
are connected using iSCSI initiator software and supports optional CHAP username/name and
password/secret to improve security. If you need to make an iSCSI drive available to multiple servers
for backup simply “share” the drive on the machine with the iSCSI initiator software, making it
available as a network wide resource. This may be thought of as re-sharing the drive to the rest of the
network.
Disks may be formatted with with encryption if desired for added protection. The encryption is
compatible with the popular TrueCrypt disk encryption software allowing for the disk to be decrypted
on any system capable of running TrueCrypt. Some models of the NetSwap/RAIDFrame Plus include
hardware encryption.
Some models add the ability to replicate backups off site; either to another NetSwap or to various cloud
storage providers (including Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage) or servers or providers
using FTP or SFTP protocols.
