Adventures in Data Movement

By nature I'm a problem solver, so when I see something that should be easier. I tend to try and solve it. With one caveat ‘it has to be interesting’, otherwise all those boring mundane tasks I flee from in the home would be done already. So let's assume that what's upcoming will not only solve a problem, be cool and keep my interest.

Storage is moving into people's lives in ways that we don't notice most of the time. Cell Phones, Camera's and Music Players store things. My teenagers are asking for flash sticks so they can transfer between school and home. You get the picture, while I love this as a storage geek this can get overwhelming for people that don't understand the magic inside the great mysterious box known as the personal computer in any of its forms today.

 
So here's the problem that caught my interest. My wife uses her camera almost every day at work. She is a preschool teacher they build a photo album for each student at the end of the year. This is filled with pictures of the child's interactions thru out the school year. You can see with 40+ students any given term that that's a lot of photos. She is always copying from the camera onto her lap top working away dragging and dropping, sorting then into the proper locations etc. This should be a lot easier, why isn't this like putting your smart phone in the cradle and the data just winds up where it should be. This might answer that question that the computer savvy among us has been struggling with for decades of 'Why didn't it go where I wanted it too?'

 
So let's describe my setup a little bit here so folks understand what we can bring into play to solve this problem

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My home supports both wired gigabit devices as well as N wireless. The general configuration is if the device is on the 2^nd floor, mainly in my office where all the heavy lifting devices are on a gig switch. Devices in the basement, 1^st floor and backyard area have access to the N router that is funneled up to the gig backbone. The primary network storage device for the household is an Iomega IX4 this is an approximately 6 terabyte NAS Appliance. All household users have access to this and the goal is that this is where all content will reside for one simple management point. Yes I'm not a simple setup but I warned you I'm a storage Geek what else would you expect.

 
So my plan is to take the data from my wife's camera and get it upstairs onto the IX4 in the right folder solving the age old riddle. If I'm lucky there will be no loss of life, limb or interruption in my game play. This has to be easy to use and behave like docking your phone no more than a button press away

 
The cast of characters:

Iomega Ix4

Iomega iConnect

 

Generic 5 in 1 flash device

 

Flash SD drive from the camera

Assumptions:

• Your Iomega NAS device is installed and running
• Your iConnect is installed and running
• Your multi SD drive works and you have data on the SD device you wish to use

Step 1: Connect to the iConnect Device

My iConnect is open security model it is used as a data pump device as well as exporting our USB DAS to the network as needed. Your mileage may vary here it may have a login screen if you have enabled user security

Step 2: Enter the Backup and Restore menu section on the device

Step 3: Choose Copy Jobs

The storage service I've decided to use for this solution is the Copy Job Service this is a great work horse for custom data movement operation in the Iomega NAS products its supports across the line at a minimum by devices that run the EMC LifeLine software. Once you have reached this menu select the Add button to begin adding a new Copy Job into the system.

Step 4: Add a new Copy Job

When adding a Copy Job there are several pieces of data that needs to be gathered. This data is only gathered once and saved within the system and reused each time the Copy Job is run.

This data contains the following information

• The Copy Job Name

• Its overwrite Setting this tells the job system if it should overwrite existing files on the target device. There are several options here. For this task I have left this setting at its default Do Not Overwrite

Now let's start describing the source device information needed. I've left the device as ic01 this is the iConnect device within my home that we will use to plug in the SD flash device reader into.

Step 5: Choose what to copy

Now let's select the what to copy section This is the location on the source device I wish to use To this we will select the what to copy pull down button.

Step 6: Choose source folders

For this project selecting all the folders on this device would create unnecessary clutter on the target device. causing my wife to have search in order to find her new pictures once they have been moved onto the target device.

Once I've changed the setting to the 'selected files and its content', a browse button will appear on the UI this allows me to pick the correct source directory to use. As you can tell I've selected the output folders that my wife's camera stores its new content into..

We can now move onto the target information. I'm choosing a location on my IX4 NAS device to do this. By doing this my wife can connect to her pictures from any device with my household.

Step 7: Choose remote device

By selecting the To Device pull down I see the following choices on my network I've chosen the device IX4-01. This is the host name of my household NAS device.
once selected it's now time to enter all the information necessary to attach to this device.

Step 8: Add target information

The information needed for this select are as follows

• Protocol: Windows File Sharing

• Username: Diana

• Password: ********

The last piece of information is the folder that you wish to use to store the content with. You may enter this information directly into the field or select the Browse button and you can browse the destination for the location

Step 9: Completed copy job

We have just one more thing to select about this copy job that is the run when quick transfer button is pressed. This feature will run this copy job when the device is inserted and the button on the front of the iConnect is pressed. The very last step is to press the apply button and our job is saved for use.

Step 10: Available copy jobs

Once you have completed we now see our copy job in a list of available jobs that can be run.

Step 11: Copy job run report

Checking the status of a copy job is a simple act in the UI as you can see from this run there are no problems, thus the green check. From this screen you would see any error conditions and details if they had occurred.

Step 12: The end results

This is the view of the IX4 NAS appliance from my Windows 7 desktop as you can see the pictures are now under the New Pictures Folder on my wife's share. At this point she can edit, move and sort to her heart's content. She only needs to look here for her new pictures from now on.

In conclusion this was a lot simpler that I thought it would be. The products involved worked well together it honestly too far longer to write this up then to actually do the operations from scratch. Once set up it works well and has a very well understood and predictable end result. My wife likes having her photo at her finger tips and the ease of use that the process provides.

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