RAID 5 provides data striping across drives to improve performance and parity checking to provide fault tolerance. Once up and running, the Snap Server appears as a server on the LAN, enabling clients to connect to it using whatever mechanism they normally use to browse for network resources. Macintosh clients see the server in the Network Browser or Chooser. If your network uses static addressing or you need to assign a specific reserved IP to a Snap Server, you can do so through the management interface. The server provides good logging features and can notify you by email when error or fault conditions occur.
Configuration is a painless process.
Once you connect to the unit through your Web browser, the management Web page provides easy access to settings for networking, security and global properties, as well as utilities for disk configuration, management, format, repair and share creation. The unit also includes Windows-based software for configuring most options with the exception of shares and security, which require the Web interface, as shown in Figure 2. The Snap Server supports NetWare 3.1x or an NDS server running 4.x or 5.x with IPX and bindery emulation enabled. Creating local accounts and groups on the server is a good solution when you have no dedicated server on the network. Using your existing network accounts lets you maintain your existing security structure and saves the time involved in creating new users and groups on the server.