Initial NDS configuration on the NAS Drive Z can only be done using a remote Windows workstation with the NAS Drive Z's Zerverview utility. Once in the NDS tree, we were able to add users and set permissions using Novell's NWAdmin. The NAS Drive Z also has a functional FTP server and its own DHCP server. To top it off, shared files and folders can easily be published to the embedded HTTP server, so accessing files via the Web is painless. File publishing is performed on a per-share basis, making it possible to publish only those shares designated as public domain.
Event logs, current users and general system information are all easy to access.
However, the NAS server has no real-time monitors. The NAS Drive Z also lacks SNMP and NDMP support. Additionally, we question the benefit of the integrated DDS-3 DAT drive since a single tape can hold only 24 GB of data max, which leaves 264 GB left to back up. We're sure there aren't too many people crazy about manually swapping 12 DAT tapes on a regular basis. Although it posed no threat to the NSS Thunderbolt, the Excel NAS did produce respectable performance numbers.