MediaVault

The following items are included:

• MediaVault D1200 chassis.
• 12 x Enterprise NAS HDD (a range of capacities are available) shipped separately.
• Mains power leads.

D1200 Front view

D1200 Rear view showing connectivity

The left side of the MediaVault should only be removed by qualified personnel for hardware service.

The MediaVault is shipped with the disks packaged separately to prevent damage. The disks need to be installed following the procedure below.

1. Unbox the MediaVault and the disks from their packaging.

MediaVault D1200

Disk in Caddy

2. Use a 2mm hex key to unscrew the fastening bolts from the right side panel of the MediaVault and remove the panel.

Unscrewing the disk cover panel

Removing the disk cover panel

3. Install the disks into the correct numbered slots. To do this first push the blue tab on the disk caddy to open the locking lever. Push the disk into the slot, and then push the locking lever to secure the disk in the slot.

Inserting a disk

Lock caddy lever

4. Refit the side panel.

Important: If you need to ship the MediaVault between locations the disks should be removed and boxed separately, in the same way as the system was originally received. This is critically important to prevent damage to the system during shipping.

Use the procedure below to load the disks.

1. Unbox the disks from the original packaging.

2. Install the disks into any slot. To do this first push the red tab on the disk caddy to open the locking lever. Push the disk into the slot, and then push the locking lever to secure the disk in the slot.

   
   

   
   
3. Attach the front cover. This fits magnetically to the MediaVault.

Important: If you need to ship the MediaVault between locations the disks should be removed and boxed separately, in the same way as the system was originally received. This is critically important to prevent damage to the system during shipping.

Follow the procedures below to mount the MediaVault in a rack.

To rack-mount the MediaVault:

The MediaVault is supplied with a set of two rack-mounting rails. Each comprises an inner rail (to be attached to the side of the chassis), and an outer rail (to be attached to the rack).

1. Separate the inner and outer rails.

   
   

   
   

   1. Extend the rail assembly (A and B).

   2. Press the quick-release tab (C).

   3. Separate the inner and outer rails (D).

2. Secure an inner rail to either side of the MediaVault chassis making sure the rails face outwards.

3. Secure an outer rail to either side of the rack slot.
   The outer rails are extendable to allow for different rack depths.

   
   

   
   

   1. Secure the back end of the outer rail to the rack using the screws provided (A).

   2. Press the button where the two outer rails are joined to retract the smaller outer rail (B).

   3. Hang the hooks of the rails onto the rack holes and use screws to secure the front of the outer rail onto the rack (C).

4. Install the MediaVault chassis into the rack.

   
   

   
   

   1. Extend the outer rails.

   2. Align and engage the inner and outer rails.

   3. Slide the MediaVault into the rack until it clicks into the locked position.

5. Secure the MediaVault with the screws provided.

   
   

   
   
6. Fit the magnetic front panel.

To remove the front cover

The front panel is magnetic and has finger-holds (shown in the diagram below) to the left and right.

Using the finger-holds, gently ease the front panel forward to remove it from the chassis.

To remove the MediaVault from the rack:

1. Remove the front panel as above.
2. Remove the two screws that secure the MediaVault to the rack.
3. Use the handles to the left and right of the front of the chassis to slide the MediaVault out of the rack.
   
   

   
   

   Warning: Take care that the rack does not destabilise and tip over.

   Warning: Take care that the MediaVault does not fall and cause injury.

Follow the procedures below to mount the MediaVault in a rack.

To rack-mount the MediaVault:

The MediaVault is supplied with a set of two rack-mounting rails. Each comprises an inner rail (to be attached to the side of the chassis), and an outer rail (to be attached to the rack).

1. Separate the inner and outer rails.

   
   

   
   

   1. Extend the rail assembly (A and B).

   2. Press the quick-release tab (C).

   3. Separate the inner and outer rails (D).

2. Secure an inner rail to either side of the MediaVault chassis making sure the rails face outwards.

3. Secure an outer rail to either side of the rack slot.
   The outer rails are extendable to allow for different rack depths.

   
   

   
   

   1. Secure the back end of the outer rail to the rack using the screws provided (A).

   2. Press the button where the two outer rails are joined to retract the smaller outer rail (B).

   3. Hang the hooks of the rails onto the rack holes and use screws to secure the front of the outer rail onto the rack (C).

4. Install the MediaVault chassis into the rack.

   
   

   
   

   1. Extend the outer rails.

   2. Align and engage the inner and outer rails.

   3. Slide the MediaVault into the rack until it clicks into the locked position.

5. Secure the MediaVault with the screws provided.

   
   

   
   
6. Fit the magnetic front panel.

To remove the front cover

The front panel is magnetic and has finger-holds (shown in the diagram below) to the left and right.

Using the finger-holds, gently ease the front panel forward to remove it from the chassis.

To remove the MediaVault from the rack:

1. Remove the front panel as above.
2. Remove the two screws that secure the MediaVault to the rack.
3. Use the handles to the left and right of the front of the chassis to slide the MediaVault out of the rack.
   
   

   
   

   Warning: Take care that the rack does not destabilise and tip over.

   Warning: Take care that the MediaVault does not fall and cause injury.

Direct Connection

With an optional second standard Network Interface Card, direction connection is supported for up to 8 clients over 10 GbE.

With an optional second higher performance Network Interface Card, direction connection is supported for up to 2 clients over 25, 40, or 50GbE.

R1200 and R3600 - Direct connection for up to 6 clients over 10GbE as standard.

Direct Connection

With an optional second standard Network Interface Card, direction connection is supported for up to 10 clients over 10GbE.

With an optional second higher performance Network Interface Card, direction connection is supported for up to 2 clients over 25, 40, or 50GbE.

Clients will share the bandwidth available between the MediaVault and the switch.

Click Connect and in the next window enter the username and password for your MediaVault user account, and click Connect again.  The share should now be mounted. If you want your computer to automount the share after a restart then open System Preferences > Users & Groups and under the Login Items add the share to the list.

CODEX Device Manager software will detect any MediaVaults on your network and provide options to access the Admin Web Interface and to mount the storage.  See the Device Manager Integration section for more information.

Please Note:  If you are attempting to connect using one of the default user accounts (storageadmin or storageuser), then you will need to ensure you have changed the default password first.

Map Network Drive

Select the tickbox for ‘Connect using different credentials’ and click Finish and in the next window enter the username and password for your MediaVault user account and click Connect, and the share should be mounted. Select the tickbox for ‘Reconnect at sign-in’ if you want your computer to automount the share after a restart.

Please Note:  If you are attempting to connect using one of the default user accounts (storageadmin or storageuser), then you will need to ensure you have changed the default password first.

Enter the following information:

User name = storageadmin
Password = storageadmin

Click ‘Log In’.

From the Users area you can set a new password for the storageadmin user if required. Be sure to keep a secure record of the password that you set. This will be the password for subsequent logins as storageadmin to perform administration on the MediaVault.

For more information on finding your IP address and logging into the Admin Web Interface, please see the Finding the Media Vault 10GbE network IP address section.

IMPORTANT!
When a MediaVault leaves the factory, it will be set up with two default user accounts.  These accounts can access the Admin Web UI, but cannot be used to mount storage or connect into the MediaVault in any other way until the default password has been changed.

The default users and passwords are:

• user:  storageadmin  password:  storageadmin
• user:  storageuser   password:  storageuser
  
  

An alert will also be displayed next to the user in the Users section:

Click on the  user in the User section to change the password.

Once the default password has been changed for either account, you will be able to mount shares using that account.  See the Users, Groups and Shares sections below for more information.

In the table named Interfaces, the port named eno1 (at the top of the list) corresponds with Port 1 on the MediaVault.  Port 1 (eno1) is set up by default as the admin port to connect into the MediaVault for administration (although any port can be used). By default it is configured with the IP address 192.168.2.2 and Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0.  On the D1200, Port 1 (eno1) is a 1GbE port and so is typically used for administration access to the MediaVault only.  On the R1200 and R3600, Port 1 (eno1) is a 10GbE port and so can be used for administration and data transfer.

DHCP Server (software version 2.3.0 or above)
Port 1 (eno1) can be used as a DHCP server to automatically assign an IP address to a host computer.  In order to enable the DHCP server, you will need to ensure that eno1 is set to default settings (Manual mode, fixed IP address of 192.168.2.2 and Subnet Mask of 255.255.255.0).  The host computer will need to have the connected network port set to DHCP mode in order to be assigned an IP address from the Media Vault.  The assigned IP address will be in the range 192.168.2.100 to 192.168.2.200. 

D1200 Network Ports
Port 1 is the 1GbE port labelled eno1 in the image below, and is intended for admin access to the MediaVault.

The standard NIC on the D1200 provides four 10 GbE ports with the names enp101s0f0, enp101s0f1, enp101s0f2, enp101s0f3. These are the names of the ports from left to right, as viewed from the rear of the Media Vault. If any other network cards are fitted, such as a 25/40/50GbE card, these will be assigned a different number such as enp23s0f0:

D1200 Network Ports

R1200 and R3600 Network Ports
The R1200 and R3600 have two 10GbE ports, located next to the USB ports, named Port 1 and Port 2.  The other ports shown will depend on the Network Interface Cards (NIC) that are fitted in the MediaVault. The standard NIC provides four additional 10GbE ports with the names enp101s0f0, enp101s0f1, enp101s0f2, enp101s0f3.  These are the names of the ports from bottom to top, as viewed from the rear of the MediaVault.  If any other network cards are fitted, such as a 25/40/50/100 GbE card, these will be assigned a different number such as enp23s0f0:

R1200 Network Ports

R3600 Network Ports

Click on a port name to view and edit the setup:

Typically the items that would be edited are the IPv4 network address and the MTU setting:

Detailed configuration and optimisation of networking is beyond the scope of this guide, but in particular it is important to note that all machines on a network should have a unique IP Address, and they should all use the same MTU setting - typically on a 10GbE network the MTU of all machines is set to 9000 (sometimes called ‘Jumbo Frames’) for best performance. 

If required set a Mac address for the bond, either based upon one of the selected ports or newly defined.
The following Modes are available:

The MediaVault ships by default with a single Pool called ‘cdxstore’ with 2-disk redundancy on a single storage block (D1200 / R1200) or across three storage blocks (R3600).*

*NOTE: MediaVault D1200 and R1200 contain a single 12-disk storage block.  MediaVault R3600 contains 3 x 12-disk storage blocks.  3 x disks would need to fail on a single storage block for data to become inaccessible.

The Storage page lists the Pools alphabetically, along with information about the overall % of Pool capacity used (by all Shares combined) and a status indication, such as ONLINE.  When you click on a Pool, the Pool Details and Device Details information are shown.

If the Pool status is shown as ONLINE this means there are no disk or data integrity issues to attend to.

If the status is shown as DEGRADED this means there has been a disk issue (on 1 or 2 disks) but data is still accessible. In this case the disk issue should be investigated and remedied, and the Pool can then be returned to ONLINE with assistance from CODEX.

If the status is shown as FAILED this means that there has been a disk issue on 3 or more disks on a single vdev, and that data has become inaccessible. For this reason, it is critical to attend to any disk issues as soon as the status changes from ONLINE to DEGRADED.

The Status Ring on the front of the MediaVault indicates the status of the system / Storage Pool.  For more information, see the Status Ring section.

It is not commonly required to create a New Pool. This can only be done if all disks are available and not used in another Pool.

Click the dots on the Pool Details card to access options for Start Integrity Check and Delete:

When deleting there is then a confirmation step:

Click Delete Pool to proceed with deleting the Pool, or otherwise click Cancel. A Pool cannot be deleted if it contains any Shares.

The system will periodically (weekly) run an Integrity Check process to check for any errors that need to be corrected on the filesystem. If the Pool status is shown as DEGRADED then Start Integrity Check can be used to manually start the process which, if it completes and no errors occur, will reset the Pool status to ONLINE. If the Integrity Check completes and the Pool status remains DEGRADED this indicates there is a problematic disk that needs to be replaced.  See the Replacing a data disk in the MediaVault section for more information.

The Device Details card gives details of any disks that have errors:

The State column for each disk may show:

The MediaVault ships by default with a single Share called ‘mediavault’. The space for this Share is not reserved, which means if additional Shares are created that also do not have reserved space (as shown in the example above), then each of these Shares will have access to all unreserved space on the MediaVault. It is also possible to create Shares with reserved space (see Reserve Quota below).

Click the magnifying glass icon and start typing in the search box at the top of the screen to filter the list and find a specific Share.  When a Share is selected the Share Details and Group Access details are shown.

Creating a New Share

From the main Shares page click the + button to create a new Share:

Type the Share Name (which must be unique) and set the Permissions Mode*.

• Managed - this is the standard permissions mode that has been available in previous releases, whereby Share access is controlled via the Users/Groups setup.
• Open RW* - in this mode any User can Read and Write the Share without additional setup via Groups, to allow for a more straightforward access model when required. 
• You can change the Permissions Mode for any Share after it has been created.  This will also allow you to set the Share to Open RO* (open read only).

There are two further options you can use or leave disabled:

Compression
Compression can be enabled on a Share and may provide a small increase in the efficiency of data storage, depending on the type of data being stored.  The Compression is transparent (files appear the same on a Share, whether or not Compression has been enabled), and is lightweight enough to have no discernible effect on performance.

Reserve Quota
Reserve Quota allows you to specify an amount of disk space to reserve for this Share.  This quota can be increased at a later date provided there is enough unreserved and unused space remaining.  The Reserve Quota cannot be made smaller than the amount of data the Share currently contains.

With Reserve Quota disabled, the default behaviour is to freely allocate disk space to any Share as data is written to it.

Click the Create Share button to finish creating the Share.


Deleting a Share

To delete the Share click the dots in the Share Details card:

When deleting there is then a confirmation step:

Delete Share

Click Delete Share to proceed with deleting the Share and all the data it contains, or otherwise click Cancel.

Once a Share has been deleted there is no ‘undo’ function to recover the Share or the data.


Editing a Share

To edit the Reserve Quota or Permissions Mode* click the dots in the Share Details card and then click Edit.

* software version 2.6.4 or above.

To edit which Groups can access the Share click the dots in the Group Access card and then click Edit Access:

Group Access

On the Edit Group Access screen, click in the Permission column to cycle through the modes ‘Read/Write’, ‘Read Only’, and ‘None’:

Edit Group Access

After making changes click ‘Update Permissions’ to save the changes, or ‘Cancel’ to exit without saving.

Groups

The Groups page lists the Groups alphabetically.  Click the search icon in the top right of the screen and start typing in the search box to filter the list and find a specific Group.  Click on a Group to view the Group Details, information about the Share Access and Membership.

Creating a New Group

From the main Groups page click the + icon to create a new Group:

Type the Group Name and the Group Id will be completed automatically. The Group Id must be unique for each Group, and can be modified manually if necessary. Click the ‘Create Group’ button to finish creating the Group.


Editing or Deleting a Group

To edit or delete the Group click the dots in the Group Details card:

When deleting there is a confirmation step:

Click ‘Delete Group’ to proceed with deleting the Group, or otherwise click Cancel. Deleting the Group does not delete the Users it contains, or Shares it has access to. Once a Group has been deleted there is no ‘undo’ function to recover the Group.

To edit which Shares the Group can access click the dots in the Share Access card:

On the Edit Share Access screen, click in the Permission column to cycle through the modes ‘Read/Write’, ‘Read Only’, and ‘None’:

After making changes click ‘Update Permissions’ to save the changes, or ‘Cancel’ to exit without saving.

To edit which Users are members of the Group click the dots in the Membership card:

On the Edit Group Membership screen the right panel shows which Users are members of the Group and the left panel shows Users that are not in the Group but could be added:

Select one or more Users and click the < or > arrows to move them left or right. Click the << or >> arrows to move ALL Users left or right.

Users

Select the Users option from the main menu. From the Users screen you can view and edit the User accounts on the system:

The Users page lists the User accounts alphabetically.  Click the search icon in the top-right and start typing in the search box to filter the list and find a specific User.  Click on a User to display their User Details and information about their Group Membership.

Creating a New User

Click the ‘New User’ button to create a new User account:

Create User Account

Type the User Name and the User Id will be completed automatically. The User Id must be unique for each user, and can be modified manually if necessary. Type the User Email and User Password, and the Confirm Password.

If required select the Admin User checkbox. Admin Users are marked with a star symbol in the User list, and can modify the system configuration, for example:

• Add or delete Users, Groups, Shares, and Pools
• Modify the Networking settings
• Update the software version

Click the ‘Create User’ button to finish creating the User account.


Edit, Delete or Change Password

To edit, delete or change the password for a User click the dots in the User Details card:

User Details

When deleting there is a confirmation step:

Delete User

Click ‘Delete User’ to proceed with deleting the User, or otherwise click Cancel. Once a User has been deleted there is no ‘undo’ function to recover the User.

To edit which Groups the User is a member of click the dots in the Group Membership card:

Group Membership

Groups and permissions are detailed further in the section on Groups.

The MediaVault is configured with two user accounts as standard:

• storageadmin - for performing administration on the MediaVault via the Admin Web Interface.
• storageuser - for mounting the MediaVault storage to read/write files. Multiple users can be connected to the MediaVault storage with the ‘storageuser’ account. The ‘storageuser’ account can log into the Admin Web Interface but has restricted privileges and cannot create/delete users or storage pools.
  
  
  

Updating MediaVault Software

The Media Vault software can be updated in the  Software Updates screen, which can be accessed in the left panel menu in the Admin Web Interface.

You will need to ensure the following in order to update the software:

1. Connect the Media Vault to the internet (for example your office network router) and configure your network settings in the Networking screen in the Admin Web Interface.
   
   

2. Click on Software Updates in the Admin Web Interface left-hand menu and ensure Repository is set to mediavault-updates and Branch is set to mediavaultos/standard.
   
   

   
   

   
   

   The currently Running software version will be shown.
   
   Click on the blue text ‘mediavault-updates’ and click the pencil icon to edit the settings. Untick the box for Use trusted GPG key and click Apply. Then close the Change Repository box, and click Check for Updates.
   
   

3. Click Check for Updates
   

   
   

   
   

    

The latest version of software will be listed at the top.  If it is a newer version than is currently running, it will be marked as Available with an option to Rebase and Reboot.

4.  On clicking Rebase and Reboot, the version will change from Available to Updating while the Media Vault downloads the new software version.

When the download has completed the software will be automatically installed and the system will reboot, at which point the Admin Web Interface will disconnect. When the Media Vault reboots, the new software version will be running.  Depending on the download speed available this process may take up to 1 hour.

We recommend to use the latest available version of Media Vault software,

Modifying MediaVault Software Repository to allow Updates from build 2.3 (and earlier)

The repository (storage location) for MediaVault Software Updates was changed when software version 2.4 was released. MediaVault systems running version 2.4 and above will automatically use the correct settings.  For any MediaVault systems running version 2.3 or earlier, the settings will need to be updated manually in order to use the new repository and download software updates.

If there is an error when attempting to run a software update then click the name of the repository ‘mediavault-updates’:

Click on the Edit (pencil) icon, and if the URL is shown as ‘http://mediavault.ndx.at:8000’ then click the Delete option to remove the current settings:

Then click Add New Repository.  For the new repository enter the name ‘mediavault-updates’ and the URL http://mediavault-updates.ndx.at and leave the Use trusted GPG key box unchecked, and click Add.

Click on the new repository name in the pop up, and click Change Repository. These settings will now be used by default, and the correct location will be used when Check for Updates is selected.