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I was one of the kickstarter backers and I am quite disappointed in the product … so far as I have dismembered the SpaceMonkey and the 2TB hard drive now is pa

by tckr 12y ago

I was one of the kickstarter backers and I am quite disappointed in the product … so far as I have dismembered the SpaceMonkey and the 2TB hard drive now is part of my Synology NAS setup. SpaceMonkey's features are at best rudimentary and only usable as a personal cloud storage. Don't even think about working in a team (to be fair, the team is working on sharing features). The device used huge amount of bandwidth and made the network in my coworking space unusable. So today I can only recommend to look into a different solution …

throwaway509468 12y ago
I'm also one of the Kickstarter backers. The device's bandwidth usage indeed interferes with normal usage of the network. When I contacted support, they told that they wouldn't add a lower bandwidth cap setting. I had to disconnect it months ago and the device has been stored since then.
- alenlpeacock 12y ago
  The device needs around 400kbps of uplink capacity currently, though we are working to lower that. In my own home, I'm on the slowest DSL tier that my provider offers, and only have 700kbps upstream. Space Monkey works fine here, and I can still do dual Netflix streams while it is running. Some users will have to manually adjust their bandwidth settings in environments like this.
  - tluyben2 12y ago
    Not everyone lives in a well connected city; I live in a rural area and we can only dream of 400kbps currently. It's a problem which will not be a problem in the future, however they have been saying for many years now that 'soon' it will all be different.
  - WhitneyLand 12y ago
    Why does it "need" 400kbps? How was the decision made about that number, and why not simply allow users to set a limit?
    - alenlpeacock 12y ago
      That's a number we hit on experimentally. Constraining bandwidth below that, currently, causes the network backup part of the system to perform very, very poorly, resulting in your data not getting out to the system in any sort of reasonable timeframe. This is in part due to factors that we have some control over and can tweak to allows less capable links to make progress (and we're hard at work on this) and partly due just to plain old physics: if you want to be able to push N GBs of data to the network, with some redundancy factor R, and allowing for self-healing of locations that may leave the network due to failure or otherwise H, and also allow some amount of access from other devices in the cooperative network, in some given timeframe T, there's some math that indicates how much bandwidth is needed theoretically, even with everything optimized. The good news is, I believe we have some wiggle room here to optimize out still.
  - fuzzythinker 12y ago
    I want to get it, but this requirement keeps me from getting it. How can I be notified when this changes?
antr 12y ago
I too was a backer in their Kickstarter campaign. Due to the poor communication, continuous delays, and uncertainty on pricing and ownership, I requested a refund. I then bought a synology NAS, setup it up with raid 10, vpn, and Amazon glacier backup. I couldn't be more happy with the decision. Since then, SpaceMonkey got acquired... which I find fascinating.
- tw04 12y ago
  Skip the glacier and use crashplan for backup. Cheaper, and better options for restoring your data (like having a drive mailed to your house vs. pulling it over the WAN).
  - antr 12y ago
    Does Crashplan have a backup service for NAS'? or does this involve some type of NAS mount as USB drive?
    - sithadmin 12y ago
      Crashplan doesn't have any native integration with Synology NAS devices, but there are a few relatively painless ways to get their Linux backup agent running on a Synology device.
    - km3k 12y ago
      There's a community-built app for Crashplan for QNAP NAS boxes. http://www.qnap.com/i/useng/app_center/con_show.php?op=showone&internalName=CrashPlan&version=3.6.4_32&down_1_name=TS-NASX86&jump_win=1 http://www.qnap.com/i/useng/app_center/con_show.php?op=showo...
  - jm4 12y ago
    Unfortunately, Crashplan doesn't work on a Synology box. Even if you are willing to muck around in Busybox it still won't work because there is no inotify support. The best you can do is sync your Synology to a PC and then upload to Crashplan from there. Support for S3 and Glacier is built in and very easy to configure. It's not a major issue if you have a RAID setup because it's less likely you will have to restore from backup. I've only had single drives go bad and I hotswapped them. I would feel much differently if I had a single drive unit.
alenlpeacock 12y ago
Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you, tckr. Since initial delivery, we have made some great strides at reducing bandwidth usage. Just to be clear, we only hear about this being a problem for users with really small uplink bandwidth. As a co-founder at Space Monkey, I've subjected myself and my family to living with Space Monkey on this type of a link -- I have the lowest tier DSL connection available from my ISP in my own home and run Space Monkey there without problem currently. We have recently delivered shared folder functionality via the web client, and are working on shared folders for the desktop as well. I've been personally using a beta version of desktop shared folders for collaboration for over a year. We want to make sure we nail this experience before releasing it more broadly. Thanks for backing us early on! Hope you might give us another look at some point in the future.
- tckr 12y ago
  Event with cloud storage costs approaching $0 we need a product like SpaceMonkey. I still admire your approach and I will keep up to date with your progress.
WhitneyLand 12y ago
>>I was one of the kickstarter backers and I am quite disappointed in the product If you are going to throw out this statement please give specifics: Did they miss milestones? Did they promise certain features and not deliver on them?
- tckr 12y ago
  I tried to point out some of the perceived flaws of SpaceMonkey in my post. A specific problem is that the ability to copy files with LAN speed to the device turned out to be true only for small files. If you have gigabytes of files you can mount it as a network drive in linux and have around 32MB/s write speed. On Windows and Mac the client will cache files in a temp folder and copy the to the device. So you can't just unplug your laptop and leave immediately but have to wait for the sync to finish … that is some functionality they promised in the kickstarter campaign. And I experienced problems with the offline mode where you are supposed to use the SpaceMonkey network to retrieve your files if your device is offline. This didn't work in my case.

by tckr 12y ago

throwaway509468 12y ago

I'm also one of the Kickstarter backers. The device's bandwidth usage indeed interferes with normal usage of the network. When I contacted support, they told that they wouldn't add a lower bandwidth cap setting. I had to disconnect it months ago and the device has been stored since then.

alenlpeacock 12y ago
The device needs around 400kbps of uplink capacity currently, though we are working to lower that. In my own home, I'm on the slowest DSL tier that my provider offers, and only have 700kbps upstream. Space Monkey works fine here, and I can still do dual Netflix streams while it is running. Some users will have to manually adjust their bandwidth settings in environments like this.
- tluyben2 12y ago
  Not everyone lives in a well connected city; I live in a rural area and we can only dream of 400kbps currently. It's a problem which will not be a problem in the future, however they have been saying for many years now that 'soon' it will all be different.
- WhitneyLand 12y ago
  Why does it "need" 400kbps? How was the decision made about that number, and why not simply allow users to set a limit?
  - alenlpeacock 12y ago
    That's a number we hit on experimentally. Constraining bandwidth below that, currently, causes the network backup part of the system to perform very, very poorly, resulting in your data not getting out to the system in any sort of reasonable timeframe. This is in part due to factors that we have some control over and can tweak to allows less capable links to make progress (and we're hard at work on this) and partly due just to plain old physics: if you want to be able to push N GBs of data to the network, with some redundancy factor R, and allowing for self-healing of locations that may leave the network due to failure or otherwise H, and also allow some amount of access from other devices in the cooperative network, in some given timeframe T, there's some math that indicates how much bandwidth is needed theoretically, even with everything optimized. The good news is, I believe we have some wiggle room here to optimize out still.
- fuzzythinker 12y ago
  I want to get it, but this requirement keeps me from getting it. How can I be notified when this changes?

antr 12y ago

I too was a backer in their Kickstarter campaign. Due to the poor communication, continuous delays, and uncertainty on pricing and ownership, I requested a refund. I then bought a synology NAS, setup it up with raid 10, vpn, and Amazon glacier backup. I couldn't be more happy with the decision. Since then, SpaceMonkey got acquired... which I find fascinating.

tw04 12y ago
Skip the glacier and use crashplan for backup. Cheaper, and better options for restoring your data (like having a drive mailed to your house vs. pulling it over the WAN).
- antr 12y ago
  Does Crashplan have a backup service for NAS'? or does this involve some type of NAS mount as USB drive?
  - sithadmin 12y ago
    Crashplan doesn't have any native integration with Synology NAS devices, but there are a few relatively painless ways to get their Linux backup agent running on a Synology device.
  - km3k 12y ago
    There's a community-built app for Crashplan for QNAP NAS boxes. http://www.qnap.com/i/useng/app_center/con_show.php?op=showone&internalName=CrashPlan&version=3.6.4_32&down_1_name=TS-NASX86&jump_win=1 http://www.qnap.com/i/useng/app_center/con_show.php?op=showo...
- jm4 12y ago
  Unfortunately, Crashplan doesn't work on a Synology box. Even if you are willing to muck around in Busybox it still won't work because there is no inotify support. The best you can do is sync your Synology to a PC and then upload to Crashplan from there. Support for S3 and Glacier is built in and very easy to configure. It's not a major issue if you have a RAID setup because it's less likely you will have to restore from backup. I've only had single drives go bad and I hotswapped them. I would feel much differently if I had a single drive unit.

alenlpeacock 12y ago

Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you, tckr. Since initial delivery, we have made some great strides at reducing bandwidth usage. Just to be clear, we only hear about this being a problem for users with really small uplink bandwidth. As a co-founder at Space Monkey, I've subjected myself and my family to living with Space Monkey on this type of a link -- I have the lowest tier DSL connection available from my ISP in my own home and run Space Monkey there without problem currently. We have recently delivered shared folder functionality via the web client, and are working on shared folders for the desktop as well. I've been personally using a beta version of desktop shared folders for collaboration for over a year. We want to make sure we nail this experience before releasing it more broadly. Thanks for backing us early on! Hope you might give us another look at some point in the future.

tckr 12y ago
Event with cloud storage costs approaching $0 we need a product like SpaceMonkey. I still admire your approach and I will keep up to date with your progress.

WhitneyLand 12y ago

>>I was one of the kickstarter backers and I am quite disappointed in the product If you are going to throw out this statement please give specifics: Did they miss milestones? Did they promise certain features and not deliver on them?

tckr 12y ago
I tried to point out some of the perceived flaws of SpaceMonkey in my post. A specific problem is that the ability to copy files with LAN speed to the device turned out to be true only for small files. If you have gigabytes of files you can mount it as a network drive in linux and have around 32MB/s write speed. On Windows and Mac the client will cache files in a temp folder and copy the to the device. So you can't just unplug your laptop and leave immediately but have to wait for the sync to finish … that is some functionality they promised in the kickstarter campaign. And I experienced problems with the offline mode where you are supposed to use the SpaceMonkey network to retrieve your files if your device is offline. This didn't work in my case.