Direct connection to server (no router)

Hi

I need data from my WD EX4 transfered to a server running CentOS. The server is in a remote data center, and they will only allow the NAS to have a direct ethernet connection to the server, so they will plug in an ethernet cable directly from the NAS into the server.

I’m not that network savvy and wonder how the NAS should be configured before it is shipped to them, as I am quite sure the dashboard cannot be accessed.

I assume the way to do it is to leave the NAS with the default configuration to use DHCP, and then setup a DHCP server on the server, and voila, things should work.

Did anybody try this and can confirm this is the way to do it? I’d hate to have the NAS shipped to the remote data center and have it sit there “dead” because it was not setup correctly.

Any advice much appreciated!

I haven’t done it myself but I have seen an user called DarrenHill mention in several posts that he’s connected his device (which might’ve been an EX2 or Mirror but would still behave the same as EX4 in this regard) directly to a computer and transferred data. You will have to search for that username and lookup his posts (from the above search dropdown change it to users). He might not have mentioned anything about settings. But AFAIK, you should be able to direct connect an EX2/EX4/Mirror with an ethernet cable.

I just am wondering it’s a very odd way to send data to a data-center. Plus data-center folks are likely gonna be skilled enough to figure out a simple NAS like the EX4. I don’t know why you cannot just copy the data to a hard-drive (or multiple hard drives) and ship the drives instead. If the drives are in Ext4 format and then EX4 data is copied over, the data center folks should be able to pull data off of those drives easily without the hassle of figuring out how to run the NAS. Seems to me like a simpler way to do this data transfer.