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Recommendation for NAS storage device


vfclists

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I am looking for a NAS device and I am pressed for time to make a quick decision, something well designed, with a professional interface, along the lines of FreeNAS, but with consumer oriented features.

The Seagate BlackArmor looks a likely candidate, are there any others?

Any recommendations?

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I'd say a netapp (as those are the best out there) but it isn't really cheap and it highly profesional.

The thing is netapp is providing a great support (the best out there): If something fail, they send a tech with parts before you know it.

So if you need an entreprise with best features and reliability, it might be good choice.

On the side, you could find a Windows NAS built by one of the big actors like DELL and HP.

Depending on the money you want to spend and features you need, there might exist a lot of possible choices.

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Try Buffalo TeraStation Pro. This product interfaces with AD very nicely, user friendly admin, and dependable units for a reasonable cost.

If you do not need Active Directory interface then a Terastation will do for a lower priced unit.

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I'm not quite sure if you guys read the same question as me:

but with consumer oriented features

That sounds like it's going to be used for home, so solutions over $1000 (NetApp, EMC and whatever) might be a little too pricey for his taste.

The Seagate BlackArmor looks a likely candidate

You're looking at something that does about 20MB/sec (depends on the particular model you pick obviously)

Any recommendations?

If you want a NAS that doesn't suck and doesn't cost completely ridiculous amounts, roll your own using freenas or openfilter or whatever. That, or go with direct attached storage (eSATA) for even cheaper and faster (so long as it doesn't need to be "networked", or at least not without using fileshares on a host computer)

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Well, the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 110 can do some real 9MB/s, so, your average USB 2.0 stick will walk twice as fast around it, but hey! An USB stick doesn't have a network feature and it's own OS...

Now, I want to say to the OP that the Seagate BlackArmor NAS isn't much more than just a harddisk in a network setup that is so darn slow you wish you never had bought it... it will take days to fill up 1TB with the 9MB/s speeds at tops, and that's with large files, if you are talking about MP3 and JPG files, well... be happy to get 6 to 7MB/s. So, most of us can download faster from the net. Any way, I don't know what you are willing to do with it, but think twice before you buy it ;).

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I would like to add something here for people having the same problem as the original author of this thread.

I dont see why a NAS is neccessarily slow. It depends on the hardware and personally I have this one:

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ss4200/

In some reviews it scored transfer speeds of up to 40 Mb/s. While that isnt much and not even close to theoretical (100 Mb/s) and practical (70 - 80 Mb/s) limits in a gigabit network, it seems to be decent.

currently it is running on FreeBSD with a ZFS mirror setup of 2 320 GB Enterprise SATA HDDs. Transferring a file of 2GB, which is definitely bigger than the system RAM, over FTP i got 9 Mb/s when the client was on 100 MB/s Ethernet. Then I tried gigabit ethernet, as both the NAS and my client PC have it. Result: 15 Mb/s FTP.

Since the NAS system itself has scored better in reviews on tomshardware and other sites, I guess I have some sort of bottleneck. I am suspecting my clients 2.5" hdd here.

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I dont see why a NAS is neccessarily slow

Because for the most part they're low budget devices with slow CPUs that suck.

It depends on the hardware

For sure. The EMC, NetApp and such solutions that cost a LOT don't suck quite as badly.

In some reviews it scored transfer speeds of up to 40 Mb/s

That pretty much sums it up, thanks. (emphasis mine)

currently it is running on FreeBSD with a ZFS mirror setup of 2 320 GB Enterprise SATA HDDs

Running FreeBSD on it pretty much makes it a DIY setup anyway (in the roll-your-own way; and very much like what I had suggested with OpenSolaris/ZFS), and it basically takes away the only point NAS'es have going for them these days: ease of use.

Transferring a file of 2GB, which is definitely bigger than the system RAM, over FTP i got 9 Mb/s when the client was on 100 MB/s Ethernet. Then I tried gigabit ethernet, as both the NAS and my client PC have it. Result: 15 Mb/s FTP.

That's pretty awful performance (15MB/s) IMO. Especially for a $500 device (over twice as much as the one he was looking into) which isn't much of a "standard" NAS than a "standard" PC (Celeron 4xx and 512MB of DDR2). You could build something a lot nicer/more powerful out of the same budget (power usage would basically be the same too).

Since the NAS system itself has scored better in reviews on tomshardware and other sites

Hardly. On most of THG's tests it scores in the mid-30's (and as low as 17MB/s on a test -- some sites even show it going below 10 if you ever considered going RAID5)

For a small fraction of the price you can also get something much faster in form of a eSATA enclosure which I believe is a better solution for a fair amount of the folks thinking about getting a NAS.

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