NAS
Over the last few years, the developments in the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) network-attached storage (NAS) market have mostly been on the software front - bringing in more business-oriented value additions and better support for containers and virtual machines. We have had hardware updates in terms of processor choices and inclusion of M.2 SSD slots (primarily for SSD caching), but they have not been revolutionary changes. At CES 2023, QNAP revealed plans for two different NAS units - the all-flash TBS-574X (based on the Intel Alder Lake-P platform), and the ML-focused TS-AI642 (based on the Rockchip RK3588 app processor). While QNAP only provided a teaser of the capabilities, there are a couple of points worth talking about to get an idea of where the COTS NAS...
Western Digital Sentinel Lineup Updated with Xeon-Based Ultra-Compact Servers
Western Digital's SMB / enterprise network storage lineup (the Sentinel series) has been based on the Microsoft Windows Storage Server platform. The most recent update to the Sentinel lineup...
10 by Ganesh T S on 10/10/2013Synology Refreshes RackStation Lineup with RS2414+ and RS2414RP+
Synology launched two new 2U RackStations (the RS2414+ amd RS2414RP+) today. These are the first units with a full 12 bays available in the main unit itself (Their current...
5 by Ganesh T S on 10/8/2013QNAP Launches SAS-Enabled Turbo NAS Units, Updates QTS 4.0 OS
QNAP is on a roll lately, with the launch of five new business-class Turbo NAS models supporting both SAS and SATA drives. These models are all rackmounts. While the...
0 by Ganesh T S on 10/3/2013Western Digital Launches My Cloud Consumer NAS Platform
The network attached storage market is growing by leaps and bounds. While the SMB (small and medium business) / enterprise market is driven by speed, IOPS and concurrent access...
27 by Ganesh T S on 10/2/2013LenovoEMC Teams with Acronis for NAS Backup
LenovoEMC is on a roll lately with third-party partnerships. These have been done to enable extra capabilities and provide customers with features that other NAS vendors provide with in-house...
7 by Ganesh T S on 9/19/2013Battle of the 4 TB NAS Drives: WD Red and Seagate NAS HDD Face-Off
The SMB / SOHO / consumer NAS market is expected to experience good growth over the next few years. With declining PC sales and increase in affordability of SSDs...
54 by Ganesh T S on 9/4/2013Western Digital Updates Red NAS Drive Lineup with 4 TB and 2.5" Versions
In July 2012, we saw Western Digital tackle the burgeoning NAS market with the 3.5" Red hard drive lineup. They specifically catered to units having 1-5 bays. The firmware...
29 by Ganesh T S on 9/3/2013QNAP Partners with ZyXEL for Affordable 10G NAS Solutions
Small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) and datacenter operators are minimizing the footprints of their computing equipment using virtualization. Heavily virtualized environments require a good network backend (efficient IP-SANs...
15 by Ganesh T S on 8/15/2013LenovoEMC PX2-300D Network Video Recorder with Milestone Arcus VMS
Over the last few years, we have been working on improving our coverage of network attached storage (NAS) devices. The focus has been on performance, usability and reliability in...
18 by Ganesh T S on 7/26/2013Addonics Secure NAS R5 - A NAS / DAS Combo for the Security-Conscious
The number of readers requesting for encryption benchmarks after reading our NAS reviews has shown an uptick in the recent past. For consumers paranoid about security, Addonics is launching...
4 by Ganesh T S on 6/29/2013Synology DS1812+ 8-bay SMB / SOHO NAS Review
Synology recently refreshed their 8-bay SMB / SOHO NAS lineup with the DS1813+. Based on the same platform as the DS1812+ (Atom D2700), it added two extra network ports...
93 by Ganesh T S on 6/13/2013Seagate Introduces NAS HDD: WD Red Gets a Competitor
Consumers looking to fill their SOHO / consumer NAS units with hard drives haven't had too many choices. Western Digital recognized early on that the dwindling HDD sales in...
46 by Ganesh T S on 6/11/2013QNAP Launches TS-x70 Pro Series with Core i3-3220
QNAP had a number of interesting announcements at Computex, and one that grabbed my attention right away was the new TS-x70 Pro series. Available in 4-bay, 6-bay and 8-bay...
9 by Ganesh T S on 6/7/2013Broadcom Updates 802.11ac SoC Lineup with NAS-Friendly BCM5862x
The initial batch of 802.11ac routers shipped with the dated and inefficient BCM4706 (based on a 600 MHz MIPS32 CPU). Broadcom made some amends last year with the BCM4708x...
8 by Ganesh T S on 6/3/2013Western Digital Launches RX4100 Rackmount SMB Storage Server
Western Digital's Windows Storage Server based DX4000 has been very well received by SMBs. However, its desktop form factor restricted the target market. After listening to feedback from customers...
3 by Ganesh T S on 5/30/2013Synology Launches DS1813+ Quad-GbE 8-bay NAS
A few weeks back, we had the launch of the DS1513+ 5-bay NAS from Synology. Today, we have the follow-up product in the 8-bay DS1813+. Similar to the DS1513+...
17 by Ganesh T S on 5/28/2013Western Digital Launches WD Se Hard Drive Lineup for Datacenters and High-end NAS Units
One of the most interesting launches from Western Digital last year was the WD Red line of hard drives from the client storage division. It was intended for low...
23 by Ganesh T S on 5/28/2013Synology Launches DS1513+ Quad-GbE 5-bay NAS
In the desktop form factor NAS space, it is quite difficult to find units with more than two network ports and / or PCIe expansion slots. These features are...
6 by Ganesh T S on 5/14/2013Synology's DS213j Targets Budget-Conscious Home NAS Market
Synology is one of the few NAS vendors to successfully pull through multiple units in our labs without any showstopper failures. The quality and breadth of the feature set...
12 by Ganesh T S on 5/7/2013QNAP Lauches Marvell-based TS-x20 / x21 Series with Revamped QTS 4.0 OS
QNAP's entry level NAS models received an upgrade recently with the launch of the TS-x20 and TS-x21 series. Both of therm are based on Marvell CPUs (and the lack...
8 by Ganesh T S on 5/2/2013