Entry-Level NAS Storage Servers Compared 182
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Desmond Fuller provides an in-depth comparison of five entry-level NAS storage servers, including cabinets from Iomega, Netgear, QNAP, Synology, and Thecus. 'With so many use cases and potential buyers, the vendors too often try to be everything to everyone. The result is a class of products that suffers from an identity crisis — so-called business storage solutions that are overloaded with consumer features and missing the ease and simplicity that business users require,' Fuller writes. 'Filled with 10TB or 12TB of raw storage, my test systems ranged in price from $1,699 to $3,799. Despite that gap, they all had a great deal in common, from core storage services to performance. However, I found the richest sets of business features — straightforward setup, easy remote access, plentiful backup options — at the higher end of the scale.'"
unRAID (Score:4, Interesting)
It's definitely more work to set up than a pre-built appliance and I wouldn't use it in a production environment but it has some advantages and works well as my media server. I particularly like that multiple drives developing a few bad sectors won't render the entire array unrecoverable. That's a bit of a concern when combining multi-terabyte consumer level drives. I currently have 20tb of fault-tolerant storage with room for another 6tb before I run out of ports. With more ports and a larger case, I could go up to 40tb.
Re:Synology is nice (Score:4, Interesting)
I did have a NAS a while ago, but I got rid of it in favour of building up a linux server. I found that NAS performance is slow at best, abysmal at worst, even with 1gbps networking & a decent controller. Unless you go corporate style you're always going to suffer from speed problems.
Having 3 network cards and enough space for 15 drives makes up for the few hundred extra dollars you pay for a DIY NAS. Plus, a DIY NAS has a lot more flexibility than the consumer grade NAS.
Yes, you can get a Dell for this price (Score:4, Interesting)
A Dell T710 is $900 and can take 16 2.5" drives or 8 3.5". If you're not a fan of linux software raid, toss in a PERC controller ($599) and bump the ram up to 4GB ($65) and 8 1.5TB disks at $520 and you're at $2084 for 12TB of storage, in any type of RAID you want.
No one cares about your server (Score:4, Interesting)