Seagate goes fishing in the small business server pond
Having recently reviewed the new Seagate 2-Bay NAS, I was curious to see how its 4-Bay Pro model compared. I'd found the basic NAS to be a little underpowered, and Seagate had suggested that the Pro might be more to my liking.
The storage options available on this equipment 4TB (2x 2TB), 8TB (4x 2TB), 16TB (4x 4TB) and 20TB (4x 5TB). The review model came with 16TB installed, and with that capacity, using Seagate's own 4TB NAS HD drives. For those interested, Seagate also makes a two and six bay variants of this design so you can have as little as 2TB or as much as 30TB being distributed.
Setting up the 4-Bay Pro was a familiar exercise, because the Debian based NAS OS 4 is identical to that of the 2-Bay NAS. The interface is the same, the options are the same; it is unrelentingly uniform.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. Given that it might well be office managers with no IT training setting this hardware up, it's all very straightforward.
The NAS Pro has one primary function, to serve files, and it seems well specified for that job. Where the entry level NAS seemed to just have enough power for its purpose, the NAS Pro has bags of go under its small black shiny exterior. Instead of ARM power, Seagate used the new Intel 'Silvermont' C2338 Atom, a fully 64-bit CPU with dual cores that runs at 1.74 GHz.
When coupled with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, the performance jump between NAS and NAS Pro is startling. This box just about floods a single gigabit Ethernet channel, delivering 100MB/s writes and 115MB/s reads on Windows SMB access. As it has dual network adapters, I suspect on a channel bonding Switch the total throughput would be roughly doubled. That speed should be able to handle a 50-person office of file requests without choking on the numerous file movements even at buy times of the day.
There is so much power. I'm inclined to think that what this hardware is really built to do is deliver multiple services alongside file serving. Unfortunately at this time there are only six installable apps on this OS, although Seagate has promised that additional ones will be arriving shortly.
The bigger problem with this equipment is the pricing, because the difference between diskless and pre-configured storage is almost negligible. Usually you get a bonus by buying NAS with drives, but there isn't any here.
Even more problematic is the Netgear's RN10400 ReadyNAS. That costs roughly £655 for 16TB using identical Seagate NAS HDD 4TB drives. What’s more, as good as Seagate NAS Pro 4-Bay is, it needs at least a year to mature.
With a wider selection of apps and a more competitive price, it would be a serious contender. Mark Pickavance
Powerful NAS box solution for small businesses.
Specifications
Processor: Intel Atom C2338 (2C/2T Silvermont x86 Cores @ 1.74 GHz)
RAM: 2 GB DDR3 RAM
Drive Bays: 4x 3.5"/2.5" SATA 3 Gbps HDD/SSD (hot-swappable)
Network Links: 2x 1 GbE
External I/O Peripherals: 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0