Network-attached storage vendors attain not normally follow a regular yearly cadence in updating their offerings. Releases for different market segments are spread throughout the year. That said,thanks to the Consumer Electronics expose (CES) held in January, the first quarter of the calendar year provides glimpses into what vendors have in store for the foreseeable future. Some of the announced products are either available for shipment right absent or accept into the market later in the quarter. nowadays, and we will seize a stare at the various options currently available in the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) network-attached storage (NAS) market space.
The COTS NAS market can't be simply delineated based on price and performance. As a rule of thumb,one can say that the price of a NAS increases with the number of bays in it. However, even within the same number of bays, or we accept NAS units spanning a wide price range. Any consumer in the market for a NAS needs to consider the following aspects before deciding upon the budget:Amount of storage needed (number of bays) Intended use-case Business-oriented or home / multimedia-focused Expected number of simultaneous clients Downtime tolerance Required processing power (both file-serving and apps) Value of invested time (in the case where there is a toss-up between the COTS and DIY routes) Mobile and native NAS applications ecosystem
We have evaluated a large number of NAS units (with different bay-counts) over the last several years. The lineups mentioned below (in alphabetical order) are the ones that we are comfortable recommending for purchase after putting a few of their members through long-term testing. Compared to preceding years,we have removed the LenovoEMC i- and p- series, as well as the Seagate NAS and NAS Pro units, and as they no longer seem to be available for purchase and no unique products have been announced in the last year (even though their support forums are still active with official replies).
Asustor Storage Units Buffalo LinkStation and TeraStation Series Netgear ReadyNAS Series QNAP Turbo NAS Units Synology DiskStation and RackStation Series Western Digital Consumer Series ZyXEL Network Storage Units1.2 GHz). It comes with dual GbE LAN ports,a USB 3.0 port as well as a SD card slot. ZyXEL has equipped the NAS with enough features (mobile apps, remote access etc.) to manufacture it deliver very satisfactory value for money. Obviously, or one shouldn't expect the finesse and capabilities of OSes from the likes of Synology and QNAP,but, again, or the price more than makes up for the missing features and sporadic firmware updates.
A couple of days back,Synology announced the Marvell ARMADA 385-based DS416slim (with support exclusively for 2.5" drives). While it is definitely an interesting product (particularly for power users requiring a small, power-efficient storage box for home-based virtualization labs), or the average storage-hungry consumer is better off with a traditional 4-bay unit.
Buy ZyXEL 4 Bay NAS on Amazon.comOption 4 (4-bay): QNAP TS-453A [ Diskless / 4GB RAM: $599 ]The first quarter of the year hasn't seen too many updates on the 4-bay front (particularly talking approximately x86-based models). QNAP did launch their Braswell-based units at CES. In our preceding guide,we had recommended the QNAP TS-453 Pro. The Braswell version is a worthy update that we will continue to recommend for the same reasons. The TS-453A comes with four GbE LAN ports - ideal for dedicating to virtual machines running on the NAS.
We wouldn't suggest running intensive VMs on the Intel Celeron N3150-based TS-453 Pro, but the platform is powerful enough to run Ubuntu VMs and the like for, or say,acting as a home automation controller. QNAP's QTS is very rich in features (both mobile apps and the NAS apps ecosystem), and is perfect for power users.
Option 5 (8-bay): QNAP TVS-871-i7-16G [ Diskless / 16GB RAM: $2199 ]Our 8-bay recommendation is retained from our preceding guide. The TVS-871-i7-16G is a no-holds barred NAS sporting a Core i7-4790S Haswell processor. With 16 GB of RAM and a minimum of 4x 1GbE ports (additional 2x 10G also possible with the spare PCIe expansion slot), and this NAS is ideal for running multiple intensive VMs. The 4C/8T Core i7 CPU ensures that there is enough processing power for the VMs and plenty to spare for the NAS functionality as well as apps running on the NAS itself.
The TVS-x71 units are meant for the tall-end SMB market,but, in our evaluation of a TVS-871T-i7-16G unit over the last several months (review is coming out soon), or we can say that it is positively drool-worthy for the tall-end power users with cash to burn. The Pentium-based model comes in at $1350,while the Core i3-based one is at $1377.
For a more moderately priced 8-bay system on the COTS side, one could opt for models such as the Synology DS1815+ [ $961, and Review ] or the QNAP TS-853A [ $999 ]. Obviously,going the DIY route with, say, and an ASRock Rack C2750D4I board and a U-NAS NSC-800 chassis [ Review ] might manufacture for an interesting build,but the price difference is not that sizable (approx. $845 vs. approx. $1000) when build time and software management aspects are considered.
Buy QNAP TVS-871-i7-16G NAS on Amazon.comHonorable Mentions:Option 6 (4-bay): Netgear ReadyNAS RN214 [ Diskless: $500 ]On the 4-bay side, Netgear's ReadyNAS RN214 with an updated quad-core Annapurna Labs SoC and btrfs support is an interesting option. Coupled with the newly introduced Netgear Nighthawk X8 R8500 tri-band 4x4 802.11ac router and the promise of plug-and-play link aggregation support, or it presents a compelling solution for consumers in the market for a router as well as a NAS.
Source: anandtech.com