Request for more NAS coverage on AnandTech

[sublifer]

More and more people are using NAS boxes on home networks for streaming content, central file storage and backups for computers. Yes, Windows Home Server has taken a segment of the market but most power users would rather not limit themselves to another MS box with limited capabilites.

With all the demand for NAS boxes and the plethora of new NAS products it has been very hard to find good reviews and comparisons of modern NAS appliances. I'd really like to see AT give more coverage for NAS.

The last NAS roundup on the site, according to my search results for "NAS", was directed at SMB and was in 2006.

There is a recent review of a DS211+ but that is also an SMB product and is significantly more expensive than the 211/211J.

I'd also like to see AT do a NAS chart and I think the AT SSD perfomance tests would be great to run against them as SMB/NFS file shares as well as performance over iSCSI. If you've ever looked at Tomshardware's NAS charts, they're an absolute mess. Great opportunity for AT... as long as its done well and in an organized manner.

p.s. If you need a new employee/reviewer to cover this segment, let me know. I've been doing a lot of research for my own near future purchase and have managed network storage (iSCSI, NFS, CIFS on NAS and SAN) professionally as well.

 

[Zap]

Don't know if they still are, but AnandTech is Looking for Writers. There's an email address somewhere in there. If you can't find it, you don't qualify.

For reviews, try SmallNetBuilder.

 

[Emulex]

nfs when it works is great. needless to say it defers load (vmfs) to the nas which being underpowered sucks. ISCSI requires heavy locking (vmfs) so you end up crashing the nas/san (even big EMC's) with too much load under less than ideal situations. smb sucks because if the filesystem isn't native ntfs you lose perms (can't translate them 100&#37. so to do NTFS you need a windows box (10 limit connection for non-server products). Windows storage server is unreliable and slow for iscsi and nfs (IMO). So $999 costs alot for a SMB(2) server that sucks at nfs/iscsi. linux boxes like my QNAP TS-459 atom based system sucks as ntfs (userland 1 thread) and sucks at iscsi (can't handle the load timesout), and sucks with active directory 2008 integration (duh).

last time i checked all of this was still standing and the bottom line is free ain't good and good ain't free.

The trick part is to run SMB/NFS on VM that is backed by a really good ISCSI server (which could be a vm too - take Lefthand).

Let me know if you find any great updates. I've got plenty of veeam to unload 5-50 servers on cheap solutions and watch them fail endlessly.

most interesting thing of the year is opensolaris+zfs - why don't they just stuff that on a small nas with a lil ssd love for flash back write cache and sell it cheap?

i had to upgrade my ram from 1gb to 2gb and disable ntfs and usb/esata to stabilize the poor pos for simple D2D backups over the dual gigabit for nightly desktop backups. 1gb and it would die every other night. voided the warranty but it was free anyways so why not. Then again why spend that much money on custom hardware? The only thing DROBO/QNAP have is an AWESOME SATA driver that can handle TLER=0(AV), TLER=8 (RE4), and TLER=~infinity (consumer) drives all mixed together. THIS is gold. this is why i keep it. Nobody has done the same with any other operating system (zfs included). someone needs to reverse engineer that technology. then freenas/opensolaris/openfiler will really sing with a solid sata raid driver.

 

[sublifer]

Don't know if they still are, but AnandTech is Looking for Writers. There's an email address somewhere in there. If you can't find it, you don't qualify.

For reviews, try SmallNetBuilder.

The call for writers is a year and a half old. I saw it back then but have been too busy to put together all the samples that were asked for. Thanks though.

I do use smallnetbuilder for NAS reviews/comparisons but it is far from complete and up-to-date. If AT did NAS like AT does SSD's then that would truely rock.

@Emulux Wow! Thats a lot of information there. Sounds like you're pretty well versed in storage tech. NFS, SMB, iSCSI all have their quirks and best usage scenarios and different NAS appliances support each to varying degrees which is why reviews and comparisons are useful. My own plans are based on a bit of smb for backups and file shares, maybe nfs if I ever migrate my htpc to linux, a bit of iSCSI for testing and playing mainly with the idea of using it as a poor man's SAN for a cheap atom powered Xenserver host, and then I'm also planning on using the mysql/webserver (qnap or synology) for playing with and writing some app's for home. No plans for AD as that is overkill for home. Not really planning on any security for it to be honest but I'm not planning on much if any sensitive data being on it.

Sounds like you haven't had great luck with your TS-459. I would assume you've tried firmware updates? Could also be related to the move from ARM-based processing and programming to Atom's x86 environment. Change != good. haha

I'm actually a fan of Openfiler and have debating building my own NAS from it again. I did one at work as a test SAN and ended up putting some non-critical production stuff on it. BUT I like that with Synology and QNAP devices I could do an iSCSI SAN, NFS/SMB networked shares, and have a sql/web server all on one little box.

 

[Emulex]

oh i have the atom version maybe its not the ts-459 - it was free from them. i just had to upgrade the ram. it is lame they wired esata -> USB and ntfs runs as a single userland process. ghetto. honestly the operating system is the value. anyone can throw some drives in an old pc and get a cheap $25 8-port raid-card. it's really hard to get good reliable storage cheap. i've been looking for a long time. in the end i've just gone to RE4 drives for nearline storage as they are stable. sure they cost 3-4x as much but i don't have drives rebuilding or failing. 4 in the qnap box and 8 in a development esxi server. slow as turd (compared to sas 15K) but pretty reliable. sharing that storage once its stable is a whole nother chapter..

 

[sublifer]

. in the end i've just gone to RE4 drives for nearline storage as they are stable. sure they cost 3-4x as much but i don't have drives rebuilding or failing. 4 in the qnap box and 8 in a development esxi server. slow as turd (compared to sas 15K) but pretty reliable. sharing that storage once its stable is a whole nother chapter..

I like the RE4 drives too. I won't buy anything but WD if I can help it. As for slow, the worst achilles heel for 7200 rpm drives is the random seek time. A good raid card or intelligent controller can reduce a lot of that variance though. But really, you can't expect SSD performance from spindle drives. If you want it, you'll have to pay for it.