A VAR Guy Review Preview: Netgear ReadyNAS Pro 4
As the resident gadget guru here at The VAR Guy, I enjoy doing the occasional hardware review. Normally I look at laptops or mobile devices, but sometimes I can get my hands on something less “consumery.” Case in point: the Netgear ReadyNAS Pro 4, which I’ll be running through its performance/usability paces. Here’s a quick roundup of the feature set, and what I’ll be testing out …
The Netgear ReadyNAS Pro is a self-contained unit that holds four enterprise-grade SATA drives and acts as a network-attached storage for a small- to midsize business. It comes in three flavors, (Pro 2, Pro 4 and Pro 6), and I’ll be testing out the Pro 4, which comes with four drive bays. My review unit will be coming populated with 4TB (1TB in each bay) of storage so I’ll have some decent room to play with.
ReadyNAS Pro is aimed at SMBs with 75 or fewer users as well as branch offices that need their own backup, storage or private cloud, said Mark Song, product manager. It’s fully self-contained, with an embedded Intel CPU running at 1.6GHz and 1GB of RAM. Buyers or resellers have the option of buying ReadyNAS completely empty and populating it at their own pace, all the way up to 12TB.
ReadyNAS features RAID technology that allows for a single drive failure with no data loss, and also allows the mixing of different drive sizes. Such a feature is not unlike the Drobo solution. So what differentiates the ReadyNAS feature set from the Drobo Pro FS solutions?
“Drobo shies away from talking about performance,” Song said, noting also that even if on the surface the Drobo and ReadyNAS perform the same function, the Drobo Pro FS doesn’t have all the built-in software and certifications for use with VMware, Symantec and Windows Server. (It’s true, Drobo Pro FS doesn’t have these feature labels, but Drobo does make a SAN that does. But we’re talking about NAS, here.)
One of the services available with a ReadyNAS is the ReadyNAS Vault, which allows for 100GB and 12 months of online archive capacity. These files are accessible securely and without the need for software to be installed, Song said. I’ll be putting that to the test, for sure.
I’ll also be testing transfer times, speed, reliability and even noise, as well as performing a few failover tests if I can.
Have I missed anything you — the VAR or SMB — would like to see? Let me know and I’ll be sure to test it out for you.
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