NETGEAR unveils the READYNAS PRO 6 BAY the newest and most powerful member of the award-winning ReadyNAS product family.

NETGEAR’s ReadyNAS™ Pro is the newest of the award-winning ReadyNAS product family. This Network Attached Storage (NAS) product is designed for small and medium businesses, workgroups and home offices. It offers features in a desktop small form factor chassis supporting 6 SATA channels and up to 6 TB of data storage. This 6-bay gigabit network attached storage (NAS) appliance’s comes with server features, including RAID (redundant array of independent disks) levels 0, 1, 5, 6, and Auto-Expandable X-RAID2 support for data protection against disk failure, system monitoring capabilities and built-in backup. The ReadyNAS Pro also features dual redundant Gigabit Ethernet ports for failover protection to ensure high availability to stored data. The product is scheduled for launch in late September 2008 and priced for Retail between $2,000 and $4,100 dependent on configuration chosen.

Expanding its NAS line, NETGEAR has unleashed its long awaited business-focused 6-bay ReadyNAS Pro series. The ReadyNAS PRO Business Edition equipped with hot swappable 6-bay SATA II enclosures with an extension to its popular X-RAID (Vertically Expandable) methodology, the unit seems to have little or no competition. The only credible competition maybe in the form of current 5-bay SATA II based NAS appliances that may pose a threat in the pricing and most probably in the features section.

The resemblance to the ReadyNAS NV+ can easily be made as merely a larger cousin with a different color and now sporting a cool but soothing black tone, exactly the same as the 2-bay ReadyNAS DUO. The comparison ends here, as the ReadyNAS PRO is manufactured on a totally different platform.

Whilst the ReadyNAS NV+ and the DUO were powered by a Network Storage Processor (NSP), the ReadyNAS PRO has the popular Intel Dual Core Processor beating at the heart of unit coupled with 1GB of DDR2 memory which is expandable with additional slots to a total of 4GB, which should be sufficient to satisfy any power hungry user. The extra horsepower does provide an excellent turn of speed for the ReadyNAS PRO borne by the excellence in design of the integration of major components optimized to work seamlessly with the selected processor and memory combination. A feat that most certainly is as a result of the same design team that worked on the successful ReadyNAS NV and subsequently the ReadyNAS NV+, as well as the recent ReadyNAS DUO.

The clinical exterior design embodies what is to come when one takes a closer peak inside the unit, only to marvel the careful attention paid to the airflow considerations to ensure lower heat dissipation, and clearly working diligently to avoid hard disk drives overheating. Many a manufacturer has, it seems clearly ignored this in their designs or most certainly not understood the value hard disk drives play in the deployment of redundancy. Opening the right panel of the unit whilst facing from the front reveals the drive cage housing the required drives, coupled with the SATA II drive backplane and an internal 300W server-rated AC power supply, excellent quality and sufficient to hold the six drives with extra power to boot.

The unit has two rather large but intimidating fans, and upon boot up sound as though one has finally achieved a NASA take off, until of course you suddenly hear a near total silence, shortly after the unit has completed it’s boot sequence. The large fans use their large blades to extract the air from the unit at a gentle pace and hence creating a near silence experience. Both fans are software controlled with one being a 120mm and the other 90mm, the former is a chassis cooling fan, and the latter a CPU cooling fan. The software controlled fans also provide a fan failure alert as well as a high temperature alert via email with auto-shutdown options, both features worked well, although the fan failure had to be simulated twice before it kicked in.

A pleasing and most certainly the coolest feature may be its implementation of Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED), on the face of the unit providing a stream of critical system operational information to assist in maintaining and monitoring the system without being forced to load the management user interface to perform simple monitoring tasks in cases of possible issues. A significant benefit of OLED displays over traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) is that OLEDs do not require a backlight to function. Thus they draw far less power, faster refresh rate and better contrast, greater brightness, better durability and, when powered from a battery, can operate longer on the same charge. Because there is no need for a backlight, an OLED display can be much thinner than an LCD panel. OLED-based display devices may lend themselves to be more effectively manufactured than LCDs and plasma displays.

The PRO has Three (3) USB 2.0 Ports, allowing a plethora of USB peripherals to be supported, as we discovered when we connected 4 differing USB external HDD units, couple of printers for sharing, and were pleasantly surprised to find an interesting addition to the feature set that allows a quick transfer from a connected USB external HDD/Flash drive to a folder within the array. A neat feature that clearly signifies NETGEAR has been listening and taking heed of what customers want.

The PRO has two (2) Gigabit Ethernet ports that feature Load Balancing, which allows you to balance traffic across the two ports to maximize transfer rates, as well as Failover which in turns allows you to have the luxury of the second port taking over in case the first port fails.

Once of the main reasons to purchase a unit of this caliber is to be able to support a strong set of RAID features, which allow a seamless adoption of redundancy that allows the user peace of mind. The ReadyNAS PRO does not disappoint implementation of NETGEAR proprietary Auto-Expandable X-RAID2 and the standard Flex-RAID mode for RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 6. The user need not have to worry themselves over which RAID to use, as NETGEAR simplifies this with X-RAID2. X-RAID2 is merely an extension of their popular X-RAID methodology that was implemented in the ReadyNAS X6, and the entire ReadyNAS NV product range. The X-RAID2 implementation allows a user to start with a minimal number of drives providing redundancy, and expand at a latter stage by merely adding drives and for the expansion to take place on the fly, without loss of data. An excellent feature that leverages the opportunity for any user to have a staggered expansion policy without having to break the bank from the onset.

Powering up the unit for the first time allows you to login into the User Interface via RAIDar a neat little utility that finds the ReadyNAS PRO on your network. Once you’ve logged into the UI you can control pretty much every aspect of the ReadyNAS Pro from date and time, to the performance options, language settings, update services, power options, logs and health screens. The menu system is intuitive, easy to navigate, and fast. Switching between options is easy and non-destructive. Some of the control options offered are, Device status, Email alerts and event logs, SNMP, Optional SSH shell access add-on expandability, and a host of other management tools to make the user experience intuitive.

The list of Network File and Media services offered in where the ReadyNAS has always come out on top over its competitors, in the case of the ReadyNAS PRO it seems, NETGEAR has extended its reach even further from its competitors, offering a full range of Network File service inclusive of, CIFS/SMB for Microsoft Windows, AFP 3.1 for Macintosh OS 9 and OS X, NFS v2/v3 for Linux and UNIX HTTP and HTTPS, FTP and FTPS and RSYNC. The Media Streaming support is impressive boasting, DLNA Compatible UPnP AV, Logitech SqueezeBox, SONOS Digital Music Center, Network DVD player compatible, Windows MCE compatible, Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft XBOX 360.

One of the most overlooked services in many NAS appliances is that of Backup, the NETGEAR team has paid particular attention to this as the ReadyNAS PRO is squarely aimed at the business user and featured useful services such as, Integrated Backup Manager, Programmable backup button, Backup to/from CIFS/NFS/FTP/HTTP/RSYNC, Backup to/from USB disks, Bundled NTI Shadow for ReadyNAS backup software (with CDP and Versioning support). All these features are found within the UI.

On the subject of Performance NETGEAR has always wanted to squeeze as much as possible without compromising stability, to ensure the user gets more than they pay for. We were keen to test the unit and see how it stacked up against the claims made about the unit as well as its competition.

Ready NAS Pro RNDP6350 (3x500GB – Enterprise Class)

Firmware Revision: FW 4.2.1

X-RAID2 configuration

Network

NETGEAR FSM726 10/100Mbps + 1000Mbps ProSafe Managed Switch

Test Method

There are two tests that we used to measure performance on the Windows platform:

Real-World testing utility using 1024 KB sequential block reads and writes on a 2 GB test file, and Drag & Drop of a 2 GB file over CIFS, Windows default network protocol.

Testing observation revealed a tremendous performance score for the ReadyNAS PRO on our Real World Test, and one that compared closely to the IOMETER scores published. The read and write speeds of just below 100MB/s was most impressive, we did hit over 100 MB/s, but could not sustain it.

Drag and Drop is a new test we have adopted as this really does depict the way we all work and is the most common functionality for copying files from one location to another.

ReadyNAS Pro, the newest member of the award-winning ReadyNAS product family is also the most powerful one and is designed for small and medium businesses, workgroups and home offices. ReadyNAS Pro delivers class-leading performance, ease of use, and robust features in a desktop small form factor chassis supporting 6 SATA channels and up to 6 TB of storage. This 6-bay gigabit network attached storage (NAS) appliance is packed with high-end server features, including RAID (redundant array of independent disks) levels 0, 1, 5, 6, and Auto-Expandable X-RAID2 support for data protection against disk failure, system monitoring capabilities and built-in backup. To ensure high availability to stored data, the ReadyNAS Pro features dual redundant Gigabit Ethernet ports for failover protection.

Our overall observations are that with a five year warranty, excellent technical support, coupled with a responsive community forum, the NETGEAR ReadyNAS Pro product will most probably take some beating and will satisfy many users that want performance and value for money. If you are in the market for a full featured, high performance NAS, then the ReadyNAS PRO should answer all your data storage prayers.

This review is courtesy of : eAegis.com Product Testing and Evaluation Division.

Please email reviews@eaegis.com for any comments you may wish to share with us. We welcome customer feedback. September 29, 2008.

X-RAID2 presents the latest auto-expandable RAID technology developed by the ReadyNAS team at NETGEAR. Take a look at how X-RAID2 easily expands your ReadyNAS data volume. The animation will loop, or you can refresh your browser to restart from the beginning.

X-RAID2 in Action the visual is courtesy of NETGEAR and the folks involved with all aspects of the ReadyNAS Product range. We would like to extend our thanks to them all for letting use these tools. ReadyNAS X-RAID2.