NetGear Launches New ReadyNAS Servers
Netgear's new portfolio of NAS products run on the company's ReadyNAS OS 6 and are designed to be "storage made easy" for both the home and small to medium sized businesses.
Netgear's new portfolio of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices consists of three desktop models and a one 1U rackmount. It runs on the company's ReadyNAS OS 6 platform that is intended to offer "storage made easy" for both the home and small- to medium-sized businesses. According to the press release, the new range of devices provides features and capabilities previously available from expensive and large scale enterprise vendors at a significantly lower cost.
| Model | ReadyNAS 100 Series (RN102xx, RN104xx) | ReadyNAS 300 Series (RN312xx, RN314xx, RN316xx) | ReadyNAS 500 Series (RN516xx) | ReadyNAS 2120 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form Factor | Desktop | Desktop | Desktop | 1U |
| Designed For | Home Use | Small Business Networks | Small to Medium Business | Small Data Centers |
| Bays | 2 or 4 bays | 2, 4 or 6 bays | 6 bays | 4 bays |
| US Retail Price | Starting at $199 | Starting at $449 | Starting at $1,299 | Starting at $1,229 |
The ReadyNAS OS 6 comes with a variety of innovating features, such as on-box data protection with unlimited snapshot capability, cloud-managed replication, and XRAID automatic volume expansion. The unit also supports native encryption, real-time anti-virus protection, and seamless file synchronization with ReadyDROP and Dropbox. All of Netgear's ReadyNAS devices support SATA drives of up to 4 TB in capacity. The 300 and 500 series also includes an eSata expansion slot with the capacity to handle up to 84 TB of storage.
"We designed the new ReadyNAS OS from the ground up with ease-of-use in mind, so users can confidently centralize and back up all their data," said Matt Pahnke, senior product marketing manager for NETGEAR Storage. "Customers could not be more excited about our revolutionary ReadyCLOUD technology for cloud-based set-up, provisioning, and management. The cloud-based set-up and comprehensive, but simple-to-use interface is unlike anything else in the NAS market."
Finally, the ReadyNAS OS 6 features integration with the genie+ marketplace, a platform for third party developers to deliver applications and services that can be installed on ReadyNAS devices with a single click. In addition to applications already released, Netgear reportedly has over 600 developers registered to create additional content following the device's release date.
Select models of the NETGEAR ReadyNAS 100 and 300 series are now available worldwide through reseller channels and a variety of e-commerce sites. The full line of new ReadyNAS models will be available in the second quarter of 2013 through authorized NETGEAR PowerSHIFT channel partners and other reseller channels and e-commerce sites.
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Tarun Iyer was a contributor for Tom's Hardware who wrote news covering a wide range of technology topics, including processors, graphics cards, cooling systems, and computer peripherals. He also covered tech trends such as the development of adaptive all-in-one PCs.
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shadowfamicom They look nice, but for the cost I would just build a cheap PC and fill all the bays with drives (including the 5.25 bays). Boards with 8+ sata ports are not to tricky to find.Reply
Although the "600 developers registered to create additional content" I find interesting. -
Peet McKinney Not that I've been one to defend ReadyNAS lately, but shadowfamicom, you're absolutely right you could build your own NAS box. However, the point of a NAS solution like the ReadyNAS 6, is that it's all done for you and it's all done, really, really well. I built a rocketship of a NAS a while back but found myself wasting too much time tinkering with it. When it comes to the ReadyNAS's I've deployed it's often set and forget.Reply
That said. The NAS that I built myself has no risk of being left behind has the NAS OS matures. Something that Netgear has done to it's current NAS owners.
thillntn, I'm pretty sure that even if Netgear comes to their senses and offers an upgrade path to current owners of ReadyNAS products, they will only offer ReadyNAS OS 6 on x86. -
milktea It appears that Netgear is moving from ext3/4 to BTRFS format drives. But the NAS still doesn't have support for NTFS drives (especially for their 2-bay home model)? I would think that home users would like to be able to plug an NTFS volume into their NAS drives. I woudn't even bother trying it out unless the NAS can mount my collections of 'NTFS' HDDs.Reply -
Max000 to "milktea", you probably can do that with a NAS running a Windows. But that would be a bit more expensive.Reply
Also all modern NASes are able to read and write NTSF external disks (a special mention of QNAP which has a better set of performance on this area): therefore it's only a matter of using an external case (USB/eSATA depending of the NAS you are using) to move the data from the external disk to the NAS. You only need one blank disk to begin with, since most of the NASes today offer a way of migrate the 1 disk volume to 2, 3, 4 disks. -
milktea to "Max000"Reply
I had a hard time finding any performance and review on the NAS external interface 'esata'/usb. I think people very rarely uses these external interfaces, if any at all. So most pay very little attention in writing reviews on the external interfaces. IMO, these external interface are pretty much useless.
In reply to your comments, why would I want to attached an external disk to the NAS? Using external disk voids the benefits of RAID. I could just be better off buying an external esata enclosure, instead of having both the NAS + enclosure.
My point is, users are pretty much stuck once the data is moved into the NAS. Since the data is stored in ext3/4/HFS format that windows machine cannot mount/read. The only way that 'Windows' users could retrieve those data is by copying/downloading (or whatever means) those data to a windows format drive/device (whatever media). Which to me is just a haslle, very annoying.
The current NASes are just not made for Windows home users. I don't know why they try to market it to home/soho users.