NAS
The network-attached storage (NAS) market had a break-out decade in the 2010s, with a large number of vendors trying to get a slice of the pie. Brands such as EMC / Lenovo and Thecus have fallen by the wayside, and even established storage vendors like Seagate decided to drop out of the market. QNAP and Synology have held firm in the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) NAS market meant for home users, prosumers, SOHO, and SMB installations. ASUSTOR (backed by ASUS) has also been regularly releasing NAS units since their first product appeared in late 2012. TerraMaster released their first NAS around the same time, but opted to focus more on the direct-attached storage segment throughout the 2010s. The brand has shown renewed interest in the...
Synology's DS213j Targets Budget-Conscious Home NAS Market
Synology is one of the few NAS vendors to successfully pull through multiple units in our labs without any showstopper failures. The quality and breadth of the feature set...
12 by Ganesh T S on 5/7/2013QNAP Lauches Marvell-based TS-x20 / x21 Series with Revamped QTS 4.0 OS
QNAP's entry level NAS models received an upgrade recently with the launch of the TS-x20 and TS-x21 series. Both of therm are based on Marvell CPUs (and the lack...
8 by Ganesh T S on 5/2/2013QNAP's TS-EC1279U-RP 12-bay Flagship Rackmount NAS Review
Our enterprise NAS reviews have focused on Atom-based desktop form factor systems till now. These units have enough performance for a moderately sized workgroup and lack some of the...
23 by Ganesh T S on 4/29/2013LenovoEMC's LifeLine OS 4.0 Brings Enterprise Features to SMB NAS Devices
Iomega / LenovoEMC launched an updated version of the LifeLine OS for their NAS devices last week. The new release (v 4.0) will be compatible with the existing StorCenter...
2 by Ganesh T S on 4/8/2013QNAP Launches Marvell-based 4-bay Rackmount NAS Units
Rackmount NAS units introduced in recent days have been mostly based on the powerful Intel processors, but there is a market demand amongst small workgroups and SMBs for low...
7 by Ganesh T S on 3/23/2013ReadyNAS 100, 300 and 500 Series Reboots Netgear's SMB NAS Lineup
Netgear got into the SMB / SOHO / consumer NAS market with the purchase of Infrant Technologies in May 2007. The first generation ReadyNAS NV products were based on...
21 by Ganesh T S on 3/18/2013ioSafe N2: A Disaster-Resistant Synology DS213
The emergence of the digital economy has brought to fore the importance of safeguarding electronic data. We have discussed the 3-2-1 data backup strategy before in the piece where...
26 by Ganesh T S on 3/4/2013QNAP Introduces Atom-based 12-bay TS-1269U-RP Rackmount NAS
QNAP's flagship NAS lineup, the TS-ECx79U-RP, checks all the boxes for a high performance enterprise NAS in a rackmount form factor for high end SMBs. These include quad GbE...
9 by Ganesh T S on 3/4/2013QNAP Introduces XBMC App for TS-x69 Pro / L Series NAS Units
The Atom D2700 series CPUs have proved quite popular in the SMB / SOHO NAS market. We saw vendors introduce models with HDMI outputs as early as December 2011...
7 by Ganesh T S on 2/7/2013Buffalo Technology Updates NAS and DAS Lineup at CES 2013
Brian already updated readers on the new products from Buffalo in the networking and Thunderbolt space. There were updates on the NAS front too. The primary announcement was the...
3 by Ganesh T S on 1/14/2013Seagate and LaCie Demonstrate Complementary Product Lineups at CES 2013
Seagate is well on its way to complete the acquisition of LaCie, and the two companies had a joint presence at CES 2013. For the most part, the companies...
3 by Ganesh T S on 1/14/2013Synology at CES 2013: DSM 4.2 and the ioSafe N2
We met up with Synology at CES today, and the main focus was on the recently released Disk Station Manager 4.2 firmware. Different NAS vendors take different approaches to...
6 by Ganesh T S on 1/10/2013Lenovo and EMC Stir SMB NAS Market with LenovoEMC Joint Venture
News of the Lenovo - EMC joint venture, LenovoEMC crossed the wires last week. We met with Iomega yesterday at CES and discussed what this means for the storage...
2 by Ganesh T S on 1/9/2013Asustor 6 Series: A Fresh Approach in the NAS Market
We had the chance to meet up with Asustor at CES yesterday. Reviews of some of their offerings had popped up on various websites, and my initial impression was...
4 by Ganesh T S on 1/9/2013LaCie 5big NAS Pro Review - Part I
We have looked at LaCie's 5big offering before in late 2010. In that product, the only LaCie signature was the industrial design and choice of hardware components of the...
31 by Ganesh T S on 1/7/2013Updating the 2012 AnandTech SMB / SOHO NAS Testbed
In early September, we published a piece detailing our SMB / SOHO NAS testbed. Subsequently, we received extensive feedback from readers regarding the testbed as well as the proposed...
24 by Ganesh T S on 11/29/2012Iomega EZ Media & Backup Center Network Attached Hard Disk Review
The rise of powerful home networking solutions have led to the shift in consumer focus from DAS (Direct Attached Storage) units to NAS (Network Attached Storage) units in the...
20 by Ganesh T S on 11/27/2012Synology Launches SAS-Enabled Flagship 10-bay 2U RS10613xs+ NAS and RX1213sas Expander
Synology is a well respected brand in the low to mid-range NAS market. However, they missed a high-end flagship in their lineup to compete against products such as the...
4 by Ganesh T S on 11/13/2012Iomega StorCenter NAS Lineup Refresh: 2-bay px2-300d and 4-bay ix4-300d
Iomega's network storage family consists of three lineups: ARM-based EZ single-bay network attached hard disk for home users ARM-based ix series for value-focused consumers x86-based px series for performance-focused consumers (These come...
16 by Ganesh T S on 10/18/2012