Commercial NAS Operating Systems - A Comprehensive Overview of Core Features
by Ganesh T S on November 14, 2016 8:30 AM ESTSetting the Stage...
As we draw the first part of our comprehensive coverage of commercial NAS operating systems to a close, it is important to touch upon one additional core aspect. The setting up of multiple users, user groups, joining domains etc., LDAP or NIS authentication etc. are very important for business NAS units, but, not so much for NAS units targeting the home market.
Since the COTS NAS operating systems are all based on Linux, adopting the standard user / group strategy is not very difficult for the vendors. ZyXEL, as expected due to their targeting of home users, has only very basic user and group settings with quota support. Western Digital goes a bit further by allowing for multiple users to be created at the same time. Asustor, QNAP, and Synology have that feature and much more too. For example, Synology even supports 2-factor authentication for certain groups. Netgear does support some advanced features like Active Directory, but there are lots of things that Netgear could learn from the aforementioned vendors.
Today's piece dealt with the core aspects of NAS operating systems - storage and how it is configured, the user interface, setting up of the desired services and shared folders, and the configuration of the network links. Even though the coverage has been very subjective, there are some clear areas for each vendor to improve.
Asustor, QNAP and Synology have the setup process nailed down to a decent extent. However, Netgear needs to make its ReadyCLOUD process more robust. Alternatively, the RAIDar program should be fixed to avoid Java requirements. Western Digital's approach is almost perfect, given that they mostly sell systems with disks pre-installed. However, it would be good if a volume is created by default when the My Cloud OS is installed. ZyXEL's approach is passable, but the slow web UI leads to an unsatisfactory UX.
On the storage and services side, Synology and QNAP turn out to very feature-rich, followed closely by Asustor. Netgear still has some catching up to do as certain aspects like advanced SMB options still require an external package to be installed.
In terms of networking features, QNAP is very much on top. While all vendors have some sort of teaming implementation, QNAP has gone beyond that and started to implement various network modes that can really take advantage of the multiple LAN ports.
Next week, we will have a follow-up article that deals with value-add features. These include media services, surveillance (DVR for IP cameras) solutions, and the public cloud (integration with Dropbox, Google Drive etc.). We will also discuss support for virtualization - in terms of being a datastore, as well as the NAS being a host for guest VMs. A look at some of the third-party applications and the usage models that they enable will round up our comprehensive coverage of NAS operating systems.
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ZeDestructor - Monday, November 21, 2016 - link
Samba 4.5 (at least) supports multichannel SMB.In terms of performance, the last performance boost Samba doesn't have that Windows SMB has is RDMA, and that's being worked on.
ZeDestructor - Monday, November 21, 2016 - link
Samba 4.5+ provides non-experimental multichannel SMBOreoCookie - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
It's about convenience and security, not about upfront cost for the device. Paying for my Synology will probably give me ~5 years of OS and package updates, and several nice services that just work by ticking a checkbox. I'm managing Linux and FreeBSD boxes at work, among other things, and I don't want to do that with my home NAS.Beany2013 - Wednesday, November 30, 2016 - link
....and that is exactly why I have a Syno. I've got two dozen Linux servers I look after at work all day (and out of hours). I don't want to be fucking about with SMB config files at home. I just want to listen to music, watch videos and run the odd VM off an iSCSI LUN without all the tedious messing about.jabber - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
And once you've finished messing around with all of that it will have cost you $1000 in just time and effort. Then it fails a month later and you have to start again. Hence why I buy off the shelf NAS units for small business customers. 99% of them just want a place for file sharing and backups.beginner99 - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I disagree. You will then also need a Windows license and almost certainly a SATA/RAID controller card. Plus if the harware is old it might not support transcoding or encryption. You can get a 4-bay NAS that has all of this for less than $300.You don't only bay for the hardware. You also pay for the software which makes it easy to setup and use and for the compact enclosure. Any desktop/tower with 4 bays is way, way bigger than these NAS units.
I say this because I'm looking into buying one. right Now I just use my main PC as "NAS" (shared folders).
NeatOman - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
FYI, you can ussually pick up a "off lease refurbished" PC for $60-$100 with 90 day warranty from Microcenter. ~3GHz dual core and 4GB of ram etc.I've always known Windows soft RAID is kind of a joke, and i remember giving it a try many years ago just to see the BAD drive being took as the "good" drive and drop the accrual good drive causing as many problems as you can think. Which brings me to what I've been testing, a RAID10 setup with old 2.5" 500GB drives that are known bad drives using Windows 8/10 ReFS. I'm very surprised, VERY. I Copy a 7zip file (100GB) a few times every few weeks and test it. I've replaced two drives in the 4 drive setup in the 6 months i've been running it.
The RAID10 is used for 24/7 torrenting on my main rig with no ECC, so there is consistent read/writes going to it.
SnowleopardPC - Saturday, November 26, 2016 - link
IDK, Sometimes you can find a $100 special on CL..... I recently purchased 3 Dell PowerEdge 2650 rack servers with 16gb ram each and 2TB in 15k SAS drives from a business that was upgrading and selling off their old servers. While they are not the latest and greatest, They work great with the PERC hardware raid controllers in them. Need more space, drives keep getting cheaper every day....... Just don't ask me about the electric bill running 3 rack servers in the house.., :-)SnowleopardPC - Saturday, November 26, 2016 - link
Oh..... and I paid $75 for all 3. That was a deal.darwinosx - Monday, April 3, 2017 - link
If you read this article you would be aware of the many advantages of a NAS over a PC.