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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
103 Comments
View All Comments
UpSpin - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
If I understand correctly QNAP offers this:Online RAID Level Migration and RAID Capacity Upgrade
https://www.qnap.com/en/tutorial/con_show.php?op=s...
igot1forya - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
I've purchased a couple of these QNAP NAS for work (TS-853A & TS-853U-RP) and interestingly you can upgrade the size of the drives after you max out the RAID. You have to do a single drive swap, then rebuild, then swap the next drive, then rebuild, ect (until all drives are replaced). But it does work! So even if you run out of space (or plan your expansion) you can easily replace all drives in the RAID with larger drives, it just takes a few days to do it smoothly.bJammin - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
You should be able to do this with Synology too, I believe. Though I haven't done it with mine yet, I remember researching this because I put four disks in mine from the get go, and I wanted to know what to do if I needed more space.I love my Synology too, by the way. It's great cause it didn't need any major undertaking to setup, like building a server out of old (or new) hardware and software. I'm not a networking wonderkid, but I know my way around tech toys, and I still think these and other brands are quite viable for those who just want simplicity.
Mind you, I'm only a home/power user, so I don't need ZFS and FreeNAS and the like. I have physical backups of my important data, and if a movie file stored on my NAS gets corrupted, well dang, I'll just have to replace the file! Gadzooks!
jlabelle2 - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
- You should be able to do this with Synology too, I believeDid it. On my Synology DS412+, exactly the same way and worked flawlessly, albeit slowly as it took more than a day for each disk swap to have the rebuilt complete (moving from 2To to 4to drives on 4 bays).
For info, my father latest DS916+ supports Bfrs out of the box and the latest DSM6.2 (still in beta) is supporting correction of corrupted data (before, it was just detection of those).
dave_the_nerd - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
Yeah, ZFS doesn't make expanding an array very easy.DanNeely - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
Yeah the few times I've seen an explanation on how to do so and asked the opinion of people who knew ZFS well the response I always got was on the line of "well technically it could work but the random IO torture test that it would consist of is likely to kill your drives midway though leaving you with a busted array."Dunno where the line between a likely risk and just offending the hyper paranoia that ZFS zealots all seem to have is, but it's been very off putting the times I've looked at it.
BugblatterIII - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
Synology allows different-sized disks to be added whenever you like. I had 4x2TB disks and later switched out 2 of the disks for 4TB versions (one at a time of course or it wouldn't work).Here's a calculator that tells you how much extra space you get for a given configuration: https://www.synology.com/en-uk/support/RAID_calcul...
OreoCookie - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
Anandtech, this is a great idea for an article, exactly why I come here every day! Thanks!MrCrispy - Monday, November 14, 2016 - link
There are tons of used SuperMicro servers, 2/3/4U, on eBay. They come with 12-24 hotswap drives, ECC memory, and a cpu much faster than any NAS here. This is commercial grade data center equipment that's so much better than any consumer hardware. You can pick these up for <$400.The only disadvantage is the noise and power consumption is not going to be same, but you can replace the power supply/fans, and some people even replace all the internals since the SM cases and backplane is worth it by itself. Install the OS of your choice and get goodies like IPMI etc too.
This is of course not comparable to a 4bay NAS really but those are too limiting anyway and grossly overpriced. If you just want 4 bays any pc will do.
jlabelle2 - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
- This is of course not comparable to a 4bay NAS really but those are too limiting anyway and grossly overpriced. If you just want 4 bays any pc will do.And what would be advantage of the PC? Because a PC is not as small as a NAS, so cannot be put anywhere you want, needs to have a keyboard / screen to administrate. It needs to have a Windows Server licence which is not open to private person.
And if going to Linux on the PC, you end up with the same kind of issues and questions I asked in page 3 which are that it just does NOT offer the same type of capabilities. It is maybe slighly cheaper (to be seen) but not as powerful or capable.