Asustor AS7008T 8-bay Intel Haswell SMB NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on November 30, 2014 5:05 PM ESTEncryption Support Evaluation
Consumers looking for encryption capabilities can opt to encrypt a iSCSI share with TrueCrypt or some in-built encryption mechanism in the client OS. However, if requirements dictate that the data must be shared across multiple users / computers, relying on encryption in the NAS is the best way to move forward. Most NAS vendors use the industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption algorithm. One approach is to encrypt only a particular shared folder while the other approach is to encrypt the full volume. ADM doesn't support encrypted volumes, but only encrypted shared folders.
On the hardware side, encryption support can be in the form of specialized hardware blocks in the SoC (common in ARM / PowerPC based NAS units). In x86-based systems, accelerated encryption support is dependent on whether the AES-NI instruction is available on the host CPU. The Core i3-4330 has AES-NI support. Assuming that ADM takes advantage of AES-NI, we should see very little performance penalty for encrypted folders.
The graphs below compare the single client access numbers for an encrypted CIFS share for various 8-bay NAS units that have been evaluated previously. For the AS7008T alone, we have the numbers from a non-encrypted share for the same workload. This allows us to check the encryption penalty easily.
As expected, the encryption penalty is minimal. The DS1815+ fares a bit better in a few workloads, but, for the most part, things play out in a manner similar to what we saw in the single client CIFS performance section.
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bernstein - Sunday, November 30, 2014 - link
Holy crap $1500?! subtracting i3-4330, GA-H97N, 2GB RAM, a 2x SATA3 PCIe controller, some usb stick for the os & a psu thats over $1100 just for the case & that custom operating system...to which i can only say: apple would be twice as rich if it had such margins...
tocker - Sunday, November 30, 2014 - link
We have not had the best run with the Asustor NAS devices - seem to have some bugs they need to sort out - We have found that even as backup targets they do bizarre things like stop sharing the folders via CIFS/SMB. (log in and reshare, problem solved)We expect a NAS to run for months/years without issues, and sadly this had not been the case for these units.
bill.rookard - Sunday, November 30, 2014 - link
I have to agree. When you build a NAS, it needs to be rock-solid, always on, and always available. Oh, and reliable disks help too. I have a FreeNAS 7 based system in my basement (Rack-mounted, Gigabyte board, Phenom II x 2 processor, 4gb ram, 5x2tb drives in RAID5) and it has been restarted maybe a half dozen times in as many years - most of those being deliberate power-downs for reconfigurations of the hardware (ram upgrades/chassis swap/1 drive replacement & rebuild) and it has been probably the most reliable OS I've ever dealt with.Considering FreeNAS is a free, open source project, I would think that the people at Asustor would be able to come at least as close.
leexgx - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
mine is i7-920 with 8 GB ram not ECC but never had stability issues its both CPU and ram underclocked as well (only 1 of the 3 ram slot works got the mobo for like £40-50 when i was doing folding@home with 3x9800GX2 ) 6 HDDs gets rebooted for updates every so 3-6 months (running 2003 server (the XP x64 based one) the later versions of MS server (vista at the time it was Built so been running for long time) was giving me issues with network performancemrdude - Sunday, November 30, 2014 - link
>$1500 for an i3 with 2GB of non-ECC RAM and only dual ethernet?That's a steal!
bill.rookard - Sunday, November 30, 2014 - link
No kidding, for $1500.00 it should almost come populated with at least 8x2tb drives.bernstein - Monday, December 1, 2014 - link
not almost... at $1500 it has to come with at least 8x3TB, everthing less is just ripping consumers off...Wkstar - Sunday, November 30, 2014 - link
EMachines came in 1999 and knocked the computer world prices in half. Somebody will come and do the same to NAS.. There prices are crazyKerryl - Monday, December 1, 2014 - link
Don't throw out your tongue...Asustor seems to be lower-priced in the league of i3 NAS. Over $2000 out there for even lower cpu configuration:http://www.amazon.com/QNAP-TS-1079-PRO-10-Bay-iSCS...
http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskles...
techticket - Monday, December 1, 2014 - link
at the core-i3 QNAP TS-879-PRO-U cost $2000+ from newegg.....