Netgear ReadyNAS NVX - PC Pro
Product Review
Verdict: A
smart NAS appliance with very good performance and a range of backup features
that will appeal to small businesses.
Rating: 5 Star
Netgear's latest ReadyNAS storage appliance
takes everything that makes its
ReadNAS NV+ great and adds features for small offices and businesses.
The NVX claims a doubling in performance over the NV+, includes both NAS and IP
SAN support and adds a choice selection of extra backup features, including the
optional Netgear Vault off-site backup service.
The
NVX uses the same sturdy four-bay chassis
as the NV+, but processing power is now 1.2GHz Intel SoC teamed up with 1GB of
DDR2 memory. The dual Gigabit ports support load balanced and redundant link
teams, plus the drive carrier release mechanism has been redesigned to stop it
jamming.
Unlike the A-Listed
ReadyNAS Pro Business Edition,
RAID6 isn't supported but Netgear's own X-RAID2 technology is a better bet for a
four-drive appliance. It leaves more free storage capacity which can be
increased by expanding the array online into larger drives, one at a time. For
testing we were supplied with a 4TB model preconfigured as a single X-RAID2
array, leaving us with 2.7TB of fault tolerant raw capacity.
And
Netgear won't be beaten on backup
features. The NVX offers volume
snapshots and the ability to
manage daily and weekly backup schedules for designated local and remote shares
or replicating data to another remote NAS appliance. NTI Shadow gets replaced
with a three-user copy of Memeo Backup Premium which is for workstation backup
only. It offers the same CDP functions, as after the first full backup has run,
it only secures file changes or new files using a background agent. However,
it's easier to configure and you also get backup encryption.
Netgear's Vault is as optional
online backup service run by ElephantDrive that allows you to secure data from
the
NVX to its off-site data centre. Log in to
the Vault portal, set up an account and create backup jobs. Opt for automatic
encryption key generation or use your own, decide how much bandwidth to hand
over to backup tasks and fine-tune them.
Jobs can be scheduled to run
daily, weekly or monthly while the continuous option backs up new files as they
appear in the target folders. In an emergency, log on to the Vault from anywhere
and restore files to a new location.
The
NVX didn't disappoint in our performance tests,
and was substantially faster than the NV+, with copies of a 2.52GB video clip
returning read and write speeds of 52MB/sec and 43MB/sec. FTP speeds are even
better, with the FileZilla client reporting 98MB/sec and 62MB/sec respectively
with the same test file. Setting up iSCSI targets is a cakewalk and IP SAN
speeds are also very good, with Iometer reporting a raw sequential read rate of
104MB/sec.
The NVX has more features and
speed than the NV+ and is a better bet for those that don't need the Pro
Business Edition. It has more business-oriented features than the competition,
with a focus on local and off-site backup.