We have already published holiday guides for mobile devices, laptops, CPUs, PSUs and SSDs. Today, we will take a look at the various options available in the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) network-attached storage (NAS) market space.
The COTS NAS market can't be simply delineated based on price and performance. As a rule of thumb, one can say that the price of a NAS increases with the number of bays in it. However, even within the same number of bays, we get NAS units spanning a wide price range. Any consumer in the market for a NAS needs to consider the following aspects before deciding upon the budget:
- Amount of storage needed (number of bays)
- Intended use-case
- Business-oriented or home / multimedia-focused
- Expected number of simultaneous clients
- Downtime tolerance
- Required processing power (both file-serving and apps)
- Value of invested time (in the case where there is a toss-up between the COTS and DIY routes)
- Mobile and native NAS applications ecosystem
We have evaluated a large number of NAS units (with different bay-counts) over the last several years. The lineups mentioned below (in alphabetical order) are the ones that we are comfortable recommending for purchase after putting a few of their members through long-term testing. Compared to last year, we have removed the LenovoEMC i- and p- series, as they no longer seem to be available for purchase and no new products have been announced in the last two years (even though their support forums are still active with official replies).
- Asustor Storage Units
- Netgear ReadyNAS Series
- QNAP Turbo NAS Units
- Seagate NAS and NAS Pro Units
- Synology DiskStation and RackStation Series
- Western Digital Consumer Series
In this guide, we present suitable options for 2-,4- and 8-bay NAS units targeting the home consumer / SOHO market. One important aspect here is that we are not going to talk about the high-end SMB market or the multitude of offerings that come with Windows Storage Server or some similar flavor. Only products based on custom OSes are being considered in this guide.
Option 1 (2-bay): Western Digital My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 [ 2x2TB: $310 , Review ]
Most units sold in the 2-bay market are purchased by the average consumer who wants to back up photos and videos taken with mobile devices. A performance powerhouse is rarely needed in this market segment. While the user experience with the mobile app(s) is vital, the presence of apps on the NAS itself is just an icing on the cake.
Western Digital revamped their 2-bay product line with the My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 earlier this year for the home consumers (with the My Cloud EX2 still available for the SOHO / low-end SMB market). There are no diskless models and the units come with WD Red drives. Integrated Docker capabilities in the My Cloud OS point to the possibility of multiple easily-integrated third-party apps in the future. Western Digital is obviously a big vendor with end-user support appropriate even for non-tech savvy folks. Coupled with the plug-and-play experience, this makes it an ideal gift for the holiday season to anyone who is looking to get started with network attached storage and needs basic data protection.
Option 2 (4-bay): QNAP TS-453 Pro [ Diskless / 2GB RAM: $566 ]
We saw almost all the vendors listed above (except for Seagate) release new 4-bay NAS units this year. Asustor's Braswell-based AS6204T [ $668 , Review ] is solid and stable, while the QNAP TS-451+ [ Diskless / 2GB RAM: $529 , Review ] also performs admirably despite being based on the previous generation Bay Trail platform. However, the best bang for the buck continues to the QNAP TS-453 Pro. The price is just a little bit higher than that of TS-451+, but the unit comes with extra LAN ports ideal for dedicating to virtual machines running on the NAS.
I wouldn't suggest running intensive VMs on the Intel Celeron J1900-based TS-453 Pro, but the platform is powerful enough to run Ubuntu VMs and the like for, say, acting as a home automation controller. Given the age of the platform, it is likely that the TS-453 Pro will continue to see downward price pressure. However, the unit is quite powerful for advanced users and the software platform is very rich in features (both mobile apps and the NAS apps ecosystem).
Option 3 (8-bay): QNAP TVS-871-i7-16G [ Diskless / 16GB RAM: $2199 ]
Our 8-bay recommendation also goes to a QNAP NAS. The TVS-871-i7-16G is a no-holds barred NAS sporting a Core i7-4790S Haswell processor. With 16 GB of RAM and a minimum of 4x 1GbE ports (additional 2x 10G also possible with the spare PCIe expansion slot), this NAS is ideal for running multiple intensive VMs. The 4C/8T Core i7 CPU ensures that there is enough processing power for the VMs and plenty to spare for the NAS functionality as well as apps running on the NAS itself.
The TVS-x71 units are meant for the high-end SMB market, but, in our evaluation of a TVS-871T-i7-16G unit over the last several months (review is coming out soon), we can say that it is positively drool-worthy for the high-end power users with cash to burn. The Pentium-based model comes in at $1350, while the Core i3-based one is at $1377.
For a more moderately priced 8-bay system on the COTS side, one could opt for models such as the Synology DS1815+ [ $961 , Review ] or the QNAP TS-853 Pro [ $993 , Review ]. Obviously, going the DIY route with, say, an ASRock Rack C2750D4I board and a U-NAS NSC-800 chassis [ Review ] might make for an interesting build, but the price difference is not that big (approx. $845 vs. approx. $1000) when build time and software management aspects are considered.
Honorable Mentions:
Option 4 (2-bay): Synology BeyondCloud Mirror BC214se [ 2x2TB: $333 ]
Option 5 (4-bay): Netgear ReadyNAS RN214 [ Diskless: $500 ]
Synology is surprisingly absent in our list of recommendations this year. It is understandable, as their primary focus has been on the high-end SMB / SME market over the past year. They did release the DS416 based on the Annapurna Labs AL212 platform last month, but the main push on the software side of things has been for business-oriented features. With DSM 6.0 slated for next year, and Braswell-based NAS units slated to appear soon, things will change. That said, earlier this year at CES, Synology also unveiled the BeyondCloud series targeting novice users. Consumers looking for an alternative to the Western Digital My Cloud Mirror Gen 2 can also go for the Synology BeyondCloud Mirror BC214se at a similar price point. Just like the My Cloud Mirror Gen 2, the RAID volume is pre-configured (the BC series uses Seagate NAS HDDs). Obviously, the software ecosystem (DSM + apps) is quite rich compared to the My Cloud Mirror Gen 2, justifying the slight premium.
On the 4-bay side, Netgear's ReadyNAS RN214 with an updated quad-core Annapurna Labs SoC and btrfs support is an interesting option. Coupled with the newly introduced Netgear Nighthawk X8 R8500 tri-band 4x4 802.11ac router and the promise of plug-and-play link aggregation support, it presents a compelling solution for consumers in the market for a router as well as a NAS.
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