Favorite: Netgear ReadyNAS Product Line

[corndog]

Hello all,

Well, I thought I would start the recommendation list with a ReadyNAS plug. I have in the past used NASes from Netgear (Infrant), Thecus, QNAP, Buffalo, Sans Digital, Data Robotics, Linksys, HP, Dlink, and Norco; as well as quite a few D.I.Y. solutions. By far, the two companies that stand out for me are Netgear and QNAP. But of these two, I must give the nod to Netgear.

The Netgear ReadyNAS product line is the most reliable, feature-rich, and dependable NAS solution I have ever used. And most recently they are also the fastest. I have, at home and at work, run 4 different models of theirs, and they have all been amazing. I like how they run - literally for months at a time, without the slightest issue. They support a VERY wide array of network protocols. Their AD integration is solid. They let you edit UIDs for users. Their quota support works as advertised.

In addition, their resilience to drive loss is fabulous! To demonstrate: I have run a ReadyNAS 600, ReadyNAS NV, two ReadyNAS 1100's and a ReadyNAS Pro for over 30 months now. In that time I have lost at least one drive in each NAS per year (had major reliability problems with some early Seagate 750G drives) and to this moment I have not lost one byte of data on a ReadyNAS.

But the place where they really shine is their backup capability. In this area, Netgear leaves all other NASes in the dust. The ReadyNAS products (all of them, because their firmwares are amazingly standard across the line) support NAS-to-NAS backups (both push and pull) over rsync, ftp, http, nfs, and smb (smb support by time-stamp or by archive bit). No other NAS product even comes close. I even use an old ReadyNAS 1100 to back up my other newer NASes (HP MSS, QNAP, and Drobo) by "pull" because some of them don't have any facility at all for LAN backup.

The ReadyNAS products are not cheap, but if your data means anything at all to you (imagine the look on your wife's face when you tell her you've lost 10 years of digital photos and family videos and you'll know what I mean) then you owe it to yourself to get one. Even if you get another NAS, get an older, slower ReadyNAS also as a backup. They ARE that good!

 

[beq]

Thanks corndog, I can't believe how many NASes you've used

I'd also bought a couple of the ReadyNAS NV's long ago (all populated with 500GB Seagates, largest at the time), and am looking to buy new models. I've certainly enjoyed my experience, although in the beginning (with early firmware) I had to wrestle a bit with the one at work regarding AD integration.

The one at home had also scared me, once with a drive failure, and a few times with dust-clogged overheating, but all had turned out well in the end. But recently this home unit has died -- I believe it's a fan or maybe power supply failure, of which I've read similar experiences in the Infrant forum. So I'm actually not that scared yet (!), because apparently others have been able to get replacement parts from Infrant to get their ReadyNAS back up and running... In fact with having moved to a new house, I've been too lazy to try to fix the NV -- as long as I know (or keep assuming for the moment) that all my stored data is still safe on the dormant X-RAID volume

Anyways, these days I'm also becoming more interested in QNAP x86 NASes, in addition to the ReadyNAS Pro and upcoming NVX x86 models. If I can afford it, I'm considering the 8-bay TS-809 or 6-bay Pro for myself, a 4-bay TS-439 or NVX for a family member, another 2-4 bay QNAP for a location with cameras, and hopefully a 4+ bay unit for a work location with AD. I keep wanting to wait for more 2TB HDD models though.

Can I ask what you like about QNAP, and how its firmware interface and functionality compare to the ReadyNAS line? I read that QNAP is beta-testing a new firmware with spiffier Web 2.0 interface (first for their legacy line then for the x86), although I'm not sure if it offers any extra functionality.

I really appreciate your post about the ReadyNAS's unrivaled push/pull backup capabilities, that's the kind of info I'm looking for. From the spec sheets, it seems that QNAP has the edge with features like network camera monitoring/recording, web file manager (though I believe ReadyNAS has user add-ons for that?), photo station that doesn't need a client install, and some other things. What do you think?

 

[corndog]

Hello beq,

Thanks for the feedback. I guess my preference for QNAP NAS products started because of the TS-509Pro. Simply put, it is FAST. For quite a while, it ruled the NAS Charts on SNB, and if you look at the fact that Tim's forum actually has a dedicated QNAP section in the NAS area, you can see that the 509 became quite established as the "one to beat". Netgear, meanwhile, despite having rock-solid reliability, was stuck way back in the doldrums with it's custom Infrant storage processor and it's poor performance.

I got used to QNAP's web interface, just because I used it a lot, but I always found Netgear's to be much better. The QNAP has these weird icons that just aren't intuitive, and it has a somewhat "alien" feel to the layout. I can't describe it any better than that. However, the 509's raw performance was so compelling - It was literally 10 times as fast as my best Netgear 1100 based on my "real world" tests. So I forced myself to get used to it.

I run a lot of Linux systems, and I use autofs to make NFS connections to NASes only when needed. After a period of inactivity, the NFS connection is taken down. It is re-established again later if it is once more needed. I had my Linux systems operating happily for a year or two like this, connecting to the ReadyNAS 1100, so I expected the QNAP to work just as well. But it didn't. There is a major NFS bug on the QNAP product line that persists to this day, where multiple NFS client connections will cause the rpc.mountd service on a QNAP NAS to segfault and fail completely. Even worse, you can no longer ssh to the box, and the web admin server also fails, so no more admin function. The only option is to use the buttons on the front fact of the NAS to restart it, or if you are lucky enough to have an ssh connection already up before the segfault occurs, just tell the NAS to reboot. In the first 5 months of owning my TS-509Pro, I was not ever able to get an uptime of 10 days because of this problem.

Meanwhile, Netgear brought out the ReadyNAS Pro, which offers all the reliability and capability of their NAS line, with the addition of speed that rivals or even exceeds the QNAP! So it was a no-brainer for me to switch, given my NFS foibles described above. My 509 was transitioned to a SAN role (it now supplies iSCSI volumes to my VMWare ESXi Lab server, and doesn't use NFS, so I walked away from the problem), and my new ReadyNAS Pro is happily filling the role that the QNAP did, and it already has an uptime of over 50 days.

That's where my experience with QNAP sits - very very capable devices, as long as you don't use NFS much. Also, the only NAS-2-NAS backup they support is rsync push. Given all the possibilities, rsync is definitely the best choice if you only must have one. But the fact that the ReadyNAS also does rsync push, in addition to rsync pull and the pile of other options previously described, it's quite a compelling advantage.

I also once lost "everything" on my QNAP NAS during a regular firmware update. That's never happened to me on a ReadyNAS. I had almost everything backed up, so I only permanently lost a 100Gigs or so of old Ghost images, which I honestly didn't really need, but it just shouldn't have happened.

The security cam feature is in my mind NOT a NAS function, so it is more of a distraction for QNAP (I think they should fix their NFS problem instead of supporting Cameras, but that's just me, right?).

About the web file manager, ReadyNAS has had this function all along, so no advantage there for QNAP.

With all of that, I still really like QNAP - they are bold and gutsy, and push the envelope on performance, which is just waaaay sexy! I have a TS-639Pro which, despite the lingering NFS problem I described on the 509, is still a very fast and capable machine. Apparently their TS-809 is based on a Full Core2Duo chip, and I'm salivating at what kind of speed I'd be able to squeeze out of that one!

.... and have you noticed on the QNAP site, when you see those pictures cycling on their home page. There is this awesome looking 2U rack-mount version of the 809 in the picture, and no other info about it anywhere on their site? I gotta say - it has my techno-lust in high gear

 

[CutePinkSox]

Hello beq,

Thanks for the feedback. I guess my preference for QNAP NAS products started because of the TS-509Pro. Simply put, it is FAST. For quite a while, it ruled the NAS Charts on SNB, and if you look at the fact that Tim's forum actually has a dedicated QNAP section in the NAS area, you can see that the 509 became quite established as the "one to beat". Netgear, meanwhile, despite having rock-solid reliability, was stuck way back in the doldrums with it's custom Infrant storage processor and it's poor performance.

I got used to QNAP's web interface, just because I used it a lot, but I always found Netgear's to be much better. The QNAP has these weird icons that just aren't intuitive, and it has a somewhat "alien" feel to the layout. I can't describe it any better than that. However, the 509's raw performance was so compelling - It was literally 10 times as fast as my best Netgear 1100 based on my "real world" tests. So I forced myself to get used to it.

I run a lot of Linux systems, and I use autofs to make NFS connections to NASes only when needed. After a period of inactivity, the NFS connection is taken down. It is re-established again later if it is once more needed. I had my Linux systems operating happily for a year or two like this, connecting to the ReadyNAS 1100, so I expected the QNAP to work just as well. But it didn't. There is a major NFS bug on the QNAP product line that persists to this day, where multiple NFS client connections will cause the rpc.mountd service on a QNAP NAS to segfault and fail completely. Even worse, you can no longer ssh to the box, and the web admin server also fails, so no more admin function. The only option is to use the buttons on the front fact of the NAS to restart it, or if you are lucky enough to have an ssh connection already up before the segfault occurs, just tell the NAS to reboot. In the first 5 months of owning my TS-509Pro, I was not ever able to get an uptime of 10 days because of this problem.

Meanwhile, Netgear brought out the ReadyNAS Pro, which offers all the reliability and capability of their NAS line, with the addition of speed that rivals or even exceeds the QNAP! So it was a no-brainer for me to switch, given my NFS foibles described above. My 509 was transitioned to a SAN role (it now supplies iSCSI volumes to my VMWare ESXi Lab server, and doesn't use NFS, so I walked away from the problem), and my new ReadyNAS Pro is happily filling the role that the QNAP did, and it already has an uptime of over 50 days.

That's where my experience with QNAP sits - very very capable devices, as long as you don't use NFS much. Also, the only NAS-2-NAS backup they support is rsync push. Given all the possibilities, rsync is definitely the best choice if you only must have one. But the fact that the ReadyNAS also does rsync push, in addition to rsync pull and the pile of other options previously described, it's quite a compelling advantage.

I also once lost "everything" on my QNAP NAS during a regular firmware update. That's never happened to me on a ReadyNAS. I had almost everything backed up, so I only permanently lost a 100Gigs or so of old Ghost images, which I honestly didn't really need, but it just shouldn't have happened.

The security cam feature is in my mind NOT a NAS function, so it is more of a distraction for QNAP (I think they should fix their NFS problem instead of supporting Cameras, but that's just me, right?).

About the web file manager, ReadyNAS has had this function all along, so no advantage there for QNAP.

With all of that, I still really like QNAP - they are bold and gutsy, and push the envelope on performance, which is just waaaay sexy! I have a TS-639Pro which, despite the lingering NFS problem I described on the 509, is still a very fast and capable machine. Apparently their TS-809 is based on a Full Core2Duo chip, and I'm salivating at what kind of speed I'd be able to squeeze out of that one!

.... and have you noticed on the QNAP site, when you see those pictures cycling on their home page. There is this awesome looking 2U rack-mount version of the 809 in the picture, and no other info about it anywhere on their site? I gotta say - it has my techno-lust in high gear

Quick question I am torn between Ts 439 and Ts 509 drive capacity isnt a deciding factor 4 or 5 is fine. Based on what you know is the ts-509 faster I read alot of mixed reviews... Any suggestions?

 

[corndog]

Hi Pink,

well, the short answer is that the 509 has a newer celeron while the 439 has an Atom CPU. So right away based on that you should expect the 509 to be faster. However, some of the other components and motherboard bus design and I/O capabilities of the system as a whole are huge deciding factors also. My personal testing has shown the 509 to be only a hair ahead of the 639 and really too close to call. I think the 439 is the same as the 639 under the hood but I'm not 100% sure. YMMV.

Personally I thought that was amazing for an Atom-based NAS. My other Atom-based systems are pathetic.

 

[Dennis Wood]

In our environment Qnap's 639 is definitely slower on writes than the TS509, but about the same on reads.

The six drive Netgear though is nearly 100% faster on writes (over 90MB/s) and about 25% faster on writes at about 103 MB/s. That's very impressive considering the TS509 has 4GB of RAM and the Netgear only 1GB...a clear indication of better IO at the disk level. I'll be dropping 4GB into the ReadyNAS for a better comparison. The tests will be run from a Vista 64 workstation with 8GB of RAM and a 4 core processor so we'll definitely be pushing the NAS units to their limits.

 

[claykin]

My vote for 4 bay is the Readynas NVX. At $999 from select retailers with 2 x 1TB Enterprise disks its a deal. Well, not really such a bargain but very competitive with Synology and QNAP 4 bay units, maybe even a bit less expensive.

Performance is top notch and the warranty and support options are unmatched.

 

[corndog]

I run a lot of Linux systems, and I use autofs to make NFS connections to NASes only when needed. After a period of inactivity, the NFS connection is taken down. It is re-established again later if it is once more needed. I had my Linux systems operating happily for a year or two like this, connecting to the ReadyNAS 1100, so I expected the QNAP to work just as well. But it didn't. There is a major NFS bug on the QNAP product line that persists to this day, where multiple NFS client connections will cause the rpc.mountd service on a QNAP NAS to segfault and fail completely. Even worse, you can no longer ssh to the box, and the web admin server also fails, so no more admin function. The only option is to use the buttons on the front fact of the NAS to restart it, or if you are lucky enough to have an ssh connection already up before the segfault occurs, just tell the NAS to reboot. In the first 5 months of owning my TS-509Pro, I was not ever able to get an uptime of 10 days because of this problem.

It's only fair to point out that QNAP has completely solved this problem. NFS now works fine across their product line.

That leaves Backup options as the main remaining lead for ReadyNAS. And it's a big one. The ReadyNAS also beats the QNAP on performance, except for iSCSI, where QNAP just rocks.

 

[PowerMAC]

Quick question I am torn between Ts 439 and Ts 509 drive capacity isnt a deciding factor 4 or 5 is fine. Based on what you know is the ts-509 faster I read alot of mixed reviews... Any suggestions?

Don't forget the TS-509 is far more futureproof because both its memory AND cpu can be upgraded. In the TS-439 only the memory can be upgraded. And a big factor in the speed of a NAS is its cpu.

 

[PowerMAC]

Hello all,

I have in the past used NASes from Netgear (Infrant), Thecus, QNAP, Buffalo, Sans Digital, Data Robotics, Linksys, HP, Dlink, and Norco; as well as quite a few D.I.Y. solutions.

By far, the two companies that stand out for me are Netgear and QNAP. But of these two, I must give the nod to Netgear.

Nice read, I also consider NetGear and QNAP as the 2 best NAS brands.

XRAID 2 looks like a great feature! However, some time ago when I was in the market for a NAS the NetGear prices were just too high.

 

[BigJim]

Can anyone update this thread with how the any-day-now Netgear Ultra series (e.g. RNDU6000) compare to their Pro series, or to the QNAP TS-410. Which are better for Mac users?

 

[thiggins]

The Ultras are D410 and D510 Atom based and will be priced accordingly ($600 for a naked four-bay). I'd expect performance in the 80 - 100 MB/s range

The QNAP TS-410 has ann 800MHz Marvell Kirkwood CPU, so will perform more in the 40 - 60 MB/s range.

Both should perform well with Macs for file sharing.

 

[ddaenen1]

I want to chime in here. I currently have a ReadyNAS RN212, this is my second netgear NAS, my first one being a ReadyNAS Duo v1 which was a 2nd hand buy to limit my risk. The Duo was a great compagnion for many years and worked rock-solid. Never let me down and not even a glitch as also the reason why i opted for another ReadyNAS instead of the more popular Synology or QNAP brands.

And again, i am super satisfied about my RN212. It does exeactly what is expected and runs flawless. An excellent GUI and great performance. My next one will definitely also be a Netgear but most likely in 19" rack format to be added to my server rack.

 

[Nettle]

Anyone still paying attention to this thread?

After some research into my first NAS, I'm curious about Netgear. On the one hand, they seem really well built, American company, with good specs. On the other hand, they seem to get little love online. Judging by the pure mass of information, QNAP and Synology seem to be the darlings of the NAS market lately. I wonder why that is?

 

[thiggins]

Anyone still paying attention to this thread?

After some research into my first NAS, I'm curious about Netgear. On the one hand, they seem really well built, American company, with good specs. On the other hand, they seem to get little love online. Judging by the pure mass of information, QNAP and Synology seem to be the darlings of the NAS market lately. I wonder why that is?

NAS is not a big money maker for consumer networking companies. Never really has been. It's too niche a market.
The low end has been killed by router file sharing features. High end has gone even higher to attract business buyers.

NETGEAR has never gone after the consumer NAS market. Always mid to higher end.

QNAP and Synology get mentioned a lot because of broad product lines with similar offerings and lots of add-in apps.