Netgear Updates SOHO/SMB NAS Offerings At IFA

[Julio Urquidi]

At this week’s IFA conference in Berlin, Netgear introduced two new desktop NAS products, the ReadyNAS 626X and 526X. The new 6-bay models, designed for creatives and SMBs, run on Intel Xeon Quad Core processors and include two 10GBase-T Ethernet ports.

Specific features for the new ReadyNAS products include:

ReadyNAS 626X:

• Intel® Xeon® Server Processor D-1521 Quad Core 2.4GH
• 8GB DDR4 of ECC RAM (expandable to 64GB)
• 2x 1GBase-T ports
• For offices or branch offices of 40-120 employees

ReadyNAS 526X:

• Intel® Pentium® Server Processor D1508 Dual Core 2.2GHz
• 4GB DDR4 of ECC RAM (expandable to 64GB)
• For small offices or branch offices of 20-80 employees

Features available on both models:

• Capacity up to 60TB (scales to 110TB with EDA500 expansion chassis)
• 2x 10GBase-T ports
• Link Aggregation IEEE 802.3ad, Layer 2, 3, 4
• Port Trunking, adaptive load balancing
• 3x USB 3.0 ports
• 1 eSATA port
• ReadyNAS OS 6

Available worldwide, diskless versions of the Netgear ReadyNAS 526X and 626X are available for$1,399 and $1,799, respectively, and include a 5-year limited warranty. The new desktop NAS devices are also available in 3 TB, 4 TB and 6 TB drive configurations.

 

[mdgm]

These are the most affordable NETGEAR ReadyNAS with 10GBASE-T ethernet ports that have ever been released. The RN526X is about half the price of the RN716X which SmallNetBuilder reviewed a few years ago.

We've added a lot of improvements since that review on the software side including adding disk-spindown and bit-rot protection in 6.2.0 close to two years ago, other new features, a major kernel upgrade in ReadyNAS OS 6.4.0, support for Amazon Cloud Drive, and improvements to the GUI's ease of use.

We have more major changes in development as you can see when looking at our beta releases. Please note that changes in beta firmware will probably make it to production firmware, but should be taken as an indication only, and there may be quite some time between the release of a beta release and the firmware going production especially for major updates.

Gigabit ethernet has been a bottleneck for many NAS units for a long time now. Link Aggregation of 1GB NICs is great, but to get the best performance switching to using 10G is the way to go.

It's important to note that 10GBASE-T NICs are backwards compatible with 1G so you can get a RN526X now and upgrade your network to use 10G later. You can stage your upgrade to using 10G to help manage your IT budget.

 

[sfx2000]

I'd like to see the management interfaces - and at this price level, with Xeon-D's, it would be interesting if they also include IPMI support for out-of-band management.

Let's hope also they have a rich SNMP solution for monitoring...

 

[mdgm]

ReadyNAS OS6 already has SNMP as a feature. I think that might have been one of the features available from the very first firmware release, but 2013 is a while ago now.

We do not have IPMI support.

 

[alphamatter]

I've used the ReadyNAS and it was solid. A bit on the slow side, getting going, that is, talking back in NV+ about 2012 or so.

Here is the interface for the ReadyNAS as of now.

http://www.netgear.com/landing/readynas-sandbox.aspx

Helpful to see what options the Management interface can give you.

 

[mdgm]

The NV+ (v1) used the same CPU and RAM as a product we released back in February 2006. It was our flagship desktop model back in the day but eventually became a cost effective option as we introduced more powerful models. The NV+ v2 released in November 2011 replaced the NV+ and was our new cost effective option. The RN104 replaced that in our lineup back in 2013.

Whereas the products just announced are at the high end of our desktop range.

 

[sfx2000]

ReadyNAS OS6 already has SNMP as a feature. I think that might have been one of the features available from the very first firmware release, but 2013 is a while ago now.

We do not have IPMI support.

SNMP support is a given - most NAS boxes will support this out of the box. Out of Band management interfaces, at this price point, should be considered, as competitors in the traditional server space offer some level of support here, even if not full Integrated Lights Out with a service processor, something like Intel AMT can be an alternative approach.

Last question - let's say an organization has a few of these spread out across multiple company sites - does ReadyNAS have a centralized management platform that would facilitate centralized administration for user accounting, authentication/authorization, and maintenance included software updates and backups of configuration and server data?

 

[mdgm]

We do have ReadyCLOUD but that is a feature targeted at the home user. It can't be used in combination with AD.

We do have the Replicate portal for centrally managing backups between devices.