ASUSTOR, Terramaster, and QNAP Introduce New NAS Items

The network-attached storage (NAS) market had a break-out decade within the 2010s, with numerous distributors attempting to get a slice of the pie. Manufacturers corresponding to EMC / Lenovo and Thecus have fallen by the wayside, and even established storage distributors like Seagate determined to drop out of the market. QNAP and Synology have held agency within the industrial off-the-shelf (COTS) NAS market meant for house customers, prosumers, SOHO, and SMB installations. ASUSTOR (backed by ASUS) has additionally been often releasing NAS items since their first product appeared in late 2012. TerraMaster launched their first NAS across the identical time, however opted to focus extra on the direct-attached storage section all through the 2010s. The model has proven renewed curiosity within the NAS market over the previous couple of years. Regardless of the cut-throat competitors within the COTS NAS market, some Asian distributors try to get a toe-hold after establishing themselves in allied markets. UGREEN, a shopper electronics model identified for its energy banks, chargers, USB adapters, and docks has additionally introduced its entry into the NAS market, however we’ll cowl that in a separate article.

Asustor, Buffalo, QNAP, Synology, TerraMaster, and Western Digital are presently the primary choices out there for customers trying to buy a COTS NAS for SOHO / SMB use. Out of those, Buffalo and WD replace their {hardware} choices solely as soon as each 3 or 4 years. The others have a extra common cadence to their portfolio additions whereas persevering with to keep up software program help for the legacy items – generally even NAS items launched so far as 10 years in the past.

CES has often been platform for NAS distributors, permitting them to point out their newest and best in each {hardware} and software program, and infrequently announce new fashions. Nevertheless, the attract has been misplaced in recent times. It began with Synology and QNAP beginning their very own convention aimed in direction of companions / resellers and builders. Ultimately, CES turned relatively quiet for this market section. Different enterprise conferences targeted on virtualization, safety and so forth. are turning out to be higher occasions for these NAS distributors. General, CES is not an vital present for the NAS market. Having stated that, the remainder of this piece captures a few of the bulletins made within the NAS area across the 2024 CES time frame.

On the 2024 CES, UGREEN made an enormous splash with the {hardware} choices for his or her upcoming NASync collection. Synology’s sales space rehashed items which have been round for a serious a part of 2023. A chuckle-worthy DS224+ (utilizing an historic Intel Celeron J4125) was additionally on show. ASUSTOR had a tiny presence in ASUS’s suite, and the opposite NAS distributors gave the present a miss.

ASUSTOR Drivestor Lite and Drivestor 2/4 Professional Gen2 : Arm NAS with btrfs Help

ASUSTOR has up to date their lineup of Arm-based NAS items for house / private use, and the items are already out there for buy. The brand new Drivestor 2 Lite, 2 Pro Gen2, and 4 Pro Gen2 use a brand new Realtek processor – the RTD1619B. This can be a quad-core Cortex-A55 SoC with the CPU operating at 1.7 GHz. The Arm Mali-G51 MP3 within the SoC is clocked at 650 MHz. This lineup takes over the Drivestor 2, 4, 2 Professional, and 4 Professional items which had the Realtek RTD1296 (quad-core Cortex-A53 at 1.4 GHz). The elevated processing energy within the new processor, coupled with a brand new SDK from Realtek, has now allowed ASUSTOR to deliver btrfs help on this lineup.

Regardless of utilizing the identical SoC, the Lite mannequin differentiates itself from the Professional mannequin by choosing half the RAM, and limiting itself to a 1 GbE LAN port (in comparison with the two.5 GbE within the Professional ones). Two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Sort-A ports within the Professional fashions are positioned by a USB 2.0 port within the Lite mannequin. There are two drive bays, however the drives themselves should not hot-swappable. ASUSTOR is selling the transcoding efficiency of the brand new efficiency and portraying the Drivestor 2 Lite as a succesful NAS for Plex and their very own ‘LooksGood’ software.

The Professional Gen2 fashions have hot-swappable bays. Along with the {hardware} configuration updates, ASUSTOR is selling a unique set of functions corresponding to Portainer (Docker) in comparison with the Lite mannequin. The variations within the specs are introduced out within the desk beneath.

ASUSTOR has moved to the identical platform adopted by Synology for the DS223 and different 23-series private / house NAS fashions, protecting tempo with the processing energy provided by the competitors. The introduction of btrfs help on this lineup now brings simple snapshots (and a little bit of ransomware safety) to ASUSTOR’s prospects at an inexpensive worth level.

TerraMaster 424 and 424 Professional: Excessive-Efficiency 2.5 GbE NAS Items with Alder Lake-N

TerraMaster just lately updated their entry-level x86 NAS lineup for SOHO / SMB setups. This section was served final 12 months by the 423 collection based mostly on Jasper Lake (Celeron N5095). The 424 collection makes use of Alder Lake-N. With Intel selling an octa-core configuration as a Core i3 on this collection, TerraMaster can be launching a 424 Professional using the Core i3-N300.

The specs of the three items are summarized within the desk beneath.

The TNAS working system (TOS) is presently at 5.1, with the discharge of TOS 6.0 within the close to future. Being a relatively new entrant to the NAS world, the OS and cellular functions lack the polish of the choices from established distributors, however the excellent news is that issues can solely enhance from right here. The {hardware} itself is sort of succesful, and the brand new 424 collection is the primary Alder Lake-N-based COTS NAS that we now have seen for buy. Terramaster had earlier experimented with a ten GbE NAS utilizing Apollo Lake, although it was unable to saturate that interface. The corporate appears to have opted for a cheaper platform with Alder Lake-N within the 424 collection.

QNAP Ryzen 7000 Rackmounts, Wider TBS-h574TX NASBook Availability and Utility Updates

QNAP stays busy all year long, often asserting {hardware} with the most recent and best from Intel / AMD / ARM-based SoC distributors. The corporate additionally takes delight in updating completely different ‘plugins’ / first-party functions for his or her QTS / QuTS Right here working methods to extend their usefulness. Much like Synology, the main target is slowly shifting extra in direction of enterprise customers as a majority of their current bulletins have been associated to their ZFS-enabled QuTS Hero-running NAS items.

On the 2023 CES, the corporate had teased their first consumer-focused hot-swappable all-flash NAS with M.2 / E1.S SSD help. The TBS-h574TX reached retail in late 2023, and QNAP uploaded a comprehensive video detailing the utilization and options of the unit final month. After collaborating within the launch webinar previous to that, my expectations had been tempered a bit. Within the 12 months since its teaser, the E1.S form-factor has not taken off as anticipated. As an alternative, we noticed distributors like Solidigm and Micron concentrate on the standard 2.5″ form-factor with U.2 and U.3 SSDs. E1.L is making extra sense for rackmount machines requiring very excessive storage density, however the common market pattern appears to be extra in direction of U.2 / U.3 for each shopper and SMB / SME on-premise utilization. 2023 additionally noticed the launch of 64TB-class U.2 / U.3 SSDs, and this form-factor appears broadly out there for buy.

We consider that the M.2 form-factor within the NAS is best suited to caching and/or non-hot-swappable storage, whereas U.2 / U.3 makes extra sense for hot-swappable items. QNAP pioneered the all-flash shopper NAS with the TBS-464 and ASUSTOR’s Flashstor series made extra choices out there. The TBS-h574TX brings hot-swap into the image, however a few of the drawbacks of the designs nonetheless stay. For instance, not one of the SSD slots get the total four-lane functionality, although they bodily settle for x4 SSDs. QNAP contends that this is sufficient to saturate the 10GbE hyperlink, however that looks as if a trade-off greatest averted when it’s attainable to make use of the community port together with Thunderbolt (appearing in IP mode with solely 10 Gb functionality per port) to have a 30 GbE up / 30 GbE down configuration. Single-slot occupancy cannot ship full efficiency in that configuration. In any case, QNAP believes their video manufacturing home prospects will nonetheless discover this unit delivering higher efficiency than different choices presently out there on this form-factor, they usually could also be proper on the sensible entrance.

At $1200, this Raptor Lake-based system just isn’t notably low cost. Regardless of utilizing an embedded half (Core i3-1340PE) which comes with in-band ECC help from Intel, QNAP would not have that enabled within the system (hopefully it’s one thing that may be addressed in a future replace). General, this product looks as if a missed alternative for QNAP within the all-flash shopper NAS market.

Shifting on to the most recent {hardware} introductions, QNAP is focusing extra on ZFS-enabled NAS items now. The corporate just lately launched two rackmount items based mostly on the Ryzen 7000 collection, and their specs are summarized within the desk beneath.

All fashions make the most of 5GB of flash storage with dual-boot OS safety. ZFS help brings in deduplication and different options vital for enterprise deployments. These are a few of the first NAS items to help Gen5 M.2 SSDs (albeit, with x2 hyperlinks), and QNAP advises use of their very own heat-sink on them to be used in these rackmounts. The redundant energy provide configuration can be vital within the use-case eventualities for these items, and the out there enlargement slots permits finish customers / IT directors so as to add 25GbE community playing cards or SAS / SATA storage enlargement playing cards as required. GPU pass-through can be supported, which might help particular virtualization setups the place the VM and related storage setup run on the identical server block.

In software program information from QNAP, the corporate can be selling its machine-learning based drive failure prediction tool that makes use of a cloud-based engine past the standard SMART readouts. It makes use of a third-party engine and requires a license buy to be used on a couple of disk per NAS. QNAP can be touting its SSD anti-wear leveling options (QSAL) as a differentiating side of its QuTS ZFS working system. All these value-additions could assist QuTS go head-to-head in opposition to choices like TrueNAS.