ReadyNAS X6 micro-review

[stanger89]

Howdy all

I got my newest toy today, an Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS X6.


My choosing of the X6 is the culmination (wow, sounds impressive ) of several months of on-and-off research for a solution to my shrinking storage problem. As some here know, I currently have a media server consisting of (among other things) a 1.75TB RAID-5 array. The array is made by 8 250GB Western Digitals and a 3ware Escalade 7506-8 hardware RAID card. I believe (rather strongly) that if one is building a RAID array, for something such as a media server, one should use a good RAID card.

The problem is, after 260 some odd DVDs, a few HD recordings, and other misc media, my array was quickly becoming too small (I actually ran out at one point, but found about 70GB of duplicate stuff I'd been processing). So the search was on for what I would do to supliment my storage.

External SATA enclosures (the kind that hold 8 drives) initially caught my eye, and I was planning my next array to be a 3ware 9500s and one of those. I'd given up on adding more drives to my current media server directly, because the 10 drives in there (array + 2 lone drives) already was approaching unreasonable to power. The external enclosure solves that by adding a dedicated PSU for the new drives.

Big problem with that was cost. The enclosures are rather expensive, and by the time you add a good 12-port raid card, a 8-bay enclosure, you're well over $1000, without any drives even. A rather tough pill to swallow.

So I began on my search for what I really wanted, an inexpensive NAS with RAID-5. My first prospect was the Buffalo Terrastation, resonably priced, but upon investigation, it's performance turned out to be dissapointing.

On a whim one day, while bored or something, I looked through the Digital Media Servers & Content Streamers forum over at AVS. And what did I find, a thread about the ReadyNAS 600. I was intrigued, the more I read, I found out about the X6, the subject of this micro-review.

The X6, it turns out, is nearly* the perfect solution to my problem. It's (relatively) inexpensive, scaleable, upgradeable, offers what Infrant calls X-RAID, which is essentially RAID-5 with automatic Online Capacity Expansion. I'm sure you can check out the specs yourselves, but the notable ones are Gigabit Ethernet (with Jumbo Frame support) and X-RAID.

So there ya go, a NAS, with redundancy, expandability, all for the price of a good RAID card. So I procrastinated (as usual ) for a while until a few awesome members of AVS organized a group buy, and I jumped on it. So today, I got my X6, and waiting for it was a shiny new 500GB Seagate HDD I ordered recently (for this purpose). I went cheap and only got 1 drive, planning to upgrade as I go.

It came well packaged, it's rather small. The first thing I did was to open it up. I got the new "cableless" design. What does that mean? Well instead of the old way (which was basically like a normal computer) the HDDs just slide in and plug directly into the ReadyNAS motherboard. You just mount the drive in the handle/holder, and plug it in. Dead easy.

So I plugged my drive in, put the lid on, connected the power and ethernet cables, and it "sprang" to life. A few blinky lights and it was going. It's quiet, not silent, not as quiet as my HTPC or desktop (remember my other post ), but quiet. I went back to my PC, and started to try and set it up. The ReadyNAS OS provides a nice web interface and (after hunting down the default password that seems to be missing in the documentation ) I went through the setup wizard.

I won't bore you with details, but if you're familiar with linux, unix, or more advanced Windows setup, you'll fell right at home. Now I don't want to scare anybody off by giving you the idea that it's complicated. It can be setup for simple share-level access (make share, set password), and by going through the (pretty simple) wizard, I'd think about anybody could have it going.

But me, I want more, I want user level share control, and the RAIDiator OS provides it. As I said, those familiar with linux/unix will be right at home. I setup a few groups, and then some users, and tweaked the user access to the shares. RAIDiator provides private user folders (if desired). It's also got a Domain access option.

A couple other things, it's got it's own SMTP server (for sending out warning emails), an FTP server, NFS, AFP, HTTP, Rsync, and also UPnP AV and "Home Media Streaming Server". Honestly, I'm not sure what the last one does

As far as performance goes it's pretty good, I copied a 4GB TS file from my
current media server to the ReadyNAS (via my desktop) and it used about 15% of my Gig-E connection, took 7.5 minutes for a rate of about 8.7MB/sec or 70Mbps. I'd say it "feels" about as fast as my RAID array.

Turned out to be a lot longer than I intended. I've only been using it for a couple hours, but I've been impressed so far. If you've got any questions feel free to ask, I'll do my best to answer. And I'll be sure to report back when I give it the real tests, and drop another drive or two in and let it expand the array

-edit

Just wanted to amend this, I figured out some stuff and it's not as loud as I thought (see below).

[teknubic]

Rockin', Stanger
I've been procrastinating, as well so this is another push. Thanks.

[mikejaner]

So how much was it?

[JasonJoel]

Can get the base unit (no drives) for $650 on ebay...

Jason

[stanger89]

I've seen it for less than that $600 on the internet. I'm not sure if it's kosher to tell the group buy price or not.

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=...al&sa=N&tab=wf

[Griff]

For what it is worth, I have been using the Buffalo TeraStation for a few months now, and have not noticed any performance issues with recording or playing media files. At about $770 for a terabyte at Newegg (and the ability to add up to four external usb drives), the price/performance is hard to pass up. The setup also was about as easy as plugging it in.

[jcato]

Nice review. I'll check it out since I'm looking for some sort of redundant, expanable storage. In your research, did you check out the Un-Raid? Or did you not consider it because it isn't Raid5? I'm leaning towards it since it can be a DIY project and I can spread the costs out over time.

[Narflex]

Do you know if there happens to be an open PCI slot inside of that case? (no, I'm not insane)

[mikejaner]

Along what lines are you thinking Jeff? For expanded external storage, or for a capture card?!?!?!?!?, lol, SAGENAS (TM), a new product from the makers of SageTV. LOL

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Do you know if there happens to be an open PCI slot inside of that case? (no, I'm not insane)

Looks like it has 1-32 bit 3.3v PCI slot. Here is the page for just the system board.

Infrant ReadyNAS system board

Gerry

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Along what lines are you thinking Jeff? For expanded external storage, or for a capture card?!?!?!?!?, lol, SAGENAS (TM), a new product from the makers of SageTV. LOL

Exactly! He wants to stick a 500 in it and sell it as a bundled SageNas device.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Do you know if there happens to be an open PCI slot inside of that case? (no, I'm not insane)

Yup, I can confirm, 1 32-bit open PCI slot . Be sure to let me know if I can be of assistance

Originally Posted by jcato

Nice review. I'll check it out since I'm looking for some sort of redundant, expanable storage. In your research, did you check out the Un-Raid?

Yeah, that was probably the first NAS device that I was really interested in. The reason I decided against that is because it's a full-blown PC, I just didn't really want another general-purpose PC floating around. The other problem (for me) is each drive is it's own volume in the un-RAID, I really don't need to deal with another 11 volumes

Griff,

This is what I was going off of:
http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Review...dID-H2H5-9.php
http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/09/infrant_readyna.html

The Terastation is probably fine for streaming, but I really wanted as much speed as possible for transferring files on/off of it. Plus the ReadyNAS X6 can be purchased bare (no drives) and you can add drives as needed. I really like that, because I want a large amount of storage, and the (currently) 1.5TB possible is a pretty good number. Off the shelf 1.5TB NAS are pretty expensive, the X6 gives the oportunity to "get your foot in the door" for less money and upgrade as time goes on.

And FWIW, the 1.0TB version of the Terastation, AFAIK, uses 4 250GB drives, so you only get 750TB if you use RAID-5 for redundancy. That's only 50% bigger than my X6 config, for roughly the same price. The largest version (1.6TB) uses 400GB drives which nets 1.2TB redundant storage, for about $1500. A fully loaded X6 (4x500GB, 1.5TB) comes in just under $2000 currently. However you don't have to fill it right away, so taking advantage of dropping HDD prices over time, you could get down to about the same $1500 but for more space.

I'm not trying to badmouth the Terastation, just walking through my decision process for the benefit of others.

[Rogue9]

Wow!

This is definately something I should look into.

As soon as I win the lottery, or get that big raise at work. Whichever comes first...

LOL! But seriously, I'm starting to realize that I'll be needing more storage soon, and this looks like an excellent, upgradable solution, without the hassle of scrounging the parts together and doing it yourself.

[Narflex]

Would a capture card mount into the chassis that it comes with?

[stanger89]

Probably, would depend on the card. A low profile card almost certainly would, something the size of the A180 probably would, something like the PVR 500 would probably be tight (might not). I can't be sure without powering it down and trying.

[insomniac]

well what are you waiting for!??!?

[Narflex]

SageTV can run on embedded systems (yes, we've done it in house). As a server all it needs is a JVM and the IVTV capture drivers (or just use network encoders).

[stanger89]

FWIW, here's someone who did what I was too lazy to do (might answer some of your questions too Jeff )
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post6811013

[stanger89]

Small correction I wanted to add.

I mentioned in my first post that the X6 was somewhat noisy. Well, for the lazy amongst you, that's not right, it's not that loud, read on for details.

When I first got it, the fan lead was just "there". So in the process of putting the lid back on I was pinching the cable. So I decided to unplug it and twist it (so it would be less free). Silly me, I didn't pay attention to which header it was plugged into. Long story short, I plugged it into the wrong header, switching it to the correct one and now the fan runs a little under half as fast, and is much quieter

[Jesse]

Thanks for the info stanger.

Since you own and use both this and a more "conventional" raid array I have a question. I had always planned on building a raid5 array at some point. I am using a coolermaster stacker case for my server. I had figured I would eventually add a couple of hdd cages, a second power supply, and either an adaptec or 3ware card. I planned on starting with three 400gig drives and using the OCE features in the raid card to add hdd's as I needed them. As of right now it would be cheaper to get to 1.5tb by this route than it would by using the ReadyNas. Not a whole lot cheaper in the grand scheme of things, but enough so that it is worth carefully considering. So the question is this: If you could start over would you still have built the conventional array, or would you just go strait to the ReadyNas solution?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Jesse