The Definitive Guide to the ReadyNAS NVX

April 7, 2009 by yoh-dah
Filed under Featured, News & Events

Overview

Since its introduction 3 years ago, the ReadyNAS NV and the follow-on NV+ have been the de facto choice of professionals, whether at the office or at home. They consistently garnered the highest ratings, and PC World even ranked the NV+ #8 in its “100 Best Products of 2007 Awards”. In a world where a product life cycle is measured in months, it’s very rare to find a design that lasts three years as the ReadyNAS NV product line has.

With that, the ReadyNAS team is proud to present the latest in our NV line — the ReadyNAS NVX, the fastest and most capable 4-bay desktop NAS in the world.

Identical in size to the NV+, the ReadyNAS NVX now sports a charcoal black exterior. And of course, it maintains the same chrome curved handle in the back, so you can easily move it between home and office if the need arises. In fact, much of the features that users have grown to love about the NV+ remains — the informative LCD in the front, the 4 hot-swappable disk trays behind the hidden mesh door, the backup button with a USB port at the top, and the two USB ports in the back.

What has changed is the brand-spanking new 1 GHz Intel CPU that replaces the NETGEAR IT3107 NSP that’s been the mainstay of the NV+. Add to that the 1 GB of fast SO-DIMM, and you have a system capable of hitting 85 MB/sec, more than what your typical PC or Mac can do locally, and twice as fast as the NV+.

The importance of protected storage

With everything now being stored digitally, a simple disk failure can be catastrophic, especially with the large capacity disks that are certainly the norm these days. And it really is not a matter of if but when you will have a massive data loss. Your whole family history captured on photos and videos will be lost at an instant. Your business will lose important documents and customer data and if you are lucky it will only cost your company with project delays, loss revenue and productivity. At the very worse, data loss can cost the company its livelihood. If the data is recoverable, it can be a time-consuming and expensive proposition. Ask yourself if your small or medium-size business can survive this sort of loss. Understandably, there’s a growing need for protected storage. If people don’t know what RAID (“Redundant Array of Independent Disks”) is today, they will find out soon enough. RAID is simply a way of pooling disks into one big virtual disk. If one of the disks in that pool fails, the data from the failed disk can be resurrected by the parity information kept on the surviving disks in the pool. In simple terms, this means that if one disk fails, access to your data is still intact. The cost of safe-guarding your data comes at a price of one disk capacity, regardless of whether your RAID volume consists of two drives or six drives. For example, a ReadyNAS with four 1 TB drives will have a protected capacity of 3 TB. With the price of disks being relatively cheap and data loss and recovery being so expensive, it’s really foolish not to use protected storage that RAID provides.

NVX comes with X-RAID2

The ReadyNAS NVX goes actually a step further than just RAID. It uses an ingenious technology developed by NETGEAR called X-RAID2™, a 2nd generation X-RAID technology that has been used in the existing award-winning line of ReadyNAS products. With X-RAID2, you can expand your data volume from one disk up to the max the ReadyNAS can house while the ReadyNAS is online. In a work environment, that means you don’t have to tell your staff to stop working while you’re trying to accomodate more capacity.

And once you’ve filled out all the slots and you’re near capacity, you can continue to expand by replacing out the disks one-by-one with larger disks, again, without needing to migrate your data out and back again. X-RAID2 will automatically expand when as little as two of your disks have extra capacity. Your data volume can keep growing every time you add a larger disk after that. It’s as simple as that — you don’t need a degree in RAID technology to do this. For a video demo about X-RAID2, click on the image below (the demo is based on the 6-bay ReadyNAS Pro).

Other NAS may tout that they have “online” RAID expansion just like X-RAID, but take a closer look and you’ll see it’s just not quite that simple. Not only are there complex RAID migration steps involved, but they don’t mention that if you encounter a power loss during the process, you can say goodbye to your data for good.

With X-RAID2, you can turn off the power as many times as you want during the expansion, and it’ll continue where it left off.

The NVX is F-A-S-T

Mind-blazingly fast, that is. When was the last time your network drive was faster than the disk on your PC or Mac? To properly measure the performance potential in our performance lab, we had to utilize a large ramdisk or a RAID 0 with 3 striped disks on our client boxes. The local disks were clearly not fast enough to push the NVX.

With the proper setup, we clock it at 85 MB/sec (that’s megabytes per second) when reading and 78 MB/sec when writing to the ReadyNAS, and that’s with the NVX running in a protected X-RAID2 setting. With that type of speed, you can be sure it can handle a boat load of users and not suffer performance degradation like other devices would. And it means it’s a device you don’t have to throw out and replace in a couple years.

Take a look at the Performance section for what you can expect in various configurations.

NVX at work

The ReadyNAS NVX is all business at the office, and it comes with 2 security levels suitable for environments with and without Active Directory service. Joining into an existing Active Directory environment is a snap, and within a few clicks, all existing users and groups from the directory can start using the ReadyNAS.

In addition, the NVX comes with snapshot support. Consider a snapshot as an instant point-in-time image of your data, sort of like a photo you take with a camera. Regardless of the number of files or the volume usage on the ReadyNAS, a snapshot only takes a couple of seconds, and you can continue using the ReadyNAS without interruption. If you inadvertantly change or delete files after you’ve taken a snapshot, you can always revert to the version saved in that snapshot. Just drag & drop files back from the snapshot share. This can be useful if your files were infected with a virus and you needed to revert back to a good copy.

A snapshot can also be scheduled to coincide with your backups. Typical backups can take hours, so a backup of a snapshot insures that you’re making copies of files that won’t be changing during the backup process.

On the subject of backup, the ReadyNAS comes with a built-in backup manager supporting a variety of file protocols, including CIFS, NFS, HTTP, FTP, and RSYNC. And because the backup manager runs right on the ReadyNAS, you don’t need to load a separate backup software on your client systems.

And with iSCSI support, the NVX can act as an iSCSI target LUN while still working as a NAS. This allows your Exchange or Oracle database to use a portion of your data volume for iSCSI, yet maintain the rest of the volume for file sharing. And in environments where Windows ACLs are required, iSCSI gives you that extra level of compatibility.

And the NVX allows the dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces to be bonded for optimal performance in multi-user environments and provide failover support in case of network failure.

As you can see, the ReadyNAS NVX is well-suited in business environments. In fact, you can take a look at several case studies on how the ReadyNAS has succeeded in businesses here.

NVX in the home

With the number of computers in an average household approaching four or more, the need to consolidate storage and backup into one device, like the ReadyNAS NVX, is a definite appeal, especially if that device can provide versatility beyond just file sharing and data protection.

In the home, ReadyNAS systems are without a doubt the choice of the AV community. Not only does the NVX provides ample protected storage for all the digital media content, it can be used to stream to all popular media streaming devices, often referred to as DMAs (“Digital Media Adapters”) without the need to have you PC or Mac powered on. The trend definitely is to use low power-consuming devices like the ReadyNAS (more on this later) in place of general-purpose power-hungry desktop systems for streaming.

This means devices like PS3, XBOX 360, Logitech Squeezebox, SONOS Digital Music System, and NETGEAR’s own EVA 8000/9150 Digital Entertainer HD/Elite can all play media files straight from the NVX. Stream all you want — the NVX is designed to handle even the most demanding streaming applications with ease.

And instead of cluttering the house with a printer for each computer, you can use the built-in print sharing capability of the NVX to share your printer(s) on your network. There’s no need to purchase a ton of expensive ink cartridges when you can now consolidate your printing to one or two printers. Just connect your printer to any of the three USB ports on the NVX, and you’re set to go.

Features

The ReadyNAS NVX feature set is driven by the common RAIDiator firmware that is used across all ReadyNAS products. RAIDiator provides a myriad of features not found in other network storage devices. Let’s go through some of the prominent ones.

Auto-Expandable X-RAID2

There’s really no need to understand RAID on a ReadyNAS. The NVX comes pre-configured with X-RAID2, NETGEAR’s exclusive automatic expandable RAID technology. With X-RAID2, complex RAID management is a thing of the past!

For instance, let’s say you started out with one disk and you treat the ReadyNAS as secondary storage for backups. If one day, you want to make the ReadyNAS a primary storage, it’s prudent to make the storage protected. To do this, you simply secure a 2nd disk with 4 screws to the disk tray and hot-add the disk while the system is still running (you can do this while the system is powered off if you prefer). Your data on the first disk will automatically mirror to the 2nd disk in the background while the ReadyNAS is still available for access on your network.

Now if you’re close to reaching the capacity on your ReadyNAS, just add a 3rd disk, and your volume expands on the fly, giving twice the original capacity, and maintaining protection from a disk failure. And again, if you add a 4th disk, your ReadyNAS will triple in capacity.

That’s not all with X-RAID2. If you find that you’re close to capacity on the four disks, just replace two of the disks one by one, allowing it to sync along the way, and just reboot the ReadyNAS to expand the data volume. You can continue to replace each of the lesser capacity disk and reboot to gain more capacity after that.

Media Server

The ReadyNAS can stream music, video, and photos to just about any popular network-capable media streaming device without the need to turn on your PC or Mac. Just drag & drop your media files to the ReadyNAS and play them on your streaming device, whether it’s a Playstation 3, XBOX 360, NETGEAR’s own EVA 8000/9150, or pretty much any DLNA-compliant device.

Small wireless music streamers have also become popular in the home, and the ReadyNAS can be central to serving music files to these devices. The Logitech Squeezebox, SONOS Digital Music System, and the Roku SoundBridge are just some of the players supported by the ReadyNAS, right out of the box.

As more and more of these thin devices start showing up, there’s no question that the ReadyNAS makes a perfect solution for your streaming network. There’s simply no other device out there that is more flexible for media streaming, period.

Music Sharing with Apple iTunes Server

With the built-in Apple iTunes 7.0 server, the ReadyNAS can be used as a large shared jukebox. With the iTunes service enabled, iPods, iPhones, and PCs or Macs running iTunes can access the shared music library stored on the ReadyNAS.

Unique Add-ons expands the ReadyNAS further

The ReadyNAS family has a unique add-on capability that can expand on the current feature set. ReadyNAS Photos and the BitTorrent are just two examples of add-ons currently available. Add-ons from NETGEAR, NETGEAR partners, and the ReadyNAS Community are sure to keep your ReadyNAS on the cutting edge.

Network Recycle Bin

Windows users accustomed to the Recycle Bin on their PC will love the Recycle Bin on the ReadyNAS. If you’ve ever inadvertantly deleted a file, you know the feeling of anxiety as you frantically search for a backup somewhere. With the Recycle Bin option on the ReadyNAS, you can relax, because your deleted file will be found in the Recycle Bin of your ReadyNAS share.

Centralized Backup

If you’re looking to centralize your backups, the ReadyNAS has a web-based Backup Manager built right into Frontview. From there, you have the option of scheduling backups to or from the ReadyNAS shares. You can opt to backup from a remote site over CIFS, NFS, FTP, HTTP, or RSYNC protocols, or similarly backup the ReadyNAS share to a remote site. You can even perform backups between the ReadyNAS and an attached USB disk drive or to another ReadyNAS.

Programmable Backup Button

If you think we’re obsessed about backups, you might be right. Another option for backups is through the use of the backup button on the front of the ReadyNAS. By default, pressing the button will backup your backup share on the ReadyNAS to the attached USB storage device connected to the USB port right below the button.

If you prefer, you can assign any or all of the Backup Manager backup jobs to the Backup Button. If you press the button, all jobs assigned to the button will run sequentially.

Time Machine

The best way to backup your Mac is with Time Machine. But you don’t have to be stuck using Time Capsule if you have a ReadyNAS. Just enable the Time Machine service on the ReadyNAS and start backing up all the Macs on your LAN straight to the ReadyNAS via Time Machine.

ReadyNAS Vault

The ReadyNAS can be the absolute center of your storage world, but what happens when a catasprophe takes the ReadyNAS with it? It’s a smart idea to think about disaster recovery, and with ReadyNAS Vault, offsite backups can start happening in a matter of minutes. All your backup and restores are controlled in the cloud, so you’re never more than an Internet access from being able to add or change a backup scheme, or to access a backed up file remotely. Take a look at how quickly you can get going with ReadyNAS Vault.

Alerts let you know what’s going on

Your data is important and you need to be aware of any anomaly on the ReadyNAS. Rest assure that the email alert system will let you know what’s going on. You will be notified when a disk fails, when a disk overheats, when a disk encounters warning signs of failure, when a fan fails, when a user or group reaches a disk quota limit, and when your volume is near capacity. It’ll even alert you in case the attached UPS is on battery. You can rest assured that ReadyNAS systems are well-prepared for non-ideal conditions just as it’s able to function optimally in ideal conditions.

Easy disk replacement eases the stress of a disk failure

Disk failure is inevitable, so when that time comes, you certainly don’t want to have to fumble your way through trying to disassembling your device. With the NVX, simply press on the latch to release the disk tray, remove 4 screws that attaches the disk to the tray, replace with a new disk, and insert the disk back into the chassis, all while the unit is powered on. There’s no need to power off the chassis, and there’s no need to worry about downtime. Once the new disk is in place, the disk is resync’d in the background to provide full protection from another disk failure.

Integrated with smart UPS monitoring

Ever wonder what happens when the power goes out for a little too long and the UPS battery is drained? The ReadyNAS constantly monitors the UPS battery level and sends alerts whenever there’s a power interruption. And when the battery runs low, the ReadyNAS shuts down gracefully, avoiding any file corruption caused by unwritten cached data. Just use a UPS from the ReadyNAS compatibility list, connect the USB monitoring cable to the ReadyNAS, and everything else is taken care of automatically.

Definite advantages to file system journaling

The ReadyNAS journals each write request to the data volume, meaning it constantly keeps track whenever writes occur. What does this do? In case of an unplanned power outage, the ReadyNAS is able to bypass the bulk of the file system checking and quickly bring the volume back online in a matter of seconds. Without journaling, it can take hours to go through the file system check. With journaling, you can prevent long downtime for your staff.

Shutdown on disk failure

The ReadyNAS is designed to keep running in the event of a disk failure. However, you do have an option to automatically shutdown the box in case a failure is detected. This is just another peace-of-mind option to prevent the ReadyNAS from encountering another disk failure until the failed disk can be replaced.

Quotas on disk usage

The ReadyNAS supports disk quotas on a per-user or per-group basis. Even with terabytes of storage, certain users or groups of users may abuse the usage norm. The quota system allows you to specify how much space each user or group is allowed to use on the ReadyNAS, and the guilty party and the ReadyNAS admin will be duly notified of any violation.

Convenient online updates

The ReadyNAS comes integrated with an easy online update feature. There’s no need to download a firmware image from a website and manually upload it to the device. Just go to the Remote Update page in FrontView, click to check if there’s an available update, and click again to confirm. That’s it!

Add to that the option to automatically download any new updates, and all you need to do is reboot the ReadyNAS at your convenience to get the latest new features and bug fixes.

ReadyNAS speaks eight languages

That’s 7 more than what most of us speak! All you need to do is set your browser to one of the supported languages (English, Japanese, French, German, Chinese/Mandarin, Korean, Russian, or Portuguese), and the FrontView web-based management system will display in that language.

Mac users love the ReadyNAS

Unlike other NAS that support Macs through a Windows SMB/CIFS protocol, the ReadyNAS supports the protocol that works best with Macs — AFP. With AFP, non-standard characters in filenames work perfectly, and resource information that would cause problems over SMB is not an issue.

And with native Time Machine support, doing complete backups of the Macs in your LAN is just a few mouse clicks away.

Secure logins

You never know who might be sniffing network packets, even behind the firewall. Rest assured that all logins to the ReadyNAS are encrypted whenever possible, including the login to the FrontView Setup Wizard and Advanced Control management system.

Remote Access

With so much data on the ReadyNAS, it’s certainly desirable to access that data remotely. The ReadyNAS allows this via FTP and HTTP, and the more secure and SSL encrypted form via FTPS and HTTPS, with appropriate port forwarding on your router. Simply use your favorite FTP/S client to connect to the ReadyNAS FTP server, or use your browser to access the built-in Web File Manager via HTTP/S. In addition, the ReadyNAS supports WebDAV, allowing drag & drop file explorer support over LAN or WAN. A simple tutorial on how to do this can be found here. And with Wake-On-LAN support, you can wake and boot up your ReadyNAS NVX remotely from a power-off state.

ReadyNAS Remote

For an even more seamless remote access experience, ReadyNAS users can now use ReadyNAS Remote to securely access the ReadyNAS remotely, going over CIFS/SMB and AFP without the use of a VPN. Setup is simple, and once connected, Windows users access the ReadyNAS users with the Windows File Explorer and Mac users access the ReadyNAS with the Finder, with the same share restrictions imposed on the LAN.

Take a look at how quickly you can start using ReadyNAS Remote.

Low power consumption

It’s nice to see a lot of companies start thinking about making their products green. It’s now the in thing to do. Well, the ReadyNAS product line has always been green even before there was a push by regulations and consumer demand. For instance, in an idle state, the NVX with one disk consumes 41W and with four disks consumes 64W of power. It’ll take a few more watts when there is disk activity. In disk spin-down mode, the NVX consumes only 30W. Furthermore, if you use the automatic power-on timer, you’ll save even more. For instance, if you plan on accessing the ReadyNAS only during an 8-hour window each day, your average usage of the box can be much lower. All without compromising performance.

And if you will be on the road, you can simply shut off the ReadyNAS NVX. When you need to access it, you can use the Wake-On-LAN feature to wake it up. Now, that sure beats running a PC, a monitor, keyboard and mouse at around 100W or more 24/7.

Performance

And on the subject of performance, the ReadyNAS team is passionate about squeezing the last megabyte per second out of every ReadyNAS. Let’s take a look at how the NVX stacks up.

The Tests

There are two tests that we use to measure performance on the Windows platform:

IOMeter using 1024 KB sequential block reads and writes on a 3 GB test file, and Drag & Drop of a 3 GB file over CIFS, Windows default network protocol.

The tests are run on Vista Home Edition with Service Pack 1 (SP1). [Note: SP1 is highly recommended as it fixes major performance problems with remote share access.] On the Mac, IOMeter is not available, so we use:

Drag & Drop test of a 3 GB file over AFP. Mac users tend to prefer accessing the ReadyNAS over AFP as it provides better support for non-standard characters in filenames and the ability to maintain Mac-specific resource information.

We will show the results in two performance settings — the default (conservative) mode, and the optimal performance mode. Optimal mode consists of making the following changes in FrontView:

1. Select Disable journaling option in the System/Performance page.

2. Select Enable Jumbo Frames option in the Network/Ethernet page.

You’ll need to reboot the ReadyNAS after making the changes. These changes will provide the fastest performance possible on the ReadyNAS.

ReadyNAS Setup

ReadyNAS NVX
4 – Seagate ST31000340AS 1TB hard disks, 32 MB cache
RAIDiator 4.2.4

PC Setup

Intel Quad Core 2.66 GHz 2 GB Memory
Windows Vista, Service Pack 1
Intel Pro/1000 PT, PCI Express GigE, Jumbo frame 9014 bytes

Mac Setup

Apple Power Mac G5, 667 MHz 1 GB Memory
OS X 10.5.6
Onboard GigE, Jumbo frame 9000 bytes

Network Setup

Switch: NETGEAR GS724TP

Router: NETGEAR WNR854T

IOMeter Results – X-RAID2

Drag & Drop – X-RAID2

AFP Results – X-RAID2

iSCSI Drag & Drop – X-RAID2

Specifications

System Requirements

Microsoft Windows Vista, XP Home or Pro (SP1 or SP2), 2000 (SP4), Macintosh OS-X, Linux
Router and Broadband connection required for remote access features

Web Browsers Supported

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+
Netscape Navigator 7.0+
Safari 1.22+
Mozilla Firefox 1.03+
Opera 9.5+

General

Intel® Advanced Embedded CPU
1GB DDR2-800 SDRAM SODIMM
Four (4) Serial ATA II channels
NETGEAR Auto-Expandable X-RAID2
Hot swappable and lockable trays
Two (2) 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports
LCD Display
Three (3) USB 2.0 ports
Embedded 128 MB Flash Memory for OS
Supports Windows, Mac, Linux/UNIX clients
DHCP server and print server
Setup Wizard and easy browser-based interface
Power-on schedule

Volumes

NETGEAR Auto-Expandable X-RAID2
Flex-RAID mode for RAID levels 0, 1, and 5
Hot swap support
Hot spare support
iSCSI target support
Journaled file system
User and group quotas

Network File Services

CIFS/SMB for Microsoft Windows
AFP 3.1 for Macintosh OS 9 and OS X
NFS v2/v3 for Linux and UNIX
HTTP and HTTPS
FTP and FTPS
RSYNC

Media Streaming

DLNA-compatible UPnP AV
Logitech SqueezeBox
SONOS Digital Music Center
Network DVD player compatible
Windows MCE compatible
Sony Playstation 3
Microsoft XBOX 360

Network Security

Selectable User or Domain/Active Directory modes
Windows ACL
Encrypted network logins
Secure Socket Layer (SSL)

Network Options

DHCP or static IP
WINS, NTP
Load-balancing & Failover

System Management

Performance options
Device status
Email alerts and event logs
SNMP
Optional SSH shell access
Add-on expandability

Backup

Integrated Backup Manager
Programmable backup button
Backup to/from CIFS/NFS/FTP/HTTP/RSYNC
Backup to/from USB disks
Bundled Memeo AutoBackup Premium for ReadyNAS backup software (with CDP and Versioning support)

USB Device Support

USB HDD and flash drives
Printers
UPS monitoring and auto shutdown

Power-saving Options

Disk spin-down
Power-on schedule
Wake-On-LAN (WOL)

Languages

Management UI: English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese
File Name: Unicode

Electrical

220W server-rated AC power supply
Input: 100-240V AC~ 50-60Hz 5A(Max)

Power Consumption

76W typical with 4 x 1TB GB disks
62W idle, 34W with disk spin-down

Thermal

92 mm chassis cooling fan
Fan failure alert
High temperature email alert with auto-shutdown option

Operating Environment

0 to 40 C (32 to 104 F)
20% to 80% Humidity (non-condensing)
FCC, UL, CE, C-tick, KCC, VCCI, RoHS compliance

Physical Specifications

Kensington Lock security hole
Dimension (H x W x D): 200 x 132 x 222 mm (7.9 x 5.2 x 8.7 in)
Weight: 4.6 kg (10 lb), without hard disks

Optional Spare Parts

SATA disk tray
92 mm chassis fan
AC power supply

Package Contents

ReadyNAS NVX
Four (4) hard disk trays
Quick installation guide
Warranty card
Power cable
Ethernet cable
ReadyNAS Installation CD

ReadyNAS RAIDar Discovery Utility

Memeo AutoBackup Premium for ReadyNAS

Available Configurations

RNDX4210, 2 x 1TB HDD

RNDX4410, 4 x 1 TB HDD

Warranty and Support

The ReadyNAS NVX is covered by a class-leading 5-year warranty against defects in material and workmanship. 24/7 phone support is available via 1-866-252-9921 (USA) and via International Numbers. Online support is available on the ReadyNAS Community forum at www.readynas.com/forum and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ) can be found at www.readynas.com/forum/faq.php. Please visit www.readynas.com for links to these sites along with insightful articles and how-to’s for the ReadyNAS.