Celeros EzSANFiler XD34S
Score: 3.3 of 5

Editor's note: This is a summary of our testing of this product, for a full rundown of how it fared in our testing across iSCSI SAN Server categories; please see our full coverage.

The EzSANFiler is a 16-bay, 3U storage server with both storage-area network and network-attached storage functions. Built on industry standard hardware (Supermicro chassis and motherboard coupled with an Areca ARC1680ix RAID controller), Celeros brings an extensive software library and management system to the table. On the SAN side, we tested iSCSI, although Celeros also offers Fibre Channel in some devices and there are certainly plenty of slots to put Fibre Channel cards into. On the NAS side, Celeros includes NFS, CIFS and Appletalk file systems as well as FTP and HTTP access. The EzSANFiler can be expanded with additional storage, but because it's essentially a very big PC, has no high-availability options if the system itself is rebooted or crashes.

Celeros has filled the system with a huge number of functions, many taken from the world of open source, that are all tied together with a very straightforward GUI.

Many of the features are NAS-focused, such as self-scan for viruses and attachment of a local tape drive for backups. One of the nifty features is that if you do use the EzSANFiler for NAS, it will very likely link to your existing backup system with built-in clients for Veritas, Dantz, and CA Brightstor preloaded.

The EzSANFiler was easy to set up and manage, as long as you're aiming for mainstream functions — we had it up and running, linked to our iSCSI initiators, and running performance tests in less than an hour. However, some areas, such as CHAP authentication and LUN hiding (a common security feature in iSCSI servers), use a confusing model that is more based on the open source software inside of the EzSANFiler than what would make sense to a SAN user. We would also have liked to see the internal RAID controller management better integrated into the rest of the management framework, not just for configuration but also for alerts and performance monitoring.

As a midrange device, the EzSANFiler turned in very modest performance — it came in at the bottom of both SAS and SATA tests — but does so at a modest price, giving the lowest price per gigabyte ($1.72) of any device with SAS drives inside. The EzSANFiler would be most interesting in configurations where it is providing disks to five to 10 servers, especially environments where the additional NAS features are useful.