* Storage appliances keep getting better
I’m increasingly impressed by the advances in storage appliances offered to small businesses. This week I’ve been testing the 1.0TB PlatinumNAS from MicroNet and the feature bar gets ever higher. This box would have done well in my Network Attached Storage review last October.
I’m increasingly impressed by the advances in storage appliances offered to small businesses. This week I’ve been testing the 1.0TB PlatinumNAS from MicroNet and the feature bar gets ever higher. This box would have done well in my network-attached storage review last October.
The big improvement across the board for NAS capacity comes from the new 750GB disk drives. Increasing disk capacity in affordable drives from 500GB to 750GB means four disks combine to make a 3.0TB appliance rather than a 2.0TB appliance. Add in the improved performance from Serial ATA (SATA) drives over the older IDE drives, and affordable storage appliances start pushing the performance of much more expensive SCSI-based NAS units, at least in smaller network applications. These certainly win the price battle with SCSI storage units.
This particular box, the 1.0TB PlatinumNAS, includes several nice features not often seen in this market. First, the drives are truly “hot swappable”, meaning you can pull one of the four disk drives out of the unit while the unit remains powered up and data remains online. Pull a malfunctioning disk drive out, plug in a replacement drive, and the unit will rebuild the data volume thanks to the error correcting RAID 5 support. Some of the other units in this market segment have accessible hard disks, but you can’t pull them out while the system is powered on. Other models enclose the disks so hot swapping isn’t a possibility. Of course, few small businesses really need the extra few minutes of uptime provide by hot swap disks, but if you do, PlatinumNAS is ready.
Two Gigabit Ethernet ports come standard on this unit, providing network flexibility since each port can connect to a different local network. Most competitive units now include Gigabit Ethernet (1,000Mbps rather than Fast Ethernet at 100Mbps or regular Ethernet at 10Mbps), but few include two ports. Again, dual network connections won’t help most small businesses, but the feature helps some users and shows advanced engineering and design work. Client support extends to Windows, Macintosh and Linux devices, another example of a full feature list.
Physically, the box is toaster size with a case made of brushed aluminum for a nice modern appearance (or retro toaster look). Each of the four drives has a locking pull lever and a blue power LED and a green activity LED. Clients don’t require software to access the drive, which is typical, and you reach the management screen by putting http:PlatinumNAS in your browser, so you don’t need to load software on any computer for any reason. Unfortunately, MicroNet doesn’t include any client backup utility software. Software included by other NAS vendors provides better service than Microsoft’s built in Backup program, but the Microsoft utility is better than nothing.
MicroNet offers larger capacity PlatinumNAS units (up to 3.0TB) and larger chassis holding up to 16 drives. RAID 5 support for the larger capacity SATA drives hasn’t been implemented by any of the vendors in the small business market yet, but when vendors start packing 16 750GB drives in one box for 12TB disk capacity in one unit, the middle market price war will be fierce.
Playing strongly in the Macintosh area, MicroNet also offers multiple units with FireWire support. It has several boxes that support three connections: USB and FireWire 400 and 800. I guess if you include USB 1.1 and 2.0 that would make four interfaces. The company also has a unit called a SANcube that supports four Macintosh desktop computer connections via FireWire plugs. A storage-area network is the next step up from NAS and adds more advanced storage technology for supporting multiple users. If you had two, three, or four Macintosh graphic stations that needed boatloads of disk space, the SANcube sounds like your type of box. FireWire 800 throughput speeds are amazing, and transfers files faster than Gigabit Ethernet.
Pricing direct from MicroNet for the PNAS1000 is $1,099, but online prices drop as low as $999. The 1.6TB box is $1,759 retail, the 2.0TB $2,349, and the 3.0TB $3,759. MicroNet’s most eye-catching price is its Fantom Drive G-Force MegaDisk Triple Interface supporting FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 connections. The price for this dual-disk external hard drive with 1.5TB of disk space? $999 retail.
All in all, the MicroNet PlatinumNAS is a winner. That said, please be aware that RAID 5 technology guarantees your data remains safe if you have a hard drive failure, but that isn’t a backup strategy. If files are deleted and not backed up somewhere, they’re gone. If this or any NAS box suffers physical damage (fire, water, cleaning crew) or gets stolen, your files are gone. When you add disk storage, add file backup capacity to support the files you plan to put on your pretty new NAS box.
