NAS Explained
Network Attached Storage
Times have changed and our storage requirements have moved from kilobytes, to megabytes, to Gigabytes and now even Terabytes of storage. And sure, it won't be long until we reach Petabytes either. Oh and after that there's Exabyte and then Zettabyte.
File Storage Capacity by Bits and Bytes | ||||
byte | Kilobyte | Megabyte | Gigabyte | |
Kilobyte | 1,024 | 1 | 1,024 | 1,048,576 |
Megabyte | 1,048,576 | 1,024 | 1 | 1,024 |
Gigabyte | 1,073,741,824 | 1,048,576 | 1,024 | 1 |
Terabyte | 1,099,511,627,776 | 1,073,741,824 | 1,048,576 | 1,024 |
Petabyte | 1,125,899,906,842,620 | 1,099,511,627,776 | 1,073,741,824 | 1,048,576 |
Exabyte | 1,152,921,504,606,850,000 | 1,125,899,906,842,620 | 1,099,511,627,776 | 1,073,741,824 |
Zettabyte | 1,180,591,620,717,410,000,000 | 1,152,921,504,606,850,000 | 1,125,899,906,842,620 | 1,099,511,627,776 |
So we passed the Terabyte marker. With our hefty demand in storage capabilities, the industry had to constantly adapt and introduce new features in hardware. Storage units got much bigger in volume over the year, 6 TB HDDs have just been introduced onto the market with 10TB already in the pipeline. In that line of storage solutions there is one product series growing fast and now reaching SOHO and consumer based markets. They are called NAS units, network attached storage. And there has been a lot of development in these nifty little boxes. Pretty much they are little servers that you can hook onto your network and then function as file-server.
The NAS units are often small, do not use a lot of power compared to say your PC, but they are highly configurable, offer redundancy as some models can even handle RAID internally. Network Attachable Units are among the most advanced home servers available on the market today. Products feature multiple HDDs setups, partitions, RAID, USER and USERGROUP based access, FTP, web server, MySQL, hot swappable drives; these are just some of the features that a NAS unit can handle. And though expensive, a product like this is just too darn handy when it comes to file-storage and management over your network.
The Asustor AS1002T
The Asustor AS1002T can house up to two hard drives or SSDs. The unit is tied to a Gigabit Ethernet jack, meaning 1000 / 8 minus QOS and random overhead like error-correction is roughly a maximum of 100 to 125 MB/sec. You can install two storage units in today's tested device NAS (AS1002T), these can be set up in a RAID 0/1 array. The RAID functionality of the unit supports RAID 0,1 or with the 4 HDD models (AS1004T) RAID 5. Once you have installed your hardware, you'll need to bind the NAS towards your Ethernet with a CAT5e/6e cable to a switch; the Asustor NAS offers more connectors though, you may also make use of eSATA or USB 2.0/3.0 making this NAS unit really a bit of a DAS unit as well. When you have your HDDs installed, and the device connected through your PC you'll need to start-up a software suite to bind and setup your configuration. Please look at the install CD for that. Or if you have a smartphone, simply use a smartphone app like FING and scan the network, Asustor will show up with a corresponding IP. Type in the IP into your browser and you can start setting up the unit.
The Asustor AS1002T/AS1004T Hardware
The Asustor AS5102T based upon an Marvell ARMADA-385 1GHz (Dual-Core) Processor that can boost towards 1 GHz. Factory installed is a 512MB memory IC that is SMT soldered onto the PCB,so you cannot expand memory. The Asustor AS1002T can eat two 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch SSDs or HDDs, but being the budget model does not come with hot-swap trays. You will notice USB 3.0 connectors (one at the back one in the front and one located at the backside). The unit sports one Gigabit Ethernet port.
Operating system compatibility wise the NAS supports file sharing across Linux, UNIX, Mac, and Windows platforms. We will be testing with Windows 8.1 and 10. Also for the more advanced among you, windows AD (Active Directory) is supported to help create an easy-to-access environment. SSH login and web page SSL login enables users to transfer, store, and share data securely. Since this product acts as a server ALL PC's within your network can connect to it, with or without access rights. You can manage it from any client as you simply log into the web-interface and configure it.
But let's dive into a more detailed photo shoot.