Netgear's Marvell Based ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Review
by Ganesh T S on November 9, 2011 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- NAS
- NetGear
Netgear's ReadyNAS lineup is very well respected in the industry. This lineup owes its existence to the acquisition of Infrant in 2007. After acquiring Infrant, Netgear moved away from the custom RAID controllers (based on the LEON SPARC core [PDF]) in favour of Intel x86 based solutions. However, Intel based solutions are too costly for the mid-range SMB market. We have already seen vendors like Synology and LG using Marvell based controllers in their systems. Netgear is also moving to a Marvell based solution for this market with the products introduced today.
The 2-bay Duo v2 is meant to replace the existing ReadyNAS Duo and the 4-bay NV+ v2 is meant to replace the existing ReadyNAS NV+. Compared to the Ultra and Ultra Plus series, these solutions are much cheaper. They also sacrifice some features such as NFS and iSCSI. These are not used by a majority of the consumers in the economical prosumers segment. Hardware wise, both the products carry only one GbE port (compared to the two ports in the Ultra lineup). The table below presents the various home NAS models from Netgear.
Netgear's suggested pricing for today's introductions is presented below:
Netgear doesn't offer any specifics on the platform except for indicating 'Marvell Smart' in the packaging and a 1.6 GHz CPU at the core. Both the Duo v2 and NV+ v2 run on the same CPU, with the number of bays being the only difference. A look at the pricing table above reveals that the units compete in the same class as that of the LG N2A2 NAS that we reviewed a couple of months ago. Is the platform same? How does the performance stack up? We will see the answers to these questions in the next few sections.
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JHBoricua - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
I'm pretty sure the difference in the power supply draw of the Ready NAS and the HP Microserver is not that much when fully loaded. And somehow, I doubt the support from Netgear is anything to talk about, having dealt with them before.LeftSide - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
My HP Proliant Microserver with a dual core 1.3Ghz with 8Gb ECC DDR3 ram running Solais 11 express idles at 15 watts. I've added 2 hitachi 3 tb drives, and have not measured power yet, but 15 watts is pretty good.nasuser - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
"but many SMBs / SOHOs don't have time to build or maintain a NAS themselves."And more to the point many don't WANT to or have the expertise.
Whatever the criticisms of various consumer NAS, unbox -> plug in -> turn on and you're ready to go in a few minutes.
No OS to install, or hooking up to a display etc. And if/when they fail - getting back to a factory default status is as easy as a reset button press.
If all you need is basic network storage, I think devices like these can save alot of time & effort and at a reasonable price point.
alanh - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
I have a mixed environment at home and am looking for something like this that I can use to do automated backups of Macs via Time Machine and PCs via [whatever other method]. Does this work for the former on Lion and does it include software for the latter?beginner99 - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
I've been considering such a device too lately but for now I just keep the stuff in my desktop. Those consumer NAS have the advantage, that they are very small. A DIY build will easily be double the size unless you go for an expensive special case (Chenboro...) and then it won't be any cheaper. You will also be very restricted with the motherboard (mini-itx with enough sata ports).dj christian - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
IDY?JHBoricua - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
" A DIY build will easily be double the size unless you go for an expensive special case"Not necessarily. As I pointed out earlier, for the same price of the diskless NV+, you can get a HP Proliant Microserver with 8 times more RAM than the default NV+ config, a better CPU and without hardly a difference in power draw. And you don't have to sacrifice on the size either.
Here's a size comparison.
ReadyNAS NV+ dimensions: 7.9 H x 5.2 W x 8.7 D in
HP Proliant Microserver dimensions: 10.5 H x 8.3 W x 10.2 D in
You get 6 SATA connections (5 internal, 1 eSATA), one internal USB port mounted on the motherboard (that could boot your Os), 1 half height PCIe x16 and 1 half height PCIe x1 open slots for future expansion and can be expanded with up to 8GB of RAM (8 times the NV+ maximum).
It's a much better deal for the DIY'er and offers better flexibility.
Evadman - Thursday, May 16, 2013 - link
An HP Microserver is 2.5 times bigger than an NV (you even posted the dimensions) 360 cubic inches vs 890 cubic inches. Comparision picture: http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1634...The ReadyNas is much more of a plug and play system than the HP is. Plug it in, throw drives in it, and it works. The HP is an actual server, so you need to do an order of magnitude more configuration and setup, not to mention continual maintenance. The ReadyNas handles all that in the software to a much higher degree than the HP. If you are looking for pure performance and configuration options, the HP may be a better solution. If you want easy, the Readynas may be a better solution. Both have their own niche, so it depends on the skills the user has and how much effort they want to expend.
Full disclosure/experience/whatever: I have three NV+'s along with a server with a 50TB RAID 60 array running Server 2008R2 on an Adaptec 52445 along with other NAS type devices from other companies.
jleach1 - Saturday, November 12, 2011 - link
Someone explain how a MSRP of $399 is cheaper than the current NV+?I see em going for between 250-350?