Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ Review

A couple of weeks ago we put the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo through its paces. We were a little disappointed in its performance, and now the ReadyNAS NV+ has shown up to try to defend the honour of the ReadyNAS family. Will it succeed or will it fall to the incessant pounding of our network stress tests?

The 4 disk ReadyNAS NV+ has arrived to wreak vengeance for the disappointing ratings we delivered to its little brother, the ReadyNAS Duo. The ReadyNAS NV+ sports 4 disks instead of 2, and this should allow the ReadyNAS NV+ to work in multiple RAID modes instead of just RAID 1 and 0.

Netgear position the ReadyNAS NV+ as "A high capacity, reliable solution for home storage":

• Serves files easily
• Backs up data effortlessly
• Streams music and video quickly
• Shares printers with ease
• Works with Windows®, Mac®, and Linux®

The Netgear specifications are quite comprehensive; interestingly the primary difference between the NV+ and the Duo is the number of disks:

• 4 Serial ATA channels
• Compatible with SATA and SATA II HDD
• Hot-swappable trays
• 10/100/1000 Ethernet
• LCD Display
• 3 USB 2.0 ports
• 256 MB PC2700 DDR-SDRAM SO-DIMM
• Embedded 64 MB flash memory for OS
• Supports Windows, Mac, Linux/UNIX Clients
• Setup wizard and easy browser-based interface
• NETGEAR Auto-Expandable X-RAID™

Significantly, the ReadyNAS NV+ uses exactly the same CPU and memory combination as the ReadyNAS Duo, and we saw that the performance of the Duo was often below par. These types of CPUs often struggle to perform under heavy mixed loads as they are optimised for specific tasks. The use of a DDR SO-DIMM may offer us a chance to upgrade the memory and get better performance - Netgear even offer a special edition of the NV+ with this upgrade already performed.

The Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ supports just about any type of computer likely to be found in its native SOHO environment:

• Windows® using SMB (Server Message Block) - aka CIFS (Common Internet File System). Note that OSX and Linux can generally use SMB as well as their own native protocols
• Mac OS 9/X using AFP - Apple Filing Protocol
• OSX, Linux and UNIX using NFS v2 / v3 - Network File System
• Web browsers using HTTP and Secure HTTP (the normal protocols for Web pages)
• FTP clients using FTP and Secure FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
• Various clients and other Netgear NAS devices using RSYNC (Remote Sync)

By default, all management is performed using a web browser. While the specifications list protocols like SSH, which allow for command line access to, and management of the ReadyNAS NV+, SSH is not listed in the manual and required a manual download and installation process documented on the community website ReadyNAS.com.

Interestingly the download and installation of the latest ReadyNAS firmware (v4.1.5) and the extra addon modules for SSH revealed the first bug in the Netgear UI - despite the system being configured for Australian Eastern Time (AEST), the date and time in the alert messages and system logs are all in Pacific Daylight Time - roughly 18 hours behind the local time. This would likely confuse a less technical administrator - given the overall quality of the web interface, this bug was quite a surprising find.

One function missing from the ReadyNAS Duo is the ability to join a Windows Domain - this is possible with its big brothers, and worked very well on the ReadyNAS NV+. While it's uncommon for a home to have a domain, the existence of Windows Small Business Server and Windows Foundation Server are common in tiny and small businesses (under 15 users) and it was nice to be able to integrate the ReadyNAS NV+ with the domain rather than needing to manually create accounts for each person, and duplicate groups and permissions.

Bonus points go to Netgear for correctly implementing the Active Directory functionality - unlike the Intel SS4200-E, the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ had no arbitrary restrictions on the name of the domain; it joined our test domain on the first attempt, did not require a restart, and even placed itself in the right location in the directory.

Unpacking and setting up the ReadyNAS NV+ was a simple affair. Since the test unit was the ReadyNAS NV+ RND4000, it came without hard disks. We chose to install all the disks before turning on the system for the first time - once powered up, the NV+ automatically created a 4 disk X-RAID set - 1.4TB - from our 500GB drives. The entire initial setup process consisted of just 5 steps:

1. Unpack the ReadyNAS, the network cable and the power supply;
2. Install the hard disks in the drive caddies (more bonus points for supplying more than the minimum number of screws - we received 20 screws leaving 4 spares), and slide the drives into the NAS;
3. Connect the network cable to the ReadyNAS and the switch;
4. Connect the power supply
5. Open the Web Admin page (http://nas-xx-xx-xx/admin)

This could not be made much simpler, except that the default name for the NAS is NAS-xx-xx-xx - where the x's are the last half of the NAS' network identity, printed on the sticker at the back of the NAS. Luckily, though, the IP address is displayed on the LCD panel at the front of the ReadyNAS and this is an easy alternative to using the name of the NAS.

The NAS comes with two shares defined by default:

Unlike the ReadyNAS Duo, the NV+ comes configured for Share level access control. In this mode, each share requires only a password rather than both a username and a password. This made access from Windows 7 troublesome, although surprisingly Windows 2008 had no issues accessing the shares.

Switching to Active Directory mode quickly cured this problem, and since this mode and share password mode are the most likely configurations for this device, they are the two configurations we tested.

Both shares allow guests to read and write all files by default. Not the most secure configuration but definitely the simplest for a novice user to unpack and have "just work".

Once converted to Active Directory mode, the shares were configured for read/write access by all, including Guest. As a result, no authentication is required to access the data.

Disappointingly, there is no way to use Windows access control lists to restrict access to folders or files - so anyone who can access a share on the ReadyNAS NV+ can also access all the data in that share.

There are no user accounts defined other than the default Admin account. Surprisingly, however, this account is not able to access shares - it is used only for administrative access. Once converted to Active Directory mode, those users are copied to the ReadyNAS and can be viewed in the normal user list.

Also, the only protocols enabled by default for these shares are for Windows and Mac OS. The NFS protocol preferred for OSX, Linux and UNIX is completely disabled by default, as is access to shares using a web browser, FTP and Remote Sync (RSYNC).

The basic steps therefore, from box to production, need to include creating the right user accounts in addition to the basic tasks previously listed or joining your Windows domain, and enabling the right protocols for your network.

The ReadyNAS Web UI, called Frontview, makes this pretty straightforward. 6 clicks and 3 pieces of information (username, email address and password) will create a user account, 6 pieces of information will join a domain, and another dozen clicks enables the NFS and FTP protocols for the default shares.

It's a piece of cake, and because Frontview responds quite snappily, you're up and running in less than 5 minutes. That's really respectable.

The ReadyNAS has a beautiful administrative interface, and supports every computer built since the dawn of modern IT (well, OK anything since about 1995), but if it's too slow to be useful ther's not much point. No-one really wants to wait for half an hour to copy a movie to their brand new network disk, when it takes 2 minutes to a disk inside their PC.

So how well does the ReadyNAS perform?

The tests use the following two data sets:

Small Files:

• 2144 files, in
• 311 directories, totalling
• 136,417,700 bytes (130.10 MB)

Large Files:

• 27 files, in
• 17 directories, totalling
• 783,609,012 bytes (747.30 MB)

The test client was configured as follows:

• Acer R510 Server (Intel 7320 Chipset)
• 2GB DDR-333 ECC RAM (2 x 1GB dual channel)
• 3.0GHz/800MHz Intel Xeon
• HighPoint RocketRAID 2210 PCI-X card in 64 bit, 133MHz slot
• 3 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB drives in RAID 5
• Intel Pro/1000 MT Network Connection
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64

To understand whether the server itself would be a limit, the dataset was copied from one directory on the server to another on the same disk (a stress test). On the small file set the server averaged 26,930,343 bytes per second, or 1541.0 MB per minute. On the large file set, the server was faster at 64,884,409 bytes per second, or 3712.7 MB per minute.

All tests were conducted five times and the average taken after discarding any results that were obviously different from the rest. Tests using FTP were slower than Windows file/print sharing and thus the Windows results are shown here.

Stress Test

The performance results from the ReadyNAS NV+ are strikingly similar to the ReadyNAS Duo - in fact, most of the results are within 2% of the much cheaper Duo. In going from the Duo to the NV+, we've added two disks. In testing the Duo, we increased the amount of cache memory by a factor of 4. Neither change improved the performance. The network interface is capable of Gigabit speeds (more than 120 MB/sec - 4 times faster than the best the NV+ could manage in any test). In this context it becomes clear that the limiting factor in performance is likely the custom CPU - the common component.

The results of the performance testing are disappointing, to say the least. So low were these results, in fact, that I ran the performance tests against a Hyper-V virtual machine on another test host - and the virtual machine exceeded the performance of the ReadyNAS in every test. Despite being well optimised for disk activity (witness the 50MB per second at which the NAS rebuilds a disk), the embedded CPU is simply not powerful enough to run the disk and the network at full speed at the same time. In fact, while copying files to and from the NAS, the embedded CPU would often be running at 100%, and yet at other times would be idling while the test PCs were waiting for data.

Now that I've seen what the ReadyNAS NV+ is capable of, I can safely say where it is best suited.

The Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ is a popular NAS with a vibrant and enthusiastic user community. Unfortunately it is let down by the customised CPU which fails to deliver performance in line with the hard disks inside the box.

The slick Web Admin interface and flexibility (supporting all the major PC and server operating systems) are great, being able to use the same disks and trays in the more expensive ReadyNAS models is very, very cool, but for such an expensive NAS, performance really is below par.

As an example, the ReadyNAS NV+ without any hard disks is about $1072 at TechBuy.

Alternatives like the Intel SS4200 and QNAP TS-409 Pro are competitors to the ReadyNAS NV+. The Intel unit is cheaper than the Netgear and did exceptionally well in our tests, but lost out on some core business functionality (Active Directory membership limitations) and has no community of users yet. The QNAP unit is also cheaper than the ReadyNAS, yet includes full web server and database server capabilities.

The Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ is available from TechBuy in a range of configurations.

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