Tuesday, September 28th 2010
Seagate Unveils Industry's First 12 TB 4-bay NAS Server for Small Businesses
Seagate today introduced the industry's highest-capacity, 4-bay and 2-bay, desktop network attached storage solutions to help data-intensive small business address evolving storage needs. The BlackArmor NAS 440 network storage server and BlackArmor NAS 220 network storage server, extend the capacity range of Seagate's BlackArmor family of storage solutions, enabling businesses to now scale from 1TB to 12TB to help keep pace with the growing stores of high-definition multi-media files and business critical data. Initially, both solutions will come pre-populated with 3TB drives in each bay and will be offered exclusively for 30-days through Seagate.com and select online retailers. For the first 30 days, CDW will provide the 12TB BlackArmor NAS 440 for a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $1,899.99, and NewEgg will sell the BlackArmor NAS 220 6TB for a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of $649.99.
Both the BlackArmor NAS 440 and BlackArmor NAS 220 network storage servers are designed to help businesses with up to 50 employees and little or no IT support, centralize and secure data with maximum uptime by delivering:
For more information, visit the product pages of the BlackArmor 440 and BlackArmor 220.
- Software management tools that are compatible across the family to provide a consistent user experience and future growth path with minimal training or the need for additional support.
- Support for Microsoft Active Directory 2000, 2003, 2008 for populating users and groups.
- Unparalleled security with powerful hardware-based encryption.
- Remote access with the included, web-based Seagate Global Access service and FTP functionality.
- Quick start features, ability to easily view or map shared volumes to a computer, or back up the PC from which you are working from, using the BlackArmor Discovery tool software, which automatically displays all BlackArmor NAS products connected to the network.
- Full-system backup and recovery helps protect everything on your PC's hard drive including the operating system, programs and settings. In the event of a system crash or failure, your computer can be restored to a previous point in time with SafetyDrill software.
- Event email notification to alert the user about status and changes to the server.
- Additional USB ports to connect extra USB storage devices, easily share a USB printer or connect an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) to safeguard from power failure.
For more information, visit the product pages of the BlackArmor 440 and BlackArmor 220.
19 Comments on Seagate Unveils Industry's First 12 TB 4-bay NAS Server for Small Businesses
I wonder when those will be available to buy as bare drives.
Kind of hard to justify the cost at the moment.
Of course, IMO, $1,500 for 8TB NAS is a bit much anyway. Especially when a full on server can be put together for $1,000 w/ 8TB of storage space...
I seem to remember that the idea behind a NAS was to have a cheaper alternative to a full blown file server, but it seems that idea has been lost...
But still, you can put together a new modern system for easily under $600 and fill it with 5+ drives for 10TB+ of space.
I guess it can be chalked up to being brand new and the only one of its kind. I would expect dramatic price drops in the near future.
We used to use Buffalo linkstation NAS. Excellent little boxes, already 6+yrs old. Truly amazing (and cheap) in their day.
However, a recent crash/instability issue demonstrated two horrible problems: invisible data loss and then getting the data off the extracted HDD. With proprietary linux builds and filing systems (and security) not directly compatible with NTFS or windows, the recovery procedure took a HUGE effort. We are a very small business and don't happen to have any IT department let alone Linux gurus sitting around. Not to mention Windows 7 not linking linux shares without registry hacks. (naughty naughty MS).
The time to recover, plus the high risk of data loss, has made us take a strategic decision: no more NAS. We are retiring all our "small NAS" systems to one big NTFS-Windows-fileserver. If anything goes down, the drives can be ripped/recovered by another PC within minutes.
That "cost" of risk + recovery time far outways the cost of running a windows fileserver over NAS. The fileserver is being built using an existing "retired" CPU, memory + mainboard. Purchase: rackmount case plus new HDDs.
Making this thing almost completely USELESS for people who are actually editing and working with enormous volumes of HD video content as it will be as slow as trying to eat a Steak dinner through a drinking straw.
WHEN : For about $5 actual cost price components - this thing could have ALSO had USB3 and combined with a good raid controller in the case, could be accessed at HUNDREDS of megabytes per second.
Quite possibly at over 400MB/s with 4 drives..
What a sad sad waste :\ - Although mayhaps that's the model they will release next month - after everyone's just got this one? - "Double Sales all the way... "
1.) The transfer speeds of USB 3.0 vary between ~110MB/s and ~170MB/s depending on the controller used. Gigabit ethernet gives ~100MB/s to ~120MB/s. So the different is minimal, and you will not see anything close to 400MB/s with either. Yes, USB 3.0 is "specced" for much greater than that, but it never sees anything more than ~170MB/s and that is in ideal conditions, just like USB 2.0 is specced for 60MB/s but you never really see anything beyond ~35MB/s.
2.) You are confusing the purpose of this device with the purpose of an external hard drive. With USB 3.0 it can be accessed by one person/computer only. The purpose of a NAS is to allow multiple people/computers to access the device all at the same time. So multiple designers or film editors or whatever all reading or writing files to the NAS at the same time. This isn't designed for a 1 person user base, and god I hope that any single person looking to buy something like this realizes that a much better solution is internal RAID cards with internal hard drive. It is faster, less bulky, easier to setup and manage.
Count 1 :
The ONLY reason typical USB3 cases show an average transfer rate of around 110 - is because of the physical mechanical limitations of the drives - with USB3 SSD's showing transfer rates well into the 250+ region and even THEN, ONLY because that is the physical ram limitations of that SSD.
With an average 3.5" drive sustaining at least 110+ on a single drive - a properly raided stripe of 4 drives should come near 400 quite easily, hence my specific reference to a reasonable raid controller - and USB3 is QUITE capable of sustaining that. You cant simply assume that a drive in a case maxes out at 170, that that is the max speed of USB3.
To date I have never seen a single benchmark of an SSD in a USB3 case do anything less than it's top speed ( 250'ish being the highest I've seen) because that's as fast as the SSD can go - it's got nothing to do with USB3. In some cases SSD's on a dedicated USB3 card actually bench fractionally FASTER than drives plugged directly into an integrated SATA port.
Now obviously you are not wrong in that USB3's specced 5 Gigabit will never translate directly to data transfer - it DOES work out to about 650 Megabytes per second in pure theory - and as far as I am aware the big boys of benchmarking have been able to sustain at least 500~550 Megabytes per second in testing after taking inefficiency & overhead into account - although I have never actually seen this myself first hand (As I lack the very costly devices to perform such a test personally).
At any rate, to try and suggest that 1 gigabit Ethernet is "as good as" 5 gigabit USB3 for data transfer, just seems a little ill-informed. For that to be true you would have to be losing over 80% of your bandwidth in overhead/inefficiency, and that simply is NOT true of USB3.
Count 2 :
The sales blarb in fact specifically SUGGESTS using it in high data volume environments such as HD video editing. A function very commonly performed by a machine directly connected to a large NAS to be able to store very large amounts of data - and be able to access it at rates NOT inducive to suicide. As such you will see many makes of NAS include eSATA for this very reason.
Further more, a NAS can STILL be made available to an entire network even when connected directly to a server - this setup is OFTEN used in many many businesses where many users need storage real estate at their stations, and the central server needs very fast direct access to the data for far more rapid backup, indexing, searching or whatever else the client may require.
Having the Central server compete with the users, especially in a very large network can cause critical bottle necking for the server who's access is often FAR more time critical than a user who can gladly put up with an extra second and a half wait when opening their mail. In a situation like this, if the server enjoyed a DIRECT connection at almost 2X the speed of the Ethernet link then it could slip its usage through without interfering much or at all.
I think overall you will find that there was very little confusion involved when I made my comments. They where the direct result of a lot of research and field experience - perhaps you have confused your own needs with the "only" needs in the field.
A LOT of ppl use NAS's for a Lot of different reasons, and honestly, attempting to imply that 300mb/s+ access to a 12TB NAS would NOT be a useful feature, if indeed it only put the build cost up by roughly $5, is in my personal opinion , ignorant.
The very presence of eSATA on many NAS devices already validates my entire argument before I even began. There are numerous of models of NAS that incorporate direct high bandwidth access, so it may seem many manufacturers already agree with me, I only prefer the idea of USB3 for greater flexibility down the line, and better support for split drives / JBOD type applications as it's a lot easier to emulate different device modes over USB than it is over eSATA, but lets just forget that for now.
Anyhow - this device supports neither USB3 nor eSata (As far as I'm aware) - so it's a redundant argument.
Otherwise, if the company does have a tech and this device fits their needs, use the built-in Windows Server backup. Just need to take in account services that shouldn't be backed up live (without appropriate backup software). SQL dumps are easy to script, VM's a little more involved, but still doable.
This article says otherwise. Notice how they used the same exact drive, and notice how they got very different results depending on the implementation of USB 3.0? Guess what the limitting factor was. Here's a hint: It wasn't the drive.
You can try to say that USB 3.0 is capable of more if you want, but there is direct evidence that even with a drive capable of faster speeds, USB 3.0 is the bottleneck sometimes to the point that is is actually worse than Gigabit.I don't see anywhere where Seagate is suggesting this be used for Video Editing. Where do they say this.So, your argument is that Gigabit is too slow, so the drive should have USB 3.0, so it can be connected to a server and then shared over the Gigabit network?:banghead:
And that makes sense to you as opposed to just directly connecting it to the network like a Network Attached Storage device should be?The server doesn't need to access any files, the users do. The server is just sitting there serving up those files.:rolleyes:
And there you go again with the 2X performance thing. Sorry, besides the fact that 2X the performance ain't happening with USB 3.0, the files still need to be transferred over Gigabit from the server to the user's workstation that is access them.Actually, from the sounds of it, you have very little actual experience, and the only reasearch you've don't is probably reading a Wikipedia article that starts speeds for USB 3.0 that are way off from real world performance(I read that Wikipedia article too, except I laughed at it, and went and read real articles about USB 3.0 speed done by trusted technical websites).
Again, you are trying to take a device that is meant for multiple users, and trying to find negative things to say about it because you don't understand it's purpose. You are trying to make it into an external hard drive, accessable to one user. That isn't it's purpose. If you want a 12TB external hard drive, then buy one. But a NAS is designed for multiple users, so USB 3.0 is useless. And you argument to connect it to the server then use Gigabit to share it with multiple users is even more laughable because it goes right back to the issue you claim is the problem with this device, slow network speeds.Again, if you want a 12TB external hard drive, with supposed 300MB/s+ access speeds to a single user, then buy a device to do that, or even better buy a device with eSATA on it. But again, USB 3.0 is useless on a NAS(don't forget what that N stands for now).An eSATA connection is a huge improvement over USB 3.0 in terms of data speeds, so the inclusion would be justified. The inclusion of USB 3.0 on the other hand would only give minor improvements over Gigabit, as I've already shown, so it is pointless.
But again, you seem to be confusing the role of a NAS with the role of an External Hard Drive Enclosure. Now there are devices that perform both roles, and the ability to do both is definitely a plus don't get me wrong. However, a NAS is supposed to be attached to the network, hence the words network and attached in the name.
Ya' know what - Was busy researching benchmarks, and gathering URL's and making quotes to respond when I realized : I've already wasted far too much time on this argument.
1.) Toms device maxed at ~170 because that is that specific devices limit. Put a 250mb/s SSD in an external 3.5" sata USB3 case - watch USB3 do 250Mb/s - I do not possess my own 250Mb/s Ssd to prove this myself and post a video for you, but I have seen it done.
2.) "stores of high-definition multi-media files" in the VERY article that started the thread - did you even read it? They more specifically discuss video in the product page somewhere. I'm sick of wasting time on this - you find it yourself - I'm not digging up links.
3.) "Gigabit is too slow, so the drive should have USB 3.0" YES so the server has high rate direct access and the network users still get exactly what they would have over gigabit-ethernet anyway - is that SO hard to understand? I NEVER said people SHOULDN'T access the NAS over a network I'm just advocating the ADDITION of software flexible, high bandwidth, direct access - Not the removal of the networking component. Did you ever even conceive that you can plug the Gigabit port into the network and the server DIRECTLY into the USB3 port so server access need not saturate the Gigabit channel?
Do you even understand the concept of an ACTIVE server? That is not just a blank box in a corner that shares files, and in fact actively performs many and varied operations , some of them even manned by one or more people? Some active servers performing complex rendering on data from a NAS that is also available to lower priority users allover a network whilst it's 12 cpu's and 24gb of ram and 3 operates each with their own screens and input devices work on the central server - that needs direct access to significant amounts of data that is also available to the network users?
Do you understand that "Rendering" need not always pertain to video or 3D, but in many cases pertains to the massive batch processing of sometimes enormous and constantly changing sets of data such as for example a financial institution that has an active server calculating statistics for market research on an enormous database of data that is constantly being updated and changed by anywhere from a few tens to a few hundreds of users over a NETWORK where the server needs to constantly dredge through the entire database to recalculate new statistics on an ongoing basis?
Or that similar behavior may be implemented, with a few minor changes, in Research, Engineering, Medicine, Marketing, Warehousing, Shipping, Sales, Tourism, Web Serving, and a hundred other industries? ALL OF WHICH require a server to perform very demanding and regular/sustained access to a database that is also available to a wide array of far lower priority users on the network who constantly maintain and update the data on which the server draws its results/reports/statistics?
And that if the server itself had its own "back door" to that data rather than constantly dredging through it over the network, that that may just be a GOOD thing?
And that to smaller, low cost businesses or start ups, a device such as this Seagate may actually be very appealing IF it had some form of dynamic & flexible direct access interface in addition to the NETWORK component of the device?
4.) "The server doesn't need to access any files" - Well after this comment, and the rest of your reply I really do realize that I am simply wasting my time here. You live in some sort of fantasy land where your personal uses for a device are the only uses ever implemented on earth and the 6 billion other people on this planet simply don't exist, along with their incredibly wide-ranging uses for devices.
As a closing argument I present these points :
USB3 CAN transfer data faster than gigabit ethernet.
Direct, high bandwidth access to NAS in addition to network access, is already well precedent.
USB3 Support is cheap to implement.
USB in general can handle JBOD type situations or even smaller splits far more easily than eSata, from a software point of view.
Inclusion of a cheap additional interface may well benefit many users down the line.
And finally my own personal opinion that failure to include such connectivity, is an unfortunate oversight.
You can think whatever you like - my opinion remains unchanged.
I apologize to the mods, and the forum, for what has become a rather significant thread derailment. I invite readers to do their own research and draw their own conclusions, I gain nothing by pushing this now well worn point any further.
USB 3.0 can transfer data faster than gigabit, but as I've shown often times does not.
I absolutely love companies that say things like "Our janitor knows a lot about computers so we have him take care of that."
When their networks go completely south they are willing to pay me just about anything I ask to make it "all better". :D