Promise NS4300N: NAS For Small Offices

[MBinder]

Promise is known for its RAID controllers, but how the company will fare long-term on the NAS market remains to be seen. We took a closer look at the first of its network storage offerings, the NS4300N

Promise NS4300N: NAS For Small Offices : Read more

 

[ecka]

On the second page:

The current maximum is 6 GB, made up of four 1.5 TB drives available from Seagate.

I think it should be 6TB

 

[danielkza]

Actually it should be 8TB with the introduction of WD's new 2TB drives.

 

[chovav]

Can someone explain me why all of these NAS devices are delivering such poor performance over 1GBit LAN? they should be able to get to (more or less) 100MB/s in an uncomplicated raid 0 or such.. is the processor so slow that it can't handle it? not enough cache? what's going on?!

 

[russofris]

Unfortunately, the article is as light on details of the internal components as Promises' so-called datasgeet at http://www.promise.com/upload/datasheet/NS4300NDatasheet_20080709.pdf

I would really like a thorough investigation of the internals, including the processor (it's a SoC, but which one), controller chip, and underlying OS. I suspect that it is a BSD derivative due to the lack of published source code available on the promise website, though "Billy" from the promise NAS focus group seemd to indicate that it was Linux using a special promise RAID technology (and not LVM or MDRAID)

There are multiple posts on the avsforums regarding the unit. Of the 25 or so pages that I read, I found that the unit is not a stellar performer, and can be purchased for around $300.

Ultimately, it looks as if you're better off purchasing a full featured $200 Atom based platform, tossing in 4 disks, and utilizing linux LVM/MDRAID for a full fledged NAS.

Frank

 

[Sad Panda]

Seriously? You want us to pay 420 bucks for a POS that will underperform a standard desktop machine you can put together on Newegg for less?

MicroAtx MOBO with onboard video = $80
Dual Core CPU = $60
2 Gigs of DDR2 800 Ram = $24
Case with 6 HDD slots and 4 external slots = $40
Linux Operating System = $0

Total = $204 aka half the fucking price for more hard drive slots and much more customizable.

Seriously who buys this over-priced NAS shit.

 

[SilentBob999]

Many NAS have poor power supply coming with, it will be a good idea to test with high consumption hard drive or at least talk about this fact... I heard about some NAS system of this type that come unstable with 4 1.5TB hard drive...

For people who talking about the price, don't forget that its a Ready-To-Use solution, a lot of people want this type of gadget but doesn't have the technical knowledge require to setup a linux system able to share data over a network with an web interface for configuration....

 

[Guest]

@sad panda:
So true... not to mention you'd still have enough left over to buy a real RAID card and absolutely blow these things out of the water.

4-port Hardware RAID cards going for under $300 on newegg.

 

[Sad Panda]

[citation][nom]asdfzxc[/nom]@sad panda:you'd still have enough left over to buy a real RAID card and absolutely blow these things out of the water.4-port Hardware RAID cards going for under $300 on newegg.[/citation]

What's wrong with getting a MOBO that does RAID for you?

 

[Guest]

FreeNAS on an ASUS + RAID board. Does all the protocols not just the three mentioned and FTP. Oh boy, hardly call that NAS-centric.
For RAID10 to be worth the effort the minimum you should use is 3 pairs of hdd (didn't see RAID 10 as an option). 6 hdds with 50% redundancy. So if you were to use 2TB drives you would get a max of 6TB storage and 6TB of redundancy.
Want to run a heavy database driven application?
RAID 100 or plaid RAID would be the better one to go for. Many small businesses or startups do this. This product couldn't support that.

$420 can buy you a small form case with a number of designs that house many drive bays, mobo with onboard RAID, Graphics, multiple Gigabit ethernet adapters, good powersupply.

You can then go even further and utilise USB2.0 and throw external USB drives for another layer of data sharing.

All this and more and not stuck with a poorly put together product that limits the imagination because of its short comings.

All that and more from your local computer needs store.

 

[chookman]

Im with you sad panda, i just don't get why people buy these when a cheap low power dedicated box is superior in every way.

As for the additional card, a good hardware RAID card will give you a noticeable speed increase over any motherboard controller, provide more features and better security (failure wise). So if you needed speed and had the cash it would be better for sure.

 

[sepuko]

I support sad panda's opinion too. And anyway, even if no alternatives were available I still think those commercial NAS boxes are too expensive.
Considering you could get two 1TB drives with the config of sad panda for the price of only the box above it is indeed awful expensive.

 

[Guest]

Not enabling jumbo frames support, and then saying that it doesn't do well moving large files? All I can say is.... duh.

 

[Guest]

I support Sad's setup but I think he too left out a decent power supply. A $40 can rarely has a decent PS.

 

[Guest]

@sadpanda:
It depends on how important performance and reliability are.
FakeRAID can't hold a candle to hardware RAID on either.

I used to use on-board (aka fake) RAID for a while, but a bluescreen during a rebuild toasted my data (restores aren't fun.)

Switched to a 3ware, performance is much better and no worries about the OS killing the array.

 

[Guest]

FTA:
.."RAID 5 mode were too erratic ... as a result ... not recommend operating .. with a RAID 5 configuration"

This implies that if RAID5 was less erratic you'd recommend it. Who still uses RAID 5 for new NAS/SAN setups? Hasn't anyone heard of write holes or read this: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=162

THG even warned of this problem (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/RAID-5-Doomed-2009,6525.html) yet they've written countless articles with RAID 5 solutions since then. What gives?

tl;dr: RAID 5 dies with nTB arrays

 

[Guest]

no mention of it's bundled software like running linux based system with samba or it's user interface. Also, if it include stuffs like ftp server and torrent client.

 

[bunz_of_steel]

HOme user should use drobo

 

[Guest]

Well to be honest the NAS unit was not setup right
first you didnt use jumbo frams also you did add in the dlna componet of the unit that sets it up for media streaming.

If you did both of the above you would notice a big diffrence in the preformance and ablities of the unit. I have used this unit for many thing and have found that it is well capable of dealing with heavy loads and media straming.

I suggest you go back and try this again with the corect setup