Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 4-Bay Diskless NAS - $499.99

Ultra 4 is cheaper at frys right now:

http://www.frys.com/product/65062...IN_RSLT_PG
($404 after rebate + tax)

AND if you want the ultra 4 plus its around $450 + tax

Diskless for $500!!!! The Synology DS411 is even less than that at regular price.

too expensive.

I've been researching the turnkey nas market and concluded they all pretty much suck. far better to just install some debian-based linux (or anything that's a real linux distro) and enable samba and nfs.

the cpus the cheapie nas boxes use all suck, their software often sucks and is out of date and can't be as easily updated or security patched as fast as a normal linux distro can.

I wish the simple nas boxes were good but they all seem 'very cheap' and put out way before they are debugged and stable for production use.

mini-itx fanless systems will even beat the cheap turnkey nas systems.

at any rate, $500 for a diskless system is a JOKE. a bad joke.

Quote from linuxworks : too expensive. I've been researching the turnkey nas market and concluded they all pretty much suck. far better to just install some debian-based linux (or anything that's a real linux distro) and enable samba and nfs. the cpus the cheapie nas boxes use all suck, their software often sucks and is out of date and can't be as easily updated or security patched as fast as a normal linux distro can. I wish the simple nas boxes were good but they all seem 'very cheap' and put out way before they are debugged and stable for production use. mini-itx fanless systems will even beat the cheap turnkey nas systems. at any rate, $500 for a diskless system is a JOKE. a bad joke.

This is an exaggeration. Although linux based NAS are better that doesnt mean these suck. I have VMWare certified readynas pro used as a datastore in ESXi and it has never failed. I do not think the ultra is VMWare certified but the pros are.

Some of the built in features:
iSCSI
rSync
remote access
LCD front display
dual NIC that supports LAGG

thats all I can think of off the top of my head.

rsync is free software. anyone claiming that's a 'feature' should be laughed at.

same for 'remote access'.

iscsi is also free in linux code.

dual nic is trivial to get done on any motherboard and quite a few mini-itx boards come with it. but I wonder, how many HOME USERS need dual lan?

lcd display is cool. I admit that (I'm also working on one of my own, using an arduino for out-of-band mgmt. so yes, that's good value-add).

but that's still a lot of money for a POS cpu. the cpu is what's going to limit the speed and the lower end nas boxes really don't have much cpu power compared to even entry level mini-itx boards with intel or amd chips.

I hoped that the turnkey nas boxes would be an easy solution for me and my customers but I can't really recommend them. that said, if you HAVE to have one, the netgear is one of the better ones in its class. its just not nearly as capable or bug-free as a standard linux distro would be, on top of a standard x86 processor.

Agree in all the points above.

I found a FP barebones set and turned it into an OpenMediaVault. In a lot of was it's overkill, but I've found need for a few VMs, and it's nice to put them on a server vs. my desktop, HTPC, or notebooks.

Quote from trza : Agree in all the points above. I found a FP barebones set and turned it into an OpenMediaVault. In a lot of was it's overkill, but I've found need for a few VMs, and it's nice to put them on a server vs. my desktop, HTPC, or notebooks.

How's OMV working for you? I just recently had to ditch it since I implemented ZFS on it and it was just too much of a pain. I'll come back if they ever natively implement it, but aside from that I was liking it.