Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

It has taken a long time for the industry to adopt 10 GigE solutions, and well quite frankly that development is still not going as fast as I want it to be for the consumers. 5 GigE and 10 GigE simply is the next step for anything LAN. ASUSTOR did something remarkable here, they are offering a 10 GigE NAS in the SOHO and consumer space at very attractive price levels, I mean the four HDD bay AS4004T version we tested today will cost you roughly $359 / € 369,-. As you've been able to see, a single HDD/SSD solution also will bring you much higher performance levels compared to anything 1 Gbps. So ASUSTOR will also release the AS4002T at only 259 USD / 279 EUR. Now I mentioned this already in the article, your transition towards 2.5, 5 or 10 GigE ethernet will be a slow one as right now everything is expensive. My advice is simply, prepare yourself for what is coming. If you are in the market for a new NAS, who not get yourself a 10 GigE one? You can run it on 1 Gbps fine. And once you need to replace your network switch and move towards a Multi GigE switch, that's the next step. The same goes for motherboards, the more premium ones now often are offered with a 5 GigE Aquantia network interface. Some even add a 10 GigE ethernet adapter. So step by step you will be able to transition to superfast low latency Ethernet. And once you have created that infrastructure, then all of the sudden you can achieve results like shown today, and better. I am stating this so particularly as a NAS is a fairly expensive thing to purchase. A 10 GigE compatible network switch also is 250 bucks and a 10 GigE Ethernet adapter easily runs over a hundred bucks as well. So slow steps, and while upgrading please do choose that faster multi GigE solution. Today we landed at the AS4004T. The NAS unit delivers on all fronts in terms of features, apps, fantastic operating system, high Usenet download performance and of course 10 GigE. The one footnote I need to make is that the dual-core Marvell Armada 7020 processor is holding back write performance. Especially in a RAID5 configuration, you will notice this. It's still two to three times faster compared to a Gigabit NAS though, that you'll need to keep in mind. 

Arguably I would recommend a JBOD, RAID1 mirror or Single Disk configuration for best performance. Hey ASUSTOR had to do something to bring 10 GigE towards the masses, and that resulted into a more simple dual-core processor. For what it is though, the Marvell Armada 7020 processor still delivers very decent numbers. Especially the read performance from that NAS is ridiculously fast on 10 GigE, writes, however, are more complicated as the processor chokes on big complex IO load. If you are your average consumer, this NAS is plenty fast really. If you download heaps and heaps of Usenet or torrent content then hey, this unit offers fast downloads/uploads and offers plenty of performance, even with 2GB memory as the ADM software stack is just incredibly efficient.

Pricing

At the time of writing, this NAS unit is not yet available everywhere. It did, however, list at $359 / € 369,- for the four-bay model, and we expect the 2-bay model to sit at a 299 USD or something even lower. For a consumer sure, it is still a decent amount of coin to spend, for any SOHO/business rather affordable. However, with Three Ethernet jacks and one being 10 GigE, this NAS feels absolutely right in regards to price competitiveness

ADM 3.0

ASUSTOR recently moved towards ADM 3.0 in of their user interface. The review unit already updated towards 3.1 The operating system feels and works pretty fantastic and is among the better ones I have seen on the many NAS units we have tested. It ticks the right boxes as we haven't even talked about the amazing software suite that is available to you. The AS4004T is also a server offering a wide range of features including file-sharing, Usenet download, web applications, download systems, security center and so on. ASUSTOR also offers a wide variety of smartphone apps so that you can monitor and control your NAS. Or use it for photo sharing, cloud storage, the possibilities are limitless.

Overall Usage

We tested the 4-tray version which brings in an extra RAID level, RAID5. You get RAID 0, 1, 5,10 or JBOD functionality. Performance wise on a Gigabit jack with current gen HDDs you will not need RAID as you simply cannot pass the 125 MB/sec marker (Gigabit over Ethernet on a single link) anyway. If you want to go for RAID5, you do so for redundancy in-case of an HDD failure. On a 10 Gigabit jack, however, that answer is more complicated. RAID5 performance was limited by the processor for writes, the read performance, however, is pretty staggering and considering most end-users make use of a NAS to transfer large files, I am inclined to advise RADI5 still, as you gain from redundancy, if one HDD or SSD fails, your array is still intact, insert a new similar sized SSD and that array will rebuild itself. For huge volume NAS storage, this is recommended. But yes RAID5 write performance is slower compared to using single disks. If you decide to go for an Asustor NAS unit based on HDDS, please check the HDD compatibility list and purchase your HDDs based upon their tested and recommended HDDs. In a past review I used Seagate Archive 8 TB HDDs, and these did not run very well. So, please make sure you select your HDDs wisely and check the QVL list available on the ASUSTOR website.

Flexibility

Here we land at my usual bit of features and functionality. You'll have your FTP server, you can upload images and music, make slide-shows out of it and show it on the web server of the device or watch photos and videos with the help of a software suite on your smartphone. You can stream DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) and this NAS can be automatically discovered by Digital Media Players (DMP), Digital Media Renderers (DMR) and Digital Media Controllers (DMC) allowing Pictures, Music and Video to be shared instantly at any time at home. All DLNA Certified Devices are capable of streaming content instantly from this NAS. The NAS can act as an iTunes server, with your mobile or, say, Apple iPod Touch you can stream music over Wifi. You can share files over the internet if you wanted to, and the list goes on and on. Keep in mind though that everything on this box is targeted at consumers and small business users (SOHO). Though you can access the WEB directory and make your own website, control and configuration over, say, the MySQL server we do warn you to take security measures. 

TIP - Make sure you secure your public files with proper Unix/Linux permissions. Thus at least a CHMOD 755 on directories and preferably 644 on files. You can log in to the box through SSH. The application list you can use on this machine is ginormous. Whoever thought of making a torrent download server inside a NAS box? You insert a .torrent file in the software option and all of a sudden the NAS is downloading content from the internet. It's nearly crazy to witness, how nice is that?

Small note, ASUSTOR just released ADM 3.2 beta, a new feature includes "EZ Sync" the file synchronization between PC and NAS, very handy. Should you be interested then you can sight up for the beta here. EZ Sync also provides version control, maximum 64 versions. So users can restore the previous version if a file is accidentally overwritten with the wrong information.

Energy Efficiency

In a single SSD/HDD setup, the NAS in its entirety consumes roughly 10 Watts, which is pretty impressive for a NAS unit with this stamina. A simple processor does offer low power consumption, it surprised me that the energy efficiency of this NAS with just one SSD on 10 GigE hovered at roughly 10 Watts. RAID5 at full load performance was sitting at roughly 18 Watts, that's not bad at all and yeah, that makes this NAS is efficient, very much so.  I am very comfortable with that. If your HDDs are not used for, say, 30 minutes (or your own configured sleep time), they'll go into sleep mode and thus do not use any superfluous power. The unit also offers hibernation mode, the unit will go to sleep and consume less than a watt when sleeping, waking it up again, however, involves pressing a button or using a smart-phone app to activate it by WOL. A new feature that ASUSTOR has implemented is Wakeup over WAN, meaning outside your network you can remotely wake up the unit. Very handy if you are on the road and do not want your NAS to be active 24/7. ASUSTOR offers very energy efficient NAS units, which is an important thing considering they run 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. If I do some really rough math here, let's say we consume 15 watts averaged out. ((0.015 Watt x 24 hrs) x 365 days) x 0.21 KWh/eur = 26 Euros cost per year.

Final Words

Well, I've said all there is to be said already I guess. This NAS is really affordable for what it is, I wish it had a faster processor to help out in the complex writes and things like RAID5. But for writes 200 to 300 MB/sec is your maximum. For reads over 10 GigE realistically expect 600~700 MB/sec reads on RAID5 and fast enough storage units. With a single SSD or HDD you'll be limited towards the performance of that unit of course. But that's still at least twice as fast as anything we ever tested. I love to rant on about 10 GigE as I am very excited about this but also need to acknowledge two things. Not everybody needs these speeds, and not everybody is willing to invest in it. However slowly but steadily we now see adoption in the consumer space, and that means that in a few years from now, 5 or 10 GigE will become the new norm. We've stated it a couple of times already, you just can't go wrong with an Asustor NAS. Currently, it is easily one of my top ranking preferred brands for a NAS. I run two units myself in my office LAN, they never fail me and are always responsive and fast. ASUSTOR as such offers refined, well-balanced, powerful and energy efficient NAS servers. 

As a consumer, it is however not easy to make the right choice: how many HDD trays/bays do you need and do you need a very powerful solution? Do you want server like functionality and performance, do you need this unit as an HTPC? It is the conundrum of options that will make a choice hard. For the entry level, we still say that the AS1002T / AS1004T offer tremendous amounts of functionality and features for the money, and they remain plenty fast as well. However, in a more SOHO environment, or if you need a centralized server at home for, say, file-streaming or backups or running your own web environment, well that's where a NAS like tested today comes into play. NAS units like these will easily last you 5 to 10 years, so in the grand scope of pricing, it might just be a very relevant purchase. In the end, we feel the AS4004T could have used a faster processor, but it is fast enough to impress us. At these introduction prices and combined with excellent power efficiency and a massive software feature set these units are incredibly attractive. Centralized storage guys, in its best form. And you can already make yourself 10 GigE ready. Once you own one, you'll never look back or have regrets. I need to complement the improved tool-free installation as well as the handy new cover. Simply cool stuff that we like very much. The AS4002T and AS4004T should become available as we write this and comes recommended by us (if you are cool enough, with the somewhat limited 10 GigE write performance over 10 GigE.

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