Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

There are many NAS brands available on the market; I consider Asustor a true tier 1 manufacturer. Both the hardware and software stack is rock-solid. I've been using Asustor NAS servers in my office for years now, so I know what I am talking about as I know them inside and out. NAS servers are not just about energy-friendly hardware anymore; complete solutions, whether you want business features or home and streaming, is what the software package can assist in. And thereon is the icing of that topside of the cake to be found. NAS units can serve it all; you could make it a KODI movie player NAS over HDMI as next to your TV you will not hear it and pop in a keyboard and mouse, and you're good to go (after a bit of installation).

SSDs or HDDs?

Prices of SSDs are getting lower and lower, now reaching a 10 cents per GB level. Personally, if you do not need huge volume sizes I would recommend SSDs, really, not just for endurance and the removal of mechanical moving parts, but also these devices are lower power ones, you'll save on energy. You always need to weigh in that a NAS is likely powered on 24/7. QLC NAND-based SSDs are a great fit for a NAS as storage often is cold data, meaning it'll sit there a long time not massively overwriting valuable NAND cell cycles.

Hardware

The Celeron J4115  (Gemini Lake) quad-core CPU can turbo to a 2.7 GHz Turbo clock frequency, deliver plenty of performance and easily cope with the performance 2.5 Gbps jacks. The 4GB memory is also a sweet spot, but upgradeable to 8GB in dual-channel. But again, that ADM software stack is just incredibly efficient with memory. We like that we can add 4x HDD or SSDs to the unit; the tray caddies take both. We do love the two NVME M.2. slots, though. We're at a clipping point where NVMe storage is getting cheaper than SATA3 SSDs (I know, weird, right?). It will be interesting to see what the future brings, as I can imaging NVMe M.2 based NAS units solely for best performance and value. I have to say, though, that we love M.2. NVMe units, you can use them as SSD cache or just as the main volume cluster. Concerning all that, we feel the one gripe this NAS unit has is the 2.5 GigE connections; 5 GigE or 10 GigE, of course, is a far better match for such fast M2 Units. In terms of writes, the performance lacked a tiny bit. We're not sure why, it could be NVMe optimization or the Intel SoC. It's still in that 250 MB/sec range though.  

Pricing

At the time of writing, this NAS unit is available at $599 for the four-bay model with quad-core proc, 4GB, and two NVMe M.2 and dual 2.5 Gbps jacks. For a consumer, it is an extensive amount of money to spend for any SOHO/business rather affordable. However, from where I am sitting, it is worth every penny. You do, of course, need to factor in the extra costs for HDD/SSDs. If you want to make your LAN infrastructure compatible with multi GigE, you will need a compatible 2.5/5/10 Gbps switch. Long term, though, that's an investment that will last you many years.  If not most, motherboards already have some form of an Intel/Marvell/Aquantia 2.5, 5, or 10 Gbps Ethernet jack, saving the additional cost on the client-side of things a 10 Gbps Ethernet NIC.

Energy Efficiency

In a single SSD/HDD setup, the NAS in its entirety consumes roughly 8~9 Watts, which is pretty impressive for a NAS unit with this stamina. The Celeron J4115  (Gemini Lake) quad-core CPU is energy efficient; the max TDP for the quad-core part is only 10 Watts, that's under full load. Add to that your SSDs or HDDs, and you will get a pretty clear idea of power consumption. 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 likely will 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.

Let's talk about Plex.

This NAS is a bit of a multi-media powerhouse. For those that like to use Plex to play movies and series, here's where that Apollo lake SOC comes in handy. The Plex installation creates a plex user account; please make sure you give that account raised privileges to your shared directory. We noticed that Plex would not find any media content on initial usage. After installing the package, either through Package Manager or manually, you can connect to your new Plex server. This opens up a web browser connecting port 32400. Now create or login into your Plex account. You can watch movie trailers on the fly over the SoC, and that works out great with up-to a stream or two at roughly 10 Mbps each. Install the Plex media server, and on your smart TV use a client, combine and connect the two, and the possibilities are fantastic as the unit can transcode HEVC (H.265), H.264, MVC, VP8, VP9, JPEG/MJPEG on the fly up-to Ultra HD.

Final Words

The Asustor Lockerstor 4 | AS6604T NAS easily sits is my top 3 NAS units for this year. It has an SoC that is plenty powerful with its four cores. Accumulated, you can house six storage units. Four SATA3 units and two M.2. NVMe units. We feel that the Lockerstor 4 should have gotten a faster ethernet jack though as the performance of NVMe SSDs is limited this way. My advise to ASUSTor is this; I would have preferred a single gigabit and then at least a single 5-gigabit or preferred 10-gigabit jack to take full advantage of the NVMe storage units and even SATA3 SSDs. Other than that, we can hardly complain even slightly, though. You will need to weigh in one factor, you'll need a Multi-GigE ethernet infrastructure, meaning your switch and client-side PC, for example, needs at least that 2.5 GigE Compatibility. And the 10 Gigabit switches with a good number of ports are hard to find, and if you find them; they are very expensive. I never understood that NAS manufacturers do not take advantage of that situation, bundle or offer energy-friendly 10 Gigabit switches based on an interesting price, that would certainly boost NAS sales to new heights, as the performance these units can offer these days can be fantastic (if you have that fast LAN infrastructure). For now, you can then enjoy a performance in that 250~300 MB/sec range over your LAN with this specific NAS. Again, it is easily one of my favorite NAS units this year thanks to a powerful SoC, the 2.5 GigE jacks, dual M.2. slots HDMI and an incredibly versatile software suite that Asustor offers. Paired with three years warranty, we can highly recommend it.

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