Netgear unveils budget pro ReadyNAS servers
Netgear announces new NAS servers for professionals, the ReadyNAS Duo and ReadyNAS NV+ V2, which offer high-end features and performance without breaking the bank.
Netgear today announced new NAS servers designed for "economical pro" users. Apart from the amount of drive bays (and hence the types of RAID support), the two-bay ReadyNAS Duo and the four-bay ReadyNAS NV+ V2 are essentially the same.
Besides RAID 0, 1, and 5 (available with the NV+ V2 only), both servers support Netgear's XRAID 2 configuration, which is a proprietary flexible RAID that allows you to use hard drives of different capacities and upgrade the RAID without having to build it from scratch. XRAID 2 automatically manages hard drives based on the amount of drives used with a balance between performance and data integrity, with one drive always being used for data redundancy. XRAID 2 has been available in other servers from Netgear, such as the higher-end ReadyNAS Ultra4.
On top of that, both are the first on the market that support USB 3.0 with two of these ports, plus one USB 2.0 port. The two new servers also sport Netgear's new operating system (or firmware) called RAIDiator 5, which offers a redesigned Web GUI and a smart wizard that helps simplify navigation and user experience.
Design-wise, the two servers come with front-access hard-drive bays and support a hard-drive hot swap, which means you can change a drive, one at time, without having to turn the server off. The servers can sync a new drive to the existing RAID, while still serving data to connected clients.
For mobile users, the two new servers offer cloud services with iOS and Android mobile apps, which allow for accessing their data on the go, directly from the mobile devices.
The two new NAS servers should be available for purchase this month and will cost $200 for the ReadyNAS Duo and $400 for the ReadyNAS NV+ V2. The prices don't include any storage.