SMB NAS Roundup
by Ross Whitehead Jason Clark Dave Muysson on December 5, 2006 3:30 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Hammer Z-Box
The Hammer is a unique option in this space and is vastly different than the other devices in this article. The Hammer is essentially an entry level IP SAN, where a device driver on the client writes to the disk using block-level I/O instead of file-level I/O. One of the main differences between the Hammer and a traditional IP SAN is that the Hammer uses its own proprietary software driver vs. the iSCSI specification. We at many points in the article pondered whether this device fits in, and determined that it does due to its price point and the fact that it is still marketed as a NAS competitor.
How it works
The Hammer uses a software based initiator which handles all the I/O communication with the device and transmits it over UDP. As we alluded to above, the I/O commands are not simple file level requests; they are actually block-level. Some caveats to this approach are that it requires a fair amount of processing power on the client, and each client will require the software driver.
The Z-Box supports four types of RAID: 0, 1, 0+1, and 10. One item to note is that while the chosen RAID configuration is stored on the box, the client software handles the actual data "RAIDing", not the device itself. Unlike most NAS devices, the Z-Box is expandable. Each disk in the array gets an IP address, and you can daisy chain multiple devices together and create stripes and mirrors across any group of disks you like. For the average home user, this technology is not very useful. But, to a small or medium business looking for relatively cheap IP based storage this is an attractive option.
The Hammer comes with a single gigabit Ethernet port on the rear of the device and four hot-swap SATA drive bays The file system is either Z-FS (Zetera File System) or NTFS, so in case you haven't noticed this device is windows only. Z-FS is a custom file system that supports multi-user access and is licensed from DataPlow.
The chassis itself is quite small and has a rugged industrial look to it. Dimensions for the unit are 162mm (W) x 190mm (H) x 325mm (D), and it weighs in at 9Kg. The front panel consists of a few LEDs: one for each disk and one power. The rear of the unit houses one gigabit network port and the power supply.
Admin Interface
The management interface for the Hammer is client-side, since the device is just a target housing disks. We were somewhat unimpressed by the client-side administration of the device. Using the management software was somewhat cumbersome, especially creating volumes. When creating a volume the end user has to calculate how large the volume should be and how much space from each disk to use, which is far from intuitive.
Pros
The Hammer is a unique option in this space and is vastly different than the other devices in this article. The Hammer is essentially an entry level IP SAN, where a device driver on the client writes to the disk using block-level I/O instead of file-level I/O. One of the main differences between the Hammer and a traditional IP SAN is that the Hammer uses its own proprietary software driver vs. the iSCSI specification. We at many points in the article pondered whether this device fits in, and determined that it does due to its price point and the fact that it is still marketed as a NAS competitor.
How it works
The Hammer uses a software based initiator which handles all the I/O communication with the device and transmits it over UDP. As we alluded to above, the I/O commands are not simple file level requests; they are actually block-level. Some caveats to this approach are that it requires a fair amount of processing power on the client, and each client will require the software driver.
The Z-Box supports four types of RAID: 0, 1, 0+1, and 10. One item to note is that while the chosen RAID configuration is stored on the box, the client software handles the actual data "RAIDing", not the device itself. Unlike most NAS devices, the Z-Box is expandable. Each disk in the array gets an IP address, and you can daisy chain multiple devices together and create stripes and mirrors across any group of disks you like. For the average home user, this technology is not very useful. But, to a small or medium business looking for relatively cheap IP based storage this is an attractive option.
The Hammer comes with a single gigabit Ethernet port on the rear of the device and four hot-swap SATA drive bays The file system is either Z-FS (Zetera File System) or NTFS, so in case you haven't noticed this device is windows only. Z-FS is a custom file system that supports multi-user access and is licensed from DataPlow.
The chassis itself is quite small and has a rugged industrial look to it. Dimensions for the unit are 162mm (W) x 190mm (H) x 325mm (D), and it weighs in at 9Kg. The front panel consists of a few LEDs: one for each disk and one power. The rear of the unit houses one gigabit network port and the power supply.
 Rear |
 Front |
| Click to enlarge | |
Admin Interface
The management interface for the Hammer is client-side, since the device is just a target housing disks. We were somewhat unimpressed by the client-side administration of the device. Using the management software was somewhat cumbersome, especially creating volumes. When creating a volume the end user has to calculate how large the volume should be and how much space from each disk to use, which is far from intuitive.
Pros
- Very fast
- Small footprint
- Very quiet
- High CPU usage on the client
- Supposed to compete with a NAS, but lacks a lot of functionality found in the various NAS products like media streaming.
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23 Comments
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dropadrop - Monday, December 11, 2006 - link
How was the noiselevel measured for the device? I was considering the Intel since it's easily available here, but previous reviews have stated it was far from silent. Here's a quote from toms:I'm pretty allergic to noise, currently the noisiest thing I have is a Buffalo Linkstation, which I have allready stuffed in a closet and end up turning off when not used.
eaglemasher - Monday, December 11, 2006 - link
I've had an infrant readynas NV running for about 10 months, and I am impressed with the overall experience. The access speeds are much faster than my other NAS device, the firmware updates are very regular, the support staff are responsive, and it's quiet. Then there's the fact that it supports pretty much any network file system you want to throw at it and supports long path lengths and I am one very satisfied customer. Perhaps Infrant's hardware is hit and miss for some people, but in my case I haven't had a hiccup in 10 months of constant use as a backup device for 18 users.My other raid NAS device is a Terastation I've run for about 20 months. My overall assessment is stay the heck away. The only good thing I can say about it is that it hasn't failed yet, but the speeds are pretty dismal, the interface is very limiting, and the path length limitations make it unusable as a direct-copy backup device. Add to that the fact that Buffalo has not updated the U.S. firmware in 1 1/2 years (though the japanese version gets regular updates), and it's extremely disappointing, especially when contrasted with the ReadyNas. Maybe with the firmware updates the Japanese actually get a useful NAS.
archcommus - Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - link
I'm not too familiar with these devices, can someone tell me what advantage(s) they hold over a home built file server PC? Something cheap and slow but with a large hardware-based RAID array that simply sits in a room with no monitor attached and does its job. Seems that'd be easier and more upgradeable, also probably faster.yyrkoon - Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - link
They hold no real benifit over home built solutions, except that perhaps, like buying a Dell PC, you dont have to build/provide support for it yourself. For a home brew solution, you can use whatever you like, however you like, and dont have to worry about proprietary hardware. Granted, OEMs have more experience in this arena, so when you do build your own, you may have to learn what works, and what doesnt, on the fly.Anyhow, thats the way I see it, maybe someone else can answer further if I missed something.
TheBeagle - Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - link
I know that evaluators are most times constrained by time limits for their work, but I believe you guys missed a very good NASA box offering along the way. I'm speaking about the latest offering from U.S. Robotics, Model 8700. It is a four-bay box, with gigabit ethernet connection, 2 additional USB 2.0 ports, and is very well constructed. It comes without any drives, which allows the vendor/user to select their own drive (WD500YS drives work great in it), and can array four drives of 500 GB each into a RAID 5 setup that works like a charm. It has good software and also client backup software. You really ought to evaluate this NAS box as well. It's a winner!mziegler - Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - link
I'm really glad to see this type of review as I have been looking at these devices. However, the review left out any drive failure scenerios. I would like to see included in the review of the Hammer system restoring or rebuilding a RAID array using the Z-FS file system. Also for that system since it uses a proprietary file system a test of grabbing data off of a drive using Dataplows SFSExtract.exe DOS utility.This review focused solely on performance which is only about half the reason someone would purchase one of these devices. The redunduncy which arguably is most important was practically ignored.
A review of this type of product in my opinion must answer the following questions:
- What happens if a drive fails
- What happens if the NAS device fails
- How easy and how long is the recovery process
- What's the relative performance
- Features vs a traditional Unix/Linux/WS2003 NAS head
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - link
Insightful post. I agree with the parent poster on this one.aikend - Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - link
It would have been really nice if the features table had included the maximum number of drives, and maximum total capacity, for each of the units. Sure, I can go to each vendor's website and track it down by myself, but I would think "disk capacity" would be a pretty important measure for lots of people.JarredWalton - Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - link
Disk capacity will often be determined by the largest HDD available. Right now, that's the Seagate 750GB, so you can do up to 3TB of storage in a four drive unit (which most of these are). When someone makes a larger HDD, there's a pretty good chance all of these NAS units will support it. I'm not sure where the next "barrier" is on SATA/BIOS/OS drive sizes, but after the 128GB limitation was removed I think the next maximum HDD size went up into the many TB range.yyrkoon - Tuesday, December 5, 2006 - link
I've been told that the next limit barrier of 48 bit LBA is more than 2 TB per disk, although, I havent personally read any specifications concerning this. This also isnt to say, that other factors couldnt come into play either (manufactuer using cheaper electronics, and thus reducing the over all limit somehow).