Netgear ReadyNAS 312 2-bay SMB / SOHO NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on November 11, 2013 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- IT Computing
- NetGear
- ReadyNAS
Miscellaneous Aspects and Final Words
The Netgear ReadyNAS 312 is a 2-bay NAS, and most users are going to use it in a RAID-1 configuration. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in X-RAID2 (RAID-1). The disks used for benchmarking (Western Digital WD4000FYYZ) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities.
| Netgear ReadyNAS 312 RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration | Avg. Power Consumption |
| Idle | 11.53 W | |
| 4TB Single Disk Initialization | 20.61 W | |
| 4TB RAID-0 to 4TB RAID-1 (Expand from 1 to 2 Disks) | 10h 43m 40s | 34.24 W |
| 4TB RAID-1 Rebuild (Replace 1 of 2 Disks) | 11h 10m 45s | 33.85 W |
Coming to the business end of the review, the ReadyNAS 312 has plenty of positives: a clean and refreshing UI that is not too over-whelming, an exciting choice of file system with btrfs, a snapshot feature with minimal performance impact and good performance in a small physical footprint (compared to other 2-bay NAS units). Some features such as cloud access / mobile apps for data access are indispensable in this product space and Netgear ticks the appropriate boxes in this offering. Unfortunately, there are a few negatives too: Initial setup could be more user-friendly (particularly for the 2-bay where there is no display on the unit), the app ecosystem needs a lot of work compared to the competition and the UI / OS could do with some extra stability when attempting to install apps on the unit. Admittedly, the negatives are not show stopper issues / particularly relevant once the unit is configured and up and running. In the bigger scheme of things, we also hope that Netgear will continue to support this product long-term and not put it to pasture within a couple of years like what was done with the NV+ v2.
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anactoraaron - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
The only thing that I would add is that Netgear is really taking their ReadyNAS product line seriously with their support. I reviewed on of these units as well (mine came with 2x 1TB Toshiba drives included) and I had some very strange issues with the software (6.0.8). Without going into the details (ejecting external usb drives was one), I notified Netgear about the issue they had a firmware fix the next Monday (firmware was originally 6.0.8 - and was updated to 6.1.1). To me, that was a huge plus. Knowing that your support ticket,etc would be investigated and getting such a fast patch issued shows their commitment to this product line.jaydee - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
Ganesh,I'm wondering how likely is it, if you were to buy/use this in a home, to actually use the OS that comes with the system, rather than WHS 2011, or a Linux-based server OS (CentOS, etc)? Can you go a bit further with the software aspect of it?
anactoraaron - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
I would just use the OS that comes with it. There's other features of the OS (like Power Timer) that allow you to set a schedule for when the NAS is on - and it also has WOL functionality. Inside the OS is support for SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, iTunes, ReadyDLNA, etc. Also in the OS is a free antivirus.There's also a one touch backup button that can be configured to whatever you want to backup (like just certain shared folders) or you can schedule automatic backups. There's nothing too special about the OS, but there's really nothing missing from it either.
ganeshts - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
I agree with anactoraaron. This is an off-the-shelf NAS. If the software features don't fit, you are better off with a WHS server or custom Linux DIY build. Also, as far as I can see, the only complaint that can be put forward 'core-feature-wise' is the lack of LVM support -- i.e, say, you get the 4-bay variant and want to store some data with single disk resiliency and some with dual disk resiliency -- it is not possible with ReadyNAS OS 6.x.tuxRoller - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
BTRFS includes "lvm" just as zfs does. In fact, that's one of its criticisms.Since btrfs supports redundancy using the chunks model (default 256MB), rather than at the disk level, you can have multiple redundancy options within a single disk (not a great idea for multiple reasons, but should be doable). Of course, you can span this over multiple disks to get the desired effect.
Something like:
mkfs.btrfs -m raid 1 -d /dev/sda -d raid 1 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc
I should think.
ganeshts - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
I did mention btrfs's LVM support in the article, but the problem is that Netgear's firmware doesn't implement it.tuxRoller - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
In the article you said it was supposed to be using the code that was employed in Oracle's deployments?ganeshts - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
Yes, but not all features are exposed to the end-users. I guess the really adventurous users could try out certain things over SSH, but without official support, it is going to be pretty dangerous.jaydee - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
The feature I had in mind was proxy server for web caching, content filter, security (something like Squid). I realize this is kinda getting away from a "NAS", but with the specs listed, I don't see why it couldn't.bsd228 - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
While Oracle may now include it, Redhat is still on the fence about it with the upcoming RHEL7, and still is working out stability before endorsing it for performance reasons. If you want a better filesystem, you can get an HP Microserver and pair it with zfs. I'll let others take this netgear experiment.