Netgear's Marvell Based ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Review
by Ganesh T S on November 9, 2011 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- NAS
- NetGear
Netgear's ReadyNAS lineup is very well respected in the industry. This lineup owes its existence to the acquisition of Infrant in 2007. After acquiring Infrant, Netgear moved away from the custom RAID controllers (based on the LEON SPARC core [PDF]) in favour of Intel x86 based solutions. However, Intel based solutions are too costly for the mid-range SMB market. We have already seen vendors like Synology and LG using Marvell based controllers in their systems. Netgear is also moving to a Marvell based solution for this market with the products introduced today.
The 2-bay Duo v2 is meant to replace the existing ReadyNAS Duo and the 4-bay NV+ v2 is meant to replace the existing ReadyNAS NV+. Compared to the Ultra and Ultra Plus series, these solutions are much cheaper. They also sacrifice some features such as NFS and iSCSI. These are not used by a majority of the consumers in the economical prosumers segment. Hardware wise, both the products carry only one GbE port (compared to the two ports in the Ultra lineup). The table below presents the various home NAS models from Netgear.
Netgear's suggested pricing for today's introductions is presented below:
Netgear doesn't offer any specifics on the platform except for indicating 'Marvell Smart' in the packaging and a 1.6 GHz CPU at the core. Both the Duo v2 and NV+ v2 run on the same CPU, with the number of bays being the only difference. A look at the pricing table above reveals that the units compete in the same class as that of the LG N2A2 NAS that we reviewed a couple of months ago. Is the platform same? How does the performance stack up? We will see the answers to these questions in the next few sections.
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Wardrop - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
Not sure if I want my NAS to look like an 80's boombox.therealnickdanger - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
You want to look at it?Ratman6161 - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
Its going to be hidden in a closet anyway. I don't care what it looks like.Fake-Name - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
There are iSCSI add-ons for the NV+. It shouldn't be too long before they're available for the NV+ v2.The "Ultra" series used the same basic codebase as the NV+, and the firrmware is mostly open source, so it shouldn't bee too long before someone pulls dwn the source, and compiles the iSCSI module for the NV+.
The downside is since it's an add-on, you may have to do some tweaking using SSH (I did to get it working on my NV+).
On the other hand, it's been pretty impressively stable so far.
iwod - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
Netgear's ReadyNAS lineup is very well respected in the industry.??? May be company will buy them because of their Name.In Consumer NAS market, there are only two options, Qnap and Synology. Others dont even come close on features, price, performance.
ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
I didn't want to quote from the PR, but, it looks like Gartner did some market research / analysis and determined that Netgear is the leader in the sub-$5K market:http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/09/4041443/netgear-r...
nasuser - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
I think the reviewer needs to go back and look at his comparisonsThe 2 bay consumer NAS from Synology is the DS211j & the 4-bay unit is the DS411j
A quick search shows the DS211j available for around $200 ie the same price as the new Duo, and the DS411j costs around $350 - which is $50 cheaper than this described NV+
So to claim
"By sacrificing some features such as NFS and iSCSI and cutting back on the DRAM, Netgear has managed to deliver the members at half the price of the competition's offerings." .
is highly misleading
ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
The DS-211+ is the one based on the same hardware (Marvell 6282). We didn't review the DS211j, so can't comment there.ganeshts - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
Just confirmed that the 211j is based on the 6281, has 128 MB DRAM and is more of a competitor to the LG NAS solution, rather than this one. I am sure the Duo v2 will have more performance than the 211j.. But, the 211+ could just surpass the Duo v2 based on the presented benchmark results.nasuser - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
There is very, very little difference in performance benchmarks (as far as you can trust vendor supplied numbers)Couple that with the fact that many home users do not have PCs that can sustain such transfer speeds
Note that Synology no longer list the DS211+ on their web site as it appears to be replaced by the (cheaper) DS212... Plus there are many other vendors in the 2 bay market...
Bottom line - Netgear ain't that cheap which is why I don't completely agree with the thrust of your conclusion, but I appreciate you responding and looking into this
Maybe a review of the 2 bay NAS market in the near future?