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
The ReadyNAS NV+ v2 shipped with 2 x 1TB Hitachi 7200rpm drives. We mapped one of the default shares on our Windows testbed. The Intel NASPT benchmarks were run. In addition, we ran our standard robocopy benchmark to transfer a 10.7 GB Blu-ray folder structure.
Netgear's X-RAID2 solution automatically handles RAID level management and volume expansion as more drives are added. The ReadyNAS website has a very high level explanation of how X-RAID2 works. We added a 1 TB Samsung 7200 rpm drive to the mix and measured the time taken to expand the volume (from RAID-1 to RAID-5).
| X-RAID 2 Volume Expansion | |
| 2 x 1TB RAID-1 to 3 x 1TB RAID-5 | 07:36:25 |
With the new 3 x 1TB configuration, we repeated our NAS benchmarks.
We see a discernible loss in the performance. Does this mean that larger number of drives would tend to lower the performance of the unit? We added another 1TB Samsung 7200 rpm drive in the fourth bay and measured the time taken for volume expansion.
| X-RAID 2 Volume Expansion | |
| 3 x 1TB RAID-5 to 4 x 1TB RAID-5 | 10:31:57 |
With the new 4 x 1TB configuration, the benchmarks were rerun.
We see that the performance is back on track. Note that these numbers compare very favourably with those obtained in the Synology DS-211+ review. At half the price (for the Duo v2), the Netgear units seem to be very good value for the money.
One of the NAS aspects we have started testing recently is RAID rebuild. With all the four bays occupied, a disk failure was simulated by removing the hard drive in the first bay. A Samsung 1 TB hard drive was put in place of the original Hitachi drive in that bay and the time taken for rebuild was recorded:
| ReadyNAS NV+ v2 RAID-5 Volume Rebuild | |
| 4 x 1TB RAID-5 Rebuild after Single Hard Drive Failure | 04:58:29 |
During all stages of the volume expansion / rebuild process, the existing data remained accessible. Operation in degraded mode was made evident in the front display as well as the system health tab in the web interface.
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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?