ReadyNAS 1100 - Model RNR4450 - a waste of time
Well, work has been capitalizing on my time now - Ubuntu 8.04 is out and I've just not had the time needed to update the Piratefish, and frankly, time has become a major problem for me - there's never enough to get things done.
So, in following with this, I wanted to post something about a recent waste of my time that was costly, and was perhaps the first purchasing mistake I made in my new job. Fortunately I got these through Dell, and was able to return the two of them before the 30-day old mark, for a full refund, and no restocking fee!
The ReadyNAS 1100 (2TB) model RNR4450 (rack mounted with four 500gb drives) is a total waste of time. This NAS, using some ReadyNAS version of RAID-5, was so slow that a simple windows backup of 40gb over my gigabit lan was reporting to windows it would complete the file copy from local disk to network disk in just 23 hours with speeds about 70kbytes/second.
I contacted NetGear support, and they were about useless - it first reached some Pakistani that knew nothing about anything, other than my call was "off script" - then I got transferred back to someone who spoke English as a first language, and this guy was reading off script, and was totally useless - he then started putting me on hold repeatedly, and finally, when he realized that I knew what I was doing, he then asked for log file dumps, which I sent it for both of the units I'd purchased, and gave me a ticket number.
That's the last I heard from them - he said they'd contact me - and they did. It was their "survey" to see how satisfied I was. Their little form didn't even have the option for me to tell them I was dis-satisfied and that I wouldn't recommend their products! I could like it or be neutral. Frankly, the product was a waste of my very valuable time, and I'm not at all pleased, so as things go, I'm quite negatively inclined at this time against their products - at least their NAS products.
To solve my NAS problems, I purchased a SuperMicro $600 server chassis with 4 hotplug bays at NewEgg, added in an E2160 $69 CPU, 2gb of ram in 512mb sticks ($13 each), four 750gb seagate drives ($129 each) and loaded the BSD distro called FreeNAS.
When I set the thing up, I told the RAID controller to make two 1TB partitions on the Raid-5 array, and then told FreeNAS how to read them and setup the shares.
The end result, using the Intel ICH7 RAID controller in the SuperMicro chassis, was 400megabytes per second of write performance, and reads can completely saturate the two gigabit NIC's built into the motherboard.
The ReadyNAS was a $2100 device, and was outperformed using off-the-shelf hardware costing $900 less. NetGear, please stick to building dumb switches in metal cases - it's what you're best at. The ReadyNAS is decidedly not very ready, and as NAS's go, well, perhaps if I was Forrest Gump, I'd be happier with the performance. The only happy thing about these was that I was able to return them.
One other thing to take note about, the ReadyNAS apparently has managed to build quite a viral marketing campaign online for their product, including a site full of how-to blogs and such - all tripe designed to have higher rankings in Google than us real-world users who actually made the mistake of buying the thing. Just be aware that when looking for product reviews, one should take a look-see at www.epinions.com - that's where I'm going to post next.
While you're reading this, please bear in mind that if you need an anti-spam solution, and Linux is friendly to you, take a look-see at my website - www.piratefish.org. Thanks.
So, in following with this, I wanted to post something about a recent waste of my time that was costly, and was perhaps the first purchasing mistake I made in my new job. Fortunately I got these through Dell, and was able to return the two of them before the 30-day old mark, for a full refund, and no restocking fee!
The ReadyNAS 1100 (2TB) model RNR4450 (rack mounted with four 500gb drives) is a total waste of time. This NAS, using some ReadyNAS version of RAID-5, was so slow that a simple windows backup of 40gb over my gigabit lan was reporting to windows it would complete the file copy from local disk to network disk in just 23 hours with speeds about 70kbytes/second.
I contacted NetGear support, and they were about useless - it first reached some Pakistani that knew nothing about anything, other than my call was "off script" - then I got transferred back to someone who spoke English as a first language, and this guy was reading off script, and was totally useless - he then started putting me on hold repeatedly, and finally, when he realized that I knew what I was doing, he then asked for log file dumps, which I sent it for both of the units I'd purchased, and gave me a ticket number.
That's the last I heard from them - he said they'd contact me - and they did. It was their "survey" to see how satisfied I was. Their little form didn't even have the option for me to tell them I was dis-satisfied and that I wouldn't recommend their products! I could like it or be neutral. Frankly, the product was a waste of my very valuable time, and I'm not at all pleased, so as things go, I'm quite negatively inclined at this time against their products - at least their NAS products.
To solve my NAS problems, I purchased a SuperMicro $600 server chassis with 4 hotplug bays at NewEgg, added in an E2160 $69 CPU, 2gb of ram in 512mb sticks ($13 each), four 750gb seagate drives ($129 each) and loaded the BSD distro called FreeNAS.
When I set the thing up, I told the RAID controller to make two 1TB partitions on the Raid-5 array, and then told FreeNAS how to read them and setup the shares.
The end result, using the Intel ICH7 RAID controller in the SuperMicro chassis, was 400megabytes per second of write performance, and reads can completely saturate the two gigabit NIC's built into the motherboard.
The ReadyNAS was a $2100 device, and was outperformed using off-the-shelf hardware costing $900 less. NetGear, please stick to building dumb switches in metal cases - it's what you're best at. The ReadyNAS is decidedly not very ready, and as NAS's go, well, perhaps if I was Forrest Gump, I'd be happier with the performance. The only happy thing about these was that I was able to return them.
One other thing to take note about, the ReadyNAS apparently has managed to build quite a viral marketing campaign online for their product, including a site full of how-to blogs and such - all tripe designed to have higher rankings in Google than us real-world users who actually made the mistake of buying the thing. Just be aware that when looking for product reviews, one should take a look-see at www.epinions.com - that's where I'm going to post next.
While you're reading this, please bear in mind that if you need an anti-spam solution, and Linux is friendly to you, take a look-see at my website - www.piratefish.org. Thanks.
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