Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The first question to ask is why would you want to do this? There are several reasons why NDAS might make sense vs a traditional NAS or USB drive. First, when compared to NAS over GB Ethernet, the NDAS is significantly faster. It does not communicate via CIFS or NFS. It uses its own proprietary drivers. Without all the communication baggage of CIFS and NFS, reading and writing to the device is significantly faster than NAS.

Compared to USB it is easier to share between users and is roughly twice as fast at transfer speeds. As stated already this is not a NAS, it does not use IP but instead its own proprietary drivers. The Windows driver allows multiple user’s to read and write to the drive simultaneously. The Macintosh driver allows for multiple read access but does not currently support multiple write access at this time.

Since NDAS is not a NAS, there are no network connectivity issues to work through. Instead of setting IP addresses the driver automatically finds the NDAS device, you key in a serial number and write code if you chose and the system appears on your desktop as an externally attached storage device. Since it does connect via standard network connections, you can connect it to the back of a wireless router for WiFi sharing of the storage. Of course you will see a decrease in speed going across a WiFi connection but the ability to access your external data from anywhere in the building is very interesting.

When does NDAS make sense?

First it makes sense as an alternative connection to external storage. While you can’t boot from NDAS it is a fast secondary hard drive for holding data or using to back up too. We found transfer rates to be almost 3X as fast as backing up to a network hard drive and almost 2X as fast as backing up to a locally attached USB drive.

Another interesting use for the unit is as a shared backup device. In our lab we set up multiple systems to back up to the unit in a round robin fashion. The first system would mount the drive in read/write mode, then the next system, then a third. While this was manual there is no reason why it can not be scripted in the future. Finally, the device can be used as a read repository, where multiple users could have fast, simultaneous access to read only content.

In a recovery the NDAS can not be booted from for recoveries. Fortunately the unit includes a USB and eSATA interface for when that type of recovery is needed. Also since eSATA is 3Gbps vs. NDAS 1Gbps it may be more ideal to use eSATA for the initial backup.

Storage Switzerland’s Take

All in all we were impressed with the quality of the unit, the quality of the drivers and the speed of the unit. This system can be an ideal option for the small office, home office business category. It also has a role as an external hard drive for corporate users where they can connect to the device locally for high speed, at the desk and then still have access to the data while in a meeting in a conference room or on another floor.

One of the obvious comparisons is going to be to the emerging wireless USB market. The rage of wireless USB is limited to a few meters. The roaming capability that ethernet and WiFi provide the NDA make it a compelling alternative.

George Crump, Senior Analyst