Any chance you guys are considering putting Thunderbolt connectors into future ReadyNAS products? Two Thunderbolt ports would allow for expanding the array with another NAS box and it is faster than eSATA while allowing for hot swap. It would also allow for plugging the NAS into a SAN array with an adapter to convert from Thunderbolt to Fiberchannel. Lots of other possibilities too.
If there is going to be another type of interface added I would prefer to see something like FireWire 800.
I am not sure how well Thunderbolt is going to be adopted outside the Apple world. But then again it was apple that started using FireWire long before the Wintel side of the house so there may be some benefit in the long run for a Thunderbolt connector on the ReadyNAS but not for a while.
Lacie just anounced their 5 disk Thunderbolt RAID NAS. http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10607 Netgear better get a move on - loyalty is nice but workflow is priority. USB 2 is too slow. If Netgear are the same it will cost them dear.
Considering the 2-bay x86 models have a USB3 port on the front, and the Duo/NV+ v2 have two USB3 ports on the rear I would be very surprised if any new desktop models introduced in the future didn't at least have a USB3 port.
The LaCie products have the same device either configured to be DAS or NAS/SAN, they swap out the Ethernet for the Thunderbolt between versions.
A competitive advantage would be to support both simultaneously. NAS/SAN for regular use or plug in a thunderbolt cable for when you have to do a full disk restore, and also use the bus externally to connect the expander chassis with better performance than eSATA
Of course now we'd need Thunderbolt 2!
I see a scenario where I connect to the DAS/NAS to my Mac Pro via Thunderbolt 2 (leveraging the device as a DAS) and support other devices though Gig ethernet (As NAS). The Thunderbolt connectivity could also then offer the ability support thunderbolt chaining, and even a hub to USB3, HDMI, Gig Ethernet for the connected Mac Pro. Albeit this could otherwise be achieved by chaining a thunderbolt dock in too, indent just supporting connectivity for the NAS/DAS device.
The ReadyNAS is not a peripheral. If you feel gigabit network performance is not enough you may wish to consider e.g. the 716x which has a couple of 10GBase-T ports.
