I'm looking for an SMB~ish NAS for my home lab running VMware vSphere and/or Citrix XenServer.
I've read about the Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 2/Ultra 4 and the Pro 2/Pro 4. Most of the time the NAS will be used to serve iSCSI target to a VMware lab (sometimes Citrix XenServer instead).
Can anyone tell me what useful differences there are between the Home/SMB based "Ultra", "Ultra Plus" and SMB/Business based "Pro" models? How do these compare to the Iomega StorCenter ix2/ix4 boxes for these purposes?
Also, is there a limit on the number of iSCSI targets that can be created on these Netgear devices? Some NAS boxes I've read up on support as little as 10 targets, and this is pointless in this kind of environment! I have read the size limitations on ISCSI targets is no longer an issue, but for me lots of small targets is more important than a few big ones.
Ultra/Ultra Plus have 3 year warranties and lack business features.
Pro Series has 5 year warranty and business features (e.g. AD Integration, NIC Teaming, Rsync over SSH etc.).
I haven't ever used the Iomega devices
As far as I can tell there's no limit on the number of targets you can make. I just tested it and created 11 targets and could've easily created many more.
The size limit per target is up to 16TB (of course if your volume capacity is less then the limit's going to be less).
Of course there are going to be practical limitations on how many targets you can make.
