I've been happily using my ReadyNAS Duo .v1 for the past three years (cost £235), but I have also been tempted by the current offer on the ReadyNAS NV+.v2 (£160).
I use my ReadyNAS Duo for streaming music to my Squeezebox Touch & Classic, and movies to my Mac Mini HTPC.
However, I am hesitating in my purchasing decision by the existence of the HP Proliant Microserver N40L - which, with cashback, will cost around £160.
From the manufacturer's perspective, why should I buy another ReadyNAS over the HP Microserver.
That is, what are the unique selling points of the ReadyNAS over the Microserver for a home user such as myself?
With the ReadyNAS there are firmware updates etc. built for you. With a HP server, installing an OS, updating it etc. fixing things if they go wrong would require more work on your part. It really depends a lot on your skills.
I'd recommend keeping the Duo v1 for additional storage or for backing up the new NAS whichever you go with.
You'll also get the benefit of being able to back up one NAS straight to the other with Replicate. I've never used it, or looked into it's features, but If the marketing blurb is to be believed, it should be a doddle to back up your new NAS to your old one and use the old one as a backup store. Obviously, if you get an NV+ and fully populate it, you'd get to a point (perhaps) where you have more data than the the backup NAS can store, but that is further on down the line.
Also, having two systems by two different manufacturers means you are duplicating your requirements for support. The HP N40L looks like a nice piece of kit, but will it be supported by HP for the length of time the ReadyNAS line has been supported by Netgear? I have my doubts.
If I were in your shoes, i'd go with the ReadyNAS NV+ V2.
[EDIT]: looks like Replicate is x86/ARM only from the add-ons page. However backing up from one ReadyNAS to another should still be a lot simpler than with two different products by different manufacturers. I'd still go with the NV+ V2 considering they are both the same price from the support viewpoint.
No its available for ARM devices its just not listed on the addons page, if you go into frontview and look at available addons its there just click the get button and it downloads and installs.
What is the full list of additional 'add-on's for the NV+v2 that are not listed on the 'add-on's' page?
Even so, as 'Replicate' isn't available on my existing ReadyNAS Duo v1, the Replicate software doesn't help in transferring existing files over to a new ReadyNAS.
If both units are on the same network, replicate is not needed. You can back up one ReadyNAS to the other using NFS transfer to make the first backup, the switch to Rsync to verify the backup and synchronize the files on the two NAS units from then on. Note: follow on backups are not incremental as in other types of backups as Rsync synchronizes the files and only copies over the updates to a file. It is blindingly fast, typically only taking a few minutes to synchronize all the files in a share.
My Rsync jobs run every night starting at midnight. When they are through my NVX Pioneer has the identical files to my NVX BE. With the addition of NFS and rsync to ARM based ReadyNAS units with 5.3.5, all ReadyNAS desktop units support rsync. I am not sure about the HP.
Reading comments on Newegg, the Proliant apparently comes without software. One user commented about FreeNAS and another about installing Ubuntu. This means that in setting it up and configuring it, you may be fairly much on your own. The ReadyNAS even if purchased without drives is pretty much plug it in and let it set itself up. My first NAS (NV+ v1 in 2007 was this way as was my NVX BE in 2010. Several months before that my NVX Pioneer was not, but it had a memory module that was not seated properly. Once it was reseated, it was turn it on and let it do it's thing.) Of course the default setup is X-Raid2 on all the current models.
Of course having experience with a Duo, you pretty much know how they are supposed to react. If you go with a 4 or 6 bay unit you will gain the advantage of a message panel telling you the status of your NAS while booting and setting up. It goes off after a few minutes of inactivity. What looks like a similar panel in some photos of the Proliant is actually a blank panel covering a top 5 1/4" bay.
If you are happy with your Duo, you should be very happy with an NV+ v2. I think it's performance is about equal to my NVX (both are 32bit and faster than the sparc units) and I am very happy with my units.
On a NV+ v2; if I have two 2Tb drives for video and audio streaming duties, and then install a couple of spare 500Gb drives in the free drive bays, can the latter be used for TimeMachine duties for backing-up my Mac, while the larger drives deal with streaming duties?
No. With X-Raid2 (and X-Raid) you cannot add a drive smaller than the previous smallest drive. Now, if you use Flex-Raid and establish a Raid1 volume with the first two drives (mirrored) I don't know if that precludes smaller drives in the new volume (volume would be D:) or not. I don't know of any forum topic that has answered that.
If you start with the two 500GB drives and then add the two 2TB drives you could have a net volume of 2.7TB (after overhead), with one 2TB drive providing redundancy, a first layer of 1.35TB (net) across the two 500GB drives and 500GB of the 2TB drive and a second layer of 1.35TB (net) on the 2TB drive. This is a feature not available with X-Raid on the sparc based Duo and NV+ (v1) which you are familiar with. Then if you replace one of the 500GB drives with another 2TB, it would result in another increase of 1.35TB (net) bringing you total volume of just over 4TB (net). As you can see you would get more volume this way. If you assign only 500GB to Time Machine, the other 2.2TB (net) would be available for streaming.
The N40L is a nice "looking" piece of kit. It's very aeasthetically pleasing - at least to me. But will HP still be providing updates for it in 5 years time? With their track record I seriously doubt it. Function over Form here is the best policy. The ReadyNAS line aren't without their quirks and issues, but by the same measure Netgear aren't No.1 NAS vendor for no reason. And if it were me, i'd stick with kit i'm already familiar with, as I did when i migrated to the Ultra from the Duo. Not the mindset everyone should adopt, maybe. But it worked for me.
In the end I chose the NV+.v2, as it was too tempting at £159 - and it's really worked out well, especially with both PLEX an ITunes Server for ARM add-on's emerging.
Moreover, the speed differential between my old Duo.v1 and my new NV+.v2 is perceptibly like comparing the speed of a shopping trolly to a Ferrari (but probably not in reality)
Also, economics came into it. After cashback the HP Microserver would have cost the same as the NV+.v2. However, for me, there was the added cost of WHS 2011 (£40) plus iHome Server (£20), plus extra RAM (£40). Then, although the Microserver has four drive bays, one is taken up with the OS, leaving three vacant (which are not hot-swappable). These only work in RAID 1 or 0. Anything like X-Raid is just fantasy. While additional disk installation was possible by using the space taken-up by not installing the optional optical drive in the end it didn't seem worth all the extra effort.
I was seduced by the possibility of accessing all my stored movies on the Microserver by my AppleTV3 - but I'm sure in due course that FireCore will successfully jailbreak the ATV3 (like they have with the AppleTV2) to enable NAS access.
Transferring data between my Duo.v1 and the NV+.2 via my Mac Mini initially was a pain - with 150Mb of music files taking 9 hours (!). I cannot imagine what went wrong there. A direct connection between the two devices made the process a lot quicker. To experiment, I took the same files directly from my Mac Mini and transferred them to the NV+.v2 in just 10 minutes!.
My only unresolved issue is in what extra drives to buy. I currently have a Seagate 500Gb ST3500320AS drive and a Seagate 2Tb ST32000542AS drive (from my old Duo.v1). I would ordinarily stay with Seagate (as there are some really good deals on 2/3Tb drives in the UK currently), but I'm tempted by the WD Red's too.
In the end I chose the NV+.v2, as it was too tempting at £159 - and it's really worked out well, especially with both PLEX an ITunes Server for ARM add-on's emerging.
Moreover, the speed differential between my old Duo.v1 and my new NV+.v2 is perceptibly like comparing the speed of a shopping trolly to a Ferrari (but probably not in reality)
Also, economics came into it. After cashback the HP Microserver would have cost the same as the NV+.v2. However, for me, there was the added cost of WHS 2011 (£40) plus iHome Server (£20), plus extra RAM (£40). Then, although the Microserver has four drive bays, one is taken up with the OS, leaving three vacant (which are not hot-swappable). These only work in RAID 1 or 0. Anything like X-Raid is just fantasy. While additional disk installation was possible by using the space taken-up by not installing the optional optical drive in the end it didn't seem worth all the extra effort.
I was seduced by the possibility of accessing all my stored movies on the Microserver by my AppleTV3 - but I'm sure in due course that FireCore will successfully jailbreak the ATV3 (like they have with the AppleTV2) to enable NAS access.
Transferring data between my Duo.v1 and the NV+.2 via my Mac Mini initially was a pain - with 150Mb of music files taking 9 hours (!). I cannot imagine what went wrong there. A direct connection between the two devices made the process a lot quicker. To experiment, I took the same files directly from my Mac Mini and transferred them to the NV+.v2 in just 10 minutes!.
My only unresolved issue is in what extra drives to buy. I currently have a Seagate 500Gb ST3500320AS drive - I do have an unused second 500Gb with bad sectors - and a Seagate 2Tb ST32000542AS drive (from my old Duo.v1). I would ordinarily stay with Seagate (as there are some really good deals on 2/3Tb drives in the UK currently), but I'm tempted by the WD Red's too.
