I recently found that Promise make a large range of quality NAS systems and by the looks of the GUI in their user manual it also looks way ahead of anything Netgear have done. I've been using ReadyNAs devices for years now and there has been zero work on the GUI from what I recall.
That wouldn't be such a big problem, but when you've got scroling windows within scrolling windows once you have long backup links/folders, yet have a whopping 22" monitor on your desk.. it's a bit naff - especially as the PRO devices we run aren't exactly cheap!
I think as Richy_Boy has stated here - the GUI is at the point where it is now limiting functionality that is expected. The lack of feedback from the backend NAS functions into the GUI especially is a significant weakness.
I recently found that Promise make a large range of quality NAS systems and by the looks of the GUI in their user manual it also looks way ahead of anything Netgear have done. I've been using ReadyNAs devices for years now and there has been zero work on the GUI from what I recall.
That wouldn't be such a big problem, but when you've got scroling windows within scrolling windows once you have long backup links/folders, yet have a whopping 22" monitor on your desk.. it's a bit naff - especially as the PRO devices we run aren't exactly cheap!
Rich
If you look deep in code you will see that they have done some change
I think they are thinking and/or working on it , but for me it's not the highest priority
Thanks for the feedback guys, but we don't pre-announce what we're going to be doing. If we let you know, you know what we'll do to you if you spill the beans :nashammer:
I thought it was called having a public roadmap, which is a good thing for sales, as people may invest in a ReadyNAS device for a feature which is not yet here (rather than going to competition which has it already, yet the hardware may not be quite as good).
By the way.. I need faster disks in my RN PRO.. are 15k SAS drives compatiability possible / on the roadmap? i.e. when using ESX I seem to run out of IOPS using SATA drives way before the network bandwidth is saturted (single GB link).
But preannouncing what they're doing would signal to the competition as to what NetGear reckons it needs to do to maintain its position of producing the best NAS product in the market. There's obvious reasons why the Jedi keep their plans to themselves.
Ofcourse the major secrets like possible blocklevel replication between readynasses shouldn't be made public. But what would the announcement of an advanced multi tasks AJAX web 2.0 frontview tell the competition... nothing ... because the competition already HAS IT!
To be very blunt, I'd take a good old fashioned CLI over that synology form-over-function webgui any day. But then again I'm no fan of glossy plastic either, and used to manage a national-sized telco for a living before my health gave up on me. A rock solid CLI interface (which would still be responsive over a 9600 baud connection, btw) would quite likely need less cpu on the unit as well, cpu cycles that would be better spent on things like pattern-matching cache pre-fetches and other performance boosts.
Having had a chance to test my SS-439 (with 4x 500GB Momentus XT drives) for some days now ... Well, to be quite blunt: It runs in circles around the ReadyNAS 2100. Big circles. We're talking about 1.5x the speed on iSCSI set up to load balance over both the network cards (two IPs in both ends, round-robin load balancing between the portals). With standard 500GB Momentus 7200rpm laptop disks (not the XT hybrids) the performance difference is less, but the qnap still clocks in faster than the ReadyNAS2100, while also being cheaper.
Take down names all you want, but the facts remain the same.
Irrespective of anything else, that post highlights exactly the type of basic improvement that Frontview requires.
That the interface does little checking that the options being selected are actually valid is very poor. The interface should respond instantly, and not force a user to look elsewhere or to download and sift through numerous cryptic logs to get a clue as to what has gone wrong.
Even without the interface, Netgear has a long way to go. I think Readynas has just become a hobby for them rather than a real product they are trying to sell. Anyone want to buy my NV+? I'm switching companies.
I will agree that the UI is not fancy and has some issues but I do not find that it is bad enough to switch to an different product. I have never been partial to interfaces with a lot of eye candy. I far prefer a UI that is simple and the options are easy to find. I actually prefer a good command line utility to a GUI especially if the utility can be used in scripts.
I have not seen anything that would give the impression that Netgear is treating the ReadyNAS as a hobby, they are releasing new hardware models and updating the firmware, except for the legacy Sparc based units. It may not be helpful if you, like me, have one of these legacy units but that is the nature of the industry. I have a Sun Blade 1000 Workstation that has a Standard Sun video card that Solaris 11 doesn't support. Apple OS X no longer support the PowerPC architecture.
