Network attached storage devices/servers (NAS) keep gaining ground over mini PC systems build solely for non-gaming purposes and no matter how one sees it this was a long time coming since their advantages simply can't be ignored. NAS devices/servers are smaller in size, consume much less electrical power, work right out of the box with pretty much every application you'll ever need (and for free), allow the end user to install multiple drives in RAID effortlessly and are far easier to setup compared to normal PC systems. According to some people the largest drawback NAS servers have is their graphical user interface (GUI) or web interface as others call it but right now there are several high-end Intel based NAS servers in the market that support multiple OS installation (yes including Windows) via virtualization so there's always a solution for the more demanding users. In order however to do everything you'd ever want with a NAS server you need high/ultra-high end hardware and although a couple of years ago choices were quite limited today in the market one can find powerful such devices that even support 10GbE for extremely I/O intensive workloads. One such NAS Server is the N7710-G by Thecus so after equipping it with a total of 6 Seagate Enterprise Capacity V3 3.5 4TB SATA III drives (unfortunately we don't have 7) and using it for roughly a week we can now share our findings with all of you.



Link: NikKTech