Asustor Launches Marvell-based AS4000 Series NAS Units with 10GBASE-T
by Ganesh T S on January 13, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- Marvell
- NAS
- Asustor
- 10GBase-T
- Cortex A72
- CES 2017
Asustor took the opportunity at CES 2018 to launch their AS4000 NAS series. It will have two SKUs - the 2-bay AS4002T, and the 4-bay AS4004T. While there are plenty of 2- and 4-bay NAS units in the market to choose from, this series stands out for a unique hardware feature - we believe these are the first 2- and 4-bay ARM-based units to come with a 10GBASE-T network interface. 10G has finally started to appear in home consumer equipment. Switches such as the Asus XG-U2008 and the Netgear GS810EMX Nighthawk Pro, 10G add-in cards such as the Asus XG-C100C, and even non-workstation enthusiast desktop motherboards with 10G capabilities built-in (eg.: ASRock Z370 Professional Gaming i7) are slowly, but surely, bringing 10G mainstream.
There are ARM-based SMB NAS units with 10G ports (usually SFP+ connectors) already in the market. Almost all of them are based on SoCs from Annapurna Labs . The current crop of SoCs from Annapurna Labs all use the Cortex A15 ARMv7 CPU. 10GBASE-T has typically been restricted to high-end x86 units. The Asustor AS4000 series changes that. It uses the Marvell ARMADA 7020 dual-core Cortex A72 processor (88F7020). This makes the Asustor AS4000 series one of the first ARMv8-based home consumer / SOHO NAS unts in the market.
The Marvell 7K Embedded Processor for Gateways and Network-Attached Storage Units
Asustor has a new industrial design for the AS4000 series, with screwless installation capability for the hard drives. Hot-swap is also supported. The front panel has also been redesigned to make it dustproof. The units come with 2GB of DDR4-2400 memory. There are 2x 1Gbps ports in addition to the 10GBASE-T port.
On the software side, Asustor is continuing to improve the features of its OS - the Asustor Data Manager (ADM). ADM 3.1 is in beta right now and features support for SSD caching and RAID scrubbing amongst a host of other new features.
The AS4000 series is set to come to market later this quarter. Pricing was not announced, but it is likely that it will come in-between that of the AS31/32 series and AS61 series. That would put the AS4002T between $259 and $290, and the AS4004T between $395 and $460. 10GBASE-T NAS units with those price points are sure to increase the adoption of 10G Ethernet in the home / SOHO market.
Source: Asustor
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zepi - Saturday, January 13, 2018 - link
Would these support 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T as well? I'm guessing that it might be a relevant question for SMB / home users, because I've seen some products that don't go all the way to 10Gb, but only support 5GBASE-T, which should already provide most, if not all of the performance from this kind of NAS devices.ganeshts - Saturday, January 13, 2018 - link
It is 10G or 1G, no NBASE-T support. I think it is not a big factor for NAS units because they are probably going to be quite close to the switch. So, the distance concern is not a big deal. Even short Cat 5e cables can be used (probably with some packet loss)lagittaja - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link
As the SoC itself lists 2.5GbE, is there some sort of limitation to that as to why they can't have 2.5GbE support as well on the 1G ports. Because they're already using the 10GbE?Hurr Durr - Saturday, January 13, 2018 - link
I always forget: is this company a some sort of ASUS subsidiary or completely independent thing?ganeshts - Saturday, January 13, 2018 - link
Yes, ASUS is the parent company.Xajel - Sunday, January 14, 2018 - link
Damn, I wish QNAP has a 4bays x86 NAS with 10GBe at this price point.Morawka - Sunday, January 14, 2018 - link
I wish QNAP would just sell their software. VM and Container station come in really handyXajel - Monday, January 15, 2018 - link
Yeah that will be great too, at $700+ for NAS I will just create my own server with that amount money.perovics - Sunday, January 14, 2018 - link
This is great news as it means 10GBASE-T will come to cheaper entry level NAS's. I have a 4 disk Synology DS414 and it is severly bottlenecked by its 1GbE connection. My NAS is almost full and I'll buy a new one only with 10GBASE-T. I would like to stick to Synology as I'm familiar with it and also it works well. Since Synology uses Marvel processors in several of its NAS's, they may introduce a NAS with this new Marvel processor. And if not, surely Marvel's competitors Annapurna Lab and Realtek can't be much behind with 10GBASE-T integration so it is definitelly will be more affordable soon.imaheadcase - Sunday, January 14, 2018 - link
Mmm i doubt its bottlenecked. lol