Seagate NAS 4-Bay with Marvell ARMADA 370 Review
by Ganesh T S on July 24, 2014 8:30 AM ESTEncryption Support Evaluation - Single Client CIFS Access
Consumers looking for encryption capabilities can opt to encrypt a iSCSI share with TrueCrypt or some in-built encryption mechanism in the client OS. However, if requirements dictate that the data must be shared across multiple users / computers, relying on encryption in the NAS is the best way to move forward. Most NAS vendors use the industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption algorithm. One approach is to encrypt only a particular shared folder while the other approach is to encrypt the full volume. Seagate supports only volume-level encryption for now in NAS OS.
On the hardware side, encryption support can be in the form of specialized hardware blocks in the SoC (common in ARM / PowerPC based NAS units). In x86-based systems, accelerated encryption support is dependent on whether the AES-NI instruction is available on the host CPU. The ARMADA 370 SoC does have cryptography accelerator blocks. We created an encrypted volume and set up a CIFS share to repeat our Intel NASPT / robocopy benchmarks. The results are presented in the graphs below.
The Seagate NAS 4-bay excels in write heavy workloads, but reads are much worse off compared to the competition.
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Arbie - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
Didn't see thermals mentioned. Seagate goes for record-setting internal temps by totally sealing their drives in plastic. I have several GoFlex multi-TB units that, out of the box, exceed their max rated limits! It seems impossible that a company that can build a modern hard drive can't produce a ventilated plastic box to house it. At least I thought it was impossible, but technology advances....Yeah I know these are different animals but they still say "Seagate" on them, and those incompetent packaging engineers must have moved on to some other project. Could be this one.
Ref: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3858/the-worlds-firs...
and probably many other web comments by now.
BTW the fix on the GoFlex is to rip half the cover off, and hold the remaining half on with a rubber band. Looks real nice.
JeffFlanagan - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
I was considering getting three or four of these to replace my somewhat flaky Unraid server, but Arbie's comment makes me worry that this will be drive-destroying junk.Ganesh, can you tell us about any thermal issues?
DanNeely - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
This design includes a 120mm fan. While measurements would be nice, I doubt this design has the same problem as the goflex enclosure.woggs - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
The pics on page 2 show the fan but no other vent holes for air flow. Where does the air from the fan go? Are there bottom vent holes we can't see?MichaelD - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
The fan pulls air through the chassis from front to back. The air enters through the spaces around the drive sleds and is pulled through/over the drives before being pushed out the perforated rear panel.I've been looking to get a NAS device to replace the W7 box/HW RAID card setup I have running at home as a NAS. I built that box 3 years ago to replace the SOHO NAS JUNK that was for sale at that time. I.E. under $600 or so.
This box looks promising...but still, the storage format is not compatible with Windows. If the NAS itself fails, I have to wait until a replacement NAS is purchased to see if my data is there, and that worries me.
MichaelD - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
Just saw that even though it's got two GbE ports, this device does not support Link Aggregation. A real shame. Not a deal-breaker for me but it's nit to pick.MadMan007 - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
It depends on the NAS drive file system actually. There are ext4 drivers for Windows that enable read/write of ext4 volumes. I have read that people are able to pull a drive from a RAID1 and read it on a Windows machine...perhaps it depends on the NAS vendor as well though.ganeshts - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
This unit's lineage is not related to the GoFlex, rather, it is from LaCie (the use of Noctua fans, for example).I am very happy with the thermal performance. All our evaluation was done with the WD Re drives (known for not being very 'cool'), and never once did the temperatures go above 50 C in our stress tests.
BMNify - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
seriously, how can you keep flogging the crap ARMADA 370 SoC in a NAS as a good investment, tindustrial hey are far lower spec than even a A8 in data throughput and the ports are second rate add-on's for a soc that cant cope.....even an old 5.4" single board computer with a cheap case would be far more forgiving of data throughput, http://www.abigo4u.com/review/product/list/id/2136...
LS-576TXD 5.25" Embedded board with Intel QM77 w/6 x Giga LAN
or one of the newer 3.5" smb's would give far better return on investmant, just bung freenas on there and be far better supported.
name99 - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link
Dude, just accept that different people have different desires and needs.Personally I don't see the point of these NAS boxes --- I can (and do) create much the same thing by hooking up a bunch of external drives to an old Mac and using OSX's soft RAID. Meets my needs, may not meet yours, especially if your needs demand RAID5 or live disk replacement.
Likewise some other people's NEEDs (not desires, NEEDs) are "absolutely trivial installation", or "comes in a single box that can easily be moved, with no bits hanging out".
You're like the salesman who, asked "please show me the laptops department" starts ranting about "you don't want a laptop, you want a tablet. Here, let me show you our fine selection of tablets."