Review: Netgear ReadyNAS 3130

Introduction and setup

The ReadyNAS 3130 is a 1U rack-mount enterprise-class storage device. It's sold in a diskless configuration with space for up to four hard disks. The documentation suggests an official maximum capacity of 24TB, by using 6TB disks, although there's no reason it shouldn't work with 8TB disks (such as Seagate's Archive V2 ST8000AS0002) for a total of 32TB.

It's powered by an Intel Atom C2338 processor running at 1.7GHz, with 2GB of ECC memory, expandable to 16GB. The specification suggests a maximum of 75 users, which is what could be called a small-to-medium sized organisation, although the feature set is ideal for home users who are particularly enthusiastic about a solid storage setup as well.

Online prices vary, but at around £600 (we found it for sale at $886 in the US, which translates to around AU$1280) it's just about affordable as a high-end home NAS as well.

At its heart is Netgear's ReadyNAS OS software, currently at version 6.2, which is installed on pretty much every ReadyNAS product, although the 3130 has a few unique storage features. One of these is unlimited snapshots, allowing restoration of deleted files in both public and user storage spaces. Anti-virus, thin provisioning and iSCSI shares are integrated, along with remote access features such as Netgear's ReadyCloud, which works like a Dropbox-style shared space, but entirely hosted on your private network.

We'll explore the software and of course the hardware in more detail later in this review, but first let's look at the design and setup of this Netgear offering.

Configuration and setup

Typical of a rack-mount NAS, the ReadyNAS 3130 is quite deep, measuring 406mm from the front to the rear, 486mm wide, and 44m high. Not including disks, it weighs 5.21kg.

A big accessories box contains screws and mounting brackets. The 180W power supply is internal meaning only an IEC 'kettle' lead is required to power it. Attaching the drives is as straightforward as most NAS units – you remove each bay by undoing a lever at the front, hook them out, screw in the disk, then put them back. There's support for 2.5-inch drives as well, so you can use SSDs if desired.

There are three internal 40mm fans, a USB 2 port and USB 3 port for external storage expansion, and four gigabit Ethernet ports at the rear. There's no 10GbE support, a feature reserved for more high-end storage units, but 802.3ad LACP dynamic link aggregation is possible, along with a few other ways to bond the ports together. There's an option for Active Backup, Load Balancing, XOR, Round Robin and Broadcast. The most useful is 802.3ad – this will require a switch that also supports the technology.

On initial setup, the 3130 will automatically choose Netgear's X-RAID 2 storage setup, a RAID 5 system that supports volume expansion, with one of the four disks reserved for backup. The alternative option is what Netgear calls Flex-RAID, a label for traditional RAID, where the user can choose RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 or JBOD storage modes.

With four 6TB disks installed, the ReadyNAS was left with a total of 17.94 TB of usable capacity, or 16.3 TB in Windows. Obviously a RAID 0 array will give you more capacity but with a much greater risk of data loss in the event of hardware failure.

Software and performance

Software

ReadyNAS OS presents a clean interface that's generally easy to navigate. The 3130 isn't in a usable state until a user account and shares have been created. The snapshot options are set when creating a share, with options of hourly, daily or weekly backups.

It works as you'd imagine – giving the option of restoring either deleted or previous versions of files, useful for the clumsy user who accidentally deletes important columns of spreadsheet data. There's a timeline where you can look through previous snapshot backups and it tells you how many days protection you have. These snapshots can be searched by date with a graph, which can help with more tricky data recovery situations.

Obviously, more shares with hourly snapshots puts more load on the system, so you'll need to think carefully about the number of users and shares you're planning to accommodate.

The share creation screen allows you to select protocols, allowing AFP, FTP, NFS, SMB, RSYNC, HTTP, DLNA and iTunes sharing. You can, for example, create a share that can only be accessed via FTP.

Thick or thin provisioning is a further option when creating shares, used for either pre-allocating storage for each share or allocating space on-the-fly, which (with some planning) could be used to provide far more user storage than the 3130 has capacity for, if its users only ever consume a fraction of that storage, as is normally the case.

Antivirus protection is disabled by default. iSCSI shares and LUN groups are simple to set up with optional CHAP authentication support. There are also a few ways to back up to the ReadyNAS, from folders, or the USB ports, and also ways to back up data on the ReadyNAS to a remote location. This can be done via FTP, Windows file sharing protocols, NFS or RSYNC over SSH.

Netgear has also put a lot of effort into its support for Apple's Time Machine feature, which is particularly useful on Mac-only networks. You can have a single shared Time Machine folder, or allocate space as part of each user's storage account.

ReadyNAS OS has an extensive selection of apps in its store, directly accessible and installable from within the interface. Many are provided by Netgear itself although some have been coded by third parties. All the usual apps are there – media servers like Plex, web platforms like Wordpress and Drupal, BitTorrent, Photo Albums, and so on. Once an app is installed an icon is added to the main interface which leads you to its setup page. It's all straightforward and works the same way in most NAS software.

The final aspect of the software that's worth mentioning is its extensive integration with Netgear's Cloud services. First off is the ReadyNAS Vault backup service. You can have a 'Lite' account with a file limit of 2GB for free (fine for just personal documents) but you do have to pay for the tiers with larger capacities – either Business, Pay Per Use or Personal accounts, which can be up to 2TB or even unlimited space.

The ReadyCloud service is also free to use, as it only functions as a VPN between your computer and the ReadyNAS 3130. Apps for mobile devices and PC (the Mac version is oddly missing from the download page, although you can always upload via a browser) work pretty much in the same way as Dropbox, but with the critical difference that your files are stored on your own storage which you have complete control over, rather than remote servers with an EULA that limits your rights to privacy.

Using Dropbox is not a good idea for very sensitive data, so ReadyCloud is a good way to have the convenience of drag-and-drop cloud backup without the potential for prying eyes.

Performance

The ReadyNAS 3130 was tested with four WD Red 6TB hard disks, set up in an X-RAID 2 configuration. I measured the unit's performance with a standard SMB share using Intel's NAS Performance Toolkit under Windows 7, and a Robocopy file transfer both to and from the unit of a 5GB folder of JPG files and a 5GB folder of larger movie files.

I'm only measuring the speeds of a single client transfer here. With an 802.3ad bonded link, you can run multiple client transfers and expect to see these speeds from all of them, as well as redundancy and backup.

Here are the results achieved by the Netgear ReadyNAS 3130:

Robocopy (MB/sec)

• 5GB Small Files Read: 52.4
• 5GB Small Files Write: 47.5
• 5GB Large Files Read: 94.5
• 5GB Large Files Write: 108.1

Intel NAS PT (MB/sec)

• HD Video: 100.6
• 2xHD: 113.3
• 4xHD: 113.9
• HD Record: 120.7
• HD Playback: 105.5
• Content Creation: 12.5
• Office Productivity: 67.4
• File Copy To NAS: 122
• File Copy From NAS: 89
• Directory Copy From NAS: 11.3
• Directory Copy To NAS: 18.2
• Photo Album: 13.3

These results are as expected, driven as much by the CPU performance as the network speed. The Atom processor means the HD Record and File Copy To NAS elements max out the speed of gigabit Ethernet, while the intense Photo Album and Directory Copy To NAS test shows a marked improvement over consumer-grade NAS units like the Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay, as do the Robocopy tests.

Power consumption with the disk heads parked and system idle hit 35.9W, while with the drives in use, the ReadyNAS 3130 consumes 46.5W. That's still more efficient than running a PC-based storage server.

Verdict

We liked

The ReadyNAS 3130 is a strong offering for SMBs as well as enterprise users, and the headline snapshots feature works excellently. It's a feature all NAS units should offer, and could save the day for those users who accidentally lose important files.

Although it's not the fastest NAS you can buy, the ReadyNAS 3130 is capable of some good file transfer speeds.

The ReadyOS software supports all kinds of network standards for different shares, the iSCSI support is very good and the cloud backup options work well.

We disliked

There's no 10GbE option. Although bonded links with multiple gigabit Ethernet ports mean you get 4Gb/sec of network performance, 10GbE is restricted to more high-end NAS units.

A 1U form factor is perfect for organisations with rack setups, but a smaller version, squeezing the exact same features into a small box that could fit under a desk might be preferable for home users.

That said, Netgear of course sells plenty of smaller consumer-oriented NAS units, with the ReadyNAS 316 being most similar to the 3130, and it's very close in terms of the feature set. If you want a smaller unit, that's the one to go for, as it still supports the headline unlimited snapshots feature.

While functional, the iPad version of the ReadyCloud software we tested could be improved, with better viewing options to show more information about files, or create shared links directly within the app. Although it's not bad, the app could do with some more work, and it would be nice if the user was given more control over their files.

Final verdict

The ReadyNAS 3130 has very good software, offers good performance and it's relatively affordable too, with pricing that is very competitive with other prosumer/SMB/enterprise NAS units that feature the same number of bays.

The software offers a nice looking GUI, with plenty of advanced settings to integrate with a corporate network and there are lots of apps to extend its functionality.

Although a few areas could do with a bit more polish, Netgear deserves a pat on the back for the 3130, and the long list of features it offers.

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