Final thoughts, awards, where2buy, right2reply
From our experience with Thecus' N5200, we know what this kind of NAS kit can do. The question is: has Thecus done enough to make the 1U4500 suitable for the server room?
Let's start with the physical design, then. Four hot-swappable disks is the best you can do with a 1U chassis and 3.5" drives, so no complaints there. Fitting the LCD display is a nice touch; it's big and clear, providing useful info at a glance. The buttons on the front allow basic configuration changes, provided the passkey is known. Well, that would be the case if it wasn't for the reset button. The ability to power it off with a brush of the power button is a little worrying too, although if somebody has access to the rack, then that's going to be the least of anyone's worries, so we'll let that slide.
Two is the magic number as far as network interfaces go. For reliability, failover mode works great. Or, if you need a LAN/WAN setup, or link aggregation, then it'll do the job, too. UPS connectivity is there to avoid disk crash disasters, and physically, the eSATA connection is handy to have.
eSATA's not so great on the software front, though. It mounts just like a USB mass storage device, so the things you can do with it are somewhat limited. You can't add it to a RAID array; that's something we'd quite like to see. Still, rackspace would probably be better served by another NAS box, if number of disks is an issue, unless you're after extra storage on the cheap.
The configuration interface is easy to use, although sometimes it lacks the more advanced configuration options that you might want from a high-end piece of kit. The serious sysadmin would like to see a SSH interface on the 1U4500, too.
Data throughput of the 1U4500 is good, most of the time. It'll rip through smaller files, especially when reading with jumbo frames enabled. Ramp the file size up a bit and performance drops a little. We'd like to see that GbE interface stressed a bit more, given the performance we could obtain from four 500GB HDDs in a local RAID configuration. Performance gets a bit hairy during the rebuild process, but when you're reconstructing a third of your data, it's hard to avoid.
All things considered, we'd say that for most network data storage needs, the 1U4500 can handle it... if the price is right. So is it? Right now a 1U4500S will cost you a little over £800, before hard drives, while the redundant PSU version will set you back an extra £80-90. You can get a populated 1U NAS for the same price, but then again some populated NAS boxes will also cost a lot more than the 1U4500. You can get an N5200 for between £500 and £600, depending on the version you want. It may not be rackmount, but you can stick some more RAM in there and it'll still be a fair lick cheaper than the 1U4500.
But rackmount kit is always going to be more expensive than its clumsy, stand-in-a-corner counterparts. Ask yourself three questions when considering the 1U4500: Do you need NAS in a 1U form factor? Does it have the features you require? Is the performance sufficient? We reckon this review will give you enough insight to make an informed decision.
HEXUS Certification
The Thecus 1U4500 survived the HEXUS Labs testing regime, and while it'd be brash of us to give the first rackmount NAS reviewed here at HEXUS an award, we're able to say with confidence that the 1U4500 can proudly bear the HEXUS Labs certification.
Thecus 1U4500S
HEXUS Where2Buy
SCAN has the 1U4500 listed in both single and redundant PSU varieties.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of Thecus' representatives choose to do so, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.