14 DAY TRIAL // There was a time when you could only stick one storage device inside a personal computer or a server (not counting supercomputers), but things have changed during the past decade. One of the changes was the rise in prominence of NAS devices, like the new Asustor AS70T.
Perhaps “prominence” is too strong a word to describe the status of network-attached storage devices. Indeed, “prominent” probably won't really define them, ever.
Nevertheless, NAS devices have definitely risen from obscurity to having an important role in many home and office networks. Especially office networks.
As a server system in a much smaller and unobtrusive package, it's a popular choice for administrators who want to set up a network storage and streaming hub on a whole floor, but don't want the hassle and ugliness of a clunky server rack system.
The new NAS that we're about to show you is called AS7004T and was made by a company known as Asustor.
The Asustor AS7004T tower model NAS device
As the “tower” in the name implies, the Asustor AS7004T NAS is taller than others of its kind and has the drive bays arrayed vertically instead of horizontally.
That allows its PC-like hardware to be crammed into the left-hand-side, and for the I/O technology to be included there as well. You get a USB 3.0 port on the front, as well as two Gigabit Ethernet connectors at the back alongside two more USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 connectors, one HDMI port, and two eSATA ports.
A specialized cooling system can use a single large fan to chill the entire hardware, drive bays included. The heatpipes and disk tray vents help as well, allowing air to flow from the front to the back, cooling both the CPU and the hard disks.
ADM smart fan control mechanism further adds efficiency to the system, allowing the fan to spin only as fast as it needs to, so that no more energy is used than necessary.
As for the actual system parts, there's an Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz dual-core processor at the heart of it all, backed by 2 GB SO-DIMM DDR3 memory (up to 16 GB if you're feeling adventurous).
Finally, the ADM 2.3 (ASUSTOR Data Master) operating system is installed on the NAS, which supports Windows AD and ACL permissions, so that integration into businesses can go without a hitch. SMB 2.0 increases Windows networking performance by 30-50% too.
Availability and pricing
The Asustor AS7004T, with one S/PDIF port, LCD display and infrared receiver, should sell soon. Its price wasn't mentioned, but in the end, most of your money will go into the HDDs anyway. Speaking of which, the top capacity is of 24 TB (6TB per bay). Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10 are possible, with HDD hot swapping and Online RAID Migration included.