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Thecus gives you a NAS with a PCI-E slot and is VMWare ready

by: John -
More On: N7700+
I'm currently using the ole Thecus N7700 NAS and it's been a solid device in streaming video and music to my 360 and PS3 as well as serving as a backup station. Well, Thecus is coming out with an updated device that adds a few new features.

The N7700+ gives you a PCI-E expansion slot for those wanting to use a 10GB Ethernet card in the future. That's gonna be a nice big fat pipe to move data around internally but I'd hate to see what the prices of a 10GB switch is. I wonder if it will be possible to use the PCI-E slot for other things though since you can update the NAS with modules for new functionality. Imagine sticking in a TV tuner card and having a module be able to record TV with the N7700+ archiving the shows with all the features of an expensive NAS.

Also, the N7700+ is VMWare ready for people like me who run multiple OS's for development. The one thing I don't like though is that it's still using a Celeron M processor with 2GB of ram, which might be a bottleneck when doing things like running multiple virtual machines.

The thing's got 7 bays though so you can pop in plenty of hard drives. While the one I had only supports up to 1TB hard drives, the N7700+'s bays each can use hard drives of up to 2TB.

Thecus® Technology Launches the N7700+ NAS Server

Seven-bay desktop network storage appliance ready for 10Gb Ethernet

04/01/2010 – The 7-bay NAS is shaping up to be the go-to desktop NAS device for users who require both massive storage and blazing performance. Today, Thecus® Technology is pleased to introduce the N7700+, a seven-bay storage server that retains all of the robust functionality of the N7700, but ups the ante with a PCIe x8 slot suitable for 10Gb Ethernet cards.

Thecus® constantly engineers new ways to squeeze the maximum performance from existing technologies. The N7700+ one-ups its predecessor by including an internal PCIe x8 slot. Compared to the x1 slot found in the N7700, the N7700+’s PCIe slot offers up to eight times more bandwidth, which makes it perfect for 10Gb Ethernet cards. Outfitted with one of these cards, the N7700+ is fully compatible with the latest 10Gb networks, delivering unprecedented data transfer rates for the most demanding users.

Of course, the N7700+ still includes the extensive feature set of the N7700. A wide selection of RAID modes including RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, and JBOD are there, allowing system admins to choose the optimal level of data protection. The N7700+’s Dual DOM design gives added system reliability by reprogramming the primary DOM with a secondary DOM in case of a failure. System administrators don’t have to worry about the N7700+ not being compatible with their existing network as the N7700+ supports Ext3, XFS, and ZFS file systems, and is fully compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux. Admins will also love the fact that the N7700+ comes with online RAID expansion and migration, making it easy to administer from anywhere on the network.

The N7700+ is powered with an Intel® Celeron™ M CPU and 2GB compliment of high-speed DDR2 memory, enabling it to achieve data transfer speeds of up to 300MB/s by adding a PCI-e 10Gb Ethernet adapter. This power can easily manipulate the up to 14TB of storage space offered by the N7700+’s seven 3.5” hard disk bays. And if 14TB isn’t enough, the N7700+ is also stackable with up to five other N7700+es, and all of these can be accessed via the master system for ultimate convenience. The N7700+ is even compatible with iSCSI initiators and supports iSCSI thin provisioning for added performance and flexibility. With the popularity of VMware, virtualization technology is now widely used in the IT world. Thecus® is now the member of Technology Alliance Partner (TAP), and N7700+ is now officially VMware Ready certified.