iSCSI
The biggest feature of the ReadyNAS 2100 server is it’s ability to act like a SAN. With iSCSI support you can attach a hard drive as if it was actually an internal drive.
USB support
Also, it has the ability to dump your data to a USB external device so you can walk away with an offsite backup.
2 LAN Connections
Another great feature are the two 1Gb LAN connections that can be bonded to provide fault tolerance and load balancing. You get 7 different ways to bond these two LAN connections together.
- Round-Robin
- Active Backup
- XOR
- Broadcast
- IEEE 802.3ad LACP
- Transmit Load Balancing
- Adaptive Load Balancing
You can read up on each different bonding method here. I will warn you that some of these methods can only be achieved by having certain network hardware in place. Right now I’m using the “Round-Robin” method. It seems to be working quite well for me, if you know of a better method please feel free to comment.
Raid Support
The ReadyNAS also comes with a new type of RAID I’ve never encountered before, X-RAID2™.
Overall
I’m very impressed with this server’s great features like iSCSI, USB support for external drives, and dual lan connections. There are lot more features like snapshots and remote management that I haven’t gotten to yet. Just remember you get what you pay for, this isn’t the most expensive network storage on the market, but it does offer pretty good bang for your buck.
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