Infortrend's EonNAS Pro 510 is an SMB NAS device with a unique feature that sets it apart from most SMB NASes: It uses Sun Microsystem's (now Oracle's) operating system ZFS, instead of a Linux-based OS. ZFS is purported to offer some advantages of particular interest to the enterprise, such as self-healing of corrupted files and data deduplication. The biggest advantage of the EonNAS is its several layers of security—good if you are storing sensitive data such as patient healthcare information. It's a decent NAS, but it doesn't perform as well as Synology's DiskStation 1812+ SMB NAS, which boasts many of the same capabilities as the EonNAS (although the Synology NAS is a bit pricier).
Form Factor and Specs
The EonNAS Pro 510 is a five-bay desktop form factor, and it's quite heavy when fully loaded with drives—a little over 18 pounds. It has an LCD that displays the hostname and IP address of the NAS and will flash a warning when drive problems are detected. It's not as useful a display as the LCD in Iomega's StorCenter px4-300d, which shows more detailed system information.
The device has an Intel dual-core Atom processor (2.13 GHz) and shipped to us with 2GB RAM (memory is expandable up to 8GB). RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10 are supported as well as drive hot-swapping. The test NAS shipped to me with 4TB of storage, but a total of 15TB is supported. SATA II and III 3.5-inch drives are supported, but not SSDs as is the case with the Iomega's StorCenter px4-300d.
I'm not at all a fan of the large, silver power button on the front of the chassis. It protrudes instead of being recessed. It's too easy to brush against the button and shut off the NAS (my editor actually did this by accident during my testing).
There are lots of expandability options. The rear panel has four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and an eSATA port. There's a serial connection on the back and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports that support link aggregation.
Infortrend's NAS supports CIFS/SMB file systems for Windows, NFS for Linux, and AFP for Mac.
Setup
The NAS ships with a quick installation guide that illustrates how to install hard drives (the NAS ships diskless), connect to a switch, and power up. It also includes a disc containing the NASFinder app that locates the NAS on your network. The EonNAS Pro did not pick up a DHCP-assigned IP address from my network right away. I had to click a "Set IP" button in the finder app, and then the address was assigned. It's an extra step for joining the NAS to my network that I've not needed to do with other SMB NASes.
Setup is easy, but I noticed that even after the NAS was on the network and fully booted up, the LED for the disk activity would flash red occasionally. As far as I could tell by looking at the disk status in the interface, nothing was amiss with the drives or the volume. I don't like to see red lights on a network product unless something is wrong.
Features and Interface
The web-based interface opens to a Home Page that displays information such as disk capacity and system information such as CPU utilization, number of users connected, Read and Writes in KBps and more. The interface is not widget-based and isn't customizable, however. On this page are shortcuts for performing basic tasks including adding users, creating folder shares, and accessing help via shortcuts to an online community forum and Infortrend's online help.
Many of the weightier features of this NAS are concerned with security. There are the typical security features found in most business-class NASes, such as adding an SSL certificate and setting permissions on folders. In this NAS, you also have a feature called WORM (Write Once, Read Many) for extra security. When you have WORM activated on a folder, the contents cannot be deleted or modified for a time period you specify. Additionally, folders can be set with data deduplication and encryption.
For backup, the NAS lets you create a pool mirror that allows you to replicate data to another NAS on the network. Local snapshots can be created for restore points. The NAS also supports the RSync protocol for remote replication. Backups can also be made to an attached USB or eSATA drive and configured with a one-touch copy job. Infortrend also bundles free licenses for Farstone Total Recovery Pro 7—a disk imaging, backup, and restore solution.
Other security and enterprise features include link aggregation with the dual Ethernet ports, AES-256 and CHAP Encryption, virtualization, and Windows Active Directory support, as well as the ability to add SSL certificates.
Disk Recovery
Since my testing unit was configured with RAID 5, I wanted to see how well the system recovered from a simulated drive failure. I pulled out a disk with the NAS running. The system beeped, and a message flashed on the LCD giving the option to mute the beeping. The LCD then displayed "System Error! Check Logs."
While the LCD did report a system problem, the information displayed was not very specific. I went into the interface and the system logged that the drive in slot 1 was not online—detailing the problem more specifically. The log files also showed that the partition and volume were in a degraded state.
I replaced the pulled drive with another drive of the same capacity. After I did, the NAS beeped again and the LEDs flashed. I didn't see any information on the LCD about the volume being restored or the RAID array being rebuilt—which would be better than just having the "System Error" message remain.
Even in the event log, I saw no status change. After about 15 minutes, I refreshed the interface's home page, and now saw the partition's status reported as "healthy." I was also able to access all of the data I had on the volume.
So the EonNAS Pro did recover from a simulated failure and kept my data intact. Synology's DiskStation 1812+ provided a more elegant recovery process in that its interface details what's happening during recovery. It updates you when the system is performing a parity check or verifying disks during a hot swap. I prefer the level of detail that Synology's interface provides, because you don't want to have to guess what's happening with the drives on your NAS.
Performance
The EonNAS Pro offered acceptable Read and Write speeds. It has slightly better Write speed than the ioSafe N2 NAS but far worse Read speeds. Iomega's StorCXenter px4-300d absolutely blows the EonNAS Pro away in Reads, and the all-around I/O performance champ remains the Synology DS 1812+. While the EonNAS Pro should handle downloads and copies from multiple users in a business fine, if you were to use it where a lot of data is being written to it, it's probably worth upping the memory. Below is a performance chart of recently tested SMB NASes.
Click here for Infortrend EonNAS Pro 510 benchmarks
NAS for ZFS Fans
You may be attracted to the EonNAS Pro 510 if you are a fan of the ZFS file system and the properties it delivers. The self-healing against data corruption is a plus, and the EonNAS Pro 510 does offers additional security features such as WORM, which I have not seen in competing NASes. But there's not much in this NAS that you can't find in faster performers with better interfaces such as devices from Synology and Iomega. Still, it's not a bad pick and for an SMB with sensitive data in an office that's not doing a lot of writing constantly to the NAS (think a smaller accounting office or doctor's office), the EonNAS Pro 510 is sufficient. The EonNAS Pro 510 is a 3 star earner; Synology's DiskStation DS1812+ remains the Editors' Choice for SMB NASes.
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