NetGear offers new four-bay network storage appliance

NetGear has announced the ReadyNAS NVX, a new network attached storage (NAS) device aimed at the Small to Medium Business (SMB) market. It’s priced starting at $1,500.

The ReadyNAS NVX sports four bays for Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drive mechanisms, and can be configured in RAID level 0, 1 and 5 arrays. Inside is an Intel embedded processor and 1GB of DDR2 RAM operating Netgear’s RAIDiator operating system. The ReadyNAS NVX is configurable using a Web browser and is cross-platform compatible with Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

The device sports two Gigabit Ethernet ports with support for load-balancing and failover; three USB 2.0 ports enable you to connect additional peripherals like an external hard drive for local backup. You can hot-swap failed disks and expand single volumes using X-RAID2 technology.

File protocols supported by the ReadyNAS NVX inlude CIFS/SMB for Windows, AFP 3.1 for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9, and NFS 2/3 for Linux and Unix. It also supports HTTP for the Web, FTP/S, rsync and secure rsync, WebDAV, print sharing, Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and iSCSI target support for Windows, Mac and Linux initiators.

The 2TB system costs $1,500. That also comes with a free 30-day trial of ReadyNAS Vault, an Internet backup service, which costs $5.95 per month for consumers and $19.95 per month for businesses.