Enterprise Reviews
- Hyper-Converged
- Enterprise Storage
- Medium SAN/NAS (12+ bays)
- Small SAN/NAS (up to 8 bays)
- Server
- Thin Client
- SSD
- HDD
- Backup and Recovery
- Attached Storage
- Storage Adapters
- Networking
- Server Rack
- Power Management
- Software
- Accessories
- In the Lab
April 17th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000 Review
In August of 2018, Dell EMC announced the launch of its new high-performance, modular infrastructure, the PowerEdge MX7000. The 7U MX7000 is sort of an evolution of the company’s M1000e modular blade chassis. With the popular M1000e, users are able to quickly add in blades depending on there needs e.g. add more storage, compute, or extra networking. This technology allows users to easily grow if need be, say their workloads’ needs expand in storage or compute. Dell EMC customers love this flexibility but had been asking Dell EMC for a platform that can better take advantage of new technologies as they come to market be it CPUs, storage or interconnects. After several years of research and development, Dell EMC released a new blade server chassis and sleds with the MX platform (though not a replacement for the M1000e) to better adapt to the ever-changing technological landscape.
April 2nd, 2019 by Brian Beeler
Supermicro SuperServer with Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory First Look Review
The Supermicro SuperServer 1029U-TN10RT is a 1U dual-processor complete system. Supermicro designed the SuperServer to address a slew of popular use cases like virtualization, databases, cloud computing and others that can benefit from high density compute power. The system has been updated to support second generation Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs and it's one of the first to ship with support for Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory Modules.
March 25th, 2019 by Marshall Gunnell
Synology DiskStation DS918+ Review
The DiskStation DS918+ is the newest edition of Synology’s 4-bay tower Plus Series NAS. This model offers four 3.5" bays in addition to two M.2 NVMe slots on the bottom for caching. Networking connectivity is provided through two 1GbE ports. The DS918+ designed for small and medium-sized businesses looking for a NAS that provides impressive performance. It also offers expandable storage capacity, allowing businesses the economical option of scaling as their business grows.
March 21st, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR570 Server Review
The Lenovo ThinkSystem SR570 is a 2-socket 1U server that can be used by the entire gamut of SMB to large enterprises. The server offers a balance of performance, memory, and storage. This balance leads to versatility allowing the SR570 to be used in a wide range of workloads, such as virtualization and cloud computing, infrastructure security, web serving, and application development. The SR570 is also a popular option for software-defined solutions, of which Lenovo supports many via their ThinkAgile platforms, that have a heavier reliance on compute density than storage footprint.
March 4th, 2019 by Brian Beeler
QNAP Qtier and SSD Cache Review
We review so many NAS systems that we rarely have time to explore all of the features available within these systems. From a QNAP perspective, they've been working to continue to enhance the ways flash can be taken advantage of within their systems. This is both in terms of aggressive hardware designs that allow for a ton of flash via 2.5" and/or M.2 slots, and within the NAS operating system itself (QNAP QTS). On the software side, QNAP offers two ways to accelerate NAS performance with SSDs. The first is their auto tiering mechanism dubbed Qtier, the second is via SSD cache. In this review we take a look at both options to illustrate the performance benefits of each technology.
March 1st, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
QSAN XCubeNAS XN8012R Review
In 2018, QSAN rolled out its XCubeNAS XN8000R series of next generation, high efficiency NAS products. The XN8000R series is aimed at SMBs that leverage enterprise applications. There are two types in this series, the QSAN XCubeNAS XN8008R and the QSAN XCubeNAS XN8012R. The last two digits, -08 and -12, are reflective of how many LFF bays (3.5") the NAS has. In this review we will be looking at the QSAN XCubeNAS XN8012R, with 12 front facing bays and 6 rear facing bays.
February 26th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 Review
The Dell EMC PowerEdge R840 is a 2U server and part of the company’s 14th generation of its server line. The R840 is a four-socket server that offers Intel Xeon Scalable processors for up to 112 cores. Users can leverage up to 24 direct attached NVMe drives as well as up to two double-wide GPUs or up to 2 FPGAs, and up to 48 DIMMs for a max of 6TB of memory (12 NVDIMMs can be used for a max of 384GB). This hardware is great for applications that need high-performance and for data analytics and other emerging compute-heavy workloads.
February 8th, 2019 by Adam Armstrong
Samsung 883 DCT SATA SSD Review
As Samsung updates its Data Center line of drives it is easy to get enamored by the fastest or largest drives that come along, namely NVMe drives. There is, however, still a large market for SATA interface drives. For this segment Samsung has released its new Samsung 883 DCT SATA SSD. The new drive is aimed at meeting the demands of server storage systems while giving the assurance of end-to-end data protection.
February 5th, 2019 by Kevin OBrien
In the Lab: Eaton 9PX Battery Replacement
There is nothing more certain in a datacenter than End of Life product management, where old equipment needs to be cycled out and replaced with newer hardware. This is especially true with battery backup systems, where the core component is generally a sealed lead acid (SLA) battery, which has a usable life between 3-5 years. While you can't rip out the guts of a server and make it "new" again, you can do just that with an enterprise battery backup system. In this In the Lab article, we replace the battery pack in an Eaton 9PX UPS that has been serving our lab for the past six years.
Read moreJanuary 25th, 2019 by StorageReview Enterprise Lab
Synology DS1819+ Review
Synology expanded their already-extensive portfolio back in November, 2018 with the 8-bay tower NAS, DS1819+. The DiskStation DS1819+, successor to the DS1817+, comes equipped with a Quad Core 2.1GHz CPU with an AES-NI hardware encryption engine, and 4GB DDR4 RAM with expansion capabilities up to 32GB. For businesses demanding a NAS with a large data storage capacity, the DS1819+ provides a maximum internal raw storage capacity of 112TB with expansion capabilities of up to 252TB when using two DX517 expansion units.