IronWolf Intelligence: The Always Changing Software of a NAS

  • Seagate IronWolf — Adapt to Your Environment

The Always Changing Software of a NAS, from an Owner’s Perspective

Owning a NAS for home for the past 6 years has been very interesting. I had a Synology DS209 and over the course of the years, I replaced it with a DS713+ a 2-bay NAS. What’s interesting is the fact on how much the software has changed over the time of ownership.

IronWolf for Home and SOHO NASWhen I originally owned the NAS in 2009 it was in the user interface stage of being very “90’s-like” and looked very similar to an old Linksys router user interface. It looked a bit stale, and it did the basic necessities it was made for: file sharing, back up, and remote access. There were tons of features included also on top, but I originally used it for backing up my PC gaming system at the time, and some file sharing. Over the years, the firmware itself evolved into more of an operating system. Going along with several trends in the market, the OS of the NAS system changed to being more of a private cloud — I can access it for all my media content on the go. I can literally stream TBs of music to my iPhone 5 and it can also be a storage target within my network that can be found by my PlayStation. This meant I can enjoy music on the go, and have hundreds of movies at home streamed through my PlayStation.

In the present, with so many changes to the software, I still use my NAS for everything it was originally intended for, but now I have three other people accessing it remotely from different states, and I use it to host WordPress for my personal blog. With the always-changing software of NAS, there’s one very important key component to keep in mind, to make sure it’s always on, always accessible, and reliable — to achieve what a NAS needs to act as a server.

IronWolf. Tough, Ready, and Scalable.

The other “half” of a NAS is extremely important. It’s not the processor, it’s not the RAM, or even the power supply. The other half of a NAS is the hard drive. Servers provide for several different use-case scenarios, such as home, small business to even a huge enterprise. The hard drive is the companion of a NAS. Sort of like a duo: if one lacks, the other has to pick up for its slack.

Like a NAS, the hard drive needs to handle the current demands and trends of the storage market. Introducing IronWolf a tough, ready, and scalable hard drive that meets the ever changing needs of NAS enclosures.

AgileArray Firmware — The soul of IronWolf, being able to stay agile and keen on what the NAS needs to meet the storage demand for its users. AgileArray allows for the drive to be NAS-optimized and built for 24×7. IronWolf’s AgileArray firmware focuses on three areas for the NAS enclosure – disk balance, RAID optimization and advanced power management.

Disk Balance — Dual-plane balancing with built in rotational vibration (RV) sensors that mitigate any vibration in a multi-bay drive environment. In return you get consistent performance and reliability from the drive.

RAID Optimization — For the best performance possible, and has error recovery control to maintain better data integrity. If the NAS is being used for serving video media, IronWolf is tuned for video streaming for increased performance.

Power management. — IronWolf’s advanced power management allows saving power during your NAS’s low-processing times, and delivers power when you need it the most.

IronWolf Multi-User TechnologyDo more. The IronWolf and NAS duo with multi-user technology

IronWolf delivers the performance and long life to handle the NAS and its multiple users at once. With multi-user technology IronWolf and the NAS make an awesome duo by having 180TB/year user workload rate. Meaning you can go further with the NAS enclosure with your data by pushing more data out of it with IronWolf. This is essential for creative professionals and businesses that handle a lot of data.

The Power of Agility for Everything NAS.

What sets each NAS vendor apart is its software. The software is only going to get more robust to meet the current storage trends of today and tomorrow. With the constant changes, IronWolf and NAS enclosures make the ideal solution together because of AgileArray. I will continue to use my NAS as the main media server for my house. However for creative pros, and businesses they can go even further with their NAS knowing that IronWolf is equipped with AgileArray and multi-user technology allowing them to do more with their storage.

2018-02-09T10:48:24+00:00

About the Author:

Jason Bonoan
Jason Bonoan is a product marketing expert in Video and Analytics Storage Solutions at Seagate.