Seagate's acquisition of LaCie in 2012 made quite a bit of sense as most of their product lines were complementary in nature. it was an ideal segment to target with the help of LaCie's expertise. The Seagate Business Storage 1U Rackmounts come in 4-bay and 8-bay varieties. The Business Storage lineup also includes 1-4 bay versions based on a Cavium chipset. There is also a 4-bay Windows Server. The Cavium-chipset based units as well as the Windows Server come in the desktop tower form factor, while the units based on LaCie's OS are all rackmounts.
The specifications of the Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay Rackmount
| Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay 32TB Rackmount (STDP32000100)Specifications | |||
| Processor | Intel Celeron G1610T (2C/2T @ 2.3 GHz) | ||
| RAM | 4 GB DDR3 ECC RAM | ||
| Drive Bays | 8x 3.5" SATA 6 Gbps HDD [ Populated with 8x ST4000NM033 Constellation® ES.3 SATA 6Gb/s 4-TB Hard Drives ] | ||
| Network Links | 2x 1 GbE | ||
| USB Slots | 3x USB 2.0 | ||
| eSATA Ports | None | ||
| Maximum Capacity | 8-bays | ||
| VGA / Console / HDMI | VGA | ||
| PSU | Redundant (2x) 250W | ||
Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology
| Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay 32TB Testbed Configuration | |
| Motherboard | Asus Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA2011 SSI-EEB |
| CPU | 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630L |
| Coolers | 2 x Dynatron R17 |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL (8x8GB) CAS 10-10-10-30 |
| OS Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Secondary Drive | OCZ Technology Vertex 4 128GB |
| Tertiary Drive | OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid (1TB HDD + 100GB NAND) |
| Other Drives | 12 x OCZ Technology Vertex 4 64GB (Offline in the Host OS) |
| Network Cards | 6 x Intel ESA I-340 Quad-GbE Port Network Adapter |
| Chassis | SilverStoneTek Raven RV03 |
| PSU | SilverStoneTek Strider Plus Gold Evoluion 850W |
| OS | Windows Server 2008 R2 |
| Network Switch | Netgear ProSafe GSM7352S-200 |
The OS on the unit (Seagate NAS OS) is an evolved version of the LaCie NAS OS that we evaluated in the 5big NAS Pro review. The UI is more streamlined, but some features (such as encryption support and volume expansion above 12 TB) have been cut. Starting the unit in diskless mode involves booting the unit with the rescue USB key inserted. This results in the unit getting a DHCP address, after which the setup process can be completed via the web interface.Most of the OS features are similar to the LaCie NAS OS. The unit comes with support for the secure Wuala Cloud Storage. Available drive configurations include 8TB (4x2TB), 12TB (4x3TB), 16TB (4x4TB) and 24TB (8x3TB). In order to accommodate 8 hot-swappable drives, the unit adopts a sliding tray design with the front part of the top cover capable of being propped open. The eight bays are laid out flat in two rows.
Users can be added (along with an optional e-mail address for Wuala / hybrid cloud access). Shares can be set up with restricted access protocols. For example, a share can be configured to be accessible only over NFS and not SMB. The OS also features an in-built download client which supports BitTorrent, as well as direct HTTP / FTP downloads. Backup jobs can be configured through a front-end for rsync. It is also possible to set up the NAS to act as a rsync destination for other compatible clients (the backups go to a default Net Backup directory). One of the nice features in NAS OS is the ability to restrict access protocols to particular network links. Seagate also provides a dynamic DNS service for accessing the unit over the Internet. It requires forwarding of ports 80 and 443 for HTTP and HTTPS respectively. This service is available only on the primary LAN port. Power management (including scheduled power on and off times as well as hard disk sleep configuration) and monitoring features (CPU, chassis fans, S.M.A.R.T etc.) are present in the OS.
Single Client Performance - CIFS and iSCSI on Windows
The single client CIFS performance of the Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay Rackmount was evaluated on the Windows platforms using Intel NASPT. All data for the robocopy benchmark on the client side was put in a RAM disk (created using OSFMount) to ensure that the client's storage system shortcomings wouldn't affect the benchmark results. It must be noted that all the shares / iSCSI LUNs are created in a RAID-5 volume.
Encryption Support
The Seagate NAS unit, unfortunately, doesn't have native encryption support. Even though the Celeron G1610T doesn't support AES-NI, software-based enryption would have definitely yielded better results compared to what is obtained from Atom-based units. In any case, Seagate believes that using SEDs (Self-Encrypting Drives) for the disks would be a better option for customers with no impact at all to the NAS performance. Even though none of the SEDs are currently in the public compatibility list, Seagate says they do support them
| Seagate Business Storage 8-Bay - Linux Client Performance (MBps) | ||
| IOZone Test | CIFS | NFS |
| Init Write | 67 | 68 |
| Re-Write | 68 | 65 |
| Read | 26 | 103 |
| Re-Read | 25 | 102 |
| Random Read | 16 | 45 |
| Random Write | 65 | 65 |
| Backward Read | 15 | 36 |
| Record Re-Write | 660 | 671 |
| Stride Read | 24 | 76 |
| File Write | 65 | 67 |
| File Re-Write | 65 | 68 |
| File Read | 18 | 74 |
| File Re-Read | 18 | 72 |
| Seagate STDP32000100 RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration | Avg. Power Consumption |
| Deep Sleep (WOL Supported) | N/A | 7.32 W |
| Idle (Diskless) | N/A | 36.21 W |
| 4TB Single Disk Initialization | N/A | 45.14 W |
| 4TB JBOD to 4TB RAID-1 (1 to 2 Disks) | 11h 42m 49s | 54.41 W |
| 4TB RAID-1 to 8TB RAID-5 (2 to 3 Disks) | 1d 2h 44m 18s | 63.83 W |
| 8TB RAID-5 to 12TB RAID-5 (3 to 4 Disks) | 1d 3h 13m 41s | 74.53 W |
| 28TB RAID-5 (8 Disks) Initialization | 13h 39m 30s | 122.72 W |
| 28TB RAID-5 Rebuild (Replace 1 of 8 Disks) | 18h 56m 40s | 119.47 W |
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