Internal Details

I wasn't able to completely disassemble the 200rl, so didn't run down all of the component details. However, Iogear's spec sheet says that the CPU is an Intel Celeron D 352 @ 3.2GHz, there is 512 MB of DDR2 non-ECC memory and the Ethernet port is via an Intel PRO 10/100/1000. While jumbo frames are supported, Iomega has chosen to support 9K frames only. The drives installed were Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 series (7200 RPM, 3 Gb/s SATA).

Figure 2: Iomega 200rl board detail

I counted a total of six fans in the 200rl (three inside, two back panel and one in the power supply). The result is that the 200rl screams like a jet taxiing for takeoff when first booted, then settles down to an annoyingly loud level. It's so loud that I banished it to a back room during testing since the noise level made it hard to concentrate and was tiring, as well. I can't imagine a server room full of these; the noise would be horrendous.

When the unit is running it draws around 100 Watts, which is higher than both the Linksys NSS4000 (55W) and Thecus 1U4500 (86W). There are no power saving features, so if you're looking for an Eco-friendly NAS, you'd better move along.

Feature Highlights

Most of the admin screens are described in the slideshow, so I won't repeat the info here. I'll just concentrate on the highlights (and annoyances, of course) and include links to the appropriate slideshow pages.

Note that there is no online help. I found the HTML-format User's Manual difficult to use, but I'm not much of a fan of that documentation format anyway. At least there is a built-in Search feature.

Figure 3 shows the initial Home screen displayed after logging in. Like too many other NASes, you won't find RAID array status or alerts here. For that, you need to drill down into the Disk Management or System Status pages. It's also surprising that, in a product intended for business use, there is not a secure (HTTPS) admin access option.

Figure 3: Home Screen

Home subsections include:

• Basic - Contains NTP, Timezone and Interface language (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) settings. You also can set the admin password (none by default) and enable user quotas.
• Event Log [screenshot] - Entries are brief and there is no syslog support. New entries are added to the bottom of the log, but email alert tests are written to the top of the log.
• Alerts - Emailed alerts support username / password authentication and optional SSL connection and SMTP port setting. The "From" address is in the form of NASadmin@Iom200rl- plus the last six charaters of the 200rl's MAC address. I was able to receive alerts in my Yahoo mail account, but the odd From address never made it past my Postini email filtering, despite my whitelisting it. Up to three addressees are supported.
• System Status [screenshot] - RAID array status is shown here. Oddly, this is also where you upgrade firmware.
• UPS Monitor - The 200rl will work with any UPS that uses the usbhid-ups driver to gracefully shut down before the battery runs out. These include the APC Back-UPS Pro USB, Back-UPS USB, Back-UPS RS, Back-UPS LS USB, Back-UPS ES/CyberFort 350, Back-UPS BF500 and Smart-UPS USB.
  

User, Group Management - Nothing unusual in user and group creation. The User Edit screen is shown in Figure 4. You just move shares among the boxes to set permissions. Group creation is also simple and uses a similar format.

You can also join a Windows NT or Active Directory domain for user authentication. Those settings are in the Network > Windows Setup screen.

Figure 4: User edit screen

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