Inside
The My Cloud EX2 is powered by a Marvell Armada 370 running at 1.2 GHz. Other key components are summarized in Table 1 along with components for the other two My Clouds. Note there is no beeper for alerts.
| MY Cloud EX2 | My Cloud EX4 | My Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Marvell Armada 370 @ 1.2 GHz | Marvell Kirkwood 88F6282A1 @ 2.0 GHz (single-core) | Mindspeed Comcerto 2000 (M86261G-12) dual-core ARM @ 650 MHz |
| RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB DDR3 | 256 MB DDR3 |
| Flash | 128 MB | 256 MB | 512 MB |
| Ethernet | Marvell 88E1518 | Marvell 88E1518-NNB2 (x2) | Broadcom BCM54612E |
| SATA | In Armada 370 | Marvell 88SX7042 PCI-e 4-port SATA-II controller | In Comcerto SoC |
| USB 3.0 | NEC D720202 | Etron Tech EJ168A | In Comcerto SoC |
Table 1: Component summary
My Cloud relies on a cleverly-placed small internal fan for cooling. That's it in the photo below located at the bottom front of the chassis. This location helps mask airflow noise. Fan noise and noise from the WD Red 2TB (WD20EFRX) drives was rated as very low. It drew 13 Watts with its two factory-installed WD RED WD30EFRX 2 TB drives spun up and 5 W when the drive spun down after the programmed idle drive time.
WD My Cloud EX2 chassis with cover removed
For those of you who like the circuit board image, the photo below shows the component side of the PCB. Unlike the EX4, the Armada 370 processor, located in the middle of the board, has a heat sink.
WD My Cloud EX2 PCB component side
Features
The feature set for the EX2 is almost identical to what you find on the EX4. The information below originally appeared in the EX4 review, but I've updated it, as appropriate to reflect the EX2's features.
Features common to My Cloud / MY Cloud EX2 / My Cloud EX4:
- SMB/CIFS network filesystems
- AFP ( for Apple Time Machine)
- NFS (only to default Public mount)
- FTP server
- Apple Time Machine target
- UPnP Certified AV/DLNA 1.5 Media Server (Twonky 7)
- iTunes Server
- SmartWare for Windows bundled client backup application, unlimited licenses (local network). 3 licenses for SmartWare Pro also included (WD My Cloud) and 10 user licenses for EX2/EX4
- User level permissions (no groups, no quotas)
- HTTP web administration (no HTTPS)
- Email alerts (w/ built-in SMTP service for no-hassle setup)
- Remote access to shares via WDMycloud service
- WD Photos photo viewer app for iOS, and Android (requires WDmycloud service)
- My Cloud Mobile App for iOS, Android and Windows Phone
EX2/EX4 additional features:
- Single drive, Span, JBOD, RAID 0, 1 volumes. RAID 5 and 10 - EX4 only)
- RAID level expansion: JBOD to RAID 1 & 5; RAID 1 to 5 (EX 4 only)
- RAID auto-rebuild enable/disable
- Multiple volume support.
- Volume level encryption
- User groups and storage quotas
- WebDav support
- FTP server with max user, bandwidth, SSL/TLS and IP blocking
- DFS support
- Active Directory support
- ISO mounts
- Dual Ethernet LAN ports with jumbo frame, IPv6, link aggregation and failover (EX4 only)
- USB and Network UPS support
- Real-time resource monitoring (CPU, Memory, Network, Processes)
- Disk and system diagnostics
- Email and SMS notifications (built-in SNMP service)
- Backup to/from USB drive
- Network backup (only to other My Clouds)
- Internal drive-to-drive backup
- Cloud backup to Amazon S3 and ElephantDrive
- iSCSI targets
- iSCSI initiator
- HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent downloaders
- Web File viewer (Web browser) with upload / download
- Add-in Apps (aMule, IceCast, Joomla, phpBB, phpMyAdmin, SqueezeCenter, WordPress, Git, NZBGet, Transmission
- NFS, SMB2, LLTD, SNMP, SSH protocols
- Dynamic DNS (DynDNS.org, no-ip.DDNS, tzo.com)
Not supported:
- RAID expansion and level migration
- RAID auto-rebuild enable/disable
- Print server
The admin GUI for the My CLoud EX2 more closely resembles what you find in the My Cloud EX4. As compared to the original My Cloud (single drive), the UIs for both EX2 and EX4 reflect additional features such as iSCSI, RAID configurations and downloadable apps that weren't included in the original product. In addition, the multi-drive models both include a much more robust set of backup tools as compared to the whole volume "Snapshot" feature found on the single drive My Cloud. Jump to Tim's review of the EX4 for more details on the backup features.
The image below shows the landing page for the My Cloud EX2. I especially like the Network Activity and CPU/RAM monitor in the lower left corner - another new addition on the EX4 and EX2.
WD My Cloud EX2 home page
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