NAS Reviews

Features

This bulleted feature summary below provides a bit more feature set detail.

Storage

• Network file sharing via SMB/CIFS, NFS, AFP
• WebDAV support
• Windows DFS support
• HTTP / HTTPS file and admin access
• FTP, SFTP and TFTP servers
• JBOD, RAID 0, 5, 10 volumes *See note below
• iSCSI targets with ISNS support
• EXT4 filesystem

Backup

• Network Backup: Schedulable (smallest interval is one day) to / from rsync targets and SMB/CIFS shares
• Apple Time Machine backup
• Auto file copy from PTP-enabled digital cameras

Media

• Recording and viewing of up to 16 IP cameras [supported models] via MindTree SecureMind (1 camera license included)
• AXIS Video Hosting System support
• UPnP AV / DLNA media server (Twonky Media)
• Photo slideshow
• iTunes server
• BitTorrent downloader
• Auto upload to Flickr
• Auto upload to Facebook

Cloud

• Secure Web-based remote access and site-to-site backup (Personal Cloud)
• Amazon S3, Mozy, EMC Avamar, EMC Atmos cloud backup

Other

• Dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces with VLAN and failover modes
• SNMP support
• Joins NT Domain / Active Directories for account information
• Compatible with Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, VMware VSphere ESX5 iSCSI and NAS, XenServer™, 5.5, 5.6 (w/ MPIO), iSCSI & NFS
• User level quotas
• Email alerts
• Logging
• File upload via Bluetooth
• USB printer serving
• UPS shutdown synchronization via USB

Iomega hasn't tweaked the OS since our last look at the px2-300d. The apps haven't changed, but here they all are in the All Features screenshot below.

All Features

Volume configuration is fairly unsophisticated compared to other RAID 5 NASes. First, there is no RAID level migration or expansion. If you want to do either, you need to delete the existing volume. Once you choose a RAID 5 or 10 volume, you'll need to wait a long time while it syncs. Full RAID 10 sync of the 8 TB review sample took 10 hours and 45 minutes!

The Drive Management screenshot below shows the volume creation options. Note the absence of drive select checkboxes and no RAID 1 option. So you can't create multiple RAID 1 or 0 volumes, nor can you create a three-drive RAID 5 volume with a spare drive. The None option actually creates a single JBOD volume with all four drives. The default for write caching is Enabled with UPS as shown, but you can also select Always enabled and Always disabled.

All Features

I found you can acutally create a RAID 1 volume, by pulling two drives. But you can't create two RAID 1 volumes or a mix of RAID 0 and 1. No matter how many drives you put in, you can create only one volume.

A few other competitive weaknesses remain including:

• You can limit access to shares by user and/or group. But you can't control access by service. So you can't shut off FTP access to certain shares, for example
• No iSCSI encryption or authentication and no target multiple connects
• No IPv6 support
• Unlike px-series NASes, the ix4 doesn't support volume or folder encryption.

If you want more screenshots of the ix4's features, check the ix2-dl review gallery.