Low-Cost Network Area Storage Devices: Page 3 of 17

Most of the Snap Server's setup functions and network settings are simple, with only a couple of options under each setting in the system window. The real meat-and-potatoes settings are under the storage icon. A RAID wizard shows the available options for the number of disks you have, as well as a small explanation of each setting for novice storage administrators.

The rest of the menu lets you look at individual devices such as disks and locally attached tape drives. You can set up shares and quotas, manage RAID sets and volumes, and play with directory structures. The software also allows you to set up snapshots, which allow for quick point-in-time restores. There's a security tab to manage security for shares, users and groups, plus you can set up NIS security for Unix systems and attach the Snap Server 4500 to an Active Directory tree. Use the maintenance menu to set up and configure eTrust Antivirus, update the OS, reboot the server and perform other maintenance functions.

We found daily management of the Snap Server 4500 as easy as it could be without having someone else do it for us. Adding users and groups is simple, and shares management is fairly painless. You can also perform these functions within an Active Directory tree.

The Snap Server's performance beat every other product in this review, showing clear and consistent performance across all of our tests. Performance under CIFS was particularly good, but NFS performance held its own, too. (See "How We Tested Low-Cost NAS".)

This NAS device has a three-year, limited ship-in/carry-in warranty. Extended warranty and onsite service are available for an additional charge. Configured for our review with 1 TB of storage and 512 MB of RAM, the Snap Server 4500 has a price of $5,795, which calculates to $5.80 per gigabyte.