The ReadyNAS 3312 12 Bay Network Attached Storage is a high performance NAS ideal for a small office for file sharing, backup, HD streaming, virtualization, or disaster recovery. Enterprise features: 5 year hardware warranty is included, 24-hr replacement service, Serial number needed for coverage and customer telephone support. If you purchase the unit with drives, the drives are enterprise quality and also have 5 year hardware warranty. This is a rack-mounted hardware, comes with a variety of power plugs, has dual power supplies, and is just as noisy as any other enterprise-quality racked-mounted server.
ReadyNAS uses a BTRFS file system, a newer format for Linux systems, which supports up to sixteen times the data that Ext4 supports. Overall, the ReadyNAS OS is a good choice for hosting virtual machines. It also works as a target for Apple’s Time Machine. ReadyNAS OS 6 supports SMB protocol 3.0 by default, which works with Windows 2016+ and Linux. If you need support for older Windows 2012R2, you need to enable the less secure SMB 2.0 protocol. You can also enable NTFS support, if you want a basic CIF share. Supporting cameras requires the purchase of a Netgear ReadyNAS Surveillance licensing.
For a small backup project I used three 1TB drives. It auto-configured the best RAID based upon the number of drives it found–it decided to create a RAID5 from them, which seemed reasonable to me. So, in summary, I’d highly recommend this for a small business with file storage and virtual machine virtualization requirements. The hardware and the 5-year warranty rocks! But, for home usage, I’d lean towards Synology because of the wide variety of free third-party software support that ReadyNAS cannot match.
- Pricing and Availability on Amazon: NETGEAR ReadyNAS 3312 12 Bay Network Attached Storage
NOTE: I am an independent product reviewer–if I don’t like the product I say so, and if I do like the product I say so. If you end up purchasing something from a link on my site, I may receive, at no additional cost to you, a small commission. Thank you for your support!