LaCie's 2big NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on May 28, 2012 7:55 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
- Storage
- NAS
- LaCie
We tested RAID-1 rebuild after removing the drive in the first slot. Physically, the unit was able to indicate operation in degraded mode by turning the LED light above the bay from blue to red. Also, the front light turned red. Unfortunately, the NAS webpage offered no indication of operation in degraded mode on the first page. However, the RAID Management page correctly indicated the RAID status and the affected disk bay. The option to set up a SMTP account (which can be used for email alerts) is also available.
| LaCie 2big NAS RAID-1 Volume Rebuild | |
| 2 x 3TB RAID-1 Rebuild after Single Hard Drive Failure | 06:02:35 |
The power consumed by the unit at the wall under various NAS operating modes is provided in the table below. 2-bay ARM-based NAS units from other vendors have a similar power consumption profile.
| LaCie 2big NAS (6 TB) Power Consumption | |
| Deep Sleep | 1.2 W |
| Idle | 7.7 W |
| 100% Writes (IOMeter) in RAID-1 | 22.3 W |
| RAID-1 Rebuild | 24.9 W |
In terms of price, the LaCie 2big NAS slots in between the Netgear Duo v2 and the Synology DS211+. The available features are in line with the pricing. While the Netgear model doesn't have official support for NFS or iSCSI (slated to appear in one of the upcoming firmware releases), the LaCie 2big NAS model supports them at launch. On the other hand, the DS211+ has 256 MB of DRAM extra, and is able to offer more features such as multiple iSCSI targets. These factors lead us to conclude that the LaCie 2big NAS model is not overpriced for its feature set. The performance of the unit is acceptable when the price is taken into account.
Towards the end of the testing process, we tried to check out how the unit would behave when starting in diskless mode. After removing the drives and removing the partitions by connecting them to a PC, we put the drives in the NAS and expected the unit to appear on the network. However, the 2big NAS behaves quite differently. LaCie has a quick install guide, but it just goes to show that the unit is not as user friendly as it can be. Basically, in diskless mode, the unit can't be accessed over the network (unlike other NASes we have evaluated).
LaCie definitely needs to work on augmenting the LaCie NAS OS 2 feature set. Hiding away the capabilities of the system (including the failure to provide SSH / root access for advanced users) under the pretext of maintaining the reliability and performance of the NAS doesn't count as an acceptable excuse. In addition, the hard drive temperatures and S.M.A.R.T. status don't seem to be available to the users.
We haven't touched upon the LaCie MyNAS app available for iOS. LaCie gives more attention to Apple users, which is understandable given their target market. An Android version would definitely help broaden the appeal of the 2big NAS.
In conclusion, the LaCie 2big NAS will keep their existing users happy and may tempt them to upgrade. However, for advanced users who want to extend their NAS's capabilities, the Netgear Duo v2 presents a cheaper option and the Synology DS2xx+ lineup offers more features for a higher price. That said, depending on the usage scenario, the industrial design and the acoustics might give the 2big NAS model an edge under certain circumstances.
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zzing123 - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
Apparently a lot of these SOHO NAS's begin to have problems when they fill up, due to both using the inner tracks of the HDD platters, as well as the CPU overhead from software RAID. Rather than benchmarking absolute performance at new, can you begin to see what performance is like with an 85% full drive after a tortuous series of production IO? The reason being is a lot of people are increasingly using these NAS's for iSCSI and this doesn't help matters.See here for more info: http://www.servethehome.com/cost-nas-boxes-perform...
Furthermore, while technologies such as bcache (http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&am... and BTRFS are nearing kernel inclusion, or even using an OpenIndiana based embedded OS to provide ZFS (like EON), I see very little from the NAS manufacturers that they are even considering these advanced filesystems and SSD tiering, except for Drobo who are wildly overpriced and underperformant.
ganeshts - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
Thanks for the note. We will keep this in mind for future NAS reviews.In fact, I tried to do something similar to expose QNAP's kernel problem [ http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=189&t=51... ], but left that effort hanging once QNAP owned up to the problem. Maybe it is time to work more on that aspect :)
guste - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
Ganesh, thanks for the great review. I was wondering if it's possible, next time can you pick colours for the graph that aren't so similar?JarredWalton - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
How's that?guste - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
Cheers, Jarred. Thanks kindly.ggathagan - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
It would be interesting to see if your list of desired features are present on the LaCie "Professional" products that use NAS OS 2.It may be that the focus for their non-"professional" devices is ease of use, as opposed to full features.
I think the review blurb LaCie uses on their web page for the 2big summarizes their target:
“...5/5 – this really is a well made, cool looking NAS that can do pretty much everything you need it to do. My only real problem with it is that I have to give it back!”
Like Apple, LaCie has always focused as much effort on the aesthetics of their products as they have the functionality. Also like Apple, I would expect that mindset to extend to how much of the inner workings of the OS are exposed to the user.
Math nitpick from the unpacking page:
"On the rear side, we have four square slots behind which the fan's exhaust pipe sits"
I see six.
GrizzledYoungMan - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
Some of my clients are those sorts of people (ie, Lacie customers). And man, it's crazy.They've all suffered a huge identity crisis in the last few years because Apple so clearly doesn't give a shit about its professional users anymore, abandoning FCP and eventually the desktop. Reflexively they want to keep buying Macs because hey, that's what 'creative' people do (never mind that they best pros I've met don't give a shit what type of computer they use). But logically they are running out of reasons to.
I predict mass suicides.
GrizzledYoungMan - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
I don't know if it's too pricey to make sense for your audience, but you all may want to check out Open-E's DSS V6 NAS software platform.It uses a heavily modified version of FreeBSD (I believe) and runs on a really wide variety of hardware, and provides nearly all of the failover, security and management features of those atomic powered high end enterprise NAS appliances for a fraction of the price (ie, thousands instead of tens of thousands).
I've installed a bunch of these things for clients ranging from SOHO (with heavy storage needs, like video) to SMB all the way up to legit mid-tier enterprise work. They take a bit more knowledge to install than, say, Drobo, but it's the kind of stuff that anyone who works with gray-box appliances routinely will be well versed in.
Coming from things like Windows Storage Server, Drobo, etc the performance is pretty amazing, you really feel like you're getting the most out of the hardware. With basic hardware (a modern low power Xeon mobo, LSI SAS RAID controller populated with 7200 rpm enterprise SATA drives) I routinely see wire speed on transfers from NAS to client machines over gig-e. In the small handful of installations I've done with 10 Gbe present, shit gets crazy.
Most importantly, I've never seen a client lose data thanks to trouble with the software and support from the company is incredible, to the point where they will write unique small patches for specific clients, regardless of size. Between the two, it feels solid like a rock, in a way that many NAS and SAN systems simply don't.
secretmanofagent - Monday, May 28, 2012 - link
I can't help but see the turret. If they make the blue light red, slap an Aperture Science on the side, and they'll get the geeks to swarm over it.sleepeeg3 - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - link
Probably the last product before they are swallowed by Seagate.