Asustor Lockerstor 2 Gen 2 AS6702T review

Greatest Costs At present: Asustor Lockerstore 2 Gen 2 AS6702T

$459.00

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Asustor, a subsidiary of Asus has been creating some enticing NAS drives for some time, and it frequently revamps the product line.

We’ve beforehand coated the Lockerstor 4 AS6604T, a superb four-bay NAS, and now it has prolonged that collection with a ‘Gen 2’ launch that includes an upgraded platform.

As a substitute of the Lockerstor 4 model, this evaluation covers the dual-drive Lockerstor 2 mannequin, the AS6702T. Whereas this machine resembles the earlier AS6602T from the surface, internally, this can be a utterly totally different answer.

Design & Construct

• Identical design
• Spring-loaded bays
• Different areas are tougher to achieve

On the surface, the AS6702T hasn’t modified in any respect from the AS6602T, and because it doesn’t carry another label than ‘LOCKERSTOR’, you may simply confuse them.

These wanting so as to add arduous drives and energy the unit up ought to have this machine up and operating shortly for the reason that drive trays come out with a spring-loaded launch. It’s disappointing that screws are used to carry the drives in place, each 3.5- and a pair of.5in sorts, as many different NAS makers have toolless trays.

Much more ironic is that the M.2 slots don’t require a screwdriver to fill, as plastic clips maintain the modules in place.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

In the event you want to set up extra reminiscence or NVMe M.2 modules, then the AS6702T will have to be disassembled to some extent. The M.2 slots are accessible by eradicating three screws and the outer case cowl, however accessing the SODIMM slots requires briefly eradicating the motherboard. It seems from the proprietor’s guide that on the AS6704T four-bay variant, this isn’t obligatory, however it’s on the AS6702T.

With the ability to entry these extra simply could be good, however most customers gained’t be doing this greater than a handful of instances over the lifetime of the machine.

As a NAS, the AS6702T is a practical design that avoids the temptations of being over-engineered, and all of the ports are straightforward to entry and clearly labeled. It’s as well-made as a lot of the Synology desktop NAS and comparable with the higher QNAP NAS choices.

Specs & Options

• New Intel Celeron processor
• House for as much as 4 M.2 NVMe drives
• USB 3.2 Gen 2
• HDMI 2.0

To raised perceive the AS6702T, it’s price turning the clock again to its predecessor, the AS5602T, and analysing what has modified. It’s price noting from the outset that the Gen 2 design isn’t a small overhaul.

What they share is identical dimension enclosure, twin drive bays, and a 65W AC energy adapter.

The place the 6602T used an Intel Celeron J4125, a Lake Gemini refresh design from 2019, the AS6702T makes use of the Jasper Lake cored Celeron N5105 from 2021. These are each four-core and four-thread CPUs, however the N5105 is made with the higher 10nm fab and never the previous 14nm one used within the J4125.

The commerce right here is that the N5105 makes use of about 25% extra energy however has greater clock speeds and a extra highly effective GPU. The chipset that goes with these newer processors is presumably extra vital than the CPU, permitting for sooner reminiscence, extra PCIe bandwidth (3.0 over 2.0) and extra PCIe lanes.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

The bandwidth out there to the system has elevated sufficient to take 4 M.2 NVMe drives, double that of the earlier design, and the USB ports at the moment are 3.2 Gen 2.

That final characteristic is critical. Whereas there at the moment are solely two USB ports, they’re now able to 10Gbps, making them considerably higher than the eSATA ports that Synology is caught utilizing for exterior growth.

Once you mix these NVMe caching prospects and the twin 2.5GbE LAN ports, the AS6702T is a strong system, even when it seems to be modest outdoors.

With the GPU within the N5105, it is usually appropriately specified for 4K transcoding, and with HDMI 2.0 out there, it could actually output media on to an acceptable show.

General, this new platform is roughly 35% sooner than the one it replaces, and with options just like the USB-c connections and the 4 M.2 slots, it’s simpler to use that energy inside.

Nonetheless, there may be one essential limitation that, when addressed, will make the AS6702T even higher.

Presently, in case you cable each 2.5GbE LAN ports to an acceptable aggregating change, it’s potential to get near 600MB/s of studying velocity and 500Mb/s of write efficiency to the NAS. However, not one linked host can get all that bandwidth, as it’s over two channels which can be stored separate.

Mark Pickavance

If two host programs are accessing the NAS, the overall efficiency can add as much as bigger numbers, however one can solely get the total velocity of a single 2.5GbE LAN.

The answer is named SMB Multi-channel, and this characteristic remains to be thought-about ‘experimental’ beneath Samba 4.4.0. It’s not a characteristic lively by default, even on the ADM 4.1 launch on this NAS. It’s potential for these with command-line expertise to make it lively, although some customers have skilled knowledge loss previously.

The ultimate particular characteristic, additionally on its predecessor, is an HDMI port. On this mannequin, that is HDMI 2.0 specification. Asustor has a unique interface for the HDMI out referred to as Asustor Portal, and there are particular apps designed to interface to this for output. When you have the NAS close to a TV, this is a wonderful strategy to output from Plex instantly.

Software program & Apps

• ADM 4.1 OS
• Spectacular collection of apps
• Use M.2 drives as storage or cache

Low cost NAS usually have a poorly thought-about OS with a small collection of authorized functions, however Asustor has a really spectacular app choice and a fairly mature platform for them to run on.

What I particularly favored about this model of Linux is that M.2 modules will be configured as each typical storage and as cache, and with 4 slots out there, they will even use RAID.

Mark Pickavance / Foundry

Nonetheless, it must be talked about that Asustor has not too long ago had one thing of a PR nightmare with the safety mannequin of ADM. Particularly, a Deadbolt ransomware assault in February 2022 focused Asustor NAS utilizing the EZ-Join mechanism to achieve entry and entry.

QNAP and, extra not too long ago, TerraMaster NAS have additionally been attacked with the identical ransomware, so that is one thing that many individuals who personal these units have encountered.

Asustor has launched updates designed to plug these holes on ADM and assist affected customers get well their programs, however encrypted recordsdata can’t be unencrypted, sadly.

The one NAS maker not broadly impacted by this exercise to this point is Synology, however contemplating how profitable these felony endeavours are, there aren’t any ensures.

Value & Availability

The Asustor Lockerstor 2 Gen 2 AS6702T retails for $459/£469 making it about $60 greater than the AS6602T it replaces.

You should purchase it from Amazon, Amazon US and Newegg.

Evaluating this machine to the market chief, Synology, is troublesome as they don’t make a dual-drive NAS with each NVMe and HDMI out. The DS720+ excludes the HDMI out port, has a a lot older CPU, much less RAM and solely two NVMe slots, and prices about £420 within the UK.

It does have an eSATA port for growth, however the USB on that machine is USB 3.2 Gen 1, and you’ll solely use the NVMe slots for caching, circuitously as volumes.

Till new dual-drive fashions come from Synology, the AS6702T doesn’t have a lot opposition within the high-performance small NAS slice of the market.

Examine our chart of the greatest NAS drives to see extra choices.

Verdict

That Asustor has extra enthusiastically embraced 2.5GbE networking, and NVMe storage on this design than Synology has in its merchandise speaks volumes about its ambitions on this sector.

There’s a delicate stability between the parts right here that demonstrates that these designing these machines use them frequently and perceive the place the efficiency pinch factors exist.

With solely two 3.5in drive bays, the pondering behind the AS6702T is that the proprietor ought to use one very massive or two, if price range permits drives, utilizing the 10Gb USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports to create resilience with an in a single day backup to an exterior drive. The NVMe slots maintain the move of information to and from the machine lubricated or supreme for a particular smaller quantity for dwell backups.

The hyperlink aggregated 2.5GbE ports permits for recordsdata to journey neatly to and from the NAS, and when SMB Multi-channel is prepared for everybody, a single person with twin community ports could possibly be transferring near 500MB/s between the PC and this NAS. Although, this efficiency would require NVMe caching or SSD volumes.

Amongst all the nice issues, there are a couple of hiccups. It’s troublesome to dismantle the machine to put in reminiscence and NVMe drives, however this can be a job you might be doubtless solely to carry out as soon as.

The one actual challenge right here is the worth, and given the characteristic set, this stage of outlay is to be anticipated.

Specs

• Quad-Core Intel Celeron N5105 2.0 GHz – 2.9 GHz turbo
• 4GB DDR4-2933 SO-DIMM (max. 16GB, 8GB x2)
• 2x 3.5in or 2.5in SATA HDD/SSD and 4x M.2 NVMe 2280 (drives not included)
• Raid Modes: Single, JBOD, RAID 0/1
• Networking: 2x 2.5GbE LAN port
• Networking Protocols: CIFS/SMB, SMB 2.0/3.0, AFP, NFS, FTP (Unicode Supported), TFTP, WebDAV, Rsync, SSH, SFTP, iSCSI/IP-SAN, HTTP, HTTPS, Proxy, SNMP, Syslog
• USB ports: 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (one entrance and rear)
• OS: ADM 4.1
• OS Languages: Deutsch, English, Français, Italiano, Nederlands, Русский, 日本語, 한글, 简体中文, 繁体中文, Česká, Polski, Svenska, Dansk, Norsk, Suomi, Português, Türkçe, Español, Magyar
• Inner drive codecs: EXT4, BTRFS
• Dimension (HxWxD): 163.5 x 108 x 230mm
• Guarantee: 3 years