Broadberry CyberStore 316S DSS-R2 review

All drives were preconfigured in a single RAID6 array, so we went straight to the main web interface to create our volumes. Each array is termed a volume group, and within these you create your logical volumes and decide whether they should be NAS, iSCSI or Fibre Channel volumes.

Here, you can enable volume replication or mirroring to another Open-E appliance. NAS shares can also be set as WORM volumes. Snapshots for point-in-time backups are available too. Once a snapshot has been created, it can be scheduled to run at regular intervals. Any type of volume can be expanded on-the-fly, where you choose one from the Volume Manager window and enter the capacity you want to add.

The appliance can run its own jobs, where selected volumes are secured to a local NAS volume or a tape drive. Full, incremental and differential backups are available; jobs can be run to a schedule; and Open-E also offers embedded agents for Backup Exec and ARCserve. Retrospect virus scanning is provided: ClamAV is loaded on the appliance.

IP SAN configuration is a simple process: choose this option during volume creation, enter a size for each target, and enable CHAP authentication if required. Lists of blocked or allowed IP address can be applied, and a valuable feature is iSCSI failover since two physical adapters can be bound into a single virtual adapter.

To test performance over 10GbE we used a Dell PowerEdge R310 with a 2.67GHz X3450 Xeon, 16GB of DDR3, an Intel 10GbE adapter, and Windows Server 2008 R2. With everything hooked up via a Netgear GSM7328S switch, we timed drag-and-drop copies of a 6.3GB data sample to a NAS share, which returned fast read and write rates of 449MB/sec and 341MB/sec.

We made the share available to FTP users, and FileZilla recorded top read and write speeds of 510MB/sec and 398MB/sec. IP SAN performance was even more impressive, with copies to and from a 200GB target averaging 520MB/sec and 472MB/sec.

The CyberStore 316S DSS-R2 combines an impressive range of storage features with incredible expansion potential and top performance. With support as standard for NAS, IP SANs and Fibre Channel SANs, you have a complete, unified storage solution – and it’s extremely affordable to boot.