asustor AS3102T NAS Review
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asustor AS3102T NAS Review
NAS are evolving faster than many segments of the computing world. Today, there are more NAS makers than you can shake a stick at, and all of them are on a mission to produce a product that will find its home in yours. asustor is no stranger to the market, and they have been quietly making some of the best NAS available today. While doing so, they have been keeping the costs down, the features rich, and the evolution moving forward. Recently, ASUSTOR launched their AS3102T 2-bay NAS with 4K capabilities and a Celeron processor, but will it be enough to capture our attention and deliver results that you, the consumer, are looking for?
Many of the NAS manufacturers have ditched the ARM platform and have migrated to more mainstream processing engines. asustor has followed suit and has been producing NAS with various Intel CPUS for as long as I can remember. This latest generation of NAS by asustor,the AS3102T has the Celeron Braswell processor at the core of its central processing. Many of us wouldn’t typically consider a Celeron as the CPU for our desktop or mobile CPU, NAS has much fewer requirements and has the benefit of a structured and limited operating system that can use these processors very efficiently.
To get basics out of the way, the AS3102T has a Celeron 1.6GHz Dual-Core CPU at its heart, 2GB of DDR3L memory, 3 x USB 3.0 ports, 1 x GbE port, 1 HDMI 1.4b port, a 70mm cooling fan, an Infrared Reciever, and 2 x HDD bays. Both bays are internal and can support 8TB drives, making the total capacity 16GB (unformatted) in RAID 0.
asustor bills the AS3102T as a “Powerful and Economical NAS Featuring 4K Multimedia Playback and Hardware Encryption.” Some of the finer points on the product’s page are:
Powered by the latest Intel Celeron processors
Local HDMI multimedia output (4K, 1080P and high-definition multi-channel audio)
Hand screw design for toolless installation
Stylish diamond-plate finished cover design
Equipped with hardware transcoding engine
asustor claims that their system is capable of delivering speeds of up to 110MB/s read and 112MB/s write with a RAID 1 configuration. Their test configuration will be detailed with the product benchmarks and our test bed configuration.
Touting multimedia capabilities, the 4K compatibility of the AS3102T means that many consumers can have this NAS direct connected to their home theater. Given, many of us will run a system through a receiver, those that are new to home theater or are looking for a simple solution can find peace with its simplicity. The HDMI interface and abundance of multimedia applications availble on the NAS allow home users to take advantage of the things many of us HTPC enthusiasts have been doing for years. The NAS supports FULL HD output
The NAS supports FULL HD (2160p) output and can run KODI. The AS3102T also supports 5.1 and 7.1 multi-channel audio immersing the viewer in a field of sound that puts them right into the action. Team this NAS up with an IR remote and you have a home theater system in a box.
At first glance, the AS3102T is a very sleek and compact unit. The front of the NAS doesn’t have much to it. There aren’t any LED screens presenting information about what is going on; there aren’t any removable disk trays or even any fancy colors. The NAS is designed to exist without drawing much attention to it. However, if it is noticed, it isn’t an eyesore.
The front has a diamond-plate sort of modern design to it. The asustor logo is prominently displayed on the upper right-hand corner, the left panel features a power LED, a system status LED, a Network LED, and an HDD LED. Just below them you will find the Infrared Reciever and a single USB 3.0 port.
Around back you find two thumb screws, 2 x USB 3.0 ports, HDMI Port, Ethernet Port, a cooling fan, and a power button. The thumb screws are the only thing holding the case to the chassis and must be removed in order to install your hard drives.
Sides and bottom are uneventful.
The AS3102T is built on a simpler platform than many of the asustor models. This NAS features a toolless installation that requires the NAS to be opened for drives to be installed. If you are an old timer, like me, you will remember the old Dell clamshell designs. This is similar, without the hinges.
The two thumbscrews in the back are the key to everything. The screws are small but are easy enough to maneuver. If your Jimmy Deans are unable to grab and turn, there is the Phillips Head backup plan in place.
Once opened, the internal structure is on full display. There really isn’t much to this NAS. A cooling fan rests directly behind your drive cage to keep them cool, and the system board sits right behind. The system board isn’t all that exciting. There are no fancy blinking “Open for business” signs present.
Drives are installed using provided thumb screws, the same screws we found on the back of the unit. There isn’t much space to play with as this unit is quite compact. I don’t normally make it a habit of outfitting every screw when testing, but the metal cage provided enough vibration to cause concern, once every anchor point was used, vibrations were gone. For those that consider this unit, make sure you fully anchor your drives.
The board sports a passively cooled CPU, Celeron Braswell 1.6GHz Dual-Core CPU. The CPU is strong enough for NAS activity and can burst to 2.16GHz. The N3050 sports 2MB of L2 Cache, can support up to 8GB of RAM (no ECC), Intel HD Graphics, and can support Virtualization.
System information is handled by iTE IT8728F. “The IT8728F is a highly integrated Super I/O using the Low Pin Count Interface. It provides the most commonly used legacy Super I/O functionality plus the latest Environment Control initiatives, including H/W Monitor and Fan Speed Controller. The device’s LPC interface complies with Intel “LPC Interface””
Gigabit Ethernet is courtesy of Broadcom BCM57781, Ethernet NIC NetXtreme.
Around back, the board is outfitted with 2GB of RAM, Samsung K4B2G1646Q-BYK0. The RAM is DDR3L-1333 (9-9-9).
ADM 2.4, the ASUSTOR Data Master Operating System, is a sleek and robust Linux-based operating system. The interface has been upgraded and navigation is as easy as using an iPhone. The OS is standard across the entire ASUSTOR lineup. Simplicity? Yes. Multitasking? Yes. Looks good? Yes. Bloated? No way. With the advanced web IU, you can rearrange settings, create pages based on your usage preferences, and even change the background image. You can run multiple applications without having to commit to those changes and lose everything; the applications can be minimized, moved, or closed.
The administration, out of the box, is broken up into several different “apps” that reside on the desktop. The apps are logically defined and it is easy to figure out what does what without requiring a manual.
Access control is where your users, groups, app privileges, and shared folders reside. Users can be added with just a few clicks and groups can be assigned just as easily to make administrating access to shared folders easy. Shared Folders can be created and added in no time at all and allows for advanced user access permissions.
The activity monitor presents everything you need to know about what your NAS is doing in a very slick way. The percentage of each CPU (core) is displayed graphically, as well as memory, network activity, disk usage, and running processes.
Backup & Restore is everything the name describes. You can create RSYNC jobs, FTP Backup jobs, configure backup to external devices, configure the One Touch Backup, backup to Cloud (currently only supports Amazon S3), and the ability to export and import your backup settings. In addition to backing up your NAS, you can export or schedule an export of your NAS configuration.
File explorer is as self-descriptive as can be. You can view and manage documents easily. With the cloud services ASUSTOR builds into the NAS, you also have the ability to create a public share for any specific document quickly to allow someone from the outside to download. Beyond that, compression is built-in (zip or 7z!); just right-click on a file and choose.
Settings is home to the basic configuration of your NAS. You can configure system ports, regional options, enable notifications, restore to factory default, configure networking, modify energy-saving features, and more. The hardware subsection allows you to configure things like LED indicators, buzzers, HDD power down settings, and customize the LCD panel.
General: General Settings are very basic. You can change things like the ports for NAS operation, import an SSL certificate, configure auto logout timers, and change the style of the Sign In Page.
Network: Under Network you can change the Hostname of your NAS, define which Ethernet Port will be configured for the Default Gateway, identify your DNS Server for IPv4 and IPv6, configure Link Aggregation (this NAS has only a single Ethernet Port), Set the IP address of your NAS as well as MTU, VLAN, and define your Proxy information if you are using one. If you have a Wi-Fi adapter installed, you can configure the wireless networking.
VPN: VPN allows you to configure your NAS as a VPN client via PPTP or OpenVPN.
Regional Options: Regional Options is your standard Date & Time, Time Zone, and language
Hardware: Hardware allows you to configure thinks like LED brightness, buzzer sounds, disabling or enabling the reset button, Disk Hibernation and Sleep Mode, EuP, Power outage settings, Wake-on-Lan, Power Scheduling, and Fan control.
Notifications: You can send notifications (up to 20 senders) to email or SMS, configure your NAS as a Notifications Recipient, and configure Push Notifications for iOS and Android Devices.
ADM Defender: ADM defender is a very basic firewall that can ban specific IP addresses or ban them based on failed login attempts. Whitelisting, Blacklisting, etc.
ADM Update: ADM update allows you to check for and install any software updates available for your system.
Network Recycle Bin: The Network Recycle bin acts as a supplemental insurance policy. If a file is deleted accidentally from your NAS, you can retrieve it from the network recycle bin. Here, you can enable, or disable it for CIFS/SAMBA, AFP, FTP, and File Explorer.
Energy Saver: Energy saver will allow you to configure your NASs energy efficiency. You can use ASUSTOR’s recommended settings for disk standby (internal and / or external), Fan control, WOL, or customize your own.
Ease of Access: Ease of Access presents you with ASUSTOR’s Cloud Connect service, EZ-Router, and DDNS.
Factory Default: Here you can reset your NAS to NEW
Registration: Registration is required for the App store.
Storage manager is all things storage. Creating volumes and managing them happens here. You can have a bird’s-eye view of your entire storage platform or peek into individual disk’s S.M.A.R.T. Info. Disk Doctor is there to perform an instant or scheduled Bad Block Scan or S.M.A.R.T. Scan. You can also create and manage all aspects of an iSCSI target or LUN, including port.
App Central is your home for functionality expansion. Here you can find a ton of apps that can add functionality to your ASUSTOR NAS. There are a TON to choose from and the list grows constantly. Apps are broken down into categories:
Services is home to all things related to network services. The menu breaks down logically:
ASUSTOR Portal is the application that displays when your NAS is direct connected through HDMI to a TV or monitor. This portal is customizable and can display many informational bits about your NAS.
System Information is a means to discover some basic information about your NAS. ADM version, BIOS, Model, CPU, Memory, Serial Number, etc.
The test environment asustor used to obtain their speed claim numbers include a client PC with the following Specifications:
CPU – Intel Core i7-2600 3.40GHz
HDD – Intel SSD 530 128GB * 4 [RAID0]
Network – Intel Gigabit CT Desktop Adapter [MTU 1500]
Switch – DLink DSG-1210-16
The NAS was configured as such:
HDD – Intel SSD 520 128GB * 4
Network – 1Gbps Ethernet, MTU 1500
Switch – DLink DSG-1210-16
It is a given that using your NAS should be easy, and it is also a given that your NAS should perform well in serving up your files. After all, this is basically what the devices is intended for. To benchmark the NAS, we run synthetic benchmarks as well as benchmark some real world activities. Testing is conducted by configuring the N2560 PRO in both RAID 0 and RAID 1.
NAS Benchmarking Hardware & Methodology details hardware used & methodology for conducting benchmarks.
To see how this NAS compares to others, please visit our NAS Benchmarking Database
For testing the large file transfer speed of the NAS, we transfer a 46.6GB Blu-Ray ISO (Avatar) from the workstation to the NAS and back five times. We pipe the transfer speeds during the benchmark to a .csv file for charting. For more on our Avatar Benchmark please see our Benchmarking application: COD Benchmarking Utility
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For testing the transfer speed of the NAS with smaller files, we use the same method as the Avatar test but instead create two hundred individual MP3’s of specific file sizes for repeatable results. The files are copied from the workstation to the NAS and back 5 times. We pipe the transfer speeds during the benchmark to a .csv file for charting.
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For testing the large file transfer speed of the NAS, we transfer a 2GB file from the workstation to the NAS and back five times. We pipe the transfer speeds during the benchmark to a .csv file for charting.
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For further benchmarking, we test each NAS using Intel’s NAS Performance Toolkit to rate 2 key areas of NAS performance. We measure File Copy speeds to and from the NAS and the Directory Copy speeds to and from the NAS. System RAM is set to 2048MB of RAM to ensure there is no mem caching for transfers.
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For benchmarking the performance of iSCSI, we created an iSCSI connection to the NAS and benchmark the NAS using Intel’s IOMeter. IOMeter has to be one of the most widely used software packages for benchmarking disks. There are an endless number of ways you can build a benchmark, but we chose to limit our benchmarking to 100 percent Sequential Read and Write then 100 percent Random Read and Write. You can emulate our benchmarking by using the following configuration
‘size % of size % reads % writes % sequential % random delay burst align reply 2,097,152 100 100 0 100 0 0 1 0 0 2,097,152 100 0 100 100 0 0 1 0 0 2,097,152 100 100 0 0 100 0 1 0 0 2,097,152 100 0 100 0 100 0 1 0 0
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The AS3102T is a great little NAS. It looks the part and offers some great features. Many NAS in this price range are crippled with features but asustor keeps their message consistent. ADM is a refined and robust operating environment that gives users great flexibility and easy administration. Weighing in at right around $260.00 USD, it isn’t the cheapest NAS on the block, but it still offers some great value.
Having all the features plus 4K playback on a NAS device is the biggest check mark in the list of pros for the AS3102T. Unfortunately, direct playback on a NAS device isn’t something I feel is a buying decision. It is more like a bonus. Luckily, the AS3102T delivers on all things NAS. Delivering our second and third highest scores in our 2-bay avatar and the top honors for our 2GB transfer tests, this little guy is a speedster. We were able to come close to asustor’s speed claims even while working with older hardware. That means a lot more than you think.
Serving up data is what you get a NAS for, all the other stuff you can do, like run Kodi, are nice to have, but ultimately end up going unused for the most part. The folks I talk to are looking for brand integrity and value for their money. The AS3102T delivers on both, making it a nice addition to the asustor family. Leave the media playback to the XBOX One, the PS4, the HTPC, FireTV, etc. NAS, you just be you and love it.
Almost forgot… would I buy one? Yes.
NAS are evolving faster than many segments of the computing world. Today, there are more NAS makers than you can shake a stick at, and all of them are on a mission to produce a product that will find its home in yours. asustor is no stranger to the market, and…
asustor AS3102T NAS Review
asustor AS3102T NAS Review
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