With the release of the Netgear ReadyNAS RR4360X 4U 60-bay 10GbE rackmount NAS, Netgear is positioning itself to take advantage of the trend toward denser disk storage platforms. Whereas a few years ago 6x 3.5″ per U would be considered a dense configuration. With disks being relegated to low cost per TB/ low-performance storage tiers, getting denser configurations has become a priority. We are now seeing 48-60 3.5″ drives per 4U in standard configurations with 100 drives in extremely dense configurations. Netgear’s offering is groundbreaking insofar as it is the first 60 drive enclosure meant for SMB customers.

Netgear ReadyNAS RR4360X Positioning

Starting off, Netgear is blowing away other solutions in terms of price. The Netgear ReadyNAS RR4360X is being sold with a MSRP of $9,999. Using today’s 10TB drives the Netgear ReadyNAS RR4360X can handle 600TB in 4U. What that means is that the total cost to get a drive in the storage system and on the network is only about $167 per drive. Compared to a Netgear ReadyNAS RR4312X we reviewed with 12 drives for $4,399 MSRP or around $367/ drive bay, the initial value proposition is obvious. Furthermore, one saves on rack space with the dense storage chassis which can save thousands per year, lowering operational costs.

Adding additional expansion chassis it can service a total of 132 drives for up to 1.32PB. When you consider how much storage large surveillance installations (e.g. at a large warehouse or industrial yard) can consume as well as ever-expanding backups and media files, this amount of storage is now demanded by some in the SMB sector.

Key Hardware Specs of the Netgear ReadyNAS RR4360X 4U 60-bay 10GbE NAS

Here are the key hardware specs of the new Netgear platform directly from the press release:

The ReadyNAS 4360X keeps up with the demands of high workload virtualization and applications with a high-performance architecture powered by an Intel Xeon E3-1225v5 Quad Core 3.3GHz Processor, along with 16GB of DDR4 with ECC expandable to 64GB. The ReadyNAS 4360X is equipped with four 1GBase-T ports and two 10Gbase-T ports.

The ReadyNAS 4360X keeps up with the demands of high workload virtualization and applications with a high-performance architecture powered by an Intel® Xeon® E3-1225v5 Quad Core 3.3GHz Processor, along with 16GB of DDR4 with ECC expandable to 64GB. The ReadyNAS 4360X is equipped with four 1GBase-T ports and two 10 gigabit per second network interfaces, either 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) copper (RR4360X model) or 10 Gigabit SFP+ (RR4360S model). ReadyNAS 4360X is housed in a space-efficient rackmount 4U chassis offering SAS or SATAIII selectable hard disk drives.

ReadyNAS 4360X is housed in a space-efficient rackmount 4U chassis offering SAS or SATAIII selectable hard disk drive interface for all 60 bays to enable IT managers to optimize cost and performance. Its three built-in SAS interfaces can connect to three ReadyNAS EDA2000 12-bay or EDA4000 24-bay expansion chassis. Fully loaded, ReadyNAS 4360X offers a 132-bay single node network storage solution for any business demanding ultra-high capacity and reliability. Supporting 1.32 PB of data, it is the first such solution on the market designed for the SMB to offer this level of density.

The new ReadyNAS 4U 60-bay 10GbE Rackmount Network Storage (RR4360X) will become available worldwide on March 20, at an MSRP of $9,999 for both the ReadyNAS 4360X with two 10GBase-T ports and the ReadyNAS 4360S with two SFP+ ports.