With the AS-7004T, Asustor presents a NAS which aims at demanding home users or small businesses. By using an Intel i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual Core, the AS-7004T promises to be very fast and the use of a Linux kernel grants enormous flexibility regarding the configuration options. Furthermore Asustor implemented their own App store, which lets you install additional apps with a simple click.
The AS7004T is an absolute High-End-NAS, which is suitable for the use at home or in a SoHo environment. This unit has been equipped with an Intel i3 processor and 2 Gigabyte memory, which is by far more than enough power for the application environment mentioned. Apart from that you could even upgrade this unit with more memory if you wish to make it even punchier.
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Preview
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Specifications
| Processor |
Intel i3-4330
3.5GHz Dual
Core |
| RAM |
2 GB SO-DIMM DDR3
(expandable to 16 GB) |
| HDD Capacity |
2.5/3.5" SATA
II/III
HDD or SSD x 4 |
| HDD Trays |
4 x hot-swappable and lockable trays |
| LAN Ports |
2 x Gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet port (1000BaseT) |
| LED Indicators |
Status, LAN, USB, eSATA, Power, HDD 1-4 |
| USB |
3 x USB 3.0
2 x USB 2.0
Support USB printer, disk, pen drive, USB hub, and USB UPS etc. |
| eSATA |
2 x eSATA port |
| Audio
Output |
S/PDIF |
| Video
Output |
HDMI 1.4 |
| LCD Panel |
Yes |
| Alarm Buzzer |
System warning |
| Dimensions |
230(D) x 170(W) x 185.5(H) mm |
| Weight |
3.90 kg |
| Sound Level (dB) |
w/o HDD installed: 21.3 dB
In operation: 36.8 dB (with 4 x HDD installed) |
| Power Supply |
Input: 110-240V AC, 50/60Hz, Output: 250W |
| Power Consumption |
Sleep: 1.4 Watt
In Operation: 34 Watt (with 4 x HDD installed) |
| Fan |
1 x 120 mm |
Software and Features
| Operating System |
- ADM2.0 Onwards
- Built-in App Central for various Apps
|
| Supported OS |
- Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, Server 2003, Server 2008, Server 2012
- Mac OS X 10.6 Onwards
- UNIX, Linux, and BSD
|
| Supported Browsers |
- Internet Explorer 9 Onwards
- FireFox
- Chrome
- Safari
|
| Virtualization |
- VMware ready
- Citrix ready
|
| Networking Protocols |
- CIFS/SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, WebDAV, Rsync, SSH, SFTP, iSCSI, HTTP,
HTTPS, SMB 2.0*, TFTP*, Proxy*
*ADM 2.3 Onwards
|
| Storage Managment |
- Support Multiple Volumes with spare Disks
- Volume Type: Single disk, JBOS, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10
- Support for online RAID level migration
- Support for online RAID Capacity Expansion
|
| Network |
- TCP/IP (IPv4 & IPv6)
- Link Aggregation: Supports 802.3an and Six Other Modes for Load balancing and/or Network Failover
- Jumbo Frame (MTU)
- VLAN
- Clouad Connect
- Wirless Network
- DDNS and EZ-Router
- Supports Wake-on-Lan
|
| Backup Solutions |
- Rsync (Remote Sync) Backup
- Cloud Backup
- FTP Backup
- External Backzp
- One Touch Backup
|
| Security |
- AES 256-Bit Folder Encryption
- Firewall: Prevent Unauthorized Access
- Network Defender
- Alert Notifications
- Encrypted Connections
|
| External Devices |
- Supports USB/eSATA3 External Storage Devices
- USB Wi-Fi Dongle Support
- Bluetooth Dongle/Speaker Support
- USB Printer Support
- USB DAC/IR Recivier/Keyboard/Mouse Support
|
| Disk Management |
- Scheduled Bad Block Scans
- Scheduled S.M.A.T Scans
|
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Delivery
- 1 yx AS7004T
- 1 x Power cord
- 1 x CD-ROM
- 2 x Ethernet Ethernet cable
- 16 x Flat Head (for 3.5" HDD)Screws
- 16 x Flat Head (for 2.5" HDD)Screws
The AS7004T comes with all what is necessary for proper setup and operation.
The hard drive bays can easily be removed thanks to the hot-swap system used. The perforated bottom plate is there for efficient heat dissipation and the disks themselves can be installed securely using four screws.
Mounted to the back of the casing there is a fan which measures
120 millimeter in diameter. It's operating noise is subjectively
very silent but it still moves plenty of air to keep the hard
drives as well as the other components cool.
A closer look at Asustor's hardware choice shows that they
equipped the AS7004T with an Intel i3-4330 Dual Core CPU which runs
at 3.5GHz. The CPU receives cooling fro a passive aluminum heatsinks which gets support from the 120 millimeter fan. Furthermore there is
2 Gigabyte memory, which is
expandable to a maximum of 16 Gigabyte using the seocnd memory slot, which can be found on the backside of the motherboard. Out of the box this NAS offers a lot of performance and should you choose to upgrade the memory it could even run virtualized environments. Turing the device around shows two network interfaces, which can be combined for teaming or fail over redundancy purposes, either further boosting performance or increasing reliability. Furthermore there are three USB 3.0 ports, one in the front to have easier
access. Apart from that there are also two additional USB 2.0 ports. There even are two eSATA ports to attach more drives or external hard drive cages.
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Setup
Using the Control Center Software you can set
the very basic parameters like reset, shutdown, sleep or connecting via FTP for the AS7004T unit to make sure that you'll
definitely find the device in your home or small business network. Once this has
been done you can go to the web administration panel to do the detailled
configuration.
Webinterface
The web interface looks very modern and sleek and it's very easy to use. You can find your way around intuitively and there is always well structured overview regarding allt he features offered with the
AS7004T. The web interface works like a breeze in all tested browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer). The system features an extensive user administration. Various protocols for storage and networking can be easily activated by the click of a button, including iSCSI, which - as an example - could be an important factor in small and medium-sized businesses.
Since the AS7004T comes with numerous settings, there's a search engine, which works perfectly and quickly leads to the desired configuration tab or app.
Overall the AS7004T leaves a solid impression and everything works as advertised.
We very much liked Asustor's App concept. By the click of a button you can
install apps or services. It doesn't matter if you're looking for CMS,
a Wiki, a Download Center, ... There is an impressive amount of App's to
choose from and the one's we've tested, worked perfectly fine. The same goes for the the one click backup and restore option. Apart from that there are features like an activity monitor which provides insight on usage of the device. Once again we
were surprise how easy it was to work with this product.
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Test setup
| CPU |
Intel Core i7-4770K |
| Motherboard |
ASUS Maximus VII Hero |
| RAM |
16 GB |
| Graphics card |
Geforce GTX 980 |
| SSD |
SanDisk Extreme 240 Gigabyte |
| Ethernet Controller |
Intel onboard |
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Test Results
Crystal Disk Mark
| ALL 1000MB |
Read MB/s |
Write MB/s |
| Seq |
105.6 |
112.1 |
| 512K |
102.8 |
110.1 |
| 4K |
68.4 |
42.33 |
| 4K QD32 |
112.7 |
113.7 |
ATTO Disk Benchmark - Total Length 256MB
| Transfer Size KB |
Read MB/s |
Write MB/s |
| 0.5 |
6.86 |
6.68 |
| 1.0 |
9.98 |
13.91 |
| 2.0 |
21.69 |
20.38 |
| 4.0 |
44.17 |
39.84 |
| 8.0 |
77.65 |
72.53 |
| 16.0 |
93.00 |
115.68 |
| 32.0 |
117.13 |
114.83 |
| 64.0 |
117.65 |
117.38 |
| 128.0 |
117.66 |
118.70 |
| 256.0 |
116.87 |
118.71 |
| 512.0 |
116.95 |
118.78 |
| 1024.0 |
116.96 |
118.79 |
| 2048.0 |
117.48 |
118.78 |
| 4096.0 |
117.50 |
118.53 |
| 8192.0 |
117.73 |
118.56 |
Anvil's Storage Utilities 1.1.0
| Test Size 1000MB |
Resp. time ms |
MB Read |
IOPS |
MB/s |
| Seq 4MB |
16.00 |
2'000 |
62.48 |
249.9 |
| 4K |
0.203 |
240.5 |
4'924 |
19.24 |
| 4K QD4 |
0.237 |
824.0 |
16'875 |
65.92 |
| 4K QD16 |
0.480 |
1'625 |
33'287 |
130.0 |
| 32K |
0.316 |
1'483 |
3'162 |
98.82 |
| 128K |
0.700 |
2'678 |
1'427 |
178.4 |
| Test Size 1000MB |
Resp. time ms |
MB Written |
IOPS |
MB/s |
| Seq 4MB |
56.37 |
1'024 |
17.74 |
70.96 |
| 4K |
0.072 |
539.6 |
13'810 |
53.95 |
| 4K QD4 |
0.243 |
640.0 |
16'445 |
64.24 |
| 4K QD16 |
0.887 |
641.0 |
18'033 |
70.44 |
Intel NAS Performance Toolkit 1.7.1
| HD Video Playback |
100.3 |
| 2 x HD Video Playback |
111.6 |
| 4 x HD Video Playback |
118.4 |
| HD Video Recording |
138.1 |
| HD Video Playback & Recording |
104.8 |
| Photo Album |
29.40 |
| Content Creation |
17.10 |
| Office Productivity |
64.70 |
| File Copy to NAS |
134.0 |
| File Copy from NAS |
89.70 |
| Directory Copy to NAS |
20.10 |
| Directory Copy from NAS |
23.70 |
Power consumption / Noise level
| Sleep Mode |
2 Watt |
| Idle |
52 Watt |
| Load |
69 Watt |
| |
less is better |
| Sleep Mode |
32.3 dBA |
| Idle |
33.7 dBA |
| Load |
36.3 dBA |
| |
less is better |
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Conclusion
The Asustor AS7004T is an extremely powerful and versatile Network Attached Storage
system. Basically the
AS7004T is a normal PC with a socketed Intel i3-4330 CPU and 2GB of memory. means there is a lot of performance to perform network tasks. It's for example absolutely no problem for this device to provide data to several clients accessing the NAS simultaneously.
Furthermore this NAS is easily capable of hitting the bandwidth limitations set by the Gigabit
Ethernet interfaces. Taking a closer look at sequential throughputs quickly shows that this is no challenge for th AS7004T.
Since the AS7004T runs on a modified Linux-based system, many features from known
Linux distributions are available. An example is SSH access (Secure Shell) which
is set up in a breeze. Furthermore, it's also piece of cake to set up a secure
firewall. Apart form that we want to point out again that there are countless apps available, which can be installed by a simple click. Asustor even managed to shoehorn all this into an
easy and efficient web interface. Furthermore you see that the manufacturer has
been thinking a lot about how to make it easy, even for beginners to setup this
device. Their App concept for example is simply great and it's hard to find an
easier way to install additional software or services on a NAS.
If you are looking for an efficient and extremely
versatile NAS, with enough power for basically everything a NAS must do, we
highly recommend the Asustor AS7004T. Furthermore we want to underline how easy
to use this unit is.
The Asustor AS7004T is available in Switzerland
for about CHF 721 and in Geizhals for about 1050 Euro
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