New 4-Bay NAS and Digital Media Server From Promise

Promise Technology, Inc. announced the availability of the SmartStor NS4600 next-generation high performance network attached storage and digital media server for home, SOHO and small business.

The SmartStor NS4600 boasts support for up to 4 SATA 3G hard drives (not included) and is built on Intel’s EP80579 processor running at 600 MHZ, includes 256MB of DDRII memory, 1 Ethernet, 2 USB 2.0 Ports and 1 eSATA Port. With jumbo frames disabled consumers and end-users can expect sequential write performance to average in the mid 30’s (MB/s) and sequential read performance to average in the mid 40’s (MB/s).

The SmartStor NS4600 features a new ultra sleek aesthetic design with blue LEDs and no power supply fan. The internal power supply has been removed and replaced with an external power adapter that snaps into the bottom of the SmartStor NS4600 and is secured by a removable door. The SmartStor NS4600 is one of the quietest 4 drive network attached storage devices on the market today.

The SmartStor NS4600 packs tons of features under its slick design such as support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 0+1 which is accompanied by high performance over Gigabit Ethernet. As with the SmartStor NS4300N and NS2300N, Promise Technology continues its comprehensive protocol support with AFP, DLNA, CIFS, FTP, NFS, NTP and SMB protocols which allows customers to use a number of operating systems including Apple Mac OS X, Microsoft’s Windows, Linux and Unix. Other features include Active Directory integration, support for Apple’s Bonjour technology, download station, file sharing over Internet, Hot-plug, NAS to NAS Replication, One Click Configuration, one touch backup, snapshot, true hot-swap, remote access media center, scheduled backup, user quota management, wake-on-LAN and Web server.

"Connected home and small office users are demanding more intelligent and versatile storage solutions at cost effective prices," said Seth Bobroff, general manager, Intel Server Platforms Group, Storage. "The Intel EP80579 processor enables Promise to deliver a high performance, energy efficient network attached storage solution with rich multimedia and small business features to help customers more easily share, protect and manage the huge growth of digital content."

Digital Living Network Alliance
DLNA is the standard for connecting consumer electronics devices in the home. Consumers can build their digital home around the SmartStor NS4600 by utilizing the SmartStor’s DLNA capabilities to stream music, pictures and video in the home. As DLNA certified digital media server consumers can stream digital content from the SmartStor NS4600 using the hottest DLNA certified devices in the market such as Sony’s Playstation 3, Samsung’s 750 & 850 Series DLNA LCD TV, Sony’s Bravia Z-Series DLNA LCD TV, Pioneer Elite Kuro DLNA Plasma and much more. Consumers can also stream digital content using Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

"The Digital Living Network Alliance is firmly positioned to deliver the ultimate in connected devices allowing consumers to connect, explore and stream content in the digital home via digital media players such as Sony’s Playstation 3, Digital Media Servers, Mobile Devices, DLNA TV’s, online providers and much more," said Billy Harrison, Promise Technology’s Product Manager for CE Products – NAS and DAS.

Digital media server with video playback Support – The SmartStor NAS family is the first network attached storage – digital media server in the market to support streaming with video playback support. Music, movies, music videos and TV shows purchased from the iTunes Store can be stored on the SmartStor NS4600 for playback using any of the consumer’s 5 authorized computers. Consumers can also store the digital copy of movies that are included with DVD and Blu-ray disks on the SmartStor NS4600 and stream at their leisure.

"Consumers have amassed a great deal of digital content in the home and need solutions that allow them to share content in the home without jumping through hoops," said Billy Harrison, Promise Technology’s Product Manager for CE Products – NAS and DAS.

Time Machine for Mac OS X
With the launch of the SmartStor NS4600, Mac users have the ability to easily backup multiple Macs via the home or office network to the SmartStor NS4600.

Remote Access Media Center
Access music, pictures and videos remotely from anywhere in the world via the SmartStor NS4600’s Remote Access Media Center. The remote access media center is built on PHP and HTML allowing access from any device with a web browser and media player such as the iPhone, iPod touch, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Blackberry, Nokia N Series Phones, Macs and Windows PC.

Green NAS
The SmartStor NS4600 consumes a great deal less power than its predecessor and supports hard drive disk spin-down and also Wake-on-LAN. In standby mode the SmartStor NS4600 consumes a mere 6.6w and consumes an extremely modest 51w under full load. "Rising costs are everywhere and energy is no exception therefore consumers and business owners need to saving money whenever possible. There is a huge difference in power consumption between the SmartStor NS4600 and your typical entry level file and storage server packed with a 300w power supply," said Chi Chen, Senior VP of Promise’s Network Storage and Solutions Group.

NAS to NAS Replication
With disaster around every corner small businesses ‘must’ protect their backups. NAS to NAS replications allows the IT admin to ‘replicate’ data on one SmartStor NS4600 to another SmartStor NS4600. This process can be facilitated over Internet, LAN or VPN leaving the IT administrator in total control of the archival process. Allowing IT administrators to replicate data from one SmartStor NS4600 to another SmartStor NS4600 is the ultimate in piece of mind.

Pricing and Availability
SmartStor NS4600 will be available in early June. The SmartStor NS4600 will retail for 499.00 MSRP through distribution channels, DMRs, eCommerce stores, retail stores, system integrators and VARs in North America, APAC region, Europe, Japan, South America, New Zealand and Australia.