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  • Review: WD Sentinel DS6100 Storage Plus Server

Review: WD Sentinel DS6100 Storage Plus Server

Jon Tullett
By Jon Tullett, Editor: News analysis
Johannesburg, 13 Dec 2013
The DS6100 is a well-featured server appliance aimed at SMEs.
The DS6100 is a well-featured server appliance aimed at SMEs.

The DS6100 is part of Western Digital's push into full-blown server appliances in its Sentinel range, rather than the network attached storage (NAS) appliances you may be familiar with.

Where the latter have been criticised for a narrow focus and older Microsoft operating systems, the DS6100 is a very different proposition, offering a complete server package with up-to-date software and some very appealing hardware.

SME server-in-a-box

The DS6100 is aimed primarily at SMEs or branch offices for larger enterprises, offering a server-in-a-box, which has enough hardware resilience to survive common failures in an office-friendly form factor. Like the company's other appliances, it runs Windows Server, in this case 2012 R2 Essentials - the version designed for SMEs.

I'm always a little sceptical of storage appliances running Windows Server, for three reasons. Firstly, they have the unavoidable extra licence cost for Windows, which, in an appliance, is only really worth it if you're using Windows-specific capabilities. Second, because they're usually presenting only a subset of the OS features, you're paying for a full server - more than a full server, because of the extra appliance engineering - without getting all the advantages. And lastly, since Microsoft is itself working hard to make Windows Server more SME-friendly, with the Essentials SKU and lots of simplified interfaces, the added value of making the appliance user-friendly is being eroded. Can the DS6100 overcome these obstacles? In a word, yes.

The DS6100 is not really an appliance at all - it's a small server, with some appliance goodness on top, like the front-facing LCD panel showing status messages and the preconfigured hardware. And unlike the storage appliances running Windows Server 2008 data centre edition, the DS6100 is up to date with Windows Server 2012 R2, offering the full gamut of virtualisation, storage space, cloud integration and the rest. Essentials does have some limitations, but an SME is unlikely to bump against them.

Its obvious use case is as a storage server, and, in fact, the company even calls it a "storage plus server", managing shares, providing remote access, handling cloud synchronisation and running backups. And in that role, it will perform just fine, but it will also step up as a domain controller, or to handle (lightweight) server applications or even as a small Web server.

Software

The software needs very little introduction - Western Digital doesn't add much to the server (and they could - there is plenty of scope for added value or partnerships). It's Windows Server, and it does what Windows Server does. My only concern is that, being a locked-down appliance, you can't upgrade the CPU, RAM or OS disk, so some users may hit a performance ceiling sooner than they need to.

Initial config is basically identical to setting up WS2012 R2 Essentials on a whitebox server, requiring domain configuration and so on. It takes longer than the storage appliances of old, and despite Microsoft's efforts to simplify its interfaces, non-tech-savvy SME types will come unstuck pretty fast - the hard drives aren't even configured, for example. This is definitely more suited to deployment by an IT manager or support contractor. But if you're at all familiar with Windows Server, creating storage spaces or RAID arrays is a snap.

In summary

Pros: Small, neat, and fully functional Windows Server
Cons: Not suited for non-tech-savvy SMEs
Configuration: Intel Xeon 2.5GHz CPU, 2x 4TB WD HDD, 16GB RAM, hardware RAID
Ports: 2x power, 2x 100GB Ethernet, 2x USB 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, IPMI
Price: $3 440 (SA price not yet available)
Rating: 8/10

The DS6100 comes in a variety of configurations. The unit we tested had an Intel Xeon 2.5GHz processor, 16GB of RAM, and a pair of 4TB WD enterprise-class drives. All that is crammed into a tiny chassis, measuring just 22x20x17cm. Part of that svelte footprint is because the PSUs are DC, with external adapters. The unit runs quiet, but despite the DC power (ie fanless power supplies), the server is not as quiet as I'd like. Sitting on a desk next to a multimedia PC, a 2kVA UPS, and an HP Microserver, the DS6100 is noticeably the noisiest member of the team, but even so, it is still far quieter than a full-size server.

Hardware

The hardware, in particular its redundancy, is the major selling point of the DS6100. The server provides dual power supplies, dual NICs, and the drive bays are hotswappable, both key advantages over my usual baseline for comparison, the HP N54L, which offers neither. Dual power is nice but not critical in an SME, I feel - if you have a power outage, both supplies will fail, and if you're on a UPS, you don't need the second supply. Since the power is DC, the risk of a supply failing because of fan problems, as is common in a hot, dusty country like SA, is minimised. If, like me, you've seen servers downed by overenthusiastic cleaning staff plugging in a vacuum cleaner despite the "DO NOT UNPLUG ME" sign, you'll welcome this redundancy.

Hotplug drive bays are very useful, and show the vendor's storage roots - Western Digital's value proposition usually starts with RAID and backup, and the DS is no different. This is a box designed to offer robust storage in a newbie-friendly package, and it ticks all the boxes necessary to do so. The drive bays don't require caddies to hold the drives, and yanking out a drive results in a red LED, a LCD status warning, and the usual OS alerts, but storage operations continue unabated.

Redundant NICs is also a useful touch, since not only can that provide tolerance for cable damage, it also opens the box up to dual-homed network applications like Web filtering and proxying.

Around the back, the DS offers four USB 3 ports for external storage, an IPMI port that no SME customer will ever use, and no eSATA, which is a bit disappointing, but iSCSI support is a plus.

Performance and pricing

[REVIEW]In practice, with a handful of real users and a collection of simulated users running file operations, we barely made the box sweat. If anything, it's probably slightly overspecced for its target audience, so concerns over the lack of upgradability fall away. In particular, internal operations like backup jobs ran very fast for a box of this size, and RAID updates after drive failure also took place commendably fast.

Local retail pricing is not confirmed, but if it follows standard local mark-ups, the US list price of $3 440 means you probably won't get much change from R50 000, if you're lucky. So the DS6100 may look pricy on the face of it, but that's actually not unrealistic given what you're getting. Yes, you can configure a bare-bones server for a lot less, but hitting the same performance and fault tolerance, and the Windows licence, will put you in the same ballpark. And while there's scope for Western Digital to add software value on top, the package as it stands is well worth considering for many smaller environments.

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