Features

• High Availability (HA) 
  For the first time, your data is completely free of delays in access. Regardless of the situation, HA actively keeps your data on two separate, identical NAS. If one needs maintenance, the other will dutifully rise to the occasion without as much as a blip in service. Whether rain, shine, or Armageddon, your data will always be there.

• Volume Expansion
  Thecus Dynamic Volume Expansion is a key solution for enterprises and heavy data users who require large amounts of storage with the option of easy growth. By incorporating a 10GbE switch, businesses have the flexibility to add up to eight target devices in a single NAS stack.

• Daisy Chaining
  With daisy chaining, users now have the ability to cost effectively increase their storage volume while maintaining fast transfers. To set up a daisy chain, one master NAS unit is installed as a controller with up to four DAS linked as slaves. SAS cables are then used to link the units together in order to ensure rapid speeds. The ability to reach tremendous capacities while saving nearly 30% on hardware costs (versus traditional storage architecture) is something truly groundbreaking in the industry.

• SATA III and SAS 6G
  SATA III and SAS 6G for Ultra-Fast Transfer Speeds Select Thecus NAS now support internal hard drives with SATA III and SAS 6G interfaces which feature top-of-the-line transfers speeds of up to an amazing 6 Gbit/s! They are also backwards-compatible with SATA II drives, so your old disks can still be swapped in and out without a hitch.

• PLEX Media Center
  The Plex Media Server is both the heart and brains for any digital media system. The free server is a module available on the Thecus® App Center that allows you to set up and manage your media. With the Plex Media Server installed on your Thecus® NAS, various devices on your network (such as your Xbox 360 and mobile devices) can connect to and stream your local and online media.

• Snapshot Backup
  With BTRFS support, Thecus NAS users can enjoy the simplicity of snapshot backups. Through BTRFS subvolumes, snapshots of data at various time points can be manually or automatically made and just as easily later restored to rollback files or folders to previous states.

  • Disk Clone and Wipe
    Disk Clone allows users to copy the entire contents of a disk to one or many other disks while Disk Wipe allows for permanent volume data destruction.

    • VPN Server
      A VPN Server allows users to remotely access a secure network.  with VPNs, businesses will be able to utilize a cost-effective, scalable and secured network infrastructure for its client base.

    • 10GbE Ready
      High-end data centers often need a level of speed that today’s average Internet cannot provide. This Thecus NAS is 10Gb Ethernet ready to satisfy the toughest needs of today and tomorrow.
       

    • USB 3.0 Connectivity 
      The next generation of connectivity is here with speeds 10x faster than USB 2.0. Whether connecting digital cameras and smart phones, backing up large external hard drives, or extending the capacity of your NAS, USB 3.0 will make sure it's done in no time at up to 5 Gbit/s. Backwards compatibility adds the connectivity of a world full of USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 devices to get the best combination of speed and universal access.

    • Acronis True Image
      Thecus brings the best to the table with Acronis’s advanced backup software. Back up all your data with One-click Protection or pick and choose only your most important files. Acronis sports a slick interface, user-friendly design, and comprehensive features to keep your data safe.

    • Dual DOM
      A Disk On Module (DOM) contains all of the system's critical software. If it stops working for any reason, your system firmware could be inaccessible - or worse. With Thecus®' unique Dual DOM (OS Redundancy) design, a secondary DOM automatically reprograms the primary DOM if it fails, meaning your data is always safe and accessible.

    • Multiple RAID 
      When it comes to data management, Thecus NAS truly let you have it your way. Create multiple RAID volumes each supporting different RAID modes including RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10,50, 60 and JBOD for your own balance of performance and data protection. Should a hard drive malfunction occur, changing one is simple thanks to online RAID migration and expansion, hot spare, and auto rebuild.

    • Multiple File Systems
      Support for multiple file systems including Ext3, EXT4, Btrfs  and XFS, gives Thecus NAS flexibility to handle many different types of environments. Users can simultaneously use different file systems across multiple RAID volumes to get the best of each one.
       

    • iSCSI Thin-Provisioning
      Get the most out of your storage space with the extreme speed of iSCSI and the efficiency of iSCSI thin provisioning. Connect through iSCSI for the fastest data transfer speeds available and make wasted disk space a thing of the past with thin provisioning's flexible storage functionality.

    • iOS/Android Connectivity
      In the modern world, nothing is as important as reaching your data from anywhere. With T-OnTheGo and the T-Dashboard, you can manage your NAS, and upload to and download/stream from your NAS using an iOS or Android device on the go.

    • Rsync
      Backing up your data is very necessary, and everyone has specific needs when it comes to storage. Thecus’s Rsync functionality gives users great flexibility with remote backup capability, a flexible scheduler, and the stability of Linux-based transfer.

    • User Quota
      Divide the massive storage of a Thecus NAS among multiple users. Whether there are two users or 100, user quotas make it easy to divvy up and manage disk space.
       

    • PCI-e slot
      Thecus NAS products are ready for a number of emerging technologies. Through the built in PCI-e slot, business users can add a 10G Ethernet Adaptor for lighting fast transfer speeds, or a USB 3.0 Adaptor Card to enjoy next-generation connectivity.

    • 

Overview

Thecus already has an 8 bay rackmount NAS, the N8200XXX featuring a quick Intel® Atom™ processor and providing a very good value. This product fills an important niche in the market and provides users with an excellently priced large storage NAS. Before this, Thecus was already known for innovative and powerful appliances such as the N8800SAS with SAS support and heavy-loaded hardware. With the N8900, they've decided to go one step further in performance and provide a state of the art NAS device for the most demanding users: USB3.0, HDMI output, and 10Gb Ethernet compatibility are only some of the key features included. Let's have a closer look.

Powerful Hardware for Superior Performance

As part of the latest generation of leading CPUs on the market, the Intel® Core™ i3-2120 processor integrates 2 cores at 3.3GHz to match the N8900's no less than 8GB of DDR3 memory. Fast RAID operations, multitasking, reactive virtualized environments, application serving, and more; anything your business needs.

To maximize your data safety, the N8900 benefits from a unique Thecus feature: Dual DOM design. The DOM (Disk On Module) is the equivalent of the BIOS on a computer: if it fails or gets corrupted for any reason, all your data can be lost forever. Thanks to Thecus Dual DOM design, there is a second DOM ready to replace or reprogram the first one. In this way, Thecus has reduced DOM failures by 67%!

A Design Focused on Flexibility

The N8900 also embeds what's best for connectivity: two USB 3.0 ports, audio output/input, and an HDMI connection. Those will also give users even more possibilities when writing their own modules thanks to the brand new Thecus software developer kit.

In addition, the N8900 is built with several free PCI-e extension slots (one 4-lane and two 8-lane slots), which can be used for virtually everything. For instance, you can decide to add more USB 3.0 or eSATA slots. For companies with higher-end needs, you can choose to install a 10Gb Ethernet adapter, allowing you to use either traditional fiber or high-performance/low-cost base-T cables!

Speaking of flexibility, the N8900 is compatible with every common (and not so common) file system: Ext3, Ext4, and XFS. There are also 6 modes of link aggregation supported to maximize performance. Coupled with 6G SAS hard disks, the final results can't be wrong!