Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Introducing a new line of Network Storage Servers for SMB

WD Sentinel DX4000

Only yesterday, a third product that I worked on over the past little while called Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials was announced, on hardware provided by Western Digital.

Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials is a mid-way point between Windows Home Server, and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials.  And by in between, I mean you have a business class Home Server.  So you have media streaming, but no domain controller, and a limit of 25 users instead of 10 that Home Server has. 

One other unique feature it has is the ability to join a domain, that Windows Home Server does not have.  You can join any size domain, but limit (via AD security group) the number of users down to 25 who can use the NAS box.  You can only use it for up to 25 users.

This is a great solution if you want to add client backup to 25 clients on any SBS 2008 or SBS 2011 Standard networks, or just a standard server network.  Furthermore, it does have RWA with it, which means you can add an RWA solution to your standard server network if you want.

The WD Sentinel DX4000 looks pretty awesome from a hardware perspective as well.  You can jump on over to the Western Digital WD Sentinel DX4000 website to learn more.


4 comments:

multiple ip hosting services said...

Thanks for sharing about this great info of WD Sentinel DX4000. I found it useful enough and I can suggest it to my boss for a possible upgrade.

Halconnen said...

Licensing-wise, is it okay to use a Storage Server 2k8 R2 Essentials NAS in a SBS 2011 Standard Domain?

Sean Daniel said...

Licensed? it's totally encouraged and was designed for EXACTLY that scenario in mind. However, please note that you can only run RWA on either the standard box, or the NAS box... you can't do both because the ports can't be shared (unless of course you happen to also be running a high-end firewall like Microsoft's TMG (ISA).. have at it!

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