Introduction

Thecus' new Top Tower line of NAS servers set the market on fire when introduced earlier in the year. These new high capacity and high connectivity products bring rackmount NAS performance together with pedestal NAS connectivity and convenience. Not every office needs a full server rack, but most require a centralized location to store data and a simple, central backup solution.

The Top Tower product line brings big storage to the pedestal form factor. With a range between six bays and ten bays, these professional-grade servers bridge the gap, without omitting features. Speaking of features, Thecus worked on several new game changing hardware and software features which are standard on the new models.

Cloud Backup and McAfee Antivirus are two of the new big improvements on the software side. The N6850 brings HDMI video output to the table as well as the new Data Burn feature that allows you to install an optical drive to the NAS. You can now burn CDs, DVDs or Blu-Ray disks straight from the NAS and ISO burning is supported. This feature opens a new door for those of us using NAS servers to store large amounts of Linux distributions.

Today we're looking at the Thecus Top Tower N6850, the smallest and most affordable member of the new Top Tower family. To spice things up we're test this unit with Intel NASPT while using 10GbE Ethernet and our new enterprise multi-client test with dual gigabit Ethernet running 802.3ad.

Let's get started!