NAS: New Solutions for Creative Professionals by Jose Antunes

After the MyBook series and some initial My Cloud NAS, Western Digital is in full swing with new NAS solutions: 4 of them now.

Jose Antunes

February 26, 2015

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Western Digital has expanded its suite of network attached storage (NAS) solutions with four new products that address the increasing demands for content storage, management, protection and streaming among prosumers, creative professionals and small businesses.

Based on the popular WD Red Drives, the My Cloud Expert Series includes My Cloud EX2100 (two-bay) and My Cloud EX4100 (four-bay) high-performance NAS systems designed from the ground up for creative professionals and prosumers that need to reliably save, share, back up, stream and manage large amounts of digital data. I’ve written before about the NAS system from WD here at ProVideo Coalition.

For photographers, videographers, graphic designers and other creative professionals adapting to ever increasing file sizes, from RAW images and 4K video footage, the new My Cloud Expert Series products include the latest and fastest dual-core Marvell ARMADA 385 and 388 processors for high-performance media streaming, top of their class read/write speeds, providing up to 24 TB of storage and the ability to keep files safe, secure and accessible from anywhere. The robust data management and security features let customers select their preferred methods for managing, sharing and protecting their most important movies, photos, music and digital files.

The new My Cloud Business Series includes My Cloud DL2100 (two-bay) and My Cloud DL4100 (four-bay) high-performance NAS systems built to provide the reliability, security and scalability small business customers need. Powered by Intel Atom dual-core processors with up to 24 TB2 of storage capacity, the My Cloud Business Series runs on the acclaimed Linux-based WD My Cloud operating software (OS).

My Cloud DL2100 and My Cloud EX2100 systems are shipped in RAID 1 configuration, which leaves 50% of the system capacity available for data storage. My Cloud DL4100 and My Cloud EX4100 systems are shipped in RAID 5 or RAID 1 configurations depending on number of hard drives, which leaves three quarters in a 4 hard drive system and 50% in a two hard drive system of the system capacity available for data storage. Systems are configurable to RAID 0, JBOD or spanned, which leaves all system capacity available for data storage. Up to 0.1TB may be reserved for non-user accessible storage.

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The included WD Red drives can be configured using multiple RAID options (model dependent) including RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD and spanning modes. Customers can use their My Cloud Expert Series products to centralize and back up all of their computers and notebooks with WD SmartWare Pro software for PC users, and with the Apple Time Machine backup software for Mac users.

“As the market leader in the single-bay personal cloud category with our award winning My Cloud platform, as well as in the NAS hard disk drive (HDD) category with our WD Red line, WD understands that customers need more power and more choice in NAS systems,” said Jim Welsh, executive vice president, WD Content Solutions Business and Worldwide Sales. “We are very excited about our new My Cloud Expert Series and My Cloud Business Series NAS products that offer the performance, ease of use, reliability and My Cloud OS that customers want from WD.”

My Cloud Expert Series products can also serve as a digital entertainment hub, seamlessly streaming movies and music to any DLNA/UPnP certified multimedia device such as gaming consoles, smart TVs and WD TV Live media players. The Twonky, DLNA-certified media server and iTunes server make for simple streaming of large movie and music libraries.

Additionally, the integrated file server, FTP server, backup server and P2P download server provide advanced data serving options. Customers can also customize their My Cloud Expert series NAS, monitor system health, manage users and energy saving features with the My Cloud dashboard, as well as use a suite of third party apps, including aMule, Icecast, Transmission, DVBlink, SqueezeCenter and more.

The all new My Cloud Business Series solutions allow small businesses to centralize and protect their data in the workplace and provide employees with secure access to critical data from anywhere. Powered by the latest Intel Atom dual core processor, with RAM up to 2GB, and data storage capacity up to 24 TB, small businesses have the performance and scalability to meet their business needs.

Secure access, protection and backup of data for small businesses is critical. Offering AES 256-bit volume encryption and multiple RAID options (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD and spanning modes), the My Cloud Business Series offers small businesses multiple options to secure and protect their data. Customers can also use their My Cloud Business Series products to back up all of their computers with WD SmartWare Pro software for PC users and Apple Time Machine support for Mac users. My Cloud Business Series products can also backup themselves, either to another My Cloud in a different location or to cloud services such as Amazon S3 and ElephantDrive. Users can also use the one-touch USB 3.0 copy button to automatically copy data from an external USB storage device onto the NAS.

My Cloud Business Series

The My Cloud Business Series products feature many business-ready capabilities including iSCSI target and initiator, replication and file synchronization, integrated FTP, WebDAV server, SSH Shell, and Microsoft Active Directory support. Additionally there are enterprise-class redundancies such as dual power supply ports with fail over, dual Gigabit Ethernet and UPS support. The My Cloud Business Series also provides memory expansion up to 6GB, and scalable storage through dual NICs or USB.

My Cloud Business Series products are available in several capacity options. The My Cloud DL2100 (two-bay) is available diskless or with 4 TB, 8 TB or 12 TB capacities. The My Cloud DL4100 (four-bay) is available diskless or with 8 TB, 16 TB or 24 TB capacities. With Easy-Slide-Drive technology, My Cloud Business Series customers can easily install or hot-swap drives in seconds, without the need for a screwdriver, toolkit or trays.

Anywhere Access

The award-winning WD My Cloud mobile app provides anywhere access to the entire My Cloud product family. With the WD My Cloud mobile app users can easily view photos, stream video and share, save and manage files from anywhere on their iOS and Android devices. The mobile app makes file sharing and collaborating simple, allowing customers to easily email files, share files as a link and print and open files with third party apps. The WD My Cloud mobile app currently is available for download for free from the App Store and Google Play.

My Cloud mobile app also integrates major public cloud services so that customers can easily transfer files from their Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive public cloud accounts.

Availability and Compatibility

The My Cloud Expert Series and My Cloud Business Series products will be available through selected WD channel partners including retailers in store and online, e-tailers, distributors, authorized resellers and at the wdstore.com.My Cloud Expert Series and My Cloud Business Series are compatible with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion, as well as DLNA/UPnP enabled devices.