UNAS just entered the Chat!
2024 has marked an exciting year for all Unifi fans. From introducing new gateway units like the Cloud Gateway Max, Cloud Gateway Ultra, the UDM Pro Max and many other gateways, the Unifi Switch Professional Max, Unifi U7 and more. Today, Unifi has announced the Unifi UNAS as a response to the high demand for network storage units. The unit will start selling on October 25th at $499. It is a very competitive pricing compare to units on this price range.
The UNAS integrates seamlessly with their Unifi Dashboard using a new app called the UniFI Drive in which you will be able to control all aspects of your network storage.
The unit itself is a 2U NAS powered by a Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A57, 8GB of system memory and 1GbE and 10G via SFP+. It supports up to 7 2.5/3.5" drives which can be configured with RAID 0,1,5 or 6 giving you ample choice for your needs whether it is to have all the storage possible to 1 or 2 storage redundancy.
At the time of this writing, the unit allows for SMB shares for Windows, Mac and Linux and provides you with easy to find connection from the dashboard. This is a unique feature that I have not seen on any other NAS solution which would help any non technical person to add file shares. Additionally, you can easily create an external shareable link which would come in handy when you need to share folders or single files. Additionally, you will be able to create network shares that connects with Time Machine for MacOS backups.
Accessing your shares in managed by the Unifi Identity app but it can also be configured with services like Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory, Google Secured LDAP, LDAP and JumpCloud LDAP.
Lastly, the UNAS also support data encryption and backup solutions. For backups, this can be offloaded to a different unit in the network, remotely or even to cloud more specifically to Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. These features come in handy for organizations that need to maintain a level of backup for their disaster recovery operations.
Final Remarks
I am really excited for this announcement as I enjoy how seamless the Unifi integrations are. Sure it is not the greatest unit but it sure packs a punch and is decently priced. Other brands like QNAP, Synology and Asustor provide desk units at this price range but Unifi is about to change that. I do agree that the unit is lacking other features like other means of sharing data like NFS and iSCSI but it at least you would be able to create SMB shares and connect to your time machine on Mac.
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