Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing and first look at the small business owners delight this is meant to be a turnkey storage and backup and data access solution for small businesses who basically don't want to lose all of their data this is the WD sentinel DX 4000 outer brown box and have a look at the inner brown box so that's the shipping carton so let's start by saying that this thing is not cheap this is a value proposition but not a price play this is not really meant for consumers we gave you guys some idea the four terabytes q which is the one that we have here is around 800 bucks and moving up to something like a 12 terabyte version you'd be looking at closer to 1500 to 2000 dollars so what's the value proposition here well for one thing it includes actually in a weightless let's okay you guys will get the value proposition later and I should preface this by saying if you want a far more detailed look at this we will be doing a follow-up video on the NCIX comm channel where we take a much closer look at it the product like this is not served correctly by a basic unboxing but we might as well film an unboxing if we have to open up the box so let's start with what WD has to say for themselves on the outside so the package contents is the small office storage server AC adapter rj45 cable okay system requirements are basically you need an internet connection and a router okay that's pretty basic two Gigabit Ethernet ports two USB 3.0 ports those two Gigabit Ethernet ports are very interesting because they are failsafe which means they are redundant so even if you lose an Ethernet port you will not lose access to your data uses an Intel Atom d5 25 dual-core processor with 2 gigs of RAM and runs Windows Storage Server 2008 r2 essentials now when you break down the cost of this unit including the hardware they're using that Intel processor as well as enterprise grade Intel hardware for the rest of the infrastructure that supports it plus they've actually got a copy of Windows Server on it us some of the other stuff that they include it starts to look like a very compelling value supported client operating systems hold on top rating systems pretty much everything that most people would care about supported web browsers pretty much everything those people would care about Network puppet Network ah great it supports Active Directory so if you have an existing Active Directory this will integrate easily into that due to its Windows due to its Windows basis network protocols ok foster raid levels aha raid 1 and raid 5 so this is a 4 terabyte skew which means it has 2 2 terabyte WD re series drives inside these are both 1.2 million our mean time between failure drives because this isn't meant as the server not as a consumer product and there is no room for failure of data in a server so this oh yeah this this what's more telling about all of this is what's absent here there's nothing about je baud nothing about raid zero nothing about anything but raid 1 and raid 5 the fentanyl does not support drive configurations that are not safe and redundant so this 4 terabytes q will automatically be configured in raid 1 which means that in terms of actual usable space we're gonna have two terabytes to start with and that if we add an additional drive will go up to 4 terabytes and it will run in raid 5 automatically it also supports online raid level migration and capacity expansion which means I can continue to use my data I'll be at reduced performance while I throw in my third drive and upgrade my storage space very cool other features share folder level access control bare metal backup and restore for up to 25 computers oh that's unreal another really cool thing so the way it does backups is actually purely incremental which means if you have you know let's say you max it up you've got 25 computers and you've got let's say the 12 the 12 terabytes q so 8 terabytes of usable data realistically can you back up 25 computers on a terabytes no except that you can be it is only it is not starting any complicated data so the Windows operating system files for example are only going to be stored once and then it can use those same files to restore any of those 25 computers also when it takes multiple snapshots of a system it's only going to copy any changes in the data rather than recreating the whole thing so it makes very efficient use of the storage space that it has moving right along file folder level restore front panel LC for search establish built-in DLNA server so yeah so if you do presentations in your office for example so this is not the same use of a deal and a server that you'd have at home where you want to stream videos to your iPad not about that it's about you know training videos and any other media that you might need for your business not for not for our home use okay USB UPS support okay so supports USB UPS and check this out guys so this thing is serious business so with them let's start but you know what no let's do accessories first so there's your interviews your Ethernet cable there's your power brick well that fsp know no name power brick okay there's your cable for that and that's pretty much it technical support warranty guide okay that might be important you want to hold on to this especially if you're a business user no WD has designed this thing from the ground up to be as simple as possible so you don't necessarily have to have an IT guy at your business in order to use this now we're gonna be testing it and making sure that that's actually the case but WD seems very confident that almost anyone can use it here's an administrators quick install guide which explains a little bit about what the Sentinel is all about and how to use it shows you how to connect it shows you how to configure it okay so this is uh not all English actually oh that's relatively quick there's only a few steps how to connect your computers to it including different os's authenticate and join our and connect to the server okay so what makes this server great hardware we've got a cooling fan servers need cooling that's good we've also got dual power in these are failsafe which means if you buy an additional power brick even if your power brick fails even if your internal power supply on the Sentinel fails you will not experience any downtime two USB 3.0 ports for auxilary storage as well as for you know running a UPS over USB and then there are your dual again failsafe Gigabit Ethernet connections on the side you got some ventilation holes on the other side you got some more ventilation holes on the bottom you don't see anything really out of the ordinary actually hold on a second so what makes this thing you know really enterprise-grade server grade a few things there are your redundant power supply input so if you grab yourself an additional power supply making sure that you use the appropriate the appropriate spec for your Power Grip you will actually experience no downtime in the event of a failure even of the internal components that are on the other side here so that's pretty cool there's your USB port for any you know additional functionality you need whether it's using it as a print server or whether it's using a UPS for backup and there are your failsafe dual Gigabit Ethernet ports we've also got a cooling fan on the back as well as your serial number and information Kensington lock spot is right here some ventilation holes on the side some ventilation holes on the other side especially if you load this thing up with four drives you're gonna want it reasonably well ventilated on the front you can see it opens up here and there is a drive so let's not fuss with that one let's instead one of the empty ones so in terms of drive mounting it's actually very straightforward now this is cool because our Sentinel is is sort of four gig or 4 terabyte but WD sent us an additional drive now it should be noted that it is a special SKU that goes into the Sentinel WD is taking the data security of small businesses very seriously you can't just use any re drive there's there's a matrix available I think it's online which shows you which drives you can use in order to upgrade the storage of your Sentinel so for the same reason it does not support running outside of raid 1 or raid 5 it does not support non enterprise-grade hard drives okay you're not does not meant to be achievement as where you're using consumer grade hardware for a business use this is a business class piece of hardware so anyway they sent us an additional two terabyte drive and the upgrade process is as simple as even if the machine is powered on lining it up there's no mounting screws no nothing dropping it in I mean don't drop it be careful to hard drive hold on ah there we go pressing it in and closing it that is the upgrade process you can do it while it's on and it won't even affect your ability to access your data and it's gonna start putting this in raid 5 mode which will double our available capacity by switching from raid 1 to raid 5 I'll take that out for now though because we do want to have a look at it running in raid 1 mode when we do our full tech tips before we go much further into that okay so there's on the front you've also got our LCD readout we've got activity LEDs for the four drives as well as navigation buttons for here as well as a power button so that's you know what let's call that it for the unboxing and I want you guys to definitely check out the full video on this on NCIX com maybe this isn't for you but if you're like the tech IT guy in your family you know anyone who has a small business slick was showing me some pretty terrifying statistics it was something in the neighborhood of forty to sixty percent of small businesses never open their doors again after a catastrophic data loss think about that for a second and if you know anyone who has a small business where they're still using you know I don't have a thumb drive on me but where they're still using thumb drives to move critical business data around it's not the right way to go thumb drives can fail I personally had one fail a little while ago that was very inconvenient for me this gives everyone remote access to the data they need you can set everything up based on you which users have access to what and when and all of all those kinds of settings this is more along the lines of what people should be using so thank you for checking out this unboxing and first look and don't forget to subscribe to - tech tips for unboxings reviews and other computer videos I forgot what to say for a second