AsustorLockerstor 8 AS6508T 8 Bay NAS - Network Storage Enclosure, Quad Core 2.1GHz CPU, 8GB RAM DDR4, M.2 NVMe SSD

I am an IT professional of over 25 years so I will review from this perspective. Overall this unit provides great specs for the price. Immediately upgraded RAM to 16GB. Not difficult but you need to disassemble the unit to get at the motherboard. Any good set of DDR4 SODIMMs should do the trick. Strongly recommend a UPS for any NAS. These file systems do not like ungraceful shutdowns. I was pleasantly surprised when it immediately recognized my UPS when I plugged it in to a USB port. I set it to shut down after 5 min of power loss. I recommend just one SSD for read cache. Write cache needs 2, is overkill for most and a really great way to corrupt your file system. If you do write cache, a UPS is a must. I've installed a few apps including surveillance center which works great. Use the smartphone app for playback. I have external access disabled, many ransomware attacks for the EZ services. Don't enable them if you like your data. A VPN on your router with clients on your mobile devices is the right solution for remote access. I have not set this up yet. Waiting on a newer router to do this. Use Raid 5 or 1. You are asking for trouble with Raid 0 as you have no redundancy. I used older hard drives and already had 1 fail. This is inevitable with hard drives. When not if they fail.Some critiques:1. Asus advertises 10g network support. To get this you have to replace the SSD card with a 10g NIC. They could really use a second slot.2. Could use more sound insulation. Depending on your hard drives the unit can be a bit noisy.3. App library is not as comprehensive as Synology or QNAP. Hopefully this improves as more of these units are sold.4. Advertised camera support for Surveillance Center is poor, and mostly older models. I had to try a couple brands before I settled on Amcrest. These work great and are easy to set up. 4 camera licenses are included which is nice.5. Unit is set to DHCP (dynamic IP assignment). You should use static IP assignments or reservations for the NAS and cameras otherwise the IP could change on reboot which you don't want.

I have been a long time user of a competitors product. I needed to add another NAS to my home/small business office network. I do a lot of photo editing and some video editing and need to back up my work to a very reliable NAS. After careful research I concluded that the ASUSTOR Lockerstor 2 Gen2 AS6702T (2-bay unit) was the best NAS to meet my needs. The unit received high reviews from third parties and it lived up to the hype.PROS-Fast file transfers (much faster than my older NAS)Dual multi-gig LAN ports (but of not value to me since my LAN supports 1000mbs only)Four slots for M.2 NVMe SSDs (for storage or caching but not both)ExpandableLarge catalog of apps both from the manufacturer and third partiesCONS-ExpensiveExpanding RAM to 16GB requires disassembling the unit (although the manufacturer has a step-by-step video to guide you through the process, and I did upgrade to 16GB and found the video helpful)Setup was easy (except for the memory upgrade installation which took about an hour). I installed 2 10TB HDDs and was up and running in less than 15 minutes. File transfers from my desktop were speedy.Besides my desktop I use an apple laptop as well as a windows laptop on my LAN and they have no problems accessing and using the NAS.I strongly recommend using a UPS with this unit.I would not recommend enabling remote access to the ASUSTOR from the internet unless you are very well versed in the security issues involved, especially using VPNs.I have been using the unit for over a week and so far I am very pleased with its performance. Recommended.

I have a Synology NAS also, but wanted to add one to do additional custom backups on. The Synology was a nightmare to install and maintain, really a nightmare. This one was up and running 15 minutes after I put the ram and hard drives in it. Did my first backup of my entire system within 30 minutes of installing. These units are really nice, their software is so easy to use; or you can use a third party software if you have a favorite.

OK so I been looking to upgrade my nas units. Was looking another Qnap or Synology. So, I opted for this one. 2 drive slots and 4 NVME. So got it set up and I will say I am happy with this NAS. It boots in 10-15 seconds and is a lot faster with the 16Gb upgrade, I also used 2 500Gb 2.5 SSD drives and 4 2Tb NVME's. My Qnap with the Atom processor was just outdated and slow. This is a big upgrade for my home use. Now, I was reading some the negative reviews adn I will tell you they just didn't know much about accessing the NAS for the first time to set it up to upgrading the rem. For example, on person gave it a 1 star just because he couldn't access the Nas via the IP, well if he had research it, he would have seen he needed to put the port at the end of the IP address. Another complained that to upgrade both memory modules one of the memory slots was in back of the mainboard and had to tear apart the entire unit. Well, it isn't entirely true. Remove the top cover 3 screws, the back cover 7 screws, NVME 2 Screws, SSD board 1 screw, and main board 4 screws. Does it sound like a lot? Yes, but it's so easy a caveman can do it. So, a lot of reviews are from people who don't know how to do these things, get mad and give it a bad review. So read the reviews!!!!!!!

To be fair, it's a decent NAS but if you're thinking of maximizing RAM, forget it. ASUS made it extremely difficult to install secondary RAM chip. Yes, one slot is easily accessible just be removing the outer shell but the other one? Oh my god, you literally have to dismantle the entire NAS to be able reach the other memory slot. Why couldn't ASUS install the ram there and leave the user accessible one empty? They chose to do the complete opposite! Thus two star rating. I do like the using HDD and SSD together. As I said, if you're OK with using single ram slot, this is fine. The NVME holder pin is SO WEAK, fragile. Seriously Asus?