Iomega StorCenter px4-300r review

Iomega claims its latest rack mount NAS appliance claims an improved performance and introduces SMBs to its Personal Cloud feature. Dave Mitchell thinks it's expensive though and in this review finds out whether Iomega can justify its high price tag.

IT Pro Verdict

The StorCenter px4-300r has plenty of storage features with cloud-based backup and file sharing a highlight. Providing you don’t mind adding a port forwarding rule to your router, Iomega’s Personal Cloud will also prove very useful for sharing data securely with remote users. However, performance is disappointing and it is comparatively expensive making rival products such as Synology’s RS411 far better value.

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Backup features are extensive and for most of these Iomega has its head firmly in the cloud. Iomega advised us earlier this year that it would be integrating EMC's MozyPro hosted backup service into its business NAS appliances and it's come good on this promise. You can create a new MozyPro account directly from the appliance's web interface which is a separate purchase.

Once activated, you can create scheduled backup jobs of selected folders to the MozyPro servers and browse existing backups to restore data back to the appliance. When our sister title PC Pro took a look at the MozyPro 2 service, they were impressed with the levels of features, but had serious concerns about the support provided by EMC.

The appliance supports Amazon's S3 hosted service and you can configure shares as Facebook or Flickr Active Folders. Then there's Iomega's Personal Cloud which is designed to provide secure data backup and file sharing to remote users as though they were on the same LAN.

We found setup easy enough although you will need to get down and dirty with your router as Personal Cloud requires the addition of a port forwarding rule to allow access from the Internet. The web console provides the port number and internal IP address you need to use for the rule.

Once we had added a port forwarding rule, the Personal Cloud could be accessed remotely by users we had sent invitations to.

Once we had added a port forwarding rule, the Personal Cloud could be accessed remotely by users we had sent invitations to.

Once we had added a port forwarding rule, the Personal Cloud could be accessed remotely by users we had sent invitations to.

We had no problems setting up a rule and could then send email invitations to users to join our private cloud. The email contains a username and unique access code plus a link to download a personalised version of the Storage Manager.

Dave Mitchell
Dave Mitchell

Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.

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