The latest vendor to revamp its NAS line is Snap Appliance, with its Snap 4500. Based on the company's Linux-based GuardianOS, the 1U 4500 supports Microsoft Active Directory Service, Unix Network Information Service (NIS), SNMP, built-in virus protection and a backup utility. The unit comes in 480GB and 720GB versions.

Among Windows-powered NAS vendors, Iomega upgraded its NAS P800m and P850m servers, with useable capacity of 960GB and 1.4TB, respectively. The P850m also includes an Alacritech TCP/IP offload engine, or TOE card, as do NAS boxes from Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

Will Snap go the TOE card route? "TOE is an interesting technology," says Mark Pollard, VP of marketing at Snap Appliance, but "it's expensive," an anathema to price-sensitive buyers. Furthermore, the 4500 is already showing 170% better performance than comparable systems based on the Windows SAK. "As it stands, we really don't need it."