M.2 connector
The number of M.2 connectors provided in the design of the NAS server.
The M.2 connector is used to connect various internal peripherals, mostly miniature form factor. Note that two electrical (logical) interfaces can be implemented through this connector — SATA 3.0 and PCI-Express, and each individual M.2 socket on the board can support both of these interfaces at once, or only one of them. These nuances should be clarified before buying, since the possibilities for using M.2 directly depend on them. So, with support for SATA 3.0, such a connector is intended exclusively for drives, and the speed of SATA is noticeably lower than that of PCI-E; so this M.2 variant is mostly used by inexpensive SSD modules. In turn, PCI-E is somewhat more expensive, but it is faster and more versatile. Support for this interface allows you to connect both high-end SSDs and various expansion cards (for example, sound cards or internal wireless adapters) to the NAS server.
LAN ports
The number of LAN ports provided in the design of the NAS server.
LAN — a connector used for a wired connection to Ethernet local networks (the most common "local" format today, it is also used to access the Internet). For a relatively simple network (say, within a medium office),
one LAN port will be enough. However, models are produced where there are more than one such ports, mainly
2 and
4 connectors. They are designed for large networks divided into subnets with separate access to the NAS server: the presence of several LAN connectors allows you to connect each of the subnets directly without using a router. This simplifies the network architecture and optimizes the load.
LAN speed
The maximum operating speed supported by the LAN port(s) of the NAS server. For the LAN ports themselves, see above; in today's networking equipment, higher speed means compatibility with lower rates
In general, the higher the LAN speed, the wider the bandwidth, the faster the device will cope with data transfer and the easier it will be for it to work with several network requests at once. As for specific standards,
1 Gbps is the most popular nowadays: it gives quite decent speed and at the same time is inexpensive. The more advanced
10 Gbps standard is less common, mostly in professional equipment designed for high loads. The middle and rare link are
models with a speed of 2.5 Gbps. But LAN 100 Mbps is considered completely obsolete version.
Power consumption
The amount of power consumed by the NAS server during normal operation. Most often, we are talking about maximum power consumption — with all the occupied slots for drives, under high load.
Modern NAS, even high-performance ones, have rather modest power consumption — even among professional models with 10 or more drives, this figure rarely exceeds 1 kW. So there are no problems with connecting to a 230 V network. However, energy consumption information can be useful for some special applications, primarily for estimating the load on UPSs, emergency generators, stabilizers, and other special equipment.
