 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 DX4000. We're going to go ahead and get it out of the 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. To give you guys some idea, the 4 terabyte skew, 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 you know what, let's, 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 NCIXcom channel where we take a much closer look at it. A 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. Let's start with what WDS has to say for themselves on the outside. The package contents is the small office storage server, AC adapter, RJ45 cable, 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 fail safe, which means they are redundant. So even if you lose an ethernet port, you will not lose access to your data. It uses an Intel Atom D525 dual core processor with two 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. Plus some of the other stuff that they include, it starts to look like a very compelling thing. It's very valuable. Supported client operating systems, whole bunch operating systems, pretty much everything that most people would care about. Supported web browsers, pretty much everything most people would care about. Network, ah right 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, okay file share, Raid levels, aha, Raid 1 and Raid 5. So this is a 4 terabyte skew, which means it has two 2 terabyte WD RE series drives inside. These are both 1.2 million hour mean time between failure drives because this is meant as a server, not as a consumer product. And there is no room for failure of data in a server. So this, ah yeah, this. What's more telling about all of this is what's absent here. There's nothing about JBOD, nothing about Raid 0, nothing about anything but Raid 1 and Raid 5. The Sentinel does not support drive configurations that are not safe and redundant. So this 4 terabyte skew will automatically be configured in Raid 1, which means that in terms of actual usable space, we're going to have 2 terabytes to start with. And then if we add an additional drive, we'll 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, albeit 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 another really cool thing. So the way it does backups is actually purely incremental, which means if you have, let's say you max it out, you've got 25 computers and you've got, let's say, the 12 terabytes skew, so 8 terabytes of usable data, realistically, can you back up 25 computers on 8 terabytes? No, except that you can, because it is only, it is not storing any duplicated 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 recopying the whole thing. So it makes very efficient use of the storage space that it has. Moving right along, file folder level restore, okay, front panel LCE for CertisTab, 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 DLNA server that you'd have at home where you want to stream videos to your iPad, not about that. It's about training videos and any other media that you might need for your business, not for home use. Okay, USB UPS support, okay, so supports USB UPS. And check this out, guys. So this thing is serious business. So with an, let's start with, you know what, no, let's do accessories first. So there's your ethernet cable, there's your power brick, look at that, FSP, no no name power brick. Okay, there's your cable for that. And that's pretty much it, technical support and warranty guide, okay. That might be important, you want to hold on to this, especially if you're a business user. Now, 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 going to 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 administrator's quick install guide which explains a little bit about what the Sentinel's all about and how to use it, shows you how to connect it, shows you how to configure it. Okay, so this is not all English actually, it's relatively quick. So it's only a few steps, how to connect your computers to it including different OSs, how to authenticate and join, 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 fail safe, 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 auxiliary storage as well as for running a UPS over USB. And then there are your dual, again, fail safe gigabit ethernet connections. On the side you've got some ventilation holes, on the other side you've 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 really enterprise grade, server grade? A few things. There are your redundant power supply inputs. So if you grab yourself an additional power supply, making sure that you use 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 ports for any 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 fail safe dual gigabit ethernet ports. We've also got a cooling fan on the back as well as your serial number and any 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 going to 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 pull out one of the empty ones. So in terms of drive mounting, it's actually very straightforward. Now this is cool because our Sentinel is a, sorry, a four gig or four 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 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. This is not meant to be a cheap NAS 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, it's a hard drive. Hold on, 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 going to start putting this in RAID 5 mode, which will double our available capacity by switching from RAID 1 to RAID 5. I'm going to 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, we'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 NCIXcom. 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 40 to 60% 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, oh 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 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 Linus Tech Tips for unboxings, reviews and other computer videos. I forgot what to say for a second.