Storage · SNS Tower Series
NetBytes SNS Tower Series — 4 and 8 bay tower storage
Quiet, enterprise-grade tower storage for branch and edge locations, SMB backup repositories and small virtualisation clusters. SATA drives, ZFS block and file services.
- 4 and 8 bays — SATA drives only
- ZFS integrity — Checksums, self-healing
- iSCSI / NFS / SMB — Block and file
- Snapshots — And replication
- Quiet acoustics — Office-friendly
About the SNS Tower Series
Enterprise storage where there is no rack
The Tower Series is engineered for environments where rack space is unavailable or low-noise operation is essential. It brings the same SNS Storage OS capabilities to a compact tower enclosure — branch offices, retail, education labs and edge computing sites.
The capability is not reduced to fit the chassis. iSCSI block targets, NFS and SMB shares, snapshots and clones, and ZFS send and receive for remote replication are all present; what changes is bay count and drive interface.
That last point is worth stating plainly: the Tower Series takes SATA drives only. Everything else scales with the Rack Series; this does not.
The platform
What the specification covers
- Chassis — tower, in 4 or 8 bays
- Drives — 3.5" and 2.5" SATA only, up to 28TB per 3.5" bay
- Services — iSCSI block targets, NFS and SMB shares, snapshots and clones
- Replication — ZFS send and receive, for remote replication and DR
- Networking — 1, 10 and 25G options with MPIO for iSCSI
- Use cases — SMB backup and archival targets, small virtualisation datastores, file services, edge workloads
Enterprise features
What you keep in a tower
- ZFS data integrity — End-to-end checksums, self-healing, compression and copy-on-write, protecting data at rest and in motion.
- Snapshots and replication — Point-in-time snapshots with fast clones, and ZFS send and receive for remote replication and DR workflows.
- Block and file services — Thin-provisioned iSCSI LUNs for hypervisors, and NFS or SMB shares with AD and LDAP integration.
- Quiet and office-friendly — Tuned acoustics and thermals for branch offices and edge environments.
- Resilience — Redundant PSUs where supported, hot-swap bays and enterprise-grade components throughout.
- Flexible networking — 1, 10 and 25G options with MPIO for iSCSI, and access controls on SMB and NFS.
SNS Tower Series — FAQ
What buyers ask before sizing
- Who is the Tower Series for? — Answer: Branch offices, SMBs, education labs and edge environments needing enterprise storage without a rack — backup repositories, file services and small virtualisation clusters.
- How much capacity can I achieve? — Answer: Up to 28TB per 3.5" bay. Eight bays give up to 224TB raw in a single tower, before RAID or erasure coding.
- Does it support iSCSI, NFS and SMB? — Answer: Yes. SNS Storage OS exposes iSCSI block targets and NFS or SMB shares, with snapshots and remote replication built in.
- Is it noisy or power hungry? — Answer: No. The Tower Series is tuned for quieter acoustics and office-friendly power profiles while keeping enterprise reliability.
- Can I expand later? — Answer: Yes. Start with 4 bays and expand to 8, or move to the Rack Series for higher bay counts as needs grow.
At a glance
The tower storage envelope
- hot-swap bays
- drives only
- per 3.5" bay
- networking available
Size it first
Work the numbers before you specify
The calculators run the same arithmetic our engineers do, so you can arrive with a starting configuration rather than a blank page.
- RAID capacity planner — Usable capacity, redundancy overhead and rebuild exposure across RAID levels.
- All sizing tools — Six calculators running the same arithmetic our engineers do.
Related range
The rest of the storage range
When the site gains a rack, or needs flash.
- SNS rack storage — 2U to 8U, 8 to 60 bays, for backup, archive and virtualisation datastores.
- SNS flash storage — All-flash for databases, VDI and analytics.
- Dual controller storage — Where non-stop access matters more than capacity.