Ubiquiti News
Ubiquiti has pulled the covers off ENAS, a new 16-bay UniFi Enterprise NAS built around native ZFS and managed entirely through the UniFi platform with no licence fees attached. It sits at the top of Ubiquiti’s network attached storage line and is aimed squarely at organisations that would otherwise be paying per-feature or per-socket for enterprise storage software.
The pitch is straightforward: enterprise-class hardware, an open approach to drives, and management that lives in the same console as the rest of the UniFi ecosystem. Ubiquiti says there are no licensing fees and no feature unlocks.
For anyone who has priced a traditional enterprise array lately, that positioning is the headline. The technical detail is where it gets interesting.
ENAS runs on an Arm Neoverse N2 platform with 8 cores and 64GB of ECC memory, paired with ZFS as the native file system. Optional M.2 NVMe can be used as L2ARC read cache, with dual NVMe cache slots on board.
Ubiquiti describes it as its highest-performance storage product so far. The key specifications it has published are:
That last point matters more than it sounds. Open drive compatibility means you are not locked into a vendor-approved list, which is a genuine cost lever over the life of a large array.
ENAS is administered through UniFi rather than a separate storage console, so files, shares and backups appear alongside the network, cameras and door access in the same source of truth. Ubiquiti says it integrates with existing identity providers and supports role-based folder permissions, with secure client access via UniFi Endpoint on desktop and mobile.
Centralised backup orchestration is flagged as coming soon rather than shipping today. Using UniFi Fabrics and Site Manager, the intent is to let an administrator point one ENAS at an offsite ENAS, an rsync target or a cloud destination in a few clicks, and to pull Microsoft 365 user data into an employee’s drive.
UniFi Drive also gains native iSCSI, which turns ENAS into shared block storage for virtualisation. Ubiquiti names Proxmox, VMware and Hyper-V clusters as compatible, with support for live migration workflows.
Dual 25G SFP28 uplinks tell you the intended company: aggregation-class switching rather than a single 1G run to the comms cupboard. If you are specifying ENAS into a site, the uplink path, the transceivers and the rack power budget all need to be part of the conversation from the start.
Redundant power supplies also imply the sort of install where both feeds land on protected circuits, so battery backup sizing deserves a look at design time rather than after the fact.
This is not a bigger UNAS Pro. It is a different class of product, and the two things that make it credible for business use are ZFS and the licence-free management model. ZFS brings checksumming, snapshots and mature data protection semantics that IT teams already understand, which removes a lot of the hesitation that has followed Ubiquiti into the storage category.
For prosumers and home labs, be honest with yourself: 16 bays, 25G uplinks and redundant PSUs are overkill for a media library. The existing UniFi NAS options remain the sensible fit there, and ENAS will be a harder sell on both cost and noise in a residential rack.
For integrators, the interesting part is iSCSI. Shared block storage under Proxmox or VMware means a small two- or three-node cluster can be built with UniFi gear at the storage layer, which is a job that previously went to another vendor entirely. Verify the workload profile first — read-heavy virtual machines will benefit from the NVMe cache far more than write-heavy databases.
For SMB IT, the multi-site backup orchestration is the feature to watch, and it is worth repeating that Ubiquiti lists it as coming soon. If your disaster recovery plan depends on it, plan around what ships today and treat the rest as upside. Ubiquiti has not published Australian pricing or availability at this stage, so hold off on budget numbers until it does.
Read the full announcement at blog.ui.com.
ENAS is Ubiquiti's enterprise storage appliance, announced as a 16-bay platform running native ZFS and managed through the UniFi interface. It uses an 8-core Arm Neoverse N2 processor with 64GB of ECC memory, dual NVMe cache slots, dual 25 Gigabit SFP28 ports and redundant power supplies. Ubiquiti says it can be expanded beyond one petabyte of raw storage.
No. Ubiquiti states that ENAS has no licensing fees and no feature unlocks, with management handled through the UniFi platform at no recurring software cost. Centralised file and backup management are included rather than sold as add-ons.
Ubiquiti says ENAS has no firmware restrictions on drive models and describes it as open-drive compatible. That means you are not tied to a proprietary approved-drive list when populating the 16 bays or expanding capacity later.
Yes. Ubiquiti has added native iSCSI shared block storage to UniFi Drive on ENAS, so multiple compute servers can share centralised storage. It is listed as compatible with Proxmox, VMware and Hyper-V clusters and supports live migration workflows.
Ubiquiti has described centralised backup orchestration across sites as coming soon rather than shipping at announcement. The plan is to use UniFi Fabrics and Site Manager to back up one ENAS to another ENAS, an rsync server or a cloud destination, and to pull Microsoft 365 user data into an employee's drive.
Ubiquiti has not announced Australian pricing or an Australian availability date for ENAS. Until it publishes local details, any figures circulating should be treated as unconfirmed. It is worth checking with an Australian Ubiquiti reseller once Ubiquiti releases regional information.
Probably not for most homes. ENAS is built for business workloads, with 16 drive bays, dual 25 Gigabit SFP28 uplinks and redundant power supplies, which is well beyond what a household media or backup server needs. Ubiquiti's smaller UniFi NAS models are the more sensible fit for home and prosumer use.
BUZY Networks stocks the full Ubiquiti range with a 2-year Advanced Replacement Warranty.
