Ubiquiti News
Ubiquiti has revealed ENAS, an enterprise NAS built on native ZFS and managed through the same UniFi ecosystem that already runs networking, cameras and door access. The pitch is straightforward: enterprise-class storage without licence fees, feature unlocks or a proprietary drive whitelist.
It sits well above the existing network attached storage options in the range, with 16 drive bays, expansion to beyond a petabyte of raw capacity, and hardware aimed at sustained multi-user workloads rather than light file serving.
CPU8 Arm Neoverse N2 coresMemory64GB ECCCacheDual M.2 NVMe, optional L2ARCDrive bays16, open drive compatibilityRaw capacityExpandable past 1PBNetworkingDual 25G SFP28PowerRedundant supplies
Management happens in UniFi, giving a single place to see files, shares and backups. Access control leans on existing identity providers with role-based folder permissions, and users connect through UniFi Endpoint on desktop and mobile.
This is the most serious storage product Ubiquiti has put its name to, and the two details that matter most are ZFS and open drive compatibility. ZFS brings checksumming, snapshots and copy-on-write protection that file-level NAS software simply cannot match, and not being locked to a vendor drive list keeps long-term capacity costs sane in the Australian market.
For prosumers, be honest with yourself about scale. A 16-bay chassis with dual 25G SFP28 and redundant power supplies is not a home media box, and to use the throughput you need aggregation-capable switching and the right SFP28 modules and fibre at both ends. Otherwise it becomes an expensive appliance running at a fraction of its capability.
For integrators, the interesting part is native iSCSI. A UniFi-managed box that can present shared block storage to a small Proxmox or VMware cluster, with live migration in play, changes the conversation from “file server” to “cluster backing store”. That said, we would want to see real-world performance under concurrent virtual machine load before designing a production cluster around it, and we would treat the multi-site backup orchestration as a roadmap item rather than something to sell on today.
For SMB IT, the licence-free angle is the headline. Recurring per-capacity or per-feature software fees are a genuine cost on competing platforms, and removing them makes the total cost of ownership much easier to defend in a budget meeting. Microsoft 365 data protection landing in the same appliance is a sensible consolidation for smaller teams that currently pay a separate SaaS backup subscription.
Our practical advice: plan the physical side early. Sixteen bays plus redundant power belongs in a properly ventilated rack with adequate battery backup, because ZFS is resilient but abrupt power loss during heavy writes still tests that resilience. Ubiquiti has not published Australian pricing or availability in this announcement, so treat it as a design and budgeting signal for now rather than something to quote.
Read the full announcement at blog.ui.com.
BUZY Networks stocks the full Ubiquiti UniFi range with a 2-year Advanced Replacement Warranty.
