Asustor Rolling Out Gen5 Rackmount NAS – The AS7212RDX and AS7216RDX Lockerstor Pro Gen2
At Computex 2025, Asustor unveils its latest additions to the Lockerstor rackmount family—the Lockerstor R Pro Gen2 series, comprising the 12-bay AS7212RDX and 16-bay AS7216RDX NAS systems. Positioned as high-performance, scalable solutions for small to medium businesses and enterprise deployments, these new models mark a notable hardware shift for the brand. Powered by AMD’s latest Ryzen 7 Pro processors and featuring support for PCIe Gen 5, 10GbE networking, and DDR5 ECC memory, this generation is clearly engineered for intensive multitasking, virtualized environments, and high-throughput applications. In addition to core hardware improvements, the systems ship with the ADM 5 software platform, which brings expanded storage and network configuration options, enhanced snapshot tools, and a wide ecosystem of applications. Combined with support for the new Xpanstor 12R expansion chassis and backed by a 5-year warranty, the Lockerstor R Pro Gen2 series is clearly being positioned to compete in the same space as rackmount solutions from QNAP, Synology, and TrueNAS, but with a focus on open upgrade paths and hardware flexibility. In this article, we break down the hardware, software, and overall direction of this release based on what we’ve seen firsthand on the Computex show floor.
Lockerstor R Pro Gen 2 Hardware Specifications
The Asustor Lockerstor R Pro Gen2 series, comprising the 12-bay AS7212RDX and the 16-bay AS7216RDX, represents a significant upgrade in rackmount NAS architecture, engineered specifically for small to medium-sized businesses and enterprise-grade environments. At the heart of both systems is the AMD Ryzen™ 7 Pro processor, based on a 5nm process with 8 physical cores. This processor line, typically used in high-efficiency workstations, delivers balanced compute performance and thermal control, making it suitable for multi-threaded tasks such as virtualization, container deployment, and high-volume file services. The systems ship with 16 GB of ECC DDR5 memory as standard, offering improved memory bandwidth and error correction capabilities vital to maintaining consistent data integrity under sustained load.
| Category | AS7212RDX (12-Bay) | AS7216RDX (16-Bay) |
|---|---|---|
| Form Factor | 2U Rackmount | 2U Rackmount |
| Drive Bays | 12 x 3.5″/2.5″ SATA/SAS | 16 x 3.5″/2.5″ SATA/SAS |
| Expansion Support | Xpanstor 12R SAS Expansion Unit | Xpanstor 12R SAS Expansion Unit |
| Processor | AMD Ryzen™ 7 Pro (8-Core, 5nm) | AMD Ryzen™ 7 Pro (8-Core, 5nm) |
| Memory (Standard) | 16 GB DDR5 ECC | 16 GB DDR5 ECC |
| Memory (Max) | TBC (likely >96-128 GB, ECC supported) | TBC (likely >96-128 GB, ECC supported) |
| M.2 Slot | 1 x M.2 NVMe (PCIe Gen 5.0 x4) | 1 x M.2 NVMe (PCIe Gen 5.0 x4) |
| PCIe Expansion | 1 x PCIe Gen 5.0 x8 | 1 x PCIe Gen 5.0 x8 |
| Network Ports | 2 x 10GbE + 2 x 1GbE RJ-45 | 2 x 10GbE + 2 x 1GbE RJ-45 |
| Power Supply | Dual Redundant 80 PLUS Platinum | Dual Redundant 80 PLUS Platinum |
| Hot-Swappable Drives | Yes | Yes |
| Cooling | Redundant Hot-Swappable Fans | Redundant Hot-Swappable Fans |
| Chassis Dimensions | TBC | TBC |
| Weight (Approx.) | TBC | TBC |
| Warranty | 5 Years | 5 Years |
In terms of storage acceleration and flexibility, both units are equipped with a single M.2 NVMe slot supporting PCIe 5.0, offering a notable increase in throughput compared to earlier PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 implementations. This slot is intended for either SSD caching or as a standalone high-speed storage tier, useful for workflows involving small file I/O, databases, or active archive datasets. Both systems also feature dual 10-Gigabit Ethernet and dual 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports, enabling high-speed networking with support for link aggregation, load balancing, and network redundancy. For those requiring more, a PCIe Gen5 x8 expansion slot is available, compatible with a wide range of enterprise accessories including SAS expansion controllers or additional 25/40/100GbE NICs, offering clear upgrade paths for future network scaling.
Operational resilience is enhanced by redundant 80 PLUS Platinum-certified power supplies, designed to minimize energy waste while providing reliable failover in the event of a PSU failure. The hot-swappable nature of these components, combined with tool-less access to the drive bays and internal fan modules, supports minimal disruption during maintenance or component replacement. Both models use a standard 2U rackmount form factor and support a variety of enterprise-class SATA or SAS drives. Additionally, they are fully compatible with Asustor’s Xpanstor 12R SAS JBOD expansion unit, allowing businesses to scale storage capacity with minimal downtime. Asustor includes a 5-year hardware warranty with these units, placing them firmly in the enterprise support tier and aligning with long-term deployment cycles common in business environments.
Lockerstor R Pro Gen 2 ADM Software
ADM 5, the latest iteration of Asustor’s NAS operating system, is pre-installed on the Lockerstor R Pro Gen2 series and delivers a broad set of administrative, storage, and security features geared toward SMB and enterprise users. The interface is browser-based, with a modular design that separates key configuration areas—such as access control, storage, network, and service management—into distinct application windows. While this layout may require some initial familiarization, it provides logical compartmentalization that benefits ongoing maintenance and delegation of user privileges. On the storage side, ADM supports both Btrfs and EXT4 file systems. Storage pools—representing RAID arrays—must be mapped directly to volumes, meaning that each volume corresponds to a single RAID pool, and the OS does not currently support multiple volumes on a single pool. Snapshot functionality is implemented at the volume level rather than on a per-folder basis, which could be limiting for users seeking granular rollback capabilities. Nevertheless, snapshots can be scheduled at hourly intervals, locked to prevent automatic deletion, and restored manually or automatically, including optional pre-restore snapshot creation. The system also includes scrubbing and defragmentation tools for Btrfs volumes.
ADM 5 includes a wide range of file-sharing services, including SMB (with multichannel support), AFP, NFS, FTP, WebDAV, Rsync, and iSCSI. Each of these services can be configured through a dedicated “Services” panel, with advanced tuning options such as SMB encryption levels, access control lists, and port customization. iSCSI support includes LUN and target creation, authentication, and snapshot scheduling. The built-in File Manager allows users to open multiple file browser windows simultaneously within the same tab, streamlining operations like drag-and-drop transfers or cross-volume comparisons. Shared folders can be configured with granular access control, write-once-read-many (WORM) settings, and optional encryption. Users can also specify upload/download-only folder behavior for shared workspaces. Drive monitoring tools include support for SMART diagnostics, IronWolf Health Management (on supported Seagate drives), and drive lifespan tracking. However, NVMe SSD management features are currently limited, with no built-in benchmarking or thermal analysis tools. On the system security side, ADM Defender provides firewall configuration, IP blacklisting, and brute-force protection policies. Two-step verification, user session management, and auto-lock policies are configurable for each user account. Remote access can be managed through integrated VPN settings, EasyConnect tunneling, and port forwarding, although some tasks require navigating across multiple panels rather than a unified dashboard.
Asustor Lockerstor R Pro Gen 2 Thoughts and Verdict
Seeing the Asustor Lockerstor R Pro Gen2 series up close at Computex 2025, it’s clear that Asustor is starting to target the upper end of the SMB and mid-enterprise market with a platform that prioritizes performance, scalability, and resilience. The use of AMD’s Ryzen 7 Pro processor, DDR5 ECC memory, and support for PCIe Gen5 across both storage and expansion puts this NAS series in a position to compete directly with more established rackmount offerings. With the added flexibility of the Xpanstor 12R SAS expansion unit and redundant 80 PLUS Platinum power supplies, the platform clearly anticipates long-term deployment cycles and high-availability expectations. ADM 5, preloaded on both the 12-bay and 16-bay models, offers a wide range of file services and storage management tools. It’s not the most streamlined interface I’ve seen at the show, but its modularity does provide powerful customization if you’re willing to invest time into setup. Snapshot support, folder-level access controls, and multi-gigabit networking options all contribute to a solid enterprise feature set. While there’s still room for refinement in areas like NVMe SSD analytics and centralized configuration workflows, the ADM ecosystem is evidently maturing in pace with the hardware.
As it stands today at Computex, the Lockerstor R Pro Gen2 looks to be one of the most forward-looking rackmount solutions Asustor has released to date, and one of the most competitive solution at the show! The combination of PCIe Gen5 infrastructure, robust software support, and a competitive warranty makes this system a serious contender for IT environments seeking reliability without stepping into proprietary lock-in or over-complex licensing. Final availability and region-specific configurations are still to be confirmed, but what I’m seeing here suggests Asustor is closing the gap with its more dominant competitors in the rackmount NAS space.
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what about Drive clients and services on Asustor (like synology drive) ? for linux
bare metal backup/restore? (like ABB) ? any other softwware?
UPS connection over USB ?
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I purchased my Asustor nas to replicate my Apple iCloud but the Nextcloud software that comes with it is not turnkey at all. It’s really glitchy very complicated to set up. Many people are buying NAS machines so that they can set up their own iCloud system, but these NAS companies are not taking advantage of providing a turnkey system that allows you to set up a iCloud system that rivals what Apple is doing or what Google Drive is doing.
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NO MORE ASUSTOR is SCRAP !!!!!
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10.000 clicks in 30 minutes. Am I supposed to get any knowledge from that ????
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So no VPN app exists in app store? How to use VPN on NAS?
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Does asustor ADM 5 let you create a virtual ADM, similar to how synology lets to you make a virtualDSM?
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Never owned a Synology, so I have no Synology user experience to compare with, but based on this ADM5 review and their modern hardware specs , I would def choose Asustor in a heartbeat over Synology! Four NVMe M.2s, dual 10Gbe NICs, etc. The only thing I wish they had is an Intel CPU for media transcoding. Great video, thank you!
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I have a Lockerstor 2 Gen 2 I’ll have to look but I’m on a 4.** version of ADM, I assume it will go to ADM 5 soon.
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You nailed the “context” perfectly Dude!
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I’ve owned an Asustor and plan on installing Proxmox and/or TrueNAS in the future as I don’t trust ADM anymore. Their updates break their own apps.
For example, I updated Jellyfin and it broke this app. I lost all my progress and configurations. An update for NextCloud broke it too (I had backups of my files at least). Another time, 2FA broke as well. I was lucky that I had recently had a recent Windows copy on another SSD on my laptop, so I was able to access the GUI without logging in again. I had to disable 2FA.
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I soo badly want to dump my Synology for a Asustore. Even more so now with ADM5. But as I said before, they really need a AMD Ryzen Embedded 8000 Series (like 8845HS) with a good GPU and media codecs (AV1 encode/decode plz) that can be the heart of a great Plex/Jellyfin setup.
Great products.though
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Asustor Gen 3 Vs Ugreen 6800 (about 500$ cheaper in black friday)
which one should I get as my fist NAS for my video business?
being able to connect directly with USB sounds fun, and also I think the Asustor is still more reliable for business.
what do you think? 🙂
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Apple no longer supports AFP and it’s been deprecated for at least a few years so I don’t know why it’s even included anymore. Apple supports SMB and should be used now.
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I wish ixsystems made cheaper boxes so everyone could go truenas.
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Nothing about VM’s despite it being in the description?? I would suggest this is a major feature for anyone looking at spending this much on this
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Does not apply for my older AS3102T NAS we are stuck on ADM 4.3………
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I don’t get it
– if i want to restore a single file from a snapshot, can i do that?
– there’s no way to browse the snapshot?
– there’s no way to change time between snapshots for an individual folder?
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ADM also lacks the ability to backup for example Photo Gallery 3 data so if your system fails, you lose all your albums. The photos itself can be backed up but not the settings/app data. Astounding that a company which sells backup solutions for a living is not making sure its own apps are backed up.
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Another missing feature is automatic reconnect of WireGuard VPN. It works for OpenVPN in ADM, but not WG.
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ADM has folder encryption, but you cannot use it for photo folders and still use ASUSTOR’ photo app. You cannot use encryption on user home folders either. So basically it does not work for home privacy protection in case of theft.
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Does ADM have a task scheduler ui yet?
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will it support lockerstor Gen 2 AS6704T ?
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Thank you for the video. Will ADM run a full synchronization for RAID1 after every reboot?
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I have an AS6806T and the LED for drive six is always on after boot-up. It’s not blinking like the others. All six drives are used in a single volume with RAID 6. any ideas? ADM-bug?
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They still haven’t fixed the scrubbing and raid sync been 2 tasks (manual, can’t be scheduled) it’s can be dangerous for your data because before running a raid sync you must always run a btrfs scrub first to make sure the filesystem is good (if raid sync is ran first and there is corruption in the filesystem it will sync that corruption to the parity making btrfs scrub unable to do a repair attempt)
On Synology a data scrub automatically runs a btrfs scrub first then once finished it runs a raid sync and it can be ran as a schedule
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Synology moved on, so the question is pointless really. Should Dell be afraid of Synology? That is the question…
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Synology isn’t worried because they decided a few years to stop focus/no longer give a shit…about private users..it’s now all corporate and maximum profits for minimum efforts…in short, if you are still considering synology…you’re dumb.
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Synology SHOULD be worried because they are screwing up with their loyal customers ….. Synology ARE NOT worried because Asustor scored a massive own goal with their delusional screwed up pricing so they will not penetrate much if any of Synology’s market share….. also a worrying LACK of support with issues with Asustor products and failing drive arrays has been noticed with quite a few threads on Reddit about it …. ADM 5 looks extremely promising ….. but as Newt said it won’t make any difference….
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Synology should have already been worried. I’ve been using Synology NAS since 2011, and was very pleased with their hardware/software offerings. But current hardware is lacking to the point their that their software is no longer enough to keep me loyal to the Synology brand.
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Is there an app for backing up a hole computer? You install some kind of agent on your station and it backs up computer to a nas. Then you restore it even on a diffrent hardware. Synology has it and it works great.
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With the pricetag of 1230 eur?? nooo way, I would love to have that, but this price is a BIG BIG NO!! adding drives to it it would be 2000 eur. I am not that mental
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Please don’t enable youtube’s auto dubbing feature, it’s absolutely awful.
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Good French translation
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It certainly performs wonders and shits cucumbers but nothing compelling to switch from Synology. Yet. Your comments regarding the breakout of functions into separate apps makes for a very busy looking desktop. And, without SHR, I would be looking to buy a 6 bay and start with 3 drives in RAID 5 to leave me expansion flexibility.
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Is it worth waiting till they improve?
Do you think it is worth installing Unraid or Truenas Scale instead?
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ASUSTOR is teaching us what a NAS should be today, unlike Synology, which decided to remove internal HEIC support to avoid slowness, instead of installing better hardware.
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The Synology Hybrid RAID still seems like the biggest selling point to me! I just don’t understand why other NAS brands haven’t done something similar. If I’ve got a 4-bay NAS, I shouldn’t have to replace all 4 drives just to get more storage.
When I rebuild my NAS, I’ll have to go with Xpenology again or UnRAID.
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Hello, did you tried to play anything in 4K ? Is it possible to add external GPU ?
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Always happy to see updates to the software across any of the NAS providers. Everytime time I see Asustor it makes me want to switch from Synology as my primary NAS. Also, that taskbar gives me anxiety everytime I see it ????
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Get us a Black friday deal for Gen 3 six bays, im in!
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Considering this file “explorer” – i would consider this over Synology, which i currently have.
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good morning Robbie.
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