QNAP TS-870U-RP NAS Network Storage Server Review By Bruce Normann Manufacturer: QNAP Systems, Inc. Product Name: QNAP TS-870U-RP NAS Server Model Number: TS-870U-RP UPC: 885022004089 Price As Tested: $2025.99 (Newegg | Amazon | B&H) Full disclosure: The product used in this review was supplied by QNAP Systems There's a new Ethernet in town; its called 10GbE, and its blazing fast. Benchmark Reviews gave you the inside scoop on the newest 10GbE networking hardware recently, with our review of the NETGEAR XS708E ProSAFE Plus Switch. In that article I mentioned that the first thing I did when I unboxed the switch was to hook it up a 10GbE-capable NAS. Plain old Gigabit Ethernet has been holding back the performance of mid-range NAS devices for a while now. Almost every modern 4-bay NAS has the capability to overwhelm the bandwidth of that one Gigabit pipe, that has been the de-facto standard for networking since the beginning of the new Millennium. The major players in the NAS market know this, and for several years now their high-end models have been designed to accept 10GbE NICs. With 10GbE starting to enter the mainstream, QNAP is now working on making their 10GbE-capable products more affordable. The QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS is part of a new model line that trades off some internal processing power and a couple of build features in order to lower the cost of entry for a 10GbE NAS. It's just the first step in what I can only imagine will be a continuing drive to push 10GbE further down into the product line, so we're still talking about a business-class NAS server here. With eight 3.5" drive bays available, there is a potential for 32TB of storage; this is for people who have serious data appetites and deep pockets. The cost to fill this unit up with 4TB HDDs is enough to give some people pause, but for most SMB owners, it's the cost of doing business. The TS-870U-RP is aimed a little higher than the typical small business needs, both by virtue of its size and its form factor. If both capacity and redundancy are needed, RAID 5 is a minimum. If you want to go to RAID 6 or RAID 10, you need a minimum of four disks, with two spindles completely occupied by providing multiple levels of redundancy for your data. A four-bay device is really the bare minimum for a high availability NAS appliance, and you're left with only two drive bays worth of storage capacity. That's not enough for many businesses. As far as the form factor goes, 90% of the networking, storage and server hardware in use by SMBs today is designed to be rack mounted, and that figure's going to be 100% at the enterprise level. The TS-870U-RP NAS server is a couple steps up from a typical four or six-bay device. While it's not the biggest NAS device QNAP offers (that's the TS-1679U-RP, a 16-bay unit), it's got enough storage space and enough CPU horsepower to do the job. It also has the option to use multiple 10GbE network interfaces, and that feature makes a huge difference in real-world performance. Even a single Seagate Barracuda 3TB Hard Drive ST3000DM001 can push 160MB/s through its SATA 6Gb/s interface. That's about 25% more data throughput than a standard 1000BASE-T network is capable of handling. That's just a single mechanical hard drive; think about what eight SSDs in RAID 5 can do! QNAP has, and they've demonstrated read and write speeds well over 1500MB/s with this model. Those are insane speeds for most of us, but its mighty good news for any room full of CADD designers or video editors. Benchmark Reviews has tested quite a few NAS products, ranging from the QNAP TS-119 NAS single-disk offering made for home users, to the Goliath QNAP TS-879U-RP 8-Bay NAS for the storage needs of large businesses. We've also tested the Thecus N5550 NAS server recently, which falls in the middle between those two extremes. Let's see how this 8-bay NAS compares to its competitors. QNAP v3.8 Software Features It seems like every time I review a new QNAP Turbo NAS, that there's a new version of the software available. There are two reasons why I can't complain about this. One is that significant new features are always being added or improved. Two, the basic operation of the software doesn't change randomly with every new release. I never have to fumble around with a totally new GUI layout, just because some web designer got bored at work and decided to change everything without really improving it. So, let's take a look at what's new with version 3.8. The changes are mostly additions, so the bulk of what we use at Benchmark Reviews to review and test NAS products with hasn't changed. When QNAP launched the v3 Graphical User Interface on their Turbo NAS servers several years ago, they set a new standard for this market. Fast forward to the year 2013 and version 3.8 offers a wide variety of enhancements that keep it at the forefront of modern networking applications. The feature set is a mix of elements that are broadly targeted at either the home user, a small/medium business, or a full-fledged enterprise situation. NAS products have gained in popularity to the point where network administrators consider them mainstream appliances, small businesses consider them a lifesaver, and they are gaining traction in the home market. It's important to meet the needs of each one of those potential customers if you want to be the market leader, and that is clearly QNAP's intention. There are an overwhelming amount of features available to manage the QNAP Turbo NAS, as the huge list in the Software Features section demonstrates. In this section of the review, we will focus on a sample of new features released with version 3.8, not the full set. Windows 8 Compatibility Turbo NAS firmware 3.8 now includes support for the latest Windows operating system. Love it or hate it, you don't have a choice. You have to support Windows 8, because new workstations, laptops and tablets are rapidly coming on line, to a network near you. Correction, make that YOUR network! Maybe the numbers aren't as high as Microsoft is pretending, but they're out there. Of course, IE10 is supported, and there are no restrictions on the use of the wide range of features that were supported in earlier versions of Windows. Web setup portal - start.qnap.com CDs and DVDs are old school when it comes to system setup. Of course, you can store the ISO image on your network, or better yet, take advantage of QNAP's web-based setup portal. Just point your Windows, Mac, or Linux machine to start.qnap.com and follow the step-by-step instructions. Once the basic NAS functions are enabled and operating, take advantage of the powerful combination of flexible application privileges and single sign-on for all registered users. If the default user gets access to only the Photo Station, Music Station, and Video Station, they get instant access to all authorized applications with one sign-in. Photo Station Photo management software is a very personal subject. I'm not going to tell you that you're going to love Photo Station, because you might be addicted to Flikr, and that's never going to change. But, if you've got an open mind, here's all the things that Photo Station can do: Photo Archiving Auto photo album creation, based on folders One-touch upload from USB devices Simplified album management tools Slideshows with transition effects Photo sharing on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter Pixlr photo editor with RAW support Music Station 3 Music Station also has a tough road to follow, because many people are already wedded to their favorite audio player. That hasn't stopped QNAP from making a best effort and the fact that they're on version 3 tells me that they aren't giving up any time soon.... The interface is pretty clean and intuitive, and you have basic search functions that can index off an artist, an album, a song, or a genre. If you already have all your music ripped to a drive on your computer, it's straightforward to upload it to the NAS. Just like photos, it's a folder-based filing system. There is an Internet Radio service built into the application, and you can create a favorites folder. If you connect a pair of USB speakers to the NAS, you can even use it as an alarm clock. Your music selection comes on at the preset time; your choice, Heavy Metal, Wagner, or Easy Listening. Video Station Video Station has less competition than the Photo or Music station, because people have been creating and uploading videos for a shorter period of time and they haven't developed long-standing application preferences yet. Video is definitely growing in popularity though, if only because every cat and dog owner in the world has posted at least three videos on YouTube in the last year, alone. The QNAP Video Station allows you to host videos on the Turbo NAS server itself, or it has hooks to publish them on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Download Station 3 Download Station 3 is another app that has been improved several times in the last few years, and it's a core functionality that has been a part of the Turbo NAS software for a long time. If you have a storage server on your network, it makes sense to relieve the desktops from download duty. After all, once you download the item, you're more than likely going to put it on the storage server anyway, either for safekeeping or for distribution to other devices on the network. Some new features included this time are Smart Download Bandwidth Control, integration of QGet into Download Station, and an add-on app to D/L videos to the NAS via website subscription. DJ Station This is the antithesis of a business app, if there ever was one. With DJ Station, you create playlists and share them with friends on Facebook. Any bets on how many times this feature gets used on a corporate network. My guess is going to be pretty high, even though it ought to be zero. I'm not sure why I don't "get" this one. It's not like I'm too old for Facebook, it's filled with Boomers and retirees that are a lot older than me. Maybe my self-esteem is too low, because I'm utterly convinced that no one cares what eight songs I think go really well together. Surveillance Station Pro The surveillance application is quite full-featured, which is not surprising given QNAP's strong presence in the dedicated surveillance market. The latest release of Surveillance Station Pro extends the number of supported IP cameras to over 1,400 different models. Each TS-x70 NAS can support up to 16 camera channels; one free license is included with the unit and additional licenses can be purchased. TS-x79 models can support up to 40 licenses per unit, so plan ahead if you need a large number of IP cameras linked to a single unit. A surveillance cluster can be formed from multiple Turbo NAS units via multi-server hosting on a PC, over LAN or WAN. 128 channels can be combined this way into a single monitoring center, and the diagram above illustrates this configuration. There are a number of features include in this app that are worth mentioning. Intelligent video analytics allow the user to have the application search long streams of video for things like missing object, motion detection, foreign objects, etc. This speeds up forensic video searches tremendously, and also avoids missing key details because a human has a hard time concentrating on surveillance video for long periods of time. An E-Map can be created that will highlight the exact location in the facility, when and where the camera detects an anomaly. Finally, most of these features are now available on your iOS or Android mobile device with the VMobile app. There is also a QNAP Surveillance Client for Mac, but it's fairly basic in scope. Proxy client support In most SMB LAN environments, proxy servers filter and control Internet access. The Turbo NAS firmware allows proxy client settings to easily resolve IP paths to the Internet. When performing live firmware updates, updating virus definitions, or installing QPKG software packages, it's generally more secure to use a proxy server for accessing the Internet. There are a lot of other important and useful features available in version 3.8. Don't let this limited description of the latest changes make you think that this is all there is. Go look at the Software Features page in this article, and you can read about everything these versatile machines can do, until your eyes get blurry. Closer Look: QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS Server The QNAP TS-870U-RP has more capacity than most NAS units in the market; that's just the nature of its target market and design specs. The eight bays can theoretically hold 32TB of data, in JBOD or RAID 0 modes, with today's state-of-the-art 4TB drives installed in each bay. The bottom line with any high performance storage solution is that the number of drive spindles in play is more important than almost any other factor, assuming that everything else is based on reasonably modern technology. When you combine the higher level of performance with the greater flexibility for online RAID capacity expansion & online RAID level migration, the additional cost of the extra drive bays looks like a bargain instead of conspicuous consumption. What initially looks like overkill in a NAS system might just be the very thing that saves the day some years down the road. I imagine the TS-1270U-RP will be at least as popular in the IT world, since it provides twelve bays of storage capacity in the same 2U form factor. The QNAP TS-870U-RP shares many of the same features as the current TS-x79 models, but some changes have been made internally to reduce cost. The TS-x70 series is meant to provide high performance on the low end of the business class series. There are quite a few similarities to the TS-879U-RP model that Benchmark Reviews tested last year. There are 8, 10, and 12 bay units available, in both tower and rack mount formats. The size and weight of the TS-870U-RP are substantial: 89mm(H) x 482mm(W) x 534mm(D), and 22 pounds without drives installed. Each HDD you install will add about 1-1/2 pounds, depending on your choice of drive. Most users will probably be looking at 2, 3, or 4TB drives for a NAS unit like this, and they're heavier than most. Very few people with anywhere near that much data are going to want to live without it for any length of time, so a RAID configuration that includes some redundancy is undoubtedly called for. Multiple SATA 6Gb/s drives can be installed as: a single disk JBOD (Linear Disk Volume) RAID 0 (Disk Striping), RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring), RAID 5 (Block-level striping with distributed parity), RAID 5 + Hot Spare, RAID 6 (Block-level striping with redundant distributed parity), RAID 6 + Hot Spare, RAID 10 (Striped (RAID 0) array whose segments are mirrored), RAID 10 + Hot Spare RAID 5, 6, & 10 configurations have the option of a hot spare, which decreases MTTR but also decreases overall device capacity. The most common choices are going to be RAID 5, 6, or 10, depending on what type of data is primarily stored on the device. Despite its popularity, RAID 5 suffers from write performance limitations in large multi-user databases. Most people running that type of application used to be limited to direct-attached storage; it really was a necessity for that type of work. RAID 10 eliminates this problem, at the expense of capacity, but for some uses it's a much better solution. RAID 6 offers some additional redundancy, allowing for continued operation even with two simultaneous drive failures, with no additional performance hit and only one additional drive. This option is very popular because if one individual drive fails in a RAID 5 implementation, the array instantly starts operating like a RAID 0 configuration, which has NO redundancy. It stays in that vulnerable state until the array is rebuilt, which is a slow process that generally taxes the system to the max, and can take several hours to complete. More than once, I've seen that situation go South; we lost the whole array and had to restore from tape backup, which meant lost work and a lot more downtime. Each drive can be formatted with FAT, NTFS, EXT3, or EXT4 file systems. All Intel-based QNAP NAS units offer the additional option of AES 256-bit encryption and some of the units in the TS-x79 series support the recent AES-NI additions to the Intel64 instruction set. The Celeron CPU in the TS-870U-RP does not have this capability, and I've learned that it's a waste of time to try using volume encryption with a system doesn't have AES-NI support. At least one vendor has implemented folder-based encryption, where you can limit the amount of data that gets encrypted to specific folders in the data structure. If only a small portion of your data needs it, you can enjoy a balance of performance and security that isn't available on the all-or-nothing units. Our tests on all QNAP systems have utilized EXT4-formatted disks without encryption. QNAP uses a fairly simple steel-framed tray to hold each drive on the TS-870U-RP, which is a common part across much of the product line. In the rack mount models, each tray slides in with the HDD in the horizontal position and locks firmly into place with the lever on the front. Key locks are included to secure the trays in place, which may or may not be a security requirement for you. The drive trays easily accommodate 2.5" drives without any additional hardware; just use the correct mounting holes located on the bottom surface. QNAP does not recommend mixing 3.5" and 2.5" drives in the same enclosure, and they also offer some small form factor units that are specifically designed for 2.5" drives. Those models are less expensive than the full size units, so it's worth investigating them if handling 2.5" SATA drives is what you're interested in. There are some definite advantages to using that form factor in specific cases, as I outlined in my review of the Patriot Convoy 425XL SAS/SATA RAID Enclosure. The trays are labeled with the chassis slot number, which is a big plus, even though it sounds like a small thing. They are all physically identical and you can mix and match them all you want, until you build a drive array and then you had better remember which one goes where. If you mix them up the NAS won't recognize the array, and worst case you could end up destroying data as you try to figure out which drive is which. The 2U chassis height of the TS-870U-RP is tall enough to house three rows of 3.5" drives, which is exactly how the companion model, the TS-1270U-RP is configured. With (only!) eight drive bays in this model, there is enough room at the top of the front panel for an LCD display, but that's one of the things that got left off, in order to reduce the price of this series. With the display, almost all the basic setup variables can be configured from the front panel. Without it, it's only configurable through the browser interface. To be honest, I don't miss the display much. On the front surface of the right rack mount handle are the ON/OFF power button and LED-illuminated icons for System Status, presence of a 10 GbE interface, LAN activity, and presence of an eSATA device. Each of the hard drive bays also has two LED indicators on it as well, showing HDD activity and error status. Green means the drive is present and OK, flashing Green means the drive is being accessed, and Red means there's an error. There are no USB or eSATA ports located on the front of the TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS; they're all found on the rear panel. There are no ventilation holes on the sides, top, or bottom of the QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS chassis. The only entry point for cool air is through the front of the drive trays; it passes over the HDDs and is then exhausted out the rear of the unit. The fan assembly is a modular unit, with two separate fans mounted to a removable panel, and is controlled by the motherboard. In order to keep things cool when needed and quiet the rest of the time, the fan speed is heavily modulated. I haven't paid much attention to fan noise in the smaller NAS models, as it was never really noticeable during my daily use. The TS-870U-RP is a corporate beast though, and the fan noise was always there, even when running at idle speed. Just one more clue that this is not a unit designed for home use. The overall size of the unit is significant, as you can see below (with a 12" ruler, for scale). The thin profile (2U height) is a bonus, and when mounted in a 19" rack is the only dimension that really matters. The unit is intended to be mounted on sliding rails, which are available from QNAP. You can't support something this heavy with a couple of bolts in the rack mounting ears. Looking at the back panel of the TS-870U-RP, you can see most of the hardwired I/O points. Starting on the left are two eSATA ports. To the right are two stacks of USB 2.0 and 1000BASE-T Ethernet jacks - a total of four USB ports and two RJ-45 jacks for the standard GbE connections. Next up are twin USB 3.0 connectors, in their customary blue plastic livery. There are no USB ports on the front panel; all of them are here, on the back. Continuing to the right, there is a single, full-sized HDMI video port, followed by the small hole that guards the reset button from accidental actuation. Two levels of reset capability are provided, Basic System Reset (hold for 3 sec), and Advanced System Reset (hold for 10 sec). Leaving the I/O panel and moving to the right, are two half-height (Low Profile, if you prefer) expansion slot covers. They line up with two x8 PCI Express expansion slots on the main board. The primary use for these expansion slots is for optional NICs, and we are going to use one of them for a 10GbE adaptor, which is available from QNAP as an option for many of their high-capacity models. On the far right are the IEC inputs for AC power, and the small cooling fans of the two power supplies. The two redundant power supplies are held in place by thumb screws, for a tool-less hot swap, if needed. U-shaped handles are on pivots, to help you pull them out and slide them back in. The electrical connections are made with a high-current card-edge connector on the back of the module, which engaged and disengaged easily when I tested it. The power supplies are each rated for 300 watts, which is enough to power the unit continuously, so there's no specific time limit on how long you can run the NAS on one PSU. There is still a need for UPS power, which most data centers will have already. The small green LEDs on the back of the PSUs light up when the system is active. Now that we've had a thorough tour of the exterior, let's do a complete tear-down and see what the insides look like. The next section covers Insider Details. Internal Details: QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS The top cover is easily removed once two thumb screws on the back panel are taken care of. The modular layout is quite evident; the main board takes up a large part of the total footprint. The drive bays at the front of the unit use almost the same amount of space, just more rectangular, and the power supply area is a smaller, but still significant part of the overall arrangement. The cooling fans are mounted on a removable aluminum plate that forms the border between the drive bays and the rest of the unit. Some things to look for, that we'll see in more detail as we continue the tear down, are: the four memory slots, the two x8 PCI Express slots, the DOM memory board, and the two heatsinks showing the locations of the Sandy Bridge CPU and PCH (Platform Controller Hub, nee Southbridge). The QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS server is equipped with an Intel Celeron G540 processor, which is based on the 32nm Sandy Bridge architecture, and is clocked to 2.4 GHz, according to QNAP. The current retail component from Intel is clocked at 2.5 GHz, so I don't know if QNAP is underclocking the CPU, or they are getting a special SKU from Intel, or if it's really running at 2.5 GHz, and the marketing collateral is just behind the curve. There is 4GB of DDR3-1600 system memory installed at the factory, and it's expandable all the way up to 16GB by adding more 4GB DIMMS into the three empty DIMM slots. The TS-870U-RP doesn't have the top-of-the-line CPU in QNAP NAS servers - that would be the systems with Xeon processors, but a modern dual-core Celeron is still a huge step up from any Atom-based model. The only question is whether it has enough horsepower to max out the system performance in an eight-bay unit, and we'll find that out shortly. From this angle you can see the fan module a little better, as well as the power supply wiring to the main board and the backplane. The wiring from the redundant PSU to the two main PCBs is very straightforward and short. The main controller board has a familiar ATX arrangement, complete with a separate 4-pin connector for CPU power. The backplane PCB gets its own dedicated power connector, direct from the PSU, for all those power-hungry HDDs. If you think about how much current it takes to spin up twelve drives, with three or four heavy platters inside each one of them, it's clearly a good idea to have substantial power cables feeding the board directly. Right next to the power connector is the dual-redundant 512MB Disk-On-Module (DOM) PC board which contains two complete, independent operating systems. If one OS fails, the system reboots with the spare OS, and then immediately starts to repair and rebuild the OS on the corrupted module. All this takes place automatically, without user input. In between the power connectors and the rear panel are something you don't see every day on a NAS server: x8 PCI Express slots, two of them. This is where you have to go if you want to get the full performance that the TS-870U-RP is capable of. Many users will only need one of these PCIe slots, since most 10GbE NICs come in a dual-port configuration, but products of this caliber need to have some degree of flexibility and future-proofing built into them. You can also put 2-port GbE NICs in each slot, for a total of six GbE interfaces, including the built-in ports. I strongly recommend using at least two of the 10GbE ports, if at all possible. The increase in system performance that you get is well worth the cost, even if you have to upgrade other components of your network. I'll be testing this model with the QNAP LAN-10G2T-U, Dual-port 10 Gigabit Network Expansion Card, which has two 10GBASE-T ports, with standard RJ-45 connectors. Several models from Intel and Emulex are also supported, with options for fiber optic cabling and SFP+ ports, too. I've personally tested the Intel X520-T2 (E10G42BT) adapter on a similar QNAP Turbo NAS and also had a good experience with that combo. The firmware instantly recognized the 10GbE NIC and there was no manual configuration required to get it running. The two fans are 70mm units from premium Taiwanese supplier AVC that are 25mm thick and PWM controlled. They are designed to handle higher backpressure than a typical PC case fan sees, both because of the layout of the device and the fact that it may run 24/7 for years without anyone cleaning it. Because cooling is such an important element of the overall reliability for devices like this, there's no good excuse for failing to clean things on a regular basis, especially since the modular fan assembly is designed to be quickly and easily removed and replaced. The electronics obviously need their fair share of cooling, but with up to eight HDDs crammed into a tight space, there is a great need to keep them cool, as well. Hard drive life is closely linked to operating temperature, and drive life is definitely something that almost all users of this unit will be concerned about. Near the middle of the TS-870U-RP, the main board ends, and several PCIe edge connectors transfer the signals to a vertical board that serves as the backplane for all the SATA HDD connectors. It's not just a passive board, there are drive controller ICs and a large FPGA chip located on the backplane. This is consistent with how QNAP builds their larger tower models, putting the controllers closer to the drives they are responsible for. Each Marvell 88SE9125 SATA controller chip handles two drives, so the board isn't littered with these ICs, but they're easy enough to spot. There's a fairly large open space above the drive bays; on the 12 bay TS-1270U-RP, which shares a similar chassis, this space would be filled with drives. It's not only the chassis that's similar; the main PC board is silk-screened with a TS-1270 designation. There are some empty solder pads where a third instance of a controller IC would probably be installed, were this board built up to the full TS-1270 specs. The memory controller is integrated on the Intel Celeron CPU, and it's designed to handle DDR3-1066 and 1333 memory modules in its native configuration. The QNAP TS-870U-RP comes standard with 4GB of DRAM, rated at DDR3-1600 CL11, which is installed in one of four DIMM sockets located on the main board. The specs for the TS-870U-RP call out a maximum memory capacity of 16 GB, which is less than the 32GB maximum addressable size of the CPU, but more than adequate for a NAS running Linux. Based on my testing, straight data transfers use very little of the NAS memory capacity. There are hundreds of more challenging apps that you can run on a QNAP NAS though, and the extra memory will have a bigger impact on some of those. The latches on the DIMM socket where the factory memory was installed are held firmly closed by a nylon cable tie, installed during the system build. At first I thought it was some sort of anti-tamper measure, but I think it's really there to make sure the memory module doesn't get loose. There's actually a lot of vibration in data center racks, mostly due to hard drives and cooling fans, so it makes sense to tie everything down tight. Airplanes also have a lot of vibration, and I can tell you from experience shipping machinery to Japan, that things WILL loosen up over the course of a trans-oceanic plane ride. So far we've had a good look at what there is to observe as far as hardware goes, but let's dig down one more layer, down to the chip level where the technology really starts to get interesting. I love my shiny hardware just as much as the next person, but it's only half the story.... Technology Details: QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS The biggest chip on the board is the Intel Celeron G540 CPU, a dual-core member of the 32nm Sandy Bridge family. It's certainly got the biggest heatsink, a densely finned aluminum block held in place by four heavy-duty springs. As much work as the CPU does, it's isolated from directly communicating with most of the subsystems by the Intel Platform Controller Hub, which we all used to call the Southbridge (back when there was also a Northbridge...). This is the second hardest working chip on the main board, and it's also got a heatsink on top, although it's less that 1/10 the size of the one on the CPU. The Celeron CPU in the TS-870U-RP does not have native CPU support for the Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (AES-NI) set. These new instructions speed up the encryption/decryption process by anywhere from 3x to 10x, depending on the implementation. As slow as the Atom-based and Marvell-based models are with encryption enabled, the QNAP TS-x70 models are the minimum level that can realistically support AES 256-bit Volume-based data Encryption. Even with the enhanced computing power offered by a Sandy Bridge CPU, the extra load of data encryption is just too much to handle without a major performance hit. If you need volume-based encryption, you really should consider spending the extra to get a CPU that will offer reasonable performance, which means a model that supports the AES-NI instruction set. So far, I have yet to see a NAS product based on an AMD CPU, but the Bulldozer and Piledriver cores are both supporting AES-NI, now. Marvell supplies the SATA interface ICs for many of QNAP's products, as well as for other suppliers. The ones used on the TS-870U-RP are marked 88SE9125, and they serve as the interface between the system's PCI-Express lanes and the eight SATA devices. Each controller supports two 6 Gb/s SATA interface ports and a one-lane 5.0 GT/s PCIe 2.0 host interface back to the Intel PCH. There are several of these controllers, located on the SATA backplane, which is the same way they were deployed on the TS-879U-RP that Benchmark Reviews tested last year. There is a whole family of parts in this series, and this one is optimized for use with a central RAID controller on the system board. Benchmark Reviews has reported on a number of issues in the past, where a variety of brand new SATA 6Gb/s controllers aren't fulfilling the promises made for this interface. With the latest SSDs pushing more than 4Gb/s on both read and write cycles, many controllers aren't keeping pace. I anticipate the primary usage of the TS-870U-RP as being paired with traditional 3.5" HDDs, none of which operate anywhere near the full capabilities of the SATA 6Gb/s interface. With the right SSDs installed, the theoretical throughput for all of the drives running together would be well over 30 Gb/s, and the rest of the hardware (not to mention the rest of the IT world) just isn't ready for that, yet. The Xilinx XC3S50A IC on the SATA backplane board is a Field Programmable Gate Array chip, which is basically a programmable logic device that can do anything you want it to. Their main advantage in the marketplace is that they can be developed and deployed quicker and much more cheaply than Application Specific ICs (ASICs). The graphics processor in a video card is a common example of an ASIC, and most of you know how long they take to develop and how much they can cost! In this case, I'm betting that this FPGA is the core RAID controller for the whole system, since I don't see any other devices on the PC board that are designed for that task. The rest of the major ICs in the system are for power management, and for supporting the various interconnects, like USB, eSATA, HDMI, and GbE. Intersil supplies their ISL6364C and ISL 6314C to provide multi-phase PWM control over the Voltage Regulator Modules that feed the CPU, RAM, PCH, etc. Renesas Electronics (nee NEC) provides their ubiquitous D720200F1 chip for USB 3.0 duties. TI supplies their SN75DP139 DisplayPort to High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) 1.4b convertor chip to drive the HDMI output on the rear panel. The CPU is powered by a 4-phase MOSFET bridge, controlled by the Intersil ISL6364 mentioned above. This image also makes it clear that QNAP is making efficient use of their design resources, by using the same PCB in two similar models, the TS-870U-RP and the TS-1270U-RP. QNAP relies heavily on Intel for their Ethernet controllers in the high-end models of their product line. It's a smart move, as Intel is a leader in this area, even though they're not very well known for it by the public. Two different ICs combine forces to provide the MAC and PHY functions for the two 1000BASE-T ports on the rear panel; the WGG82574L and the WG82579LM. The latter chip was just launched in 1Q2011, so both Intel and QNAP are keeping things current in this area. We'll see later, in our RAID testing, just how critical Ethernet performance is to a product like this. We'll also see the impact of switching to 10GBASE-T, with QNAP's LAN-10G2T-U, Dual-port 10 Gigabit Network Expansion Card installed in one of the two x8 PCIe slots. To measure isolated NAS power consumption, Benchmark Reviews uses the Kill-A-Watt EZ (model P4460) power meter made by P3 International. I had both of the redundant power supplies plugged in to the meter, because that's the way 99.99% of users will run a device like this. Obviously, power consumption is going to depend heavily on the number and type of drives that are installed. The power draw also depends heavily on the fan speed that's required to keep the unit cool. When the device first starts up and the fans are going 100%, 275 W is consumed at first, then once the system completes its boot process and gets into idle standby mode, it tapers down to 125W. This is right in line with the 155W specified by QNAP for a system with eight 1TB drives installed. With all eight drives installed and during heavy file transfer operations, it drew 150W during Writes and 140W during Reads. When the system goes into Sleep Mode and spins all the drives down, the power is reduced to 72 watts. When the unit is turned off, it still consumes 5W in Vampire mode; be aware that even when it's turned off, the two SMPS modules still pull a small amount of power. We've seen the ins and outs of the hardware, the new software, and the technology under the hood; now let's take a detailed look through the extensive list of features that you get with most every QNAP Turbo NAS. I know the next couple of sections are overly long, but it's critical to understand just how much these units can do. You don't want to be fooled into thinking it's just a big box full of drives. It's capable of so much more than that. QNAP Turbo NAS Server Features As the data value and volume of business data continue to rise, corporations need high-performance storage solutions which are secure, reliable, and easy to manage. The QNAP® TS-870U-RP, which serves as both IP-SAN (iSCSI) and NAS, can be easily utilized in different business and enterprise applications such as backup center, disaster recovery, file sharing, virtualization, and video editing storage. The Feature-rich and Integrated Applications for Business The NAS supports file sharing across Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX platforms. Versatile business applications such as file server, FTP server, printer server, web server, and Windows AD support are provided. The dominant features, such as WebDAV, Share Folder Aggregation (also known as DFS), IPv6 and IPv4 dual-stack, Wake on LAN, schedule power on/ off, HDD S.M.A.R.T, comprehensive log systems, and policy-based unauthorized IP blocking are all included features of a QNAP NAS server. Secure - Data might seem insecure being open in a network, but the QNAP® TS-870U-RP offers a variety of security options such as encrypted access, IP filtering, policy-based automatic IP blocking, and more. In addition, full control of the NAS is offered down to the user and folder access rights to determine who can access the NAS and what can or cannot be accessed. The TS-870U-RP is packed with security features to stop all unauthorized data access such as AES-256 volume-based encryption. The AES-256 volume-based encryption prevents sensitive data from unauthorized access and data-breach even if the hard drives or the device is stolen. Reliable - The TS-870U-RP is reliable with built-in safety precautions to safeguard all data from any unforeseen problems. With multiple built-in features to guarantee no interruptions to the work flow of a business, the TS-870U-RP is an efficient asset. The advanced RAID configurations and hot-swap capabilities are included to give RAID performance, protection and reduced rebuilding time. Moreover, the dual OS embedded on the DOM architecture ensures the system will boot up. If one of the two operating systems fails, the healthy operating system will boot up and operate normally while repairing the failed operating system. The dual Gigabit LAN ports can also be configured for failover which allows the NAS server to sustain the failure of one network port and still provide continuous services. Simple - Setting up local or remote access with the TS-870U-RP is painless and does not require any IT skills. All setup processes have been simplified so that most of the process is either automatic or can be completed by an installation wizard. The user-friendly web GUI allows administrators to easily manage the NAS so there is no need for an extensive knowledge of complex commands. Simple management tools such as instant SMS/Email alert, the hard drive S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) feature, and system resource monitor are provided to keep administrators up-to-date on their NAS at all times. High Network Bandwidth - The TS-870U-RP offers network expansion options which include dual-port 1 GbE and dual-port 10 GbE network expansion cards, to aggregate and boost network performance. The TS-870U-RP includes two Gigabit (GbE) LAN ports which can be expanded to six GbE LAN ports or four 10 GbE LAN ports, plus the two integral GbE ports. Blazing Fast Data Backup via USB 3.0 - The TS-870U-RP features USB 3.0 ports for high speed backup to external hard drives. EXT3, EXT4, NTFS, and HFS+ file systems are supported to ensure compatibility with Windows, Mac® OS X, and Linux operating systems. Cross-platform Sharing with Antivirus - The TS-870U-RP supports SMB/CIFS, NFS, and AFP protocols for file sharing across Windows, Mac, Linux/UNIX networks. User accounts and shared folders can be created via the user-friendly web-based interface without IT expertise. The integrated antivirus solution for the Turbo NAS ensures business continuity by offering detection against the latest viruses, malware, worms, and Trojan horses. NAS + iSCSI/IP-SAN Solution for Server Virtualization With increasing virtualization of IT resources, the need for high performance storage is more essential than ever. The TS-870U-RP offers class-leading system architecture matched with 10 GbE networking performance designed to meet the needs of demanding server virtualization, such as VMware®, Citrix®, and Windows® Hyper-V. 10 GbE network speeds greatly increase the agility of data transmission in a virtualized environment intensifying NFS and iSCSI connection performance. The Turbo NAS provides flexible and secure storage server deployment with the following enhanced iSCSI features: NAS + iSCSI storage solution - The Turbo NAS can serve as a NAS for file sharing and iSCSI storage concurrently. Flexible Multiple LUNs Management - The NAS supports multiple LUNs (Logical Unit Numbers) and iSCSI targets. The LUNs can be flexibly mapped to, unmapped from, and switched among different iSCSI targets. Secure IP SAN environment deployment - Designed with CHAP authentication and LUN masking, the advanced ACL (Access Control List) offers you the capability to block unauthorized access from the initiators. Designed for virtualized and clustered environments - Comparing with the high cost of Fibre Channel SAN, the Turbo NAS is an affordable system that can be deployed as a storage center for virtualized and clustered server environments, such as VMware and Microsoft Windows Failover Cluster. Advanced RAID Management with Hot-swap Design The NAS offers advanced RAID 0, 1, Single, and JBOD disk configurations. It also supports hot-swap design that a failed drive can be replaced by hot swapping without turning off the server. Besides, the best-in-class RAID on the NAS brings users a higher level of data security by allowing one more hard drive failure than other NAS of the same level. Online RAID Capacity Expansion - The storage capacity of a RAID configuration can be expanded by replacing the hard drives with larger ones. All the data will be kept and seamlessly moved to the newly installed hard drives. There is no need to turn off the server during the process. Online RAID Level Migration - You can upgrade the disk configuration to higher RAID level with the data retained. There is no need to turn off the server during the process. Virtual Disk Drive (VDD) adds flexibility to storage expansion along with ease of management - The unique "Virtual Disk Drive" adds flexibility to expand the capacity of NAS. By using the built-in iSCSI initiator, the NAS can connect to other iSCSI targets on the network and turn them into virtual disks, which become multiple single volumes on the NAS. Up to 8 virtual disks can be stacked. The NAS serves as the storage stack chaining master. The user only needs to connect to this single entry (QNAP NAS) and is able to reach and use all the iSCSI target storages on the network. S.M.A.R.T & Advanced HDD Health Scanning (HHS) - The NAS supports Hard Disk Drive S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) for monitoring the hard drive status. Moreover, the NAS is embedded with HHS Technology which supports disk checking and bad blocks scanning. Secure Data Storage, Access, and Sharing Comprehensive event logs: Detailed logs of file-level data access to the NAS via samba, FTP, AFP, HTTP, HTTPS, Telnet, and SSH, and networking services accessed by online users are all recorded SSL security (HTTPS): The NAS can be accessed and configured by web browser securely Remote login to the NAS by SSH (secure shell) or Telnet connection is supported Secure FTP: The data can be transmitted with SSL/TLS (explicit) encryption. Passive FTP port range setup is also supported Write-only access right on FTP server: The third party partners are allowed to upload data to the NAS but not able to read or edit the data on FTP server. Policy-based Automatic IP Blocking - To prevent the NAS from malicious attacks, the server manager can create an IP filter policy to allow, deny, or auto-block the IP address or network domain which attempts to connect to the NAS via SSH/ Telnet/ HTTP(S)/ FTP/ samba/ AFP. The most comprehensive support for numerous brands of IP cameras - The Surveillance Station of QNAP NAS supports over 1400 models from all the leading network camera brands such as AXIS, D-Link, IPUX, LevelOne, Linksys, Panasonic and Vivotek etc. Each of the supported cameras has been put through stringent tests with the NAS series in QNAP's laboratory to guarantee 100% compatibility and reliability with all these camera brands. UPS Support - The NAS supports the majority of USB UPS devices which enables the users to store the data in time and avoid critical data loss when power outage occurs during data transfer. Video Editing - Digital film and video production produces volumes of data that require high performance RAID storage with sustainable throughput to balance with the demanding output of video editing. The TS-870U-RP fulfills storage and video editing needs with a high speed 10 GbE network interface. Digital videos can be quickly stored and edited on the TS-870U-RP directly over the network. QNAP Backup Software - NetBak Replicator - The backup software, NetBak Replicator, is provided for the NAS users to perform real-time synchronization or schedule backup from multiple PCs to the NAS. 3rd Party Backup Software Ready - The NAS works well with other backup software, e.g. Acronis True Image, CA BrightStor ARCserve Backup, EMC Retrospect, Symantec Backup Exec, and LaCie Silverkeeper. Encrypted Remote Replication - The data on the NAS can be backed up to or from another Turbo NAS over the network securely. Sharing Files across Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX - The NAS is designed for users to share the files across Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX environment. Windows Active Directory (AD) and LDAP Directory Service - The Windows AD and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory service features enable the system administrator to retrieve user accounts from Windows AD or Linux LDAP server to the TS-870U-RP reducing time and effort in account setup. Users can use the same login name and password to access the TS-870U-RP. Web File Manager - The NAS provides Web File Manager for you to easily download, upload, and manage the files on the server by web browser. Ease of User and Share Folder Management - The NAS supports batch creation of users and share folders to save the time and effort of the server manager in account and folder creation. For the security of Windows network environment, server managers can hide or show network share folders. Hard Disk Standby - You can configure the hard disks to enter standby mode if there is no disk access within the specified period. Schedule Power On/ Off - The flexible schedule power on/off feature is now provided on the NAS for IT administrators to manage the NAS server's up time according to the working hours. You can set the time for automatic system power on, power off, or restart on any days of the week. Now that we've loooked at the most significant features of the QNAP TS-870U-RP, let's look at the Hardware and Software specifications that provide the power and performance to make those features run. QNAP TS-870U-RP Hardware Specifications Hardware Specifications CPU Dual-core Intel® 2.4 GHz Processor (Celeron G540) DRAM 4 GB DDR3 RAM The system memory can be increased to 16GB by installing three additional 4GB Long-DIMM RAM modules. Flash Memory 512MB DOM Hard Drive 8 x 3.5" or 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s, SATA 3Gb/s hard drive or SSD NOTE: 1. The standard system is shipped without hard drives. 2. For the hard drive compatibility list, please visit qnap.com Hard Drive Tray 8 x hot-swappable and lockable tray LAN Port 2 x Gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet port (Expandable up to 6 x 1 Gb LAN or 4 x 10 Gb + 2 x 1 Gb LAN by installing optional dual-port 10 Gb and 1 Gb network card) Note: 1. For the optional network card compatibility list, please visit qnap.com 2. For the information of network card installation, please refer to chapter 6 in the Turbo NAS Hardware Manual. LED Indicators Status, 10 GbE, LAN, eSATA, hard drives USB 2x USB 3.0 port (rear) 4x USB 2.0 port (rear) Support USB printer, pen drive, USB hub, and USB UPS etc. eSATA 2 (rear) Buttons System: Power button and reset button Alarm Buzzer System warning Form Factor 2U, Rackmount Dimensions 89 (H) x 482 (W) x 534 (D) mm 3.50 (H) x 18.98 (W) x 21.02 (D) inch Weight 9.9 kg/21.83 lb (Net) 12.74 kg/ 28.09 lb (Gross) Sound Level (dB) Standby: 45.8 dB In operation: 47.5 dB (with 8 x Hitachi HUA723020ALA640 MK7O installed) Power Consumption (W) Sleep mode: 74.7 W In Operation: 155.2 W (with 8 x Hitachi HUA723020ALA640 hard drive installed) Temperature 0-40°C Relative Humidity 0~90% Power Supply Input: 100-240V AC, 47-63Hz Output: 300W Expansion Slot 2 (for network and storage expansion) Fan 2 x quiet cooling fan (7 cm, 12V DC) I mentioned earlier that QNAP has a very extensive set of features built into the operating software, but maybe I should have warned you. The S/W feature list is HUGE. Honestly, a lot of us spend the majority of our time analyzing hardware (yeah, I'm guilty...), but when you see all the capability that a modern NAS server can provide, it's pretty amazing. Let's take a long, detailed look, shall we? QNAP TS-870U-RP Software Specifications The QNAP TS-870U-RP Series is primarily designed for small and medium-sized businesses. However, I also contend that the modern home environment looks very similar to a small business, anyways. When you have to combine the latest high tech devices, the legacy hardware and applications that everyone still has hanging around, the need to grant granular access to multiple terabytes of data with varying sensitivity, unified communications, and peripheral sharing - it's a daunting challenge. I also challenge you to tell me whether that last sentence refers to a small business or your own home network. There are a great number of software features included with the TS-870U-RP that some users will never use, never see, and never even know they exist. You can be sure though, that every corporate sys/admin is looking through this list of software capabilities and checking off the required boxes for deploying a NAS in a secure, large-scale business environment. Operating System: Embedded Linux Supported Clients Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7/8 (32/64-bit), Windows 8 (32/64-bit), Windows Server 2003/2008 R2/2012 Apple Mac OS X Linux & UNIX Supported Browsers Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10 Mozilla Firefox 8+ Apple Safari 4+ Google Chrome Multilingual Support: Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish File System Internal Hard Drive: EXT3, EXT4 External Hard Drive: EXT3, EXT4, NTFS, FAT32, HFS+ Networking TCP/IP (IPv4 & IPv6: Dual Stack) Dual Gigabit NICs with Jumbo Frame Failover Multi-IP Settings Port Trunking/NIC Teaming (Modes: Balance-RR, Active Backup, Balance XOR, Broadcast, IEEE 802.3ad/Link Aggregation, Balance-TLB and Balance-ALB) Optional Dual-port 10 GbE and 1 GbE Network Expansion Card Service Binding Based on Network Interfaces Virtual LAN (VLAN) Proxy Client DHCP Client, DHCP Server Protocols: CIFS/SMB, AFP (v3.3), NFS(v3), FTP, FTPS, SFTP, TFTP, HTTP(S), Telnet, SSH, iSCSI, SNMP, SMTP, and SMSC UPnP & Bonjour Discovery USB Wi-Fi Adapter Support Backup Solution Real-time Remote Replication (RTRR) Works as Both RTRR Server & Client with Bandwidth Control Real-time & Scheduled Backup Encryption, Compression, File Filter, and Transfer Rate Limitation Block-level Remote Replication Works as Both Rsync Server & Client with Bandwidth Control Encrypted Replication between QNAP NAS Servers Desktop Backup by QNAP NetBak Replicator for Windows Apple Time Machine Support with Backup Management Data Backup to Multiple External Storage Devices Data Backup to Cloud Storage (Amazon S3, ElephantDrive, Symform, and Google Drive) Security IP Filter and Policy-based Automatic IP Blocking Network Access Protection with Auto-blocking: SSH, Telnet, HTTP(S), FTP, CIFS/SMB, AFP Encrypted Access: HTTPS, FTP with SSL/TLS (Explicit), SSH/SFTP (admin only), Encrypted Remote Replication between QNAP NAS Servers (Rsync over SSH) CIFS Host Access Control for Shared Folders Antivirus Protection FIPS 140-2 Validated AES 256-bit Volume-based Data Encryption* AES 256-bit External Drive Encryption* Importable SSL Certificate Instant Alert via Email, SMS, Instant Messaging (Windows Live), Beep, and LCD Panel Disk Management Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 5 + Hot Spare, 6 + Hot Spare, and 10 + Hot Spare Global Hot Spare Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration Bad Block Scan and Hard Drive S.M.A.R.T. RAID Recovery Bitmap Support iSCSI (IP SAN) iSCSI Target with Multiple LUNS per Target (Up to 256 Targets/LUNs Combined) LUN Mapping & Masking Online LUN Capacity Expansion Supports SPC-3 Persistent Reservation Supports MPIO & MC/S iSCSI LUN Backup, One-time Snapshot, and Restore iSCSI Connection and Management by QNAP Finder (Windows) Stack Chaining Master: Up to 8 Virtual Disk Drives (via iSCSI Initiator) Server Virtualization & Clustering Supports VMware vSphere (ESX/ESXi 4.x, ESXi 5.x) Supports Citrix XenServer 5.x, 6.x Supports Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Supports Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 Failover Cluster Power Management Wake on LAN Internal Hard Drive Standby Mode Scheduled Power on/off (Max 15 Settings) Automatic Power on after Power Recovery USB and Network UPS Support with SNMP Management Access Right Management Max No. of Users: 4,096 Max No. of User Groups: 512 Max No. of Network Shares: 512 Batch Users Creation Import/Export Users User Quota Management Local User Access Control for CIFS, AFP, FTP, WebDAV, Application Access Control for Photo Station, Music Station, Video Station, and Multimedia Station Subfolder Permissions Support for CIFS/SMB, AFP, FTP and Web File Manager Domain Authentication Integration Microsoft Active Directory (AD) LDAP Server LDAP Client Domain Users Login via CIFS/SMB, AFP, FTP, and Web File Manager MyCloudNAS Service Private Cloud Storage and Sharing Free Host Name Registration (DDNS) Auto Router Configuration (via UPnP) MyCloudNAS Connect for Easy VPN Connection (Windows VPN Utility) Storage Plug & Play Windows Software: QNAP Finder Create and Map Shared Folders Create and Connect to iSCSI Target/LUN Web Administration AJAX-based User Interface Smart Fan Control Dynamic DNS (DDNS) SNMP (v2 & v3) Resource Monitor Network Recycle Bin for File Deletion via CIFS/SMB and AFP Automatic Cleanup File Type Filter Comprehensive Logs (Events & Connection) Syslog Client Firmware Live Update System Settings Backup and Restore Restore to Factory Default Mobile App Qmanager for Remote Monitoring Powerful All-in-one Server File Server File Sharing across Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX Windows ACL Advanced Folder Permission for SMB, AFP, FTP, and Web File Manager Shared Folder Aggregation (CIFS/SMB) Web File Manager Supports ISO Mounting (Up to 256 ISO Files) File Viewing via Google Doc Create and Send Download Links for Public File Sharing with Expiration Time and Password Protection Mobile App: Qfile for File Browsing and Management FTP Server FTP over SSL/TLS (Explicit) Max No. of Concurrent Connections: 256 FXP Supported Passive FTP Port Range Control FTP Bandwidth & Connection Control Unicode Support Backup Server Remote Replication Server (over Rsync) Real-time Remote Replication to another QNAP NAS or FTP Server Apple Time Machine Support Windows Client Backup Application: QNAP NetBak Replicator Third Party Backup Software Support: Veeam Backup & Replication, Acronis True Image, ARCserve Backup, EMC Retrospect, Symantec Backup Exec, LaCie SilverKeeper, etc. Web Server HTTP/HTTPS Connections Supports WebDAV Connection Supports Virtual Host (Max: 32) Importable SSL Certificate Database Server Built-in MySQL Server Web-based Management via phpMyAdmin (QPKG) Print Server Max No. of Printers: 3 Supports Internet Printing Protocol Print Job Display and Management IP-based and Domain Name-based Privilege Control Supports Apple Bonjour Printing Syslog Server Centralized Log Monitoring and Archiving Instant Email Alerts Supports Log Filtering RADIUS Server Centralized Account Management and Authentication for Network Access Supports PAP, EAP-TLS/PAP, and EAPTTLS/PAP Authentication TFTP Server with PXE Booting VPN Server Secure Remote Access: PPTP & OpenVPN VPN Services Remote Access to Other Resources on Local Network Max No. of Clients: 30 Surveillance Station Pro (QPKG) Supports over 1,400 IP cameras Includes 1 Free Camera License Up to 16 Camera Channels via Additional License Purchase Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA) for Advanced Video Search Visual Aid by E-map Surveillance Client for Mac Mobile App: VMobile (iOS and Android) iTunes Server Audio and Video Sharing for Windows & Mac iTunes (MP3, AIFF, WAV, MPEG-4, AAC, and M4A) Smart Playlist Multimedia Station Browser-based Photo, Audio, and Video Streaming Image Slideshow and Rotation Automatic and Scheduled Thumbnail Generation for Easy Browsing Display Photo Details from EXIF: Date, Exposure Time, Aperture, etc. Display Audio Details from ID3 Tag: Album Cover, Title, Artist, Album, etc. Access Authority Management Supports Web Publishing (Facebook, MySpace, MSN Live, Twitter, Plurk, and Blogger) Share Photos by Email Supported Formats: Photo - JPG/JPEG, GIF, PNG Audio - MP3 Video Playback: FLV, MPEG-4 Video (H.264 + AAC) Transcode: AVI, M4V, MPG/MPEG, RM/RMVB, WMV QNAP Exclusive iOS and Android App - QMobile Photo Station Supported File Formats: Photo: JPG/JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, RAW (.arw, .srf, .sr2, .dcr, .kdc, .cr2, .crw, .nef, mrw, .pef, .paf, .3fr, .erf, .mef, .mos, .orf, .rw2, .dng, .x3f, .tif, .nrw, .raf) Video: FLV, MPEG-4 Video (H.264 + AAC) Image Slideshow with Background Music, Thumbnails, and Different Transition Effects Online Photo Editing by Pixlr Editor Geotagging Photos with Google Maps Slideshow Sharing (from Private Albums) with Password Protection Photo Publishing to Social Websites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, and Blogger) Photo Sharing by Email Music Station Supported Audio Formats: MP3, OGG, WAV, AIFF, AU, FLAC, M4A, APE, AAC Local Playback with USB Speaker/Sound Card Music Streaming from DLNA/UPnP Media Servers Internet Radio (MP3) Music Alarm (up to 8 Alarms) Remote Playback Control by QNAP Mobile App: QMobile Video Station (QPKG) Web Video Sharing Video Categorization and Transcoding Supported format: mv,avi,divx,3gp,mov,mpeg,mpg,xvid,flv,asf,rm,dat,mp4 Video Upload Up to 2048MB in Size Up to 320 Minutes in Length Batch Upload (Max 50 Files) Publish Videos to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ TV Station (QPKG) DVB-T Digital TV Live View, Recording, and Playback Supports up to 2 USB TV Tuners Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) with Scheduled Recording Note: The availability of DVB-T broadcasting and EPG may vary depending on geological location. Download Station PC-less BT, FTP, and HTTP Download (up to 500 Tasks) BT Download with Magnet Link and PT Support Supports TCP/UDP Tracker Protocol Scheduled Download Configurable Port Range Bandwidth Control RSS Subscription and Download (Broadcatching) Selectable Download Files Configurable Saving Directory HTTP/FTP Download Bulk Download with Wildcard Settings RapidShare Download Support Website Subscription Service: YouTube QNAP Download Management Software: QGet For Both Windows & Mac OS Manage the Download Tasks of Multiple QNAP NAS Remotely over LAN or WAN DJ Station (QPKG) Live Broadcast of Music Playlists Music Sharing on Facebook Antivirus Protection against Viruses, Trojans, and Other Threats Free Virus Databases Update on Manual or Scheduled Basis Multiple Scan Tasks (Max: 64, Concurrent: 5) with Custom Folder Selection and Scheduled Scanning Email Notification upon Task Completion or Virus Detection Quarantines or Deletes Infected Files QPKG Center Adds New Features by Online Installation of Official and Community QPKG Add-ons Besides the core features available in the QNAP v3.8 firmware, further capabilities are available in the QPKG Center Software Expansion. Let's take a quick look at some ways to extend the functionality of this server even further. QPKG Center Software Expansion Explore the Unlimited Possibilities of Your NAS with QPKG Network Attached Storage (NAS) used to refer to a basic network storage device for simple data sharing but now with the high performance SoC and the advantage in power-saving design, it is redefined as a powerful embedded system that allows the possibilities of offering numerous fascinating applications. Over the past years, QNAP has successfully developed a series of All-in-One NAS servers for power users and business users providing a wide variety of software applications. Besides those QNAP provides, many other software packages are also developed in Linux open source community that power users are able to install them on their NAS to further enrich the functions. However, this is only limited to those advanced users or software developers who are more familiar with Linux systems. In order to let majority of general QNAP NAS users to also utilize their NAS servers with those software packages already developed by the open source community, QPKG platform and development framework is then introduced by QNAP. Inspired from the powerful software package management system in Linux (yum, dpkg, etc.), but unlike those running in the modern PCs today, QPKG is designed and fine-tuned for running on Linux embedded systems like NAS along with many popular software packages ready for install. Besides, in order to publish your software in our official repository all the software packages will be verified by QNAP to prevent from others to embed malicious codes for system intrusion or potential risks of data damage. Therefore QNAP NAS users may enjoy these software packages developed by the community in a safe way through an installation method as easy as firmware update just like you would install/uninstall software in the Windows environment without the need to go through the complicated process. QNAP has introduced some popular QPKG software packages as the demonstration purpose. Below are the quick introductions on each of them: MLDonkey (eMule) MLDonkey is a door to the "donkey" world, a multi-network, multi-platform open source P2P application used to exchange big files on the Internet and present most features of the basic Windows donkey client and additionally supports overnet, fasttrack, bittorrent and gnutella protocols (and more)! The core works best with Sancho the premier graphical user interface for MLDonkey. QAirplay QAirPlay lets you stream photo, music, and video from NAS to Apple TV. You may also use mobile app Qfile to browse the media content on the NAS and play the content on AirPlay-supported players. Optware Ipkg (Itsy Package Management System) Ipkg, or the Itsy Package Management System, is a lightweight package management system designed for embedded devices. It is used in the Unslung operating system for the Linksys NSLU2, in OpenWRT, OpenMoko, Gumstix, iPAQ and now on QNAP NAS too. Plex Media Server Plex bridges the gap between your QNAP and your home theater, doing so with a visually appealing user interface that provides instant access to your media. Plex can play a wide range of video, audio and photo formats as well as online streaming audio and video. QUSBCam The QUSBCam QPKG add-on allows users to connect a UVC-compliant (USB Video Class) USB webcam to the QNAP Turbo NAS and utilize the Surveillance Station to record and play back videos, building a budget-saving surveillance system for home and office. Google Drive Sync Access files and folders in your Google Drive with Google Drive Sync QPKG. Simply select a shared folder to synchronize with Google Drive or use it as a backup destination. WordPress WordPress is a free, open-source personal publishing system that allows you to easily create a complex blog, or web log, on your site. Written in PHP and supported by a MySQL database, WordPress offers intuitive administrative tools and sophisticated design features that make it easy to develop and integrate a personal or professional blog on your site. Joomla CMS Joomla! is a free, open source content management system for publishing content on the world wide web and intranets. The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization. BTW, Benchmark Reviews is built from the Joomla! CMS. Mono Mono provides .NET Framework environment to run ASP-based websites on Linux. PS3 Media Server PS3 Media Server is a DLNA compliant UPnP Media Server for the PS3, written in Java, with the purpose of streaming or transcoding any kind of media files, with minimum configuration. XMail XMail is an Internet and Intranet mail server featuring a SMTP server, POP3 server, finger server, TLS support for SMTP and POP3 (both server and client side), multiple domains. No need for users to have a real system account, SMTP relay checking, DNS based maps check, custom (IP based and address based) spam protection, SMTP authentication (PLAIN LOGIN CRAM-MD5 POP3-before-SMTP and custom), a POP3 account syncronizer with external POP3 accounts, account aliases, domain aliases, custom mail processing, direct mail files delivery, custom mail filters, mailing lists, remote administration, custom mail exchangers, logging, and multi-platform code. Logitech Media Server Logitech Media Server is an audio server designed for streaming music to Logitech devices over a network, allowing users to play their music collections from virtually anywhere there is an Internet connection. Software Expansion via QPKG Platform The QPKG software package platform enables the users to maximize the usage of Turbo NAS by installing additional software packages developed from the users and community worldwide. This can be done by simple "download & install" clicking without going through any complicated process. OK, now we've seen the COMPLETE ins and outs of this complex system; let's turn this thing on, set it up, and dive into the testing phase. QNAP TS-870U-RP NAS Server Setup The first thing you need to do with most NAS devices is discover them on your network and set them up. Most NAS vendors bundle a small, lightweight "finder" application with their products that has some system utilities included. The QNAP Qfinder 4.0 application provides device discovery, login to the main admin app, access to the folders on the NAS, multiple connection choices, device configuration, a report of device details, a resource monitor widget, a bookmark command, drive mapping, firmware update utility, and Startup/Shutdown functions, all before you log in to the full monitoring & control applications via the web browser. There are a number of sub-menus that you go through during initial setup; once you do that, the same setup wizard is still available, from the Configuration button, in case you get forget your password or need to reconfigure the NAS. Otherwise, just use your browser and login to the IP address that the NAS is configured to; the factory default is 169.254.100.100. The setup process is a series of small steps that guide you through the basics. The first three are easy; name of the NAS server, choose an Admin password, and set the clock. Then comes the basic network settings of IP address, subnet, default gateway, and DNS server. The default settings are mostly designed around simple network structures, but the LAN techs will have no problem setting them to match a more complex corporate environment. Then comes network services, which offer the choices of Microsoft, Apple, NFS Service, FTP Service, Telnet/SSH, SNMP, Web Server, and Network Service Discovery. Again, the defaults will work for novices and the extensive options will keep the tyros happy. Finally, the disk or disks are initialized. You can start with one disk and migrate to the desired configuration later, or you can fill all eight drive bays at once and configure the array from the start. Building a large array can take several hours, so if you want to do all the setup work at the beginning and then let the NAS server build the array overnight, that's not a bad strategy. Alternatively, one of the new features of the 3.8 version of firmware is the ability to use a web-based application to do the setup. Just make sure the Turbo NAS is connected to your ISP through a router, point any Windows, Mac, or Linux machine to start.qnap.com and follow the step-by-step instructions. It sure beats running the install disk from your DVD drive. Plus it's a quick and easy way to make sure you are starting out with the most up-to-date firmware release. Once the basic NAS functions are enabled and operating, you log in to the main System Administration application on the server to fine tune your configuration. Once the initial setup is complete, you need to log in to the main admin application, which QNAP just calls Turbo NAS V3.8 firmware. The default main screen presents you with several large icons: Photo Station Music Station Video Station Download Station Web File Manager Surveillance Station Pro DJ Station Administration Each of these icons spawns a new window, much like any app would do. The Administration Icon is where you will probably head first, in order to customize the NAS to your needs, before you put it into full operation. One of the critical aspects of setting up a NAS is the networking configuration. It's so easy to get it wrong and accidentally shut down access, that QNAP includes tools in their setup wizard application, which you can still access after you inadvertently locked yourself out. If you get it completely out of whack, it's still possible to recover by using the system reset button, which can be accessed through a small hole in the rear panel. Once you're inside, this screen lets you change global settings and individual settings for each of the Ethernet ports available on the system. IPv4 and IPv6 are both accommodated and a Port Trunking is also available as an option. The two integral ports on the TS-870U-RP are labeled "Ethernet 1" and "Ethernet 2"; and I'm happy to say that the ports on the back panel are physically labeled as well. The additional ports that are contained on the expansion card(s) are not always labeled; YMMV since there are about half a dozen cards from three different vendors that are supported. Some may have labels, most probably won't. Once the ports are configured, you can make changes on the fly from this screen, just click the "Edit" button on the far right for the adapter you want to update. Let's look at the RAID expansion and Migration process a little. The Disk Management menu is the S/W component you use to configure the individual disk volumes and the disk arrays. Our testing protocol at Benchmark Reviews uses both single disk and RAID 5 storage configurations. Besides the raw test scores we get from those setups, it also allows us to go through the RAID Migration process to see how well that works. Plenty of people start small when they get a new NAS, and expand the capacity later. After I added three more disks to the system, I was presented with the choice of RAID 1, 5, 6, or 10 and I chose RAID 5 from the pick list. The TS-870U-RP migrated from no RAID to RAID 5 in one step. The process took about 3 hours to 'synchronize' all the disks. I've definitely gotten spoiled by the systems I've tested recently, that used pools to manage disk configurations. On those systems, I was able to make this same transition in a few minutes. Starting from scratch with all disks installed during the initial setup shaves some time off this procedure, but it won't get down to minutes, it's still hours. Ok, if you've been following along this far, there's not much more I can show you except how fast it is. So let's get down to some benchmarking, and compare it to a variety of other NAS products that we've looked at recently. Network Terminology Benchmark Reviews primarily uses metric data measurement for testing storage products, for anyone who is interested in learning the relevant history of this sore spot in the industry, I've included a small explanation below: The basic unit data measurement is called a bit (one single binary digit). Computers use these bits, which are composed of ones and zeros, to communicate their contents. All files are stored as binary files, and translated into working files by the Operating System. This two number system is called a "binary number system". In comparison, the decimal number system has ten unique digits consisting of zero through nine. Essentially it boils down to differences between binary and metric measurements, because testing is deeply impacted without carefully separating the two. For example, the difference between the transfer time of a one-Gigabyte (1000 Megabytes) file is going to be significantly better than a true binary Gigabyte (referred to as a Gibibyte) that contains 1024 Megabytes. The larger the file used for data transfer, the bigger the difference will be. Have you ever wondered why your 500 GB hard drive only has about 488 GB once it has been formatted? Most Operating Systems utilize the binary number system to express file data size, however the prefixes for the multiples are based on the metric system. So even though a metric "Kilo" equals 1,000, a binary "Kilo" equals 1,024. Are you confused yet? Don't be surprised, because even the most tech savvy people often mistake the two. Plainly put, the Kilobyte is expressed as 1000 bytes, but it is really comprised of 1,024 bytes. Most network engineers are not fully aware that the IEC changed the way we calculate and name data chunks when they published the new International Standards back in December 1998. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) removed the old metric prefixes for multiples in binary code with new prefixes for binary multiples made up of only the first two letters of the metric prefixes and adding the first two letters of the word "binary". For example, instead of Megabyte (MB) or Gigabyte (GB), the new terms would be Mebibyte (MiB) or Gibibyte (GiB). While this is the new official IEC International Standard, it has not been widely adopted yet because it is either still unknown by institutions or not commonly used. NAS Testing Methodology All the NAS devices we test cannot accommodate all the different disk configurations, so our current test protocol has been based on two of the most popular setups: a basic (single) disk and RAID-5 configurations. Most NAS products that can support RAID 5 go beyond the minimum number of drive bays, to a total of four, so that is the number of drives that I typically use to test with, even though I could get by with only three. I also took advantage of the massive capacity that the QNAP TS-870U-RP offers, and tested it with the full complement of eight drives. During initial setup, the NAS was upgraded to the latest v3.8.3 firmware by flashing the DOM with binary files from QNAP's website. QNAP makes the firmware update process quite painless and foolproof; I've never had a problem updating Turbo NAS firmware. I connected the TS-870U-RP NAS directly to an Intel X520-T2 10Gbps Ethernet NIC in the test-bench system, with ten-foot CAT6 patch cables. I set up static IP addresses on the host PC that were consistent with the default address of the Turbo NAS unit and we were in business. With the networking taken care of, the next potential bottleneck that needed attention is the disk system on the host PC. In previous tests, I relied on the third generation OCZ Agility SSD, which is good for at least 500 MB/s, input or output, on the appropriate Intel Platform Controller Hub. I decided it was time to bypass the SSD on the test rig and install a RAM Disk. There are at least a dozen products on the market that will create and manage a RAM Disk on Windows systems; I chose RAMDisk v3.5.1 from Dataram based on performance tests in several reviews (we read 'em, too....) and its reasonable cost structure. I assigned 10GB of space to the RAM Disk, in order to replicate the test protocol I've been using for all my NAS testing. One other trick was necessary to get the RAM Disk to transfer files larger than 2GB. I had to use the "Convert" utility in Windows to make the RAM Disk into an NTFS volume. Then I was able to perform the file transfers with 10GB files, no problem. If you want to avoid this extra step, be sure to look for a RAM Disk product that directly supports the NTFS file system. For basic throughput evaluation, the NAS product received one test transfer followed by at least three timed transfers. Each test file was sent to the Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB (WD7502AAEX) hard drives installed in the NAS for a timed NAS write test, and that same file was sent back to the RAM Disk in the test system to perform a NAS read test. Each test was repeated several times, the high and low values were discarded and the average of the remaining results was recorded and charted. The Read and Write transfer tests were conducted on each NAS appliance using the 1 GB file and then a 10 GB file. A second set of tests are conducted with Jumbo Frame enabled, i.e. the MTU value for all the Ethernet controllers is increased from 1500 to 9000. Most of the NAS products tested to date in the Windows 7 environment have supported the Jumbo Frame configuration. Only the NETGEAR ReadyNAS NV+ v2 uses the 1500 MTU setting by default, and has no user-accessible controls to change that; you'll see that reflected in the charts. I used a single Ethernet connection for all tests; I have not been able to achieve consistent results with various units using the IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) mode, and I didn't need the fail-over redundant connection for my testing. I also ran the Intel NAS Performance Toolkit (NASPT) version 1.7.1, which was originally designed to run on a Windows XP client. People smarter than me have figured out how to run it under Windows 7, including the 64-bit version that is used more often than the 32-bit version these days. NASPT brings an important perspective to our test protocol, as it is designed to measure the performance of a NAS system as viewed from the end user's perspective. Benchmarks like ATTO use Direct I/O Access to accurately measure disk performance with minimal influence from the OS and the host platform. This provides important, objective data that can be used to measure raw, physical performance. While it's critical to measure the base performance, it's also important to quantify what you can expect using real-world applications, and that's exactly what NASPT does. One of the disadvantages of NASPT is that it is influenced by the amount of memory installed on the client, and it was designed for systems that had 2-4 GB of RAM. Consequently, two of the tests give unrealistic results, because they are measuring the speed of the buffer on the client, instead of the actual NAS performance. For that reason, we will ignore the results for "HD Video Record" and "File Copy to NAS". I'm also not going to pay too much attention to the "Content Creation" test, as it is too heavily focused on computing tasks that aren't really handled by the NAS. Benchmark Reviews also measures NAS performance using some throughput tests that are traditionally used for internal drives. The ATTO Disk Benchmark program is widely recognized and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. CrystalDiskMark 3.0 is another file transfer and operational bandwidth benchmark tool from Crystal Dew World that offers performance transfer speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to illustrate operational IOPS performance with multiple threads, which allows us to determine operational bandwidth under heavy load. The sequential file transfer test is the most relevant on for NAS products, and that's the one we report on, although I tend to run the full test suite just in case I need the data at a later date. We are continuing our NAS testing with the exclusive use of Windows 7 as the testing platform for the host system. The performance differences between Win7 and XP are huge, as we documented early on in our QNAP TS-259 Pro review. The adoption rate for Win 7 has been very high, and Benchmark Reviews has been using Win 7 in all of our other testing for some time now. It was definitely time to make the jump for NAS products. NAS Comparison Products EonNAS 1100 NAS Network Storage Server ASUSTOR AS-604T NAS Network Storage Server EonNAS 850X NAS Network Storage Server Thecus N5550 4-Bay SATA NAS Server Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Gigabit 4-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-879U-RP Gigabit 8-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-219P+ Gigabit 2-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-259 Pro Gigabit 2-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-659 Pro II Gigabit 6-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-419P II Gigabit 4-bay SATA NAS Server Support Equipment (8) Western Digital Caviar Black WD7502AAEX 750GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" QNAP LAN-10G2T-U 10GbE 10GBASE-T Network Adapter, PCIe 2.0 x8, 2x CAT6a Intel E10G42BT, X520-T2, 10Gbps Ethernet NIC, PCIe 2.0 x8, 2x CAT6a Dataram RAMDisk v3.5.1.130R22 Intel NAS Performance Toolkit (NASPT) version 1.7.1 ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.47 CrystalDiskMark 3.0 10-Foot Category-6 Solid Copper Shielded Twisted Pair Patch Cable 1 metric Gigabyte Test File (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes) 10 metric Gigabyte Test File (10 GB = 10,000,000,000 bytes) Test System Motherboard: MSI Z68-Express Z68A-GD80 (1.23.1108 BIOS) System Memory: 4x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 1600MHz (9-9-9-24) Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (BX80623I52500K) CPU Cooler: Thermalright Venomous-X (Delta AFB1212SHE PWM Fan) Video: Intel HD Graphics 3000 Drive 1: OCZ Agility3 SSD 120GB (AGT3-25SAT3-120G) Optical Drive: Sony NEC Optiarc DVD (AD-7190A-OB 20X) Enclosure: Lian Li Armorsuit PC-P50R PSU: Corsair CMPSU-750TX ATX12V V2.2 750Watt Monitor: SOYO 24"; Widescreen LCD Monitor (DYLM24E6) 1920X1200 Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate Version 6.1 (Build 7600) 1GB Single-Disk Test Results The bottom line for any storage device is the combination of capacity and transfer speed. For a network attached storage server, the differences are all about the infrastructure that is placed around the basic HDD array. Since capacity is something that's easy to define and measure, the real question for any NAS product is how fast will it Read and Write data. For this reason, Benchmark Reviews primarily measures NAS performance as the bandwidth achieved during a file transfer test. The first tests we perform utilize a single 1GB (1000 megabytes / 1,000,000,000 bytes) file in a transfer to and from the NAS. With all the NAS units operating in single disk mode, the performance of the NAS units is largely dictated by the choice of CPU and operating system. The TS-870U-RP puts in a very strong showing on the 1 GB Read tests, primarily due to the Celeron G540 CPU under the hood. The Intel Core i3-based TS-879 unit has about 50% more horsepower under the hood than the Celeron G540, but in this test the two QNAP NAS models perform about the same. Of course they both can sprint past most of the Atom-based units, and they in turn, the Marvell-based models. The EonNAS units have a measurable performance penalty due to their Solaris-based O/S and the ZFS file system that comes with it. It's a tradeoff with data integrity, so there is a significant benefit to compensate for the slightly lower performance. Most people won't use a single disk configuration, but it's useful to get an understanding of any possible issues with the basic architecture of the system. In this case, none of them have issues, and they all turn in good performance numbers. Moving on to the 1 GB write bandwidth test, our results suggest that while it may sometimes be faster to read files from a hard drive than it is to write files onto it, the opposite is often true for a NAS appliance. The good news is that the TS-870U-RP also turns in very strong numbers for Write performance, comfortably sitting in the top tier. Compared to most of the Intel Atom-based models and the Marvell-based units with the weaker CPUs, the top four performers have a distinct advantage. The Thecus and ASUSTOR models rise to the top of the Atom-based group, by virtue of their ICH10R Southbridge, which is optimized for disk I/O. The EonNAS 850X proved itself to be a much better performer in Write tests, and that's reflected in these benchmarks. All the top performers are probably affected by the GbE cap on transfer speed, even with only a single disk loaded in the drive bays. Next up is 10 GB (1000 metric megabytes / 10,000,000,000 bytes) file transfer testing. Using the single-disk configuration in each NAS, and a Gigabit Ethernet connection, network throughput will be put to the test, and the effect of any system or hardware caches will be minimized. 10GB Single-Disk Test Results Examining 10GB basic file transfer speeds, the QNAP TS-870U-RP delivers top notch read performance, better than most of the two-bay or four-bay units. The ASUSTOR just nips it in combined results by 1 MB/s, which is really nothing to brag about. These small differences in single-disk performance aren't going to make a huge difference to anyone's day-to-day work, but they do show a clear, steady evolution of NAS infrastructure performance over time, and as you move up the product structure. Of course, you get none of the advantages of redundancy with a single disk or JBOD, so most NAS users will go for one of the many possible RAID configurations. In our 10GB write performance tests, the performance of the TS-870U-RP sits firmly in the top tier again, offering clearly better performance than many NAS models in the test group. The Thecus and the ASUSTOR are still hanging in there, despite their reliance on the low-power Intel Atom CPU. They will have to put up a fight to remain competitive once we start RAID 5 testing, but for now they look very competitive. The EonNAS shows off its Write performance again, and its not bothered by large file sizes, for certain. Next we're going to look at RAID 5 performance, where the TS-870U-RP should have an easier time staying on top of the chart, based on the superior power of its Celeron G540 CPU. Since the QNAP TS-259 Pro and TS-219P+ don't support the RAID5 configuration that we normally use to test large format NAS products, we won't be able to include their results in this comparison. NAS Comparison Products EonNAS 1100 NAS Network Storage Server ASUSTOR AS-604T NAS Network Storage Server EonNAS 850X NAS Network Storage Server Thecus N5550 4-Bay SATA NAS Server Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Gigabit 4-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-879U-RP Gigabit 8-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-219P+ Gigabit 2-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-259 Pro Gigabit 2-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-659 Pro II Gigabit 6-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-419P II Gigabit 4-bay SATA NAS Server 1GB RAID 5 Test Results If you've got more than three HDD spindle to put in play, it makes sense to use one of the more advanced RAID configurations. RAID 5 is one of the most popular setups, primarily due to the balance it exhibits between capacity and redundancy. Not surprisingly, most NAS units that can support more than three HDDs also support RAID 5, so it makes sense to use it for test purposes. Most NAS products that can support RAID 5 go beyond the minimum number of drive bays, to a total of four, so that is the number of drives that I typically use to test with, even though I could get by with only three. I also took advantage of the massive capacity that the QNAP TS-870U-RP offers, and tested it with the full complement of eight drives. I am fortunate to have purchased eight W-D Caviar Black 750GB drives before the floods in Thailand wiped out half the world's HDD production capacity. I'm also showing results for three different NAS units with 10GbE interfaces, which really show the true capability of these larger models with more than four drive bays. The top three bars in the RAID5 charts are the results for the TS-870U-RP. Normally, I arrange all the results in descending order, but with the mix of 8x HDD v. 4x HDD and GbE v. 10GbE, I thought it would be easier to understand this way. The fact is, the TS-870U-RP would have ended up on top, anyway. It's READ performance was outstanding, and there's probably more speed available with a more aggressive test protocol. All these results are based on a single workstation interfacing with the NAS, and the larger models in this group are designed to handle data requests from multiple servers at one time. That doesn't invalidate these results, because it's still important to know what level of performance is available for a single user, as well as the overall aggregate. Before we look at the benchmark results, I want to show you the typical NAS CPU and Memory loading that occurred during these timed file transfer tests. As you can see, they are both quite low, and they stayed that way throughout the whole test. This chart is from a new widget that's included in the QFinder application, which you can put on your desktop to monitor system resources, network activity, etc. The old resource monitor screens are still available in the main software, and offer run charts instead of real-time "meters". Given all the behind-the-scenes processing that goes on to calculate parity bits for RAID 5, these results show that the QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS has more than enough power under the hood to keep the drives performing at their highest potential during read operations. The TS-870U-RP outperformed all of the other NAS systems, when set up with the 10GbE interface and eight disks. There was also a huge difference in performance between the two 4-disk configurations, with the 10GbE results tripling the performance available with the GbE interface. CPU and memory utilization on the TS-870U-RP were always quite low during READ tests. Read performance is clearly very strong with this system, which is a real bonus if you use it as frontline storage. Here we have network storage performance that's on par with the local SSD in a high-end workstation. If you're going to use it primarily as a backup system, you also want top-notch write performance, which we'll test next. The 1 GB RAID 5 disk write test shows very strong results, as well. Even though the TS-870U-RP doesn't take top honors like it did in the Read tests, it provides nearly 95% of the performance of the top two models. Performance scaling was also similar to the read results, as the NAS configuration went from four disks to eight, and from GbE to 10GbE. It's well known that RAID 5 write performance can be a weak point, with all the computation overhead involved and the extra parity bits that need to be calculated and written to each of the drives. The only way to overcome that is with raw computational horsepower, and there may have been concerns that the Celeron CPU in the TS-870U-RP wouldn't be up to the task. These results clearly show that QNAP made wise choices when designing the TS-x70 platform. They picked the lowest cost CPU that would meet the performance requirements and keep up with the rest of the system. Of the two other 8-bay NAS models, the EonNAS consistently did better in Write tests than Read, and it turns in a top tier performance here. Both of the QNAPs had more balanced performance and usually were able to read data faster than they could write it to disk. Still, there's not a lot to complain about, with the top three systems reaching between 420 and 450MB/s Write speeds. Next up is 10 GB (1000 metric megabytes / 10,000,000,000 bytes) file transfer testing. Using the 4 and 8-disk RAID 5 configuration in each NAS, and a combination of 10GbE and single Gigabit connections, network throughput will be put to the test, and the effect of any system or hardware caches will be minimized. This is almost pure sequential disk access testing, combined with a real-world application that gets repeated millions of times a day - file transfer. 10GB RAID 5 Test Results Looking at Read tests with a single 10GB file, the TS-870U-RP extends its dominance in Read performance. The Read results with a single 10GB file almost reached 600 MB/s, completely eclipsing the performance of any other system I've ever tested before. No worries about the new "budget" rack mount series not having enough performance under the hood, that's for sure. The performance scaling was consistent again, as the number of disks increased and the network bandwidth opened up the bottleneck that we usually see when NAS units are constrained by their GbE connections. The bottom half of this chart is filled with NAS products that could post much better numbers in this benchmark, if only they were equipped with better network interfaces. Looking at write tests with a single 10GB file, the TS-870U-RP comes out in second place, tightly sandwiched between the more costly TS-879U-RP and the EonNAS 850X models. I used to say that if you're writing large files to a NAS, you can't afford to scrimp on system hardware; you need the biggest, baddest CPU you can afford. This Celeron-based NAS has made me re-think that a bit, in favor of a more optimized systems approach. Clearly, the 10x improvement in network bandwidth that you get with 10GbE is a critical factor in getting the maximum available performance from a high-capacity NAS. There are a number of other elements that must actively support the system as well, like the Platform Hub Controller (nee Southbridge) and SATA-to-PCI interfaces. In addition, the Operating system has a big influence, as we've seen lately with a couple of NAS units that feature a Solaris based O/S. The TS-870U-RP has just the right blend of components to maximize the performance v. cost equation, which was the main design brief for this whole new series from QNAP. All in all, after these series of file transfer benchmarks, I have to give a lot of credit to QNAP for delivering the goods on their marketing message for the new TS-x70 series, "Economical, yet Powerful..." It's the first NAS I've ever seen break 500MB/s, and it did it with a Read speed of almost 600 MB/s. That's faster than many SSDs...! If you combine this NAS with some of the new economical 10GbE switches, like the NETGEAR XS708E ProSafe Plus 10GbE Switch I just reviewed, the potential is there to radically improve the productivity of the high-end workstation user, at a much lower cost than was recently possible. With such a wide performance envelope, it's suited for any task you might think of: front-line storage, backup, replication, or any combination. Its iSCSI capability means you're not limited to a single application, and the compatibility with multiple virtualized environments will be a big plus for corporate users. We may see different results as we look at other tests, because these 1GB and 10GB files used in this portion of testing are much larger and more highly compressed than what a typical SOHO would feed their NAS. That's one reason Benchmark Reviews has expanded our testing protocol for NAS systems, to use a wider range of test data that's already in common use. Let's take a look at one of those tests, developed by Intel specifically for testing NAS devices. Oddly enough, it's called the "Network Attached Storage Performance Test"; NASPT for short. NAS Comparison Products EonNAS 1100 NAS Network Storage Server ASUSTOR AS-604T NAS Network Storage Server EonNAS 850X NAS Network Storage Server Thecus N5550 4-Bay SATA NAS Server Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Gigabit 4-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-879U-RP Gigabit 8-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-219P+ Gigabit 2-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-259 Pro Gigabit 2-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-659 Pro II Gigabit 6-Bay SATA NAS server QNAP TS-419P II Gigabit 4-bay SATA NAS Server Intel NASPT Test Results NASPT brings an important perspective to our test protocol, as it is designed to measure the performance of a NAS system, as viewed from the end user's perspective. Benchmarks like ATTO use Direct I/O Access to accurately measure disk performance with minimal influence from the OS and the host platform. This provides important, objective data that can be used to measure raw, physical performance. While it's critical to measure the base performance, it's also important to quantify what you can expect using real-world applications, and that's exactly what NASPT does. In keeping with the real-world scenario, I only run these tests on the RAID 5 configurations, since that is what most users with a mid-size NAS are going to use. It just doesn't make sense to run realistic test scenarios on unrealistic hardware configurations. One of the disadvantages of NASPT is that it is influenced by the amount of memory installed on the client, and it was designed for systems that had 2-4 GB of RAM. Consequently, two of the tests give unrealistic results with modern systems, because they are measuring the speed of the buffer on the client, instead of the actual NAS performance. For that reason, we will completely ignore the results for "HD Video Record" and "File Copy to NAS". You can a batch run of 5 cycles through the tests, but my results turned out to be a bit slower than the individual runs. There seemed to be some wrinkles in the batch testing that don't show up on individual test runs, which is a bit of a pain, to be honest. The numbers in the chart below are an average of five separate runs, which I believe are more accurate than results from a consolidated batch run. With a single, 10GbE interface in place, the results look quite a bit better than any set of data I have from NAS models with the slower GbE interface. Results for several of the tests that are more sequential in nature are in the 200-300 MB/s range. Some of the tests have very low transfer rates, and that's due to the nature of the test. The Content Creation test for example, simulates a user creating a web page, accessing multiple sources for the content. The Directory Copy tests use several hundred directories and several thousand files to test a typical backup and restore scenario. That's one of the most real-world types of test, and it's useful for all of us to have a standard set of test data to use, because my directory of 1,000 random small files is never going to be the same as your directory of 1,000 random small files. To summarize things, here are consolidated charts of the "Fast" NASPT tests, the "Medium-Speed" tests, and finally the two "Slow" ones. I've regrouped these into four charts this time, in order to make them more legible. As the number of entries grows, the text gets too small to read, at some point. First, the two tests with the highest transfer rates. The TS-870U-RP didn't fare as well on the HD Video Playback trials as I expected it to. I always looked at these two benchmarks as essentially sequential Read tests, so the star Read performance of the TS-870 should really be surfacing here. With 4x Video, the TS-870U-RP hits a high of 274.1 MB/s, with the 4-disk configuration, and only scores 235 MB/s with all eight bays loaded up. The TS-879U-RP, with the faster CPU, runs past it at 457.6 MB/s in the same 4x HD Video benchmark. The Medium-Speed tests show the TS-879U-RP putting in another very strong second place finish to the TS-879U-RP with the faster CPU. The higher performance with the four-disk array continues here, especially in the File Copy test. My file copy tests certainly didn't show this trait, so I don't know what's causing it. The EonNAS 850X takes third place in this grouping, and all the NAS units with single GbE interfaces are left in the weeds. The mixture of Reads and Writes makes this set of charts a little topsy-turvy. The "Slow" tests generally are slow because the file transfers are done with data sets that contain a bunch of small files of irregular size. In addition, the Directory Copy tests are accessing the file system index much more heavily than in the other tests. This adds a unique component that could be critically important for some users. The Directory Copy To NAS and Directory Copy From NAS results show once again the effect of the 10GbE interface on performance. The top three contenders stay far ahead of all the other NAS solutions, with one difference; the EonNAS 850X takes top honors for the first time, no doubt due to the influence of its Solaris-based operating system. Its ZFS file system is known for being a monster, and it shows that quality here. This is a good demonstration of why it pays to look closely at your potential use cases when shopping for any H/W or S/W solution. The TS-870U-RP puts in a second place effort, beating out the more powerful TS-879U-RP by enough of a margin the Read test that it compensates for the smaller lead that the TS-879U-RP takes in the Write test. The Office Productivity and Content Creation are my least favorite tests in the NASPT suite for two reasons. One, I don't see most NAS products being used in this fashion. Maybe I'm behind the times, and desktop virtualization will make this a very important benchmark in the near future. Second, the results never seemed to scale very well with the system performance that I was seeing on other tests. In any case, the TS-870U-RP turned in some very unusual results on this particular test. With four disks in place, in RAID 5, it swept the field with a record result of 72.2 MB/s. With eight disks, it came in a very sorry last place. There seemed to be large gaps with no network activity, as I watched the bytes go by in the host computer's performance monitor, and I suspect this is why the average result is so low. Ignoring this anomaly, the top three performers in the rest of the tests, the two 8-bay QNAPs and the EonNAS 850X, still held on to the top three spots in the rankings. The Photo Album test is a bunch of small files again, of varying sizes, arranged in a complex directory structure. This is a very common type of data set, and these results were roughly similar to the previous test, except the 8-disk configuration on the TS-870U-RP didn't fall so far behind. The four-disk configuration won the test outright, again. The NASPT benchmark showed some real world anomalies this time, which I wasn't expecting. Beyond the simple sequential results that are easy to measure and very consistent, is a world of data that is immeasurably complex in its variations. The Intel NASPT suite is one of the few that challenges NAS devices with realistic data sets. The results can be a bit messy to interpret, like they were in this case, but they've also provided the greatest potential insight into NAS performance of any commonly used benchmark. Stay tuned to see if we have similar challenges on some non-traditional NAS tests, in the next section. NAS Comparison Products EonNAS 1100 NAS Network Storage Server ASUSTOR AS-604T NAS Network Storage Server EonNAS 850X NAS Network Storage Server Thecus N5550 4-Bay SATA NAS Server Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Gigabit 4-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-879U-RP Gigabit 8-bay SATA NAS Serv Non-Traditional NAS Test Results In addition to measuring simple timed transfers, to determine how fast it will read and write contiguous blocks of data, Benchmark Reviews was also able to measures NAS performance using some tests that are traditionally used for internal drives. By mapping the QNAP TS-870U-RP as a local drive, some of our favorite HDD/SSD benchmarking tools worked just fine. Just like the NASPT test suite, I only run these tests on the RAID 5 configuration, as that is the most realistic scenario for a system like this. Some NAS products don't work too well with this type of test program; even though they may have the ability to map the NAS device to a drive letter, they're still not treated like local drives by the Operating System. I didn't have that problem with the TS-870U-RP, so let's look at some results... ATTO Disk Benchmark Results The ATTO Disk Benchmark program is free, and offers a comprehensive set of test variables to work with. In terms of disk performance, it measures interface transfer rates at various intervals for a user-specified length and then reports read and write speeds for these spot-tests. There are some minor improvements made to the 2.46 version of the program that allow for test lengths up to 2GB, but all of our benchmarks are conducted with 256MB total length. ATTO Disk Benchmark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. Please consider the results displayed by this benchmark to be basic bandwidth speed performance indicators. The QNAP TS-870U-RP turned in a solid performance on ATTO, reaching an average peak Read speed of 682.5 MB/s with eight disks in RAID 5, and 627.7 MB/s with four disks in RAID 5. These results are in the very top tier of NAS performance, and despite the top result of 730.3 MB/s for the EonNAS 850X, the combined result of 4-disk and 8-disk performance puts them in a virtual tie. Also, it's good to see that the 4-disk and 8-disk performance is back in the proper order again. I hate to call the roughly 50 MB/s difference between the two 8-disk results insignificant, but the fact that every one of the results with appropriate (10 GbE) network hardware beats the performance of most premium desktop SSD units means that I'm going to call it "fast enough". Blasphemy, I know...! The reality is that there is almost three times more performance available from the TS-870U-RP if you bang on it with multiple high-performance servers. QNAP pulled more than 1800 MB/s in their Read tests, with multiple clients and IOMeter benchmarking software. While I can appreciate the importance of those results, the benchmarks we are presenting here show the typical performance that will be delivered to a single client. Those are equally important results, and depending on how you deploy it, one or the other will be more important to you. Let's take a look at Write performance next. Despite the fact that my timed file transfers showed the TS-870U-RP to be the top performer in Read tests, the ATTO Disk Benchmark program puts it's Write performance far ahead of any competition, at 540 MB/s. It beats out the TS-879U-RP by almost 20%, and almost doubles the performance of the EonNAS 850X. Once again, this benchmark application shows none of the foibles between the 4-disk and 8-disk results that we saw in NASPT. The 4-disk Write performance of the TS-870U-RP still manages to grab third place in the overall results, but it's no match for the full load of eight drives in the same unit. It's good to keep in mind that these ATTO tests are not always indicative of real-world performance, due to the sequential access mode used. In most cases, the results are going to be close to the numbers achieved in timed Read and Write tests, but we saw some out of the ordinary flip-flops in Read v. Write performance this time. It's interesting to note that the performance level at the smaller block sizes like 32kB were not as high, relative to the maximum, than I've seen on other units. That's a sign that random Read and Writes may not be as good as they could be. Let's take a look at that in our next benchmark, CrystalDiskMark 3.0. CrystalDiskMark Results CrystalDiskMark 3.0 is a file transfer and operational bandwidth benchmark tool from Crystal Dew World that offers performance transfer speed results using sequential, 512KB random, and 4KB random samples. For our test results chart below, the 4KB 32-Queue Depth read and write performance was measured using a 1000MB space. CrystalDiskMark requires that an active partition be set on the drive being tested. Benchmark Reviews uses CrystalDiskMark to illustrate operational IOPS performance with multiple threads. In addition to our other tests, this benchmark allows us to determine operational bandwidth under heavy load. In this case, the TS-870U-RP pulls excellent numbers for the 512k random tests and low numbers for the 4k random tests, which is not uncommon. Some of the high-end NAS models redeem themselves nicely on the 4k random test with a high queue depth, and the Celeron-based TS-870U-RP does the same. The results in the chart below are for the first test, which is Sequential Read. Once again, the 4-disk RAID 5 configuration of the QNAP TS-870U-RP comes out on top. The 8-disk results on the same unit come in about 15% lower, but still ahead of the closest competitor, the EonNAS 850X. Interestingly, the EonNAS 850X posted almost identical results for its 4-disk and 8-disk configurations. That's the first time I've seen parity for the EonNAS results. It's still worth noting the huge performance gains that are possible by outfitting most NAS models with four bays or more, with a 10GbE network adapter. I hope to see more and more manufacturers bring 10GbE connectivity further down into the product line. The benefits are obvious, and the rest of the network infrastructure products are starting to become available at reasonable prices. The results in the chart below are for the second test, which is Sequential Write. This time, the 8-disk RAID 5 configuration of the QNAP TS-870U-RP comes out on top at 480 MB/s and the same set up on the EonNAS 850X trails in second at 378 MB/s. The 4-disk configurations play second fiddle, and they are much closer together at 230 MB/s for the QNAP and 239 MB/s for the EonNAS. All the GbE results are less than half of that, with the TS-870U-RP leading the stragglers with 114 MB/s. Remember, with the exception of the NetDISK 351UNE, all these results are for 4-disk RAID 5 configurations, at a minimum. The only way to get real performance out of these units is with a 10GbE connection. All in all, these are an incredible set of results for Network Attached Storage. In many cases they can pump data to and from a workstation as fast, or faster than a local SSD, driven directly from the SATA controller on the motherboard. There's a whole generation of power users, like CADD designers and video editors, who have been waiting for this kind of network performance from mainstream hardware that a small business can afford. NAS Comparison Products EonNAS 1100 NAS Network Storage Server ASUSTOR AS-604T NAS Network Storage Server EonNAS 850X NAS Network Storage Server Thecus N5550 4-Bay SATA NAS Server Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Gigabit 4-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-879U-RP Gigabit 8-bay SATA NAS Server QNAP TS-659 Pro II Gigabit 6-Bay SATA NAS server NAS Server Final Thoughts My first and solemn duty is to remind everyone that relying on a collection of drives in any RAID configuration for data backup purposes is a huge error. RAID systems provide protection against loss of services, not loss of data. Several examples will illustrate the problem, I hope: the drive controller goes bad and corrupts the data on all the drives in the array the entire storage device is physically or electrically damaged by external forces the entire storage device is lost, stolen, or destroyed a single drive in a RAID 5 cluster dies and during the rebuild process, which puts higher stress on the remaining drives, a second drive fails floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. (AKA El Niño, Derecho) All these points lead to the inescapable conclusion that multiple drives in a common system, in a single location do not provide effective and reliable data backup. Throughout this review I've talked about high-availability systems, and the QNAP TS-870U-RP fits that description to a tee, especially when employed in a RAID 6 configuration. Even with two concurrent drive failures, your data is still available and accessible. The NAS device stays online the entire time while the failed drives are replaced and the array is rebuilt. That's what RAID systems are designed to do. The inherent redundancy is not meant to serve as a backup file set. Remember, we're not talking about losing data here, we're only talking about the ability to keep working uninterrupted, if one or two drives should fail. Remember, "Time is Money." The QNAP TS-870U-RP is not a product that a lot of readers of Benchmark Reviews will ever contemplate purchasing. I know there are a few of you out there with day jobs that utilize this level of hardware, but 99.99% of the enthusiasts reading this don't have a real justification for spending the kind of money that it takes to put eight HDD spindles in play. I know that hasn't stopped some of us from buying overkill hardware in the past, though. Maybe, as hi-res video becomes the norm, it might make sense to invest in this level of capacity. Got a thousand Blu-ray movies you want to store for your home theater server, go for it? Got five thousand DVDs, you can do the same? If you don't want to invest in eight HDDs right now, just load it up with three or four in RAID 5 and expand the capacity later. Beyond the question of capacity, there is also the question of the overwhelming bandwidth that this kind of hardware is capable of pushing out the business end of its enclosure. The one thing that was made painfully clear to me in this review is: there is a small chorus of high performance devices singing the swan song for 1000BASE-T, as the network interface of choice. Maybe the new standard ought to be 10GbE, maybe it should be Thunderbolt, or maybe we're ready to move over to fiber for system-level interconnects, but we are right now at the tipping point where common devices are overloading the current networking standard. You would think, that with Ethernet performance going up by a factor of ten every few years, that it would be well ahead of Moore's law. Never mind being so far ahead of archaic spinning magnetic disks that it shouldn't even be a contest. But no - put four or eight of those ancient mechanical devices in a box, with some SOTA silicon to support it and voila, bandwidth limiting in the extreme. At the moment, it looks like 10GBASE-T is taking the dominant position in the 10GbE market. It has the advantage of running medium distances on CAT5e or CAT6 cables, which cuts down tremendously on the cost and complexity of implementation. Fiber will always have a place in the data center, but most small and medium size businesses have reasonably small installations, where the 55 meter cable length restriction for CAT5e is not an issue, and certainly the 100m maximum for CAT6 is even less of a limitation. Now that I've got a full 10GbE test bed in place, including SFP+ connections, I can really put a high-performance NAS like the TS-870U-RP through its paces. The results have been very satisfying; nothing like a 2x, 3x, 4x or 5x increase in performance to make you sit up and take notice. So, what conclusions can we draw, particularly about this high performance, eight-bay TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS server? Click on NEXT PAGE to find out, and discuss... QNAP TS-870U-RP NAS Conclusion Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. As Albert Einstein said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer changes which occur after publication that could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on our conclusions, as they represent our product rating for the sample received which may differ from retail versions. The performance of the QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS server was very impressive, and it certainly lived up to the marketing tagline for the new TS-x70 product line; "Economical yet Powerful 10GbE-capable NAS". Recent upgrades to the networking side of my test bed allowed me to reach new highs in timed file transfers: 598 MB/s Read and 435 MB/s Write. The results in ATTO Disk Benchmark were even faster, with 683 MB/s in Read mode and 540 MB/s in Write. These are disk access speeds that meet or beat the best SSD products out there, and it did it with 7200 RPM desktop drives that are a tad slower than the latest generation of HDDs. Areal density keeps going up and these Western Digital 750 Black drives are a couple years old now. My performance rating of 9.75 is a rare sign of that outstanding performance. The Celeron processer, a Dual Core G540 CPU, running at 2.4 GHz and addressing the base 4GB of DDR3, seemed to have all the power necessary to perform basic disk I/O functions. Compared to the Intel Atom and Marvell CPUs in many smaller units, the Celeron has roughly 4x the performance of a Dual-Core Atom. QNAP has wisely chosen to implement SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 here. Yes, the newer and faster SATA interface has little practical impact on performance with traditional hard drives, but the TS-x70 series of NAS models actually have the CPU power and infrastructure to handle SSDs, if that kind of performance is required. A high volume transactional database is one example where the random R/W performance with small file sizes could be better served by SSDs. The USB 3.0 performance was a much needed shot in the arm for interfacing with portable devices, USB 2.0 was such a bottleneck and eSATA has been more expensive and difficult to implement for portable use. The large, eight-bay form factor of the QNAP TS-870U-RP is the same size as the twelve-bay model. In this case, the top row is covered with a glossy black cover with the QNAP logo on it. There is no status display, and since its dark most of the time on units that do have one, the appearance doesn't change much. The glossier finish adds a bit of elegance to the visual design, but it shows every fingerprint that comes within an inch of the front panel. Maybe that's a security feature....?!? It fits in perfectly with its intended environment - the data center, and it would also look good in a very sophisticated home theater setup which, in the extreme, looks like a data center anyway. The status LEDs for activity on each HDD are located on the right, at the front of each drive bay, the lights for 10GbE, Status, LAN, and eSATA are on the right-hand rack handle, right below the on/off button. There is no front door, or cover on the front of the unit and the exposed portion of the drive trays are nicely finished and blend well with the remainder of the front panel. Three different shades and textures of black can look busy if arranged poorly, but this NAS looks well suited for the business applications it will likely be used in. The side and top panels are well finished, but have an industrial look that is completely appropriate, given the fact that they will be hidden inside a 19" rack for their entire service life. The construction quality of the TS-870U-RP exceeds that of most computer-based appliance I've ever tested. The data center crews are all hardware junkies for the most part, and they like their gear to radiate superiority. I've seen some nice consumer hardware in the last twenty years, but nothing compares to the stuff that's designed to go in the data center. QNAP understands this, and this product is built to run 24/7 indefinitely, plus look good doing it. I couldn't find any place where cost had been reduced at the expense of quality, and I had the more expensive TS-879U-RP in house to compare it with, side by side. The QNAP TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS network storage server is best suited to a very tech-capable IT organization that can take full advantage of all the capabilities and functions it offers. The applications are well designed and documented, to the point where most IT pros can easily handle setup and administration of even the most advanced capabilities. There's a lot of functionality that's important in a business environment, but the availability of more broad-based web applications is also impressive, with support for several consumer focused cloud-based services being a simple example. At this point, all the non-business features such as Multimedia Station, Download Station, iTunes server, and UPnP media servers have been implemented in V3.8 of the Turbo NAS firmware. Most of these consumer oriented features are easier to configure than the hardcore IT apps, like VMware and iSCSI, plus the documentation provided by QNAP is excellent. Before we discuss the pricing in detail, remember that these systems are not discretionary items for most businesses, they are a necessary expense. The tragic and inevitable costs for not having a robust data management system in place are 10-100 times higher than any of the prices you will see in this paragraph. As of May 2013 the diskless TS-870U-RP model was listed for $2025.99 (Newegg | Amazon | B&H). If you need the wealth of features and the higher RAID performance the top TS-x79 series provides, but want it for a lower price, the TS-x70 Turbo NAS is the product line for you. If you just need the storage capacity, and the throughput is of little importance, you might be able to get by with the TS-869U-RP, which sells for $1,956.99 at Newegg. It runs with an Intel Atom processor, and doesn't have the option for 10GbE networking. I think the TS-870U-RP that I tested for this review is a better value, though. The extra $340 buys so much more performance capability that it definitely seems worth it, to me. Benchmark Reviews has enjoyed testing all of these QNAP network storage solutions, and with the wide range of products on offer from them, anyone in need of a NAS server can find one to fit their current and future needs. The biggest problem is choosing one; that's why we go into so much detail in our reviews, to help you figure out what level of performance and features is right for you. The TS-870U-RP Turbo NAS server seems like overkill for the enthusiast, or even the SOHO market, but there will be some obvious exceptions. Anyone doing a significant amount of video editing for instance will gladly pay the price, and will install (or already have in place) the 10GbE network that will make it fly. Pros: + 683 / 540 MBps best read/write performance + System software is SOTA and continually updated + Support Apps available for multiple cloud services + Dual 10GbE NICs supported (Multiple Vendors) + iSCSI certified for several virtualization platforms + Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Level Migration + Hot-swap RAID storage + Dual Gigabit Ethernet with teaming and failover + RAID 0/1/5/6/10/JBOD disk configurations + Two eSATA and two USB 3.0 ports on rear panel + High quality construction Cons: - Standard GbE interface is a bottleneck - 10GbE NICs are still somewhat expensive - A few advanced capabilities will be too daunting for most SOHO users - Many consumer HDDs not suitable for RAID, and enterprise units are $$$ Ratings: Performance: 9.75 Appearance: 9.25 Construction: 9.50 Functionality: 9.50 Value: 9.25 Final Score: 9.45 out of 10. Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award. COMMENT QUESTION: What type of environment (work/home/enterprise) do you use a NAS server?