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Qnap TS-559 Pro+: Familiar Network Storage With A New CPU
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1. Qnap TS-x59 Pro+ Series: Incremental Improvements

For a long time, mass-produced network-attached storage devices have given our readers a mixed impression of what they can do (and why they cost so much, frankly).

The included software often only includes basic functions like network file sharing via SMB/CIFS protocols. Moreover, the data transfer rates for important tasks like writing file backups fall disappointingly in the low double-digit MB/s range. Performance is, to a great degree, dependent on the processor built into the device. And most of the time, those processors are pretty darned anemic.

That's one reason why NAS manufacturers tend to focus on other value adds. Over time, they optimize their respective firmwares, rework the hardware internals (while still abiding by strict thermal and power requirements), and equip them with as many convenience convenience-oriented features as possible. For instance, it's difficult to find a NAS device these days that doesn't function as a media server, as well as a data storage unit, delivering multimedia content via UPnP DLNA. Firmware with integrated Web serving capabilities, including a PHP interpreter and MySQL database, is equally widespread. And there are still other differentiators cropping up all over.

Bear in mind that most of the value-adds tacked onto each vendor's firmware is enabled by adequate processing power. While many devices use ARM- and PowerPC-based processors due to their efficiency (for example, the Synology DS408j, which is based on an 800 MHz Marvell Kirkwood 88F6281 ARM processor and ranked in the top third of our NAS Charts), a significant increase in performance is generally achieved by using Intel's Atom processors.

Historically, most NAS manufacturers used the Atom D510, which is equipped with two cores and runs at a clock speed of 1.66 GHz. This CPU was released in the first quarter of 2010. A further evolution of the Atom processor lineup was presented in the second quarter with the D525 model. This one has the same two cores and four threads (enabled by Hyper-Threading), but runs at 1.8 GHz. Not only does it support DDR2-667/800 memory, but it also accommodates DDR3-800 RAM. The benefit of higher clocks and faster memory support are reasons enough for appliance engineers to rework and refresh their products.

At the end of December 2010, Synology released its DS1511+, based on the Atom D525, while Thecus introduced the N4200 Pro, also using the 1.8 GHz processor. A third popular NAS vendor, Qnap, also has devices using the same generation of low-power processor. It released products ranging from two-bay to eight-bay products, all of them equipped with Intel’s Atom D525 processor, as indicated by the plus in this family's nomenclature.

We were curious whether the "+" would be represented by an increase in data transfer rates. Therefore, we asked for a test sample, which found its way to our lab in the form of a Qnap TS-559 Pro+. Our findings are summarized on the following pages.

2. Hardware And Pricing Details

We only recently had an opportunity to take a closer look at the sister model of the device reviewed in this article. The Qnap TS-559 Pro (without the +) scored well thanks to its quality workmanship, efficiency, reliability, and good data transfer rates. The drawback to fairly well-polished NAS devices is usually their price. The applied to the TS-559 Pro, and it again becomes a discussion point with Qnap's TS-559 Pro+. At launch, it sold for more than $1000, and a quick look online reveals prices that still exceed that four-figure sum. And that's without hard drives, which you'll still need to buy.

Been There, Done That: The Housing

If you're prepared to shell out serious cash for the TS-559 Pro+, you of course expect something in return: mainly, good performance, an attractive housing, and capable software. If you're familiar with this unit's predecessor, the Atom D525-equipped TS-559 Pro+ won't hit you with any visual surprises. As before, Qnap's TS-559 Pro+ is housed in a rugged steel case.

Familiar Layout At The Rear Of The Housing

To be perfectly clear, the TS-559 Pro+ uses the exact same same housing as its predecessor. The dimensions are identical (185 mm height x 210 mm width x 235 mm depth). The same can be said about the connections at the rear of the device. Qnap relies on its tried-and-tested configuration of four USB 2.0 ports, two SATA 3Gb/s interfaces, and two gigabit Ethernet ports. The VGA connection familiar to users of the TS-559 Pro is also available, attributable to the Atom D510 and the Atom D525's integrated graphics unit. That's a cost-saver, since it circumvents the need for a motherboard-down graphics solution. 

Ventilation of the TS-559 Pro+'s interior is achieved through a regulated 120 mm fan. A second, smaller fan transports waste heat from the integrated 220 W power supply.

3. Sticking With What Works

If you're hoping to find new features on the front of the devices, we have to disappoint you. As with the rear of the device, the design of the plastic-covered front is reminiscent of the TS-559 Pro. The new model also comes with a USB 2.0 port and a one-touch copy button. The power button at the lower-left is also in the same location as on the previous model. Ditto for the status, LAN, USB, and SATA LEDs, along with the LCD display and its Enter/Select button, which switches the information shown on the LCD and allows for basic input, such as IP address configuration.

Qnap's deliberate reproduction of the TS-559 Pro's exterior design indicates that the manufacturer intends only to refresh and not to overhaul the product line, as can also be seen with the lockable drive bays. These are also installed vertically into the TS-559 Pro+, following the design of the TS-559 Pro model. Accordingly, the solid disk tray accommodates not only 3.5" hard drives, but also 2.5" drives.

The Interior Is New

If you're looking for fresh features on the TS-559 Pro+, you have to look inside. As already mentioned, the Intel Atom D525 dual-core processor is new. The TS-x59 Pro series used the somewhat older Intel Atom D510 with its clock rate of 1.66 GHz, while the TS-x59 Pro+ series runs at 1.8 GHz thanks to the upgraded processor. A glance into the interior reveals that the TS-559 Pro+ uses the same DDR2 memory as its predecessor. Qnap doesn’t highlight this fact; the product description on its Web site speaks only of 1 GB of RAM, omitting to mention which type of RAM this is. To avoid creating false hopes, we would appreciate a little more transparency in this matter.

However, the question of whether DDR3 RAM would have had a significant effect on data transfer rates is an unresolved one. From a business standpoint, it is fully comprehensible that Qnap does not opt for DDR3, as it would have required a redesigned motherboard. Aside from the fact that DDR2 and DDR3 are supplied with different voltages, they are not pin-compatible. In the end, a new board may have resulted in a more substantial redesign of the NAS system, incurring development costs, which would have probably driven the device beyond its already-steep $1000+ price tag.

4. A Glance At The Software And Specifications

As with the housing, Qnap's software displays no weaknesses and demonstrates what a modern NAS device can do. A detailed discussion of its functionality is beyond the scope of this article, but we’ll provide a quick summary: the functions leave almost nothing to be desired. Experienced users should accomplish the rapid configuration through a Web browser in a few minutes.

For inexperienced users, the Web interface of a new TS-559 Pro+ presents an installation wizard that guides the user in six steps through the initial configuration. The name of the NAS server and the IP address are entered here along with indications of which network, file, multimedia, and Web server services are to be activated. The Qnap TS-559 Pro+ accommodates heterogeneous networks and supports access to AppleTalk and NFS via SMB/CIFS. Network users can access content over an iTunes or UPnP multimedia server and Web presence is enabled by the integrated LAMP servers (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). The decision whether or not to activate only the Apache server or the MySQL server is left to the user.

The firmware supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and 6, of which the latter two can be operated with a spare drive in a hot-swap configuration. For professionals and businesses, it is possible to integrate the Qnap TS-559 Pro+ with a network as an iSCSI device. The TS-559 Pro+ supports the virtualization solutions VMware vSphere (ESX/ESXi 4.0 and higher), Citrix XenServer (5.6), and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

If you want to test the administrative interface before buying the device, we recommend taking a look at the live demo provided by Qnap. There you can use your own data to try out the system prior to purchasing it, including the administration interface, the Web file manager, as well as the download and multimedia stations.

Brief overview of specifications

ProcessorIntel Atom D525 1.8 GHz dual core processor
RAM1 GB DDR2 RAM
Flash-Drive512 MB DOM
Hard Drive
5 x 2.5/3.5" SATA
HDD Bays
Five bays, connectable with hot-swap capability
RAID ModesRAID 0, 1, 5, 5 + hot-swap, 6, 6 + hotswap
File System
ext3, ext4 (internal hard drives)
ext3, ext4, NTFS, FAT32, HFS+ (external hard drives)
LAN Connections
2 x gigabit Ethernet
USB5 x USB 2.0 (front: 1; rear: 4)
eSATA2 x eSATA (rear)
LCD DisplayMono-LCD-Display with Enter-/Select-buttons for initial configuration
Dimensions185 mm (H) x 210 mm (W) x 235 mm (D)
WeightEmpty housing: 5.1 kg (11.25 lbs)
OtherVGA connection
FanTemperature-controlled fan, 120 mm
5. Test System And Power Consumption

Test Configuration

We used the default settings of the NAS device for our testing, meaning that we didn't use the jumbo frames setting. Each of the RAID arrays used the firmware-recommended sxt4 file system. For our tests, we used the firmware version 3.3.4 Build 1019T. Instead of the Samsung 320 GB HD321KJ hard drive with 16 MB cache found in past NAS tests, we transitioned over to the HD103SJ model with a capacity of 1000 GB and 32 MB cache.

System Hardware
LGA 775 Motherboard
Asus P5E3 Deluxe, Rev.1.03G, Intel X38, BIOS: 0810 (02/11/2007)
CPUIntel Core 2 Duo E6750 (65 nm Conroe core) @ 2.26 GHz
RAM2 x 1024 MB Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600
eSATA ControllerJMicron JMB363
System Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, 160 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA 3Gb/s, 8 MB Cache
Test Hard Drive
5 x 3.5" Samsung Spinpoint HD103SJ, 1000 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA 3Gb/s, 32 MB Cache
DVD-ROMSamsung SH-D163A , SATA 1.5Gb/s
Graphics Card
Gigabyte Radeon HD 3850 GV-RX385512H, GPU: 670 MHz, Memory: 512 MB DDR3 (830 MHz, 256-Bit)
Network Card
Marvell Yukon 88E8056 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Sound CardIntegrated
PSUCooler Master RS-850-EMBA, ATX 12V V2.2, 850 W
System Software & Drivers
BetriebssystemWindows Vista Enterprise SP1
DirectX 10DirectX 10 (Vista Standard)
DirectX 9Version: April 2007
Graphics Driver
AMD Radeon Version 7.12
Network Driver
9.0.32.3 (Vista-Standard)
Intel Chipset Driver
Version 6.9.1.1001 (20/02/2008)
JMicron Chipset Driver
Version 1.17.15.0 (24/03/2007)


Intel NAS Performance Toolkit

We tested the NAS device with the Intel NAS Performance Toolkit.

Noise Level

As both the housing and the fan of the TS-559 Pro+ are identical to those of the TS-550 Pro, we don't have anything new to report about noise levels. The 120 mm fan runs quietly and unobtrusively. It would be inaccurate to describe its operation as completely silent, but the gentle hum of the fan in normal operating mode is hardly noticeable, and would be drowned out by many PCs on the market.

Unfortunately, the vibrations of the hard drive in both the TS-559 Pro and the TS-559 Pro+ make an annoying rumble. A gentle pressure on the HDD bays is required to quiet the noise.

Power Consumption


Qnap TS-559 ProQnap TS-559 Pro+
Off0.9 W0.9 W
Peak148.8 W148.8 W
HDD Power Down27.3 W27.3 W
Idle56.2 W56.2 W
Rebuild63.5 W63.5 W
6. Benchmark Results: Multimedia

For a better overview, we summarize the results sorted by RAID modes. For the purposes of comparison, we include the Synology DS1010+ in our charts, which we ran with firmware version 3.0.

In a direct comparison to its predecessor, the 1.66 GHz Intel Atom D510-equipped TS-559 Pro, the 1.8 GHz TS-559 Pro+ demonstrates an increase of just under 5 MB/s. In the other RAID modes, our testing also returns elevated data transfer values. However, as these range from 0.6 and 3.8 MB/s, they are not significant compared to the overall transfer rate.

More distinct differences are observable when looking at sequential reads. In RAID modes 0, 1, and 5, the speed increases by about 5 MB/s due to the higher processor clock speed. In the RAID 6 configuration we noted an increase of almost 17 MB/s. Apparently, the faster processor has more of an impact at double redundancy.

When transferring many small files ranging from four bytes to 102 KB, we see that the "+" model consistently delivers higher transfer rates than the Atom D510-equipped model. The increases were between 1.1 MB/s (RAID 1) and 2.7 MB/s (RAID 5) and are therefore not at all significant.

More benchmark results can be found in our image gallery.

7. Benchmark Results: Office

The results for our simulated system backup in a single container file benchmark are similar to those seen in the multimedia benchmarks. Here, too, the transfer rate increase is barely noticeable. Only RAID 6 shows a notable result: there is a transfer rate increase of 8.1 MB/s.

As with the HD video playback benchmark, a noticeable increase in speed occurs in RAID 6 here, with a bump of 15.2 MB/s. The difference between the TS-559 Pro and the TS-559 Pro+ is slightly higher in RAID 0, providing 16.5 MB/s better throughput.

Significant differences between the Qnap TS-559 Pro and the TS-559 Pro+ are not to be found with regard to office files. The influence of the Intel Atom D525 processor in Qnap TS-559 Pro+ mode is limited to increased performance of only 0.2 to 0.7 MB/s. When seen through the lens of a margin of error, the difference between the two devices in this discipline is essentially zero.

More benchmark results can be found in our image gallery.

8. Conclusion: Higher Speed, Higher Throughput

The Device

In renewing its TS-x59 series and specifically the TS-559 Pro, it was easy for Qnap to avoid mistakes. Take the quality casing and the interior of the previous series, add a mature and proven firmware, and exchange the processor for a newer model running 133 MHz faster. The move is of course evolutionary in nature, and it's a fairly logical step forward. From Qnap's perspective, simply adopting a new processor makes sense; it didn't incur any development costs, and the existing firmware is ambivalent to whether its commands are executed by an Atom D510 or an Atom D525 running slightly quicker. 

The Processor

The remaining question is precisely how much of a benefit is offered by the Intel Atom D525 dual-core processor. Considering the 133 MHz clock speed increase on the TS-559 Pro+, the boost to data transfer rates seems rather low. Quantifiably-higher transfer rates are mainly achieved in RAID 6 operation and where the transfer of data happens sequentially. But if a TS-559 Pro+ replaces a TS-559 Pro in a real-world environment, we'd bet that the difference wouldn't be noticed. Whether or not the processor makes itself evident depends on the application and user profiles; it's too small of a change to impress, though.

Recommendation

Currently, the TS-559 Pro and the faster TS-559 Pro+ are listed on Qnap's Web site. Both devices are also available from online vendors, and a closer look reveals a price difference of about $100 between the two.

Already priced up around $1000 without storage, these five-bay units are expensive. Near-term, users who've been toying with the idea of buying a TS-559 Pro will want to weigh the lower price with slightly lower performance in certain situations. Long-term, though, the TS-559 Pro will likely disappear (it was already deactivated on Newegg's site), only leaving the newer unit. It's 1.8 GHz processor doesn't offer any speed miracles on Windows networks, but a higher clock is always welcome, especially when it comes to the little Atom CPU.