Firmware: One For All
Similar to other NAS device manufacturers, Qnap offers a single firmware for all devices in a given product line. This has the advantage of allowing the firmware to be easily adapted to the different models, since both the hardware and the features are almost identical anyway. The differences are mostly in the details, for example the missing eSATA management menu item on a device without eSATA ports.
Because the TS-459 Pro and TS-559 Pro are based on identical hardware (except for the additional drive bay in the 559 Pro), the biggest differences in the Web-based administration interface are the hard drive identification and RAID mode management menus, with the TS-559 Pro simply allowing for the configuration of one more hard drive. Settings like the choice of file system or RAID mode are the same.
Pretty much all that remains when comparing mostly-identical NAS devices is the assumption that the fifth drive in the TS-559 Pro gives it some kind of performance advantage compared to the TS-459 Pro.
RAID In Theory
The choice of RAID mode and the question of whether the device is mostly going to be used for read or write operation are both relevant. Using a dedicated RAID controller and multiple drives produces a solid performance increase using RAID 5, if you're most concerned about read data rates. RAID 0, 1, and 6 modes also benefit from increasing the number of hard drives for read operations. However, the specific transfer rate increase depends on other factors as well: stripe size, the number of I/O requests, and whether they are sequential or random, not to mention the hard drives you are using. Pretty much the same factors play a role in affecting write performance, although things get a bit more complicated.
The vast majority of NAS devices for the consumer market lack a dedicated RAID controller for managing XOR operations, and that goes for the TS-459 Pro and TS-559 Pro as well. XOR is the basic mathematical operation to create (or restore) data redundancy for an array. These operations are handled by the dual-core Intel Atom D510 CPU instead (also known as host-based RAID), which can have a somewhat limiting effect on RAID array performance.
Take a look at the following pages to find out whether the additional disk in the TS-559 Pro has any effect on transfer rates, and if so, how much.


Haha! ;-)
EDIT: They have corrected it now... :-)
/ponders
Just purchase a micro atx board + case + Atom N550/D525 and 2GB of ram, and install 2 or 4 harddrives in RAID.
It'll cost you less than $400!
5 drives and up is indeed harder to get, but definitely NOT worth trice the price!
Besides, the Atom is a very small CPU which would bottleneck when 2 or 3 drives are copy/moving data. I don't think it's even wise from performance standpoint of view to buy any Atom NAS server with more than 3 or 4 drives!
comment made before reading article.
How about adding a 'building your own NAS/server' guide, including testing the sweet-spot for price/performance for various set-ups..?
I run an external 8 bay unit, all drives filled with 2x250GB drives for OS and 6x750GB drives for RAID5. The biggest problem I have in terms of getting an idea of the true transfer rates capable is the fact that the RAID5 can write faster than the other array reads. And copying from an array to itself always has issues. So in real-world apps, my write speeds are limited by the read speed of other devices. The only logical way to untangle the two is to run a separate 6 drive RAID5 array, but I'm out of PCIe 8x slots to do so (as well as money).
These systems offer some very nice features I don't mind paying for.
Keep in mind that this is the corporate version, it has a much beefier CPU than the cheaper ones that cost a few hundred dollars less. They don't offer the same performance, but not everyone needs to use volume based encryption and send the files back and forth over SSL encrypted links.
I just noticed that. It looks like they only tested with one port, not both with port trunking. It would be a lot better and truer to the spirit of testing this for performance if they had bothered to get a port trunking switch and a workstation that could do the same. Dual port Intel boards are only around $150 or so.
Its also handy to have two ports when you have a separate SAN. Keep data traffic away from regular traffic.
But if you're needing more performance than dual Gigiabit ports can provide, you need to buy a larger SAN system.
mikem_90, like I said, I paid $350 for a box that had 4 hot swappable drive bays and Windows Home Server included. So again, the value that one of these that costs almost 3 times as much as that escapes me.
Was it also not possible to connect the other esata ports and see if that makes any difference in transfer rates? be a bit more technical and try some tweaks, that's why we're here at Tom's!
A system administrator in a small company might want to buy this nas if he knew that by using some sort of tweak or setup he can get much more out of it.
Ohh and network trunking of multiple ethernet ports requires an expensive (relatively speaking) managed switch. On the switch you must set the two (or four in my case) ports into bonded mode (not fcking trunk), then set the bonding on the host. Otherwise you only get port failover for when once cable gets unplugged.
My suggestion if you want a network accessible linux based file server.
MiniITX Via Nano / C7 + 2GB DDR2 memory. I suggest one of the Jetway boards coupled with a 3x1Gb daughter board, you can then bond the three ports together for 3Gbps data access and use the onboard port as a network management port. Appropriate expandable case, might have to acquire an external enclosure and use eSATA for access depending on how crazy you want to get.
Then install CentOS 5 (Community ENTerprise OS) onto the system, CENTOS is the Open Source Red Hat Enterprise Linux distro without the propriety tools. It comes with just about everything you possible need for an Enterprise server including tools to integrate it into AD and read / write NTFS partitions. Also comes with clustering support if your into that kind of thing.
After you build it, configure the device to use the padlock (Via integrated AES encryption) engine for cryptofs and suddenly you got full file system encryption without any performance penalty. The Via C7 / Nano can encrypt AES data in the Tbps range, easily enough to saturate any reasonable drive architecture. You can do all this for under the cost of the above four drive NAS, get much better performance, better security control, better integration tools, and more flexibility.
Yah, but can you run Radius with that NAS and authenticate clients connecting to your WPA2-Enterprise wireless network?
Can you run a DNS server on it, and have it serve as a slave to several other DNS servers you have running on the network? I bet you can't do iSCSI targets with that box either.
A real system admin would go for stability than overclocking capability.
It may go very fast but it is a peace of shit if it ruins my holiday.
Although the review is incomplete and lacking.
1st, it did not use port trunking. two 1GB LAN port would really be a big difference
2nd, it did not enable jumbo frame to crank out the real gig transfer that that Gig Lan port is capable of
Its port bonding not trunking. Trunking is when you have multiple VLAN's accessible / routeable through a single switching port. Bonding is when you have multiple switching ports configured to aggregate packets together, in essence they act as a single ethernet port. In both scenarios you require a managed switch configured for this, you can't just log into a box and check a box and it magically works.
Yes jumbo frames would be amazing but somehow I doubt this box supports this out the box.
Well... That is what they said in the actual web config screen...
Port trunking. They even define it.
"Port Trunking provides network load balancing and fault tolerance by combining two Ethernet interfaces into one to increase the bandwidth beyond the limits of any one single interface at the same time offers the redundancy for higher availability when both interfaces are connected to the same switch that supports 'Port Trunking'."
Additionally, you can increase the frames 1500/4074/7418/9000 and I have seen the benefits but never bothered to take statistical analysis.
And it does have iscsi and download station aside from the usual upnp and itunes service and etc...