We know that adding drives to a RAID array can help improve performance. But does adding storage to a NAS device really help push throughput higher? We put four-bay and five-bay units from Qnap up against each other and benchmark their transfer rates.
Qnap is a network storage device manufacturer with a wide range of products. The company portfolio contains everything from media players to network storage solutions for security cameras. Its NAS device product line is probably the area where the company has its strongest brand recognition, and the manufacturer aims at offering lots of options.
As a result, many of its NAS devices come in several different varieties. The TS-x59 Pro series is available with two, four, five, six, and eight drive bays, for example. They all share the same base platform: 1 GB DDR2 memory combined with a dual-core Intel Atom D510 CPU.
Using a single platform is justifiable from a business point of view. Offering several varieties of the same basic configuration means serving different customer segments, while keeping development costs low. Taking the TS-x59 Pro series as an example, the two-drive bay TS-259 Pro version (around $599 USD without storage) is targeted toward sophisticated users who require a NAS device for home network use. The eight-drive bay TS-859 Pro is aimed at the enterprise segment, which is reflected in the price ($1580 USD without hard drives). The four- to six-drive bay units cost between $909 and $1249 USD, and might attract both business and enthusiast users.
| Qnap TS-x59 Pro Series | |
|---|---|
| TS-259 Pro | $599 USD* |
| TS-459 Pro | $909 USD* |
| TS-559 Pro | $1079 USD* |
| TS-659 Pro | $1249 USD* |
| TS-859 Pro | $1580 USD* |
* Approximated prices without hard drives; these may vary
Comparing the TS-459 Pro and the TS-559 Pro with four and five bays, the question we want to answer is: are there any differences between the two devices, other than the fifth drive bay? Is it worthwhile for ambitious users to pay extra for the five-bay unit, or are you better off with the four-bay version, in terms of value for money, as well as speed? And finally, what are the advantages of a fifth drive in the NAS device?

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...