Qnap TS-559 Pro: Do More Drives In Your NAS Mean More Speed?

[KentC]

[citation][nom]jblack[/nom]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.[/citation]

I have no idea, I doubt if it makes toast either. Not trying to be flippant but these boxes aren't designed for enterprise applications are they? My impression is that they are marketed to small business or homes and most of those people are looking for just what the name of this product says, Network Attached Storage and nothing more. And for anyone in that market with that need I again ask, what does 3x the cost buy me that my WHS box can't do? As far as I can tell the answer is nothing.

 

[mikem_90]

[citation][nom]kentc[/nom]I have no idea, I doubt if it makes toast either. Not trying to be flippant but these boxes aren't designed for enterprise applications are they? My impression is that they are marketed to small business or homes and most of those people are looking for just what the name of this product says, Network Attached Storage and nothing more. And for anyone in that market with that need I again ask, what does 3x the cost buy me that my WHS box can't do? As far as I can tell the answer is nothing.[/citation]

Actually, they are. This is a corporate level NAS box. They have oodles of services you can run and integrate into your network. Iscsi, PHP, MySQL, SSL, Rsync, Replication, Multi-OS support, On the fly RAID migration, On the fly Raid Expansion, IP Security Camera system, DLNA, Itunes, etc..

And most of those features are in the lower end versions too. A lot of them in the Home user version (~$439 for TS-410).

So yeah, if you just want file storage for the home, why not buy a windows home server. but if you want more, these are definitely worth looking into, even for the home user.

Linux Rules.

 

[justbrae1]

[citation][nom]mikem_90[/nom]Actually, they are. This is a corporate level NAS box. They have oodles of services you can run and integrate into your network. Iscsi, PHP, MySQL, SSL, Rsync, Replication, Multi-OS support, On the fly RAID migration, On the fly Raid Expansion, IP Security Camera system, DLNA, Itunes, etc.. And most of those features are in the lower end versions too. A lot of them in the Home user version (~$439 for TS-410).So yeah, if you just want file storage for the home, why not buy a windows home server. but if you want more, these are definitely worth looking into, even for the home user.Linux Rules.[/citation]
No.. this is not a corporate/enterprise storage solution. I would have to be daring to run anything related to small business needs on this. If you are in need of that much data, for that kind of use, a SAN is a solution, not a netbook stuffed into a little box running linux.

 

[junixophobia]

It is used in corporate world primarily on satellite branches with 1 to 5 staff to be used as fileserver and then synchronized to HQ. Remember, not all location has dsl that you can centralize data access all to HQ

And I don't think any company would put a SAN in a satellite branch with just 5 employee. The cost and maintenance for SAN does not justify it be used everywhere.

NAS has its purpose and it depends on the needs and clearly, it fits perfectly on SBE

 

[Guest]

I have the four bay version of this device loaded up with four 2GB WD RE4 drives (~1100 for four). The numbers they are seeing in their tests are a limit result of using one GbE port instead of using link aggregation across both ports.

To all those who believe this box is too expensive I would say it depends primarily on what your time is worth. I put together a similar box using a Lian Li case and quad front hot swappable drive enclosure. The hardware ran me about 600 (not counting drives). The result is a nice looking but much larger SAN than the QNAP.

If I use an open source O/S I can trade my time for money but getting all the same services installed and configured would take tens of hours. If your time is worth even 50/hour this SAN works out cheaper immediately. It took less than 30 minutes to fully configure with Jumbo frames, Active Directory Integration, iSCSI drive mounts, link aggregation turned on, two security cameras set to log and email error notification turned on. The raid, obviously, took longer to build but that would be a price you have to pay regardless.

Link aggregation is pretty common in SOHO switches these days. You don't usually have to pay a premium for it anymore. At home I have a pair of SMCGS24C-Smart with four GbE connecting them to each other. At $250 they are a great quality switch. I have seen 8 port switches with link aggregation at the sub $100 price point.

We mostly used vendor made SANs in our company (primarily EqualLogic units). In the Data Center my storage needs are larger than my budget so I have my team build SANs using the 24port Areca controllers (44TB in RAID 6) and redundant quad port Intel ET2 NICs. We are currently building our 10th. My company is too small to afford Enterprise caliber SANs that hold 500TB so rolling our own was really the only option. They perform on par or better than the Enterprise ones at about a 10th the price. In general though, as an web service Architect and Data Center manager, I find building devices from components is not time/cost effective. Vendor support is pretty valuable.

If the QNAP SAN size is right for you buy it. The QNAP build quality and performance are fantastic. I have had the device for over a year and it is incredibly reliable and easy to administer. QNAP is great with feature updates. Spend your time on things that are business critical not on this. I think it is a perfect device for a small office or home office. This device is not for the Enterprise/data center, though. It doesn't really claim to be that and it is hardly in the ballpark of an Enterprise or Data Center SAN.

 

[palladin9479]

As I mentioned above its the price vs its capability. This is too expensive for the "home user" market and too limited for an enterprise market. Seriously if I sauntered up to my peer-group and mentioned that I was using something like this in my data-center they would laugh and tell me good joke. Enterprise's spend houndreds of thousands of dollars on equipment, for them its considered an investment for future needs. Spending 10K for a decent fileserver + storage array is nothing from an enterprise perspective. That kind of dedicated FS will stomp a NAS in its capability / scaleability / security and integration. Although an above posted mentioned a small remote brance office using this as a local storage system that is synched with the corporate enterprise, that is a very viable need and this would fill it.

What your left with then is the power-user type market, the guys running their own home AD servers, DNS trees and various other deviecs. Most of these guys would rather build their own solution then rely on something like this, unless their not interested in experiementing at the house. Personally I built a mini-ITX Via C7 based server running Windows Server Enterprise 2003, it is both my internal DNS server and my AD server. I have a 2TB external SATA chasis connected to my AD server through eSATA (3.0gbps) and shared out to every system at my house. For me to use another device just to provide file services is retarded when I already have a 24/7 server running at the home.

 

[junixophobia]

It is already being used in off site office where vm is used but SAN storage is not recommended/overkill.

a typical 5 to 10 employee offsite office. With VM requirements can be satisfied by qnap, you can have server from a domain controller, sql, down to file server...
Replacing the harddrive can be bought locally with minimal IT experience and remote connection is good enough to manage it

any IT manager who would still recommend a full san storage for a tiny office does not have a full sense of what an overkill really means.