QNAP TS-219P+ NAS Server Review

Manufacturer: QNAP Systems, Inc.
Product Name: QNAP TS-219P+ NAS Server
Model Number: TS-219P+
Price As Tested: Available from NewEgg for $349.99

Full disclosure: The product used in this review was supplied by QNAAP Systems

Network storage is a concept that many people use without a second thought in corporate environments, but what about at home? In addition, a larger number of people are beginning to utilize cloud services, and most of those services include some storage capability. What if you could implement both, easily and with one device? All that and much more is readily available in a Network Attached Storage server from industry stalwart, QNAP. The TS-219P+ Turbo NAS uses a modern, energy-efficient 1.6 GHz Marvell ARM-based processor with 512 MB of DDR3 system memory to drive this storage server. A single Gigabit Ethernet network interface feeds data to the CPU, and then it's sent to two SATA 3Gb/s drive bays offering single disk, JBOD, and RAID 0/1 configurations. Benchmark Reviews recently examined the QNAP TS-659 Pro II Turbo NAS in detail, and now we compare the performance of this smaller unit against other network attached storage servers.

The TS-219P+ NAS server has lower capacity than most NAS units in the market, but I'm willing to bet that there are more two-bay NAS devices sold than any other configuration. If you need both very high capacity and redundancy too, you need to implement RAID 5 at a minimum, and that means at least three disks and a much bigger NAS. If your medium-term data needs can be covered by 2-3TB of storage, you're a good candidate for a smaller two-bay unit like this one.

Three features dominate the discussion of network storage hardware: data capacity, data security, and data transfer speed. In the last couple of years there has been a growing emphasis on the software side, and the current crop of NAS devices offer a dizzying array of applications to help manage and distribute the data, and provide several new ways of accessing that data. In the past, this level of control and communication has been limited to the corporate world, because you needed an MSCSE to figure them out. QNAP has always aimed for the high end of the NAS server market with performance and features such as dual Gigabit Ethernet with failover, a full range of RAID functionality, and a diverse, feature-rich user interface. Now, they've upgraded the software suite with some outstanding new features, and we'll look at both its capabilities and ease of use.

Benchmark Reviews has tested a number of QNAP products: the QNAP TS-119 NAS single-disk offering made for home users, and the Goliath QNAP TS-809 Pro 8-Bay NAS for the storage needs of large businesses. Most recently we tested a 4-bay QNAP TS-459 Pro Turbo-NAS and the 6-bay QNAP TS-659 Pro II. Let's see how this new two-bay device compares to its big brothers and little sisters.

QNAP v3.4 New Software Features

When QNAP launched the v3 Graphical User Interface on their Turbo NAS servers, they set a new standard for this market. A year or two later on, and the latest iteration offers a wide variety of enhancements that keep it at the forefront of modern networking applications. Overall, 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.

The first thing you see when you connect to the NAS is a new Administration logon screen. It seems like old hat now with version 3.4, but the QNAP v3 User Interface features a very attractive rounded GUI design made popular by Apple, and if I had an all-in-one computer with a touch screen the similarity would be further enhanced.

There are an overwhelming amount of features available to manage the QNAP Turbo NAS, as the huge list in the previous Software Features section demonstrates. In this section of the review, we will focus on some of the enhancements that were added recently with version 3.4.

RAID 10 - RAID 10 combines the advantages of RAID 0 and RAID 1. This configuration allows for one disk failure from each RAID 1 pair and offers better write performance for some database applications. There's a bigger penalty in array capacity for the redundancy that you get, compared to RAID 5, but for some it's definitely worth it. RAID 6 can withstand ANY two drives failing at the same time, whereas RAID 10 is only stable if one drive in different RAID 1 pairs fails. It's an extra chance you take for the increased performance. That's why they invented RAID 50 and RAID 60, for those enterprise-class needs.

Real-time Remote Replication - Allows real-time remote replication of one NAS to another over the Internet for maximum data redundancy. This feature is applicable to Intel-based NAS units from QNAP, so the lower-end units can't play. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of Atom-based Turbo NAS models to choose from if this is a needed feature. Don't think of this as a business only feature, it's just as relevant for home users who want to have an advanced remote backup capability, but don't want to pay a monthly fee. Just convince a family member or close, reliable friend who lives across town or across the country to join in a NAS sharing scheme. You can each back the other person's data up in real time. For most home users this is going to be overkill, but if you both have fiber running through your neighborhood, why not?

Advanced Folder Permissions - Enables you to configure access control to folders and subfolders for efficient management and better security. This is primarily aimed at business applications, but if you've got a house full of users, it makes sense to put some restrictions in place, and set up some safe areas where no one else has access. Kids and credit card data don't mix well, for example.

ElephantDrive Cloud Storage - Lets users save backups in cloud based storage in addition to their Turbo NAS for an off-site storage with continuous data protection. This is going to be a very popular option for home users. Just as Carbonite has established a nice market for their data protection services, ElephantDrive will work very well for NAS users who have consolidated storage. It's not as complex as setting up your own private cloud, and doesn't offer all the capabilities you get by doing that, but it's ideally suited for users or groups who are interested in off-line storage. Most of us should be interested, because the truth is 90% of home users are vulnerable to a wide variety of disaster scenarios.

Download Station V2 - Now easier to use with a new AJAX interface, broadcatching support (RSS download), and enhanced overall performance. For those of us intent on drinking from the fire hose, this new interface makes it easier to set up your various data feeds.

Advanced Print Server - Now supports Internet printing with permission control as well as Bonjour printing for Mac. Who doesn't have a printer in the house, that doesn't have an Ethernet interface, and you have it hooked to one of the desktop systems, and are using printer sharing to allow others on the network to access it? Well, as more and more of us are migrating to laptops, it seems wasteful to keep one desktop running, just for a printer server. Got a Turbo NAS, problem solved?

MyCloudNAS Remote Access - MyCloudNAS is a free built-in DNS service provided for users to register a unique domain name for their NAS. It further reduces the hassle of complicated Internet registration and allows users to quickly access their NAS through the Internet. This is the thing people have been waiting for, I think. When you hear discussions about Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud, this is what they're talking about. While some of the other remote access apps give you limited control of the NAS for specific tasks, MyCloudNAS gives you full access from anywhere in the world. Pretty cool, even if I'm going to want to read a couple dozen tech articles on network security before I try it. I'm chicken that way!

USB Wi-Fi Network Adapter Support - Allows you to deploy the NAS wirelessly. I can see this being worthwhile for smaller NAS units, but my old-school brain says I want this plugged directly into my router or into a Gigabit switch that connects to my primary workstations.

Two more features are included with the new version 3.4, but they're both for business-class IT environments, so I won't dwell on them here. They're more applicable to the high-end rack mount units that QNAP sells to the corporate world.

System Management Features - Import/export of users, host-based permissions control, enhanced Virtual Disk support, and direct file viewing via Google Doc

Virtual LAN Support - You can integrate the NAS into an existing VLAN on a virtualization infrastructure and configure the NAS as the storage system for other VLAN devices. This feature is applicable to Intel-based NAS

You can see that v3.4 was a major release in terms of new functionality. QNAP offers a huge selection of FAQs and how-to guides on their website that go into much more detail. It's one of the most informative sites I've seen, in any industry. They not only show what each feature does, they show you how to do it, with screen shots and real-world examples. As I said in the beginning of this section, QNAP clearly wants to stay on top, as the market leader in this segment. The high level of support that they offer for each user and each product is another example of how they intend to do that.

Closer Look: QNAP TS-219P+ Turbo NAS Server

The QNAP TS-219P+ has lower capacity than most NAS units in the market if you just count the number of models for sale, but I'm willing to bet that there are more two-bay NAS devices sold than any other configuration. Two bays can theoretically hold 6TB of data, in JBOD or RAID 0 modes. In RAID 1 mode, the capacity is halved, down to the size of a single 3.5" HDD, which is presently maxed out at 3TB for mainstream HDDs. A two bay unit pretty much forces you to think strategically about your storage requirements, because you can't get the combination of capacity and redundancy that is the hallmark of higher RAID configurations, especially RAID 5. Its either-or; capacity and speed with RAID 0, or single-level redundancy with RAID 1, take your choice. 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 in product selection, assuming that everything else is based on reasonably modern technology.

I mentioned the corporate IT environment earlier, and QNAP has plenty of solutions for that market. Today though, we're going to look at a NAS device that is scaled down for the small office/home office (SOHO) user. My home fits this description to a tee, as my wife and I have a small business, have 5 computers sharing our network, and have been using a NAS for the last six years as a file server and to manage our backups. We looked at the TS-259 Pro NAS server last year and were very impressed, now let's see what you have to give up, if anything with the TS-219P+.

The QNAP TS-219P++ shares the same basic technology platform as all the TS-x19P+ models, and there are three choices: TS-119P+, TS-219P+, and TS-419P+. Each one weighs a bit more than the next, especially with all drives bays filled. The empty TS-219P+ Turbo NAS unit weighs about 3.8 lbs, and adding two 2 TB hard drives piles on another 3.3 lbs to that. At ~7 pounds, the TS-219P+ is almost able to pass for a portable device, and the single bay unit, even more so. If I had to describe it visually to someone who knew nothing about NAS devices, I'd tell them it looks like a small, sleek toaster with a smart, German design. Oh, and the toast slides in from the front. Clever!

Multiple SATA 3Gb/s drives can be installed as a single disk (Each drive a stand-alone disk), RAID 0 (Disk Striping), RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring), or JBOD (Linear Disk Volume). Each drive can be formatted using FAT, NTFS, EXT3, or EXT4 file systems, and the system also offers AES 256-bit encryption. Our tests utilize EXT4-formatted disks without encryption. QNAP uses a steel-framed tray with black plastic latches for each drive bay on the TS-219P+, which is a common part across a part of the product line. Each tray stands on edge, slides smoothly into the NAS and locks firmly into place. Barrel locks are not available to secure the drives in place on the TS-x19 series, which may or may not be an issue for you (think of mechanically inclined, inquisitive children before you answer...). The drive trays easily accommodate 2.5" drives without any additional hardware; just use the correct mounting holes. QNAP does not recommend mixing 3.5" and 2.5" drives in the same enclosure, and they do 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 a requirement for you.

QNAP keeps the front panel clutter to a minimum on the TS-219P+, forgoing any LCD screens, and there are only a few buttons and indicator lights on the bezel. In truth, there's not really enough room to include the LCD display that many of the four-bay units have. A single power button and USB (2.0) copy button and port are located on the lower left corner of the Turbo NAS. These buttons have multi-colored status indicator lights built into them, so it's best to check the manual for the color codes. Above these are four status lights which indicate activity for HDD1 and HDD2, LAN activity, and the presence of an eSATA device connected on the back panel. Once again, check the color codes to get the most out of them.

There's a single strip of ventilation holes on the left side of the QNAP TS-219P+ Turbo NAS. This is the primary entry point for cool air to the single-core Marvell embedded processor, as the system board is located on this side of the unit. Fresh air also enters through the drive trays, passes over the HDDs and is then exhausted out through the single 70mm cooling fan on the rear of the unit. The fan is a PWM type, and is controlled by the motherboard, in order to keep things cool when needed and quiet the rest of the time. I didn't pay much attention to the fan noise, as it was never really noticeable during my daily use. Of course, I do live in a somewhat noisy urban environment, so if you have to have absolute quiet all the time you should probably load your NAS up with SSDs or 2.5" notebook drives, which run both cooler and quieter. Take a look at the QNAP SS-439 Pro, if you go down that road, as it's optimized for the smaller drives.

The QNAP TS-219P+ Turbo NAS server is equipped with a Marvell 88F6282 processor, which houses an ARM®v5TE Single Core CPU running at 1.6 GHz, with a 256KB L2 Cache. This is the third-tier specification level for CPU and memory in QNAP NAS servers, and it should provide decent performance in a two-bay unit, but we'll have to wait for our performance tests to be sure. There are two-bay units in the product line with Intel ATOM dual-core CPUs, and they clearly have the computing power to vanquish any potential processing bottlenecks. In the 8 and 12-bay units at the top of the product line the CPU gets a big bump, to Intel Core i3 Dual Core (3.30 GHz) and Intel Xeon Quad Core (3.10 GHz), giving us a solid clue to the actual computing requirements for a full featured, high performance NAS. Those inexpensive, shiny boxes that use port replication hardware fall flat on their faces when asked to pull anything more than light duty. QNAP employs a 16MB Flash Module to store firmware and applications on the TS-219P+ motherboard. This acts like the system drive, yet it takes up very little space and uses almost no power. There's no built-in backup module in case of data corruption, like the TS-x59 units have, so be extra careful during firmware upgrades.

Looking at the business end of the TS-219P+, it's not obvious (unless you were already looking for the blue USB ports), but USB 3.0 has not trickled down to the lower level QNAP servers. It's unfortunate, because USB 2.0 is such a huge bottleneck when trying to use inexpensive portable drives for making copies of your data. I always like to have a full set of backups stored at an alternate location, and USB makes it fast, easy, and cheap. There is an alternative, which many people prefer anyway. The eSATA interface has been implemented on most of the QNAP NAS products for some time, usually in the form of twin eSATA expansion ports, which are available here. They work great for attaching external drives if you're not going to disconnect/reconnect them on a regular basis, but eSATA has never been as cheap or easy to use as USB, at least in my experience. A single Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 port is provided, powered by a Marvell 88E1318 Ethernet Controller, which offers a full set of networking features. The TS-219P+ supports 4074, 7418, and 9000 bytes for MTU when Jumbo Frames are enabled. Note that Jumbo Frames are only available in a Gigabit network environment. The system Reset button is below that, recessed inside the case to prevent accidental actuation. Two levels of reset capability are provided, Basic System Reset (hold for 3 sec), and Advanced System Reset (hold for 10 sec). A Kensington lock hole and the 12 VDC power input sit along the bottom edge.

The drives get installed in removable drive trays, which some people call drive caddies, but I prefer the term "tray". The four bottom mounting holes on each HDD are utilized, and that's the only option. Because the tray and drive need to solidly engage the SATA connectors on the backplane, there is no realistic way to include shock mounting for the drives. Of course, in a couple of years someone like Lian Li will do just that, and prove me wrong.... The tray is made from carbon steel and then plated for corrosion resistance. The latching mechanism is a combination of steel and plastic, and each tray is labeled with the slot number. 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 ever take them out. Seriously, keep them in the same, sequential order they ship in - creativity and imagination are completely out of place in this one instance.

Now that we've had a thorough tour of the exterior, let's do a tear-down and see what the insides look like. The next section covers Insider Details.

Insider Details: QNAP TS-219P+ Turbo NAS

The first inner workings of a TS-219P+ that you're likely to see is the opening of the drive bay, which is rather small, compared to some of the monster drive arrays that are available, with 8 and 12 bays. The metal guide rails can be seen along the bottom here, and the PCIe extender card that carries the twin SATA power and data connectors is right where it should be. It's firmly held in place by two screws fastening it directly to the metal frame and the PCIe connector on the left, where it terminates on the motherboard. The single 70mm fan has pretty much an unobstructed path to the drive bay, so any heat being generated by the two drives can easily be pulled out the back of the enclosure. Unlike the larger units, there are no SATA controller ICs mounted to this board, as the single SATA 3Gb/s controller on the motherboard can handle the two removable drives.

Once the brushed steel top and side cover is removed, you can see the main server board installed along the left side of the chassis, parallel to the drive bays. The back side of the board faces the exterior, and only a few components are mounted on the back of the PC Board. All of the rear panel connectors are mounted directly to the board, for a reliable and secure connection. There is a full size clear, flexible plastic shield attached to the board, to prevent the metallic side cover from shorting out any circuits in the event of some extreme rough handling. You actually void the warranty by disassembling the unit to this level, oh well... You can just make out two of the four DRAM chips, soldered to the back of the motherboard. We'll get a better look at them when we take things apart a little further and get a look at the front side.

Once you decide to go for a full deconstruction, the TS-219P+ comes apart into several sections like this. The rear panel with the 70mm fan mounted to it slides off the back, the SATA backplane comes off with two screws and unplugs from the 1x PCIe connector on the motherboard, and the motherboard lifts from four standoffs and swings out with the front panel connectors still attached. The one thing that stands out in this view is the small size of the CPU heatsink. The one in the Atom-powered TS-659 Pro II was literally ten times the size.

Taking a closer look at the motherboard, it doesn't look like much, but that's because most of the subsystem-level ICs are very small. I'll call them out in detail in the very next section. For now, the thing to understand is that it's a very single-minded design, with very low power consumption. The ARM processor in the Marvell 88F6282 controller is very power efficient, as evidenced by the miniature passive heatsink mounted on top of it. Even though a few of the many software features of QNAP's v3.4 software won't run on the ARM CPU, the functionality that can be provided by this minimalist hardware still amazes me. For years, I envisioned servers as all-mighty, conquering machines with megawatts of computing power (I know, the analogy stinks...). The reality is that most modern server hardware is pedestrian compared to the enthusiast-level boxes many of our readers have. The reason most new servers have six and eight CPU cores in them is for virtualization, not to provide multi-core processing for single applications.

The most important IC on the board is the system controller, also known as an "Embedded Processor", "System-on-a Chip" (SOC) or CPU. Back in the day, the CPU was just the CPU, but we all know that Large Scale Integration waits for no man. Today's "CPU" includes a whole bunch of other support and interface modules that simplify and streamline the system for the twin goals of increasing performance and reducing costs. QNAP uses the Marvell 88F6282 processor, which houses an ARM®v5TE Single Core CPU running at 1.6 GHz, with a 256KB L2 Cache. The memory controller is integrated, and it handles DDR3-1066 or DDR2-800 memory modules; the QNAP TS-219P+ uses DDR3 memory, which is soldered directly to the motherboard. Some of the capabilities go unused on the TS-219P+, like the LCD controller, the second Gigabit Ethernet interface, and the audio port. Although I see a Security Engine in the Marvell block diagram, the QNAP materials show that none of the non-Intel NAS models support AES 256-bit volume-based encryption.

512 MB of DDR3 memory is standard on the TS-219P+ Turbo NAS; it's soldered directly to the board, and is not upgradeable. The chips in my sample were supplied by Hynix and are rated for DDR3-1333 with timings of 9-9-9 for CL-tRCD-tRP. The memory controller built into the Marvell system controller can only access them at DDR3-1066, and the memory chips support that speed as well as a variety of other speeds and timings. Marvell supplies two of the three most important ICs on the board; the Marvell 88E1318 is a Gigabit Ethernet PHY controller. PHY is a new acronym for many of us; it refers to a physical transceiver that operates at the physical layer of the OSI network model. Realtek is probably the most popular controller in the PC motherboard world, but Marvell currently produces nine different models of single port Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) controllers in their Alaska product line, so there must be a big enough market for a variety of products. The last of the top three chips on the board is the SATA II controller for the removable drives. It's a JMicron JMB362, which manages the interface between the 1-lane PCI Express connection on the motherboard to an integrated 2-port Serial ATA II Host Controller. The JMB362 supports AHCI, Native Command Queuing, ATAPI Devices, Hot Plugging and eSATA connections.

The GL850G chip is by Genesys Logic and it provides USB 2.0 connectivity for the TS-219P+ at the hardware level. The NCP3101 chip by ON Semiconductor manages power for the board, and features high efficiency, wide input voltage, and a high output current of 6A through internal MOSFET switches. There are other, minor voltage regulators on the board, for smaller subsystems like the memory and the fan, but this is the main one. The PIC16F690 may seem like a familiar name to some of our more technical readers. I think it's fair to say that more hobbyist creations have been powered by PIC controllers than any other brand. This latest version of a long line of microcontrollers is a 20-Pin Flash-based, 8-Bit CMOS Microcontroller with "nanoWatt Technology". Once again, small and efficient rules the day for this application.

To measure isolated NAS power consumption, Benchmark Reviews uses the Kill-A-Watt EZ (model P4460) power meter made by P3 International. Obviously, power consumption is going to depend heavily on the number and type of drives that are installed. In idle standby mode the QNAP TS-219P+ consumed 8 watts of electricity, this is on-par with the 7W specified for sleep mode. With one 750GB hard drives installed, and formatting the drive during initial system setup, the TS-219P+ Turbo NAS drew 14W. Heavy file transfer operations drew 15W, and when the unit was turned off, it consumed 2W in Vampire mode. It's tougher for the power meter to measure the lowest currents, so don't take the 2W vampire number to the bank, just be aware that even when it's turned off, the small brick-like SMPS plugged into the wall still pulls a small amount of power.

Experts estimate that standby energy drain accounts for anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of an average home's annual power usage. Convert that percentage into dollars, and you've got around $4 billion in wasted spending across America every year, the Department of Energy estimates. The wasted cash is bad enough, but the toll on Mother Nature is worse. Vampire energy accounts for 1 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. I walked through my house after dark one night a few months ago and counted 47 LEDs and LCD displays burning away.

We've seen the ins and outs of the hardware and the new software; 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 box full of drives. It's capable of so much more than that.

QNAP Turbo NAS Features

The TS-219P+ is a powerful 2-bay network attached storage (NAS ) server, which is designed to provide an affordable and easy-to-management solution with iSCSI service for virtualized and clustered environment. The TS-219P+ also offers versatile business applications to maximize the efficiency of the data center in a small-scale business environment.

The Most Affordable and Flexible Virtualization Solution

The TS-219P+ is certified as compatible with VMware vSphere4 (ESX 4.0 and above) virtualization platform. The NAS can be utilized as the networked shared storage of VMware virtualization environments and Windows cluster servers. Comparing with traditional SAN (Storage Area Network), the Turbo NAS is a competitive alternative with much lower setup and maintenance costs in an IP SAN.

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.

iSCSI for Virtualization Deployments
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.

Built-in iSCSI Target Service
The TS-259 Pro can act as a NAS and iSCSI target server at the same time. It provides a cost-efficient iSCSI solution to set up an IP-SAN. You can make use of the built-in iSCSI target service to add up to 8 iSCSI devices. Different iSCSI Target LUNs (Logical Unit Number) can be defined as storage expansion or backup destination of the existing application servers, such as database servers and mail servers.

Furthermore, the "Virtual Space Allocation" (Thin Provisioning) feature is provided which allows you to flexibly allocate the capacity of iSCSI LUN (Logical Unit Number). When the physical storage capacity of the volume is going to be full, you can easily expand the storage capacity by "Online RAID Capacity Expansion", or adjust/ remove the current unused volume space according to the demands.

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.

UPS Support
The NAS supports the majority of USB UPS devices (usbhid-ups supported) which enables the users to store the data in time and avoid critical data loss when power outage occurs during data transfer.

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.

One Touch USB Auto Copy
The one touch button can be configured to trigger instant data backup from the external USB device to the NAS or the other way round (applies to the USB device connected to the front USB port of the NAS only).

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.

Support Windows Active Directory
The Windows AD feature enables server manager to import user accounts from AD domain to NAS to reduce the time and effort for account setup, and users can use the same set of login name and password.

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.

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 all the leading network camera brands such as AXIS, D-Link, IPUX, LevelOne, Linksys, Panasonic and Vivotek etc. By using particular models, users can use two-way video and audio monitoring and recording, and smart PTZ control to control the monitoring direction via the web interface. 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.

QNAP TS-219P+ NAS Hardware Specifications

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-219P+ Software Specifications

Software Specifications

Operating System

• Embedded Linux

Supported Operating System

• Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista (32/ 64 bit), Windows 7 (32/ 64 bit), Server 2003/ 2008
• Apple Mac OS X
• Linux & Unix

Supported Web Browsers

• Internet Explorer 7,8, or 9
• Firefox 3 or later
• Safari 3 & 4 or later
• Google Chrome

Multilingual Support

• Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.

File System

• Internal HDD: EXT3, EXT4
• External HDD: EXT3, EXT4, NTFS, FAT32, HFS+

Networking

• TCP/IP (IPv4 & IPv6: Dual Stack)
• Dual Gigabit LAN with Jumbo Frame
• 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)
• DHCP Client, DHCP Server
• Protocols: CIFS/SMB, AFP (3.1), NFS, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, Telnet, SSH, iSCSI and SNMP.
• Network Service Discovery (UPnP, Bonjour)
• Virtual LAN Support
• USB Wi-Fi 802.11n Adapter Support (Optional Purchase)

Network File Sharing

• CIFS/SMB (Plus DFS Support)
• AFP
• NFS
• FTP
• WebDAV

Backup Solution

• USB One Touch Backup (Import/Export)
• Apple Time Machine Support with Backup Management
• Block-level Remote Replication
  • Work as Both Rsync Server & Client
  • Supports Encrypted Replication between QNAP NAS Servers
• Back up to External Storage Device
• Back up to Cloud Storage (Amazon S3 & ElephantDrive)

Security

• IP Filter & Policy-based Automatic IP Blocking
• Network Access Protection with Auto-blocking
• Encrypted Access: HTTPS, FTP with SSL/TLS (Explicit), SSH/SFTP (admin only), Encrypted Remote Replication (Rsync over SSH)
• CIFS Host Access Control for Shared Folders
• Importable SSL Certificate
• Instant Alert via Email, SMS, and LCD

Disk Management

• Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0 / 1
• Online RAID Capacity Expansion & Online RAID Level Migration
• Bad Block Scan & HDD S.M.A.R.T
• Global Spare Drive
• RAID Recovery
• Bitmap Support
• Supports ISO Mounting (via Web File Manager)

iSCSI (IP SAN)

• iSCSI Target
  • Multi-LUNs per Target
  • Up to 256 LUNs
  • Supports LUN Mapping & Masking
  • Supports SPC-3 Persistent Reservation
  • Supports MPIO & MC/S
• Virtual Disk Drive (via iSCSI Initiator)
  • Stack Chaining Master
  • Max. Virtual Disk Drives: 8

Server Virtualization & Clustering

• Supports VMware vSphere (ESX/ESXi 4.x)
• Supports Citrix XenServer (5.6)
• Supports Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V & Failover Clustering

Power Management

• Wake on LAN
• Scheduled Power on/off (Max 15 settings)
• Automatic Power on after Power Recovery

Access Right Management

• Max User Accounts: 2,048
• Max Groups: 256
• Max. Share Folder: 256
• Max Concurrent Connections: 256
• Batch Creating Users
• Import/Export Users
• User Quota Management
• Subfolder Permissions Support

Windows AD Support

• Domain Users Login via CIFS/SMB, AFP, FTP and Web File Manager
• Supports NTLMv2 Authentication

Web Administration

• AJAX-based User Interface
• HTTP/HTTPS Connections
• Alert Notification (Email & SMS)
• Smart Fan Control
• DDNS & MyCloudNAS Remote Access
• SNMP (v2 & v3)
• UPS Support with SNMP Management (USB)
• Supports Network UPS
• Resource Monitor
• Network Recycle Bin for CIFS/SMB and AFP
• Comprehensive Logs (Events & Connection)
• Real-time Online User List
• Syslog Client
• Firmware Update with Live Update Notification
• Backup and Restore System Settings
• Restore to Factory Default

Applications

• Web File Manager
• Multimedia Station
• Download Station
• Surveillance Station
• iTunes Server
• UPnP Media Server
• Apache Web Server
• MySQL Server

QMobile App

• QMobile for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Android devices
• Third Party UPnP Media Player

QPKG

• Web Applications
  • Joomla!
  • phpMyAdmin
  • WordPress
  • AjaXplorer
  • vtigerCRM
  • GLPI
  • Magento
• P2P Applications
  • MLDonkey (eMule)
  • SABnzbd+
  • NZBGet
  • Transmission
• Server Applications
  • Squeezebox Server
  • Tomcat
  • Asterisk
  • XDove (Mail Server)
  • OpenLDAP
  • eyeOS
• Media Server
  • PS3 Media Server
  • IceStation
• Misc.
  • Optware IPKG
  • Python
  • Java Runtime Environment
  • Mono
  • iStat

Powerful All-in-one server

File Server

• File Sharing across Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX
• Protocols: CIFS/SMB, AFP(3.2), NFS, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS
• QNAP Web File Manager
  • Supports ISO Mounting
  • Direct File Viewing via Google Doc

FTP Server

• FTP over SSL/TLS (Explicit)
• Max Concurrent Connections: 256
• FXP Supported
• Passive FTP Port Range Control
• FTP Bandwidth & Connection Control
• Unicode Support

Web Server

• HTTP/ HTTPS Connections
• Supports WebDAV Connection
• Support Virtual Host
• Importable SSL Certificate

Database Server

• Built-in MySQL Server
• Web-based Management via phpMyAdmin (QPKG)

Backup Server

• Remote Replication Server (over Rsync)
• Apple Time Machine Support
• QNAP Client Backup Application-NetBak Replicator
• 3rd Party Backup Software Support: Acronis True Image, CA BrightStor, ARCserve Backup, EMC Retrospect, Symantec Backup Exec, LaCie SilverKeeper

iTunes Server

• Audio and Video Sharing
• Smart Playlist for iTunes Client (Windows & Mac OS)

UPnP Media Server

• Built-in TwonkyMedia Server
• Real-time & Background Photo Transcoding
• Supports UPnP Media Player
  • Game Console: PlayStation 3, PSP and Xbox 360
  • Digital Media Adapter/Player
  • Mobile Device (e.g. iPhone, iPod touch with UPnP Applications)
• Supported Formats:
  • ASF - Windows Media Video (Codecs: WMV video and WMA audio)
  • BMP - Bitmap Image
  • FLV, F1V, F4V - Standard Quality YouTube Video (Codec: Flash, Video: Sorenson Spark H.263 Video Codec & MP3 Audio Codec)
  • GIF - Graphics Interchange Format
  • JPG, JPEG, JPE - Joint Photographic Experts Group Image
  • MP3 - MPEG Audio Layer 3 (Codec: MPEG Audio)
  • MP4 - High Quality YouTube Video (Codecs: MP4: H.264 Video & HE-AAC audio)
  • MP4 - MPEG-4 Video (Codecs: Microsoft MPEG-4 v1, Microsoft MPEG-4 v2, Microsoft MPEG-4 v3 & ISO MPEG-4 v1)
  • MPEG, .MPG, .MLV - MPEG-1 (Codecs: MPEG-1 Video & MP2 Audio)
  • PNG - Portable Network Graphics
  • WAV - Linear Audio (Codecs: Uncompressed PCM-encoded & ADPCM-encoded)

Printer Server

• Network Printer Sharing (USB)
• Max Printers: 3
• Supports Internet Printing Protocol
• Supports Apple Bonjour Printing
• Advanced Printer Management
  • Print Jobs Display and Management
  • Access Right Control (IP & Domain Names)

Multimedia Station

• Supports Photo, Audio and Video
• Image Slide Show and Rotation
• Automatic & Schedule 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
• Multimedia (Video & Audio) Streaming
• Supports Cooliris
• Supports Web Publishing (Facebook, MySpace, MSN Live, Twitter, Plurk, 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 iPhone & Android App - QMobile

Download Station

• PC-less BitTorrent, FTP, HTTP Download (up to 500 Tasks)
• BitTorrent Download
  • Supports TCP/ UDP Tracker Protocol
  • Schedule Download
  • Configurable Port Range
  • Bandwidth Control
  • UPnP NAT Port Forwarding
  • Subscribe to RSS Feeds
  • RSS Download (Broadcatching)
  • Selectable Download Files
• HTTP/ FTP Download
  • Configurable Saving Directory
  • Bulk Download with Wildcard Setting
  • RapidShare Download Support
• QNAP Download Management Software: QGet
  • For Both Windows & Mac OS
  • Manage the Download Tasks of Multiple QNAP NAS Remotely over LAN or WAN

Surveillance Station

• Supports 4 IP Cameras (Optional Purchase) for Network Surveillance

Besides the core features available in the QNAP v3.4 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

The 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 (eMule) is a door to the 'donkey' network, a decentralized network used to exchange big files on the Internet and present most features of the basic Windows donkey client. (e.g., eMule)

Slim Server on Turbo Station (with SqueezeCenter 7)
Squeeze Center is the server software from Slim Device that manages common digital audio formats (.mp3, .flac, .ogg, etc.) and streams them to its players. Slim Server On Turbo Station (SSOTS) developed by flipflip is an add-on to the Turbo Station's firmware which provides the environment to run Squeeze Center 7 on it.

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.

SABnzbd+
SABnzbd+ is a multi-platform binary newsgroup downloader written in Python language. The program works in the background and simplifies the downloading, verifying and extracting of files from Usenet. SABnzbd+ does not search for files, instead NZB files (similar to .torrent files, but for Usenet) are fed to SABnzbd+ from sites like newzbin.com, binsearch.info and tvnzb.com (Requires prior installation of Python)

Python
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes programmer productivity and code readability.

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. Benchmark Reviews is built from the Joomla! CMS.

phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin is an open source tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Internet. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, and manage keys on fields.

xDove Email Server
XDove named after XMail & Dovecot the 2 open source offerings that are combined to provide a complete set of Email server functionalities which is one-click installable on your QNAP NAS. XDove not only provides SMTP, POP3 and IMAP services, it also comes with a variety of features like multiple virtual domains and accounts, AJAX webmail with extended functionalities including personal folders, address book, calendar and real-time chat among users under the same mail domain. Besides the mail services XDove offers scheduled backup and restore of your mailboxes from multiple domains which gives you an extra protection on the top of your RAID data redundancy.

AjaXplorer
AjaXplorer is a file explorer for remotely managing files on a web server or operation as a simple file-sharing system. Its rich layout and actions make it easily accessible to virtually any end-user. The AJAX based interface, providing streamlined and intuitive functionalities, similar to that of a standard file-system explorer on any operating system.

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.

We've seen the COMPLETE ins and outs of the hardware and the software; now let's dive into the testing phase.

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 added 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. Since this two-bay device doesn't support RAID 5, I only tested the single-disk mode this time. Each NAS device was upgraded to the very latest firmware by flashing the DOM with binary files downloaded from the QNAP website. The recommended firmware was the same for all the devices under test: v3.4.3-0520T

Connected directly to the Realtek 8112L Gigabit LAN controller in the test-bench system by a ten-foot CAT6 patch cable, the NAS product receives one test transfer followed by at least three timed transfers. Each test file was sent to the Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB (WD7501AALS) hard drives installed in the NAS for a timed write test, and that same file was sent back to a Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 10,000 RPM (WD1500HLFS) hard drive in the test system to perform a read test. Each test was repeated several times, the high and low values were discarded and the remaining results were recorded and charted.

This is the start of NAS testing where we are going to exclusively use Windows 7 as the testing platform for the host system. The performance differences between Win7 and XP are huge, as we documented 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's definitely time to make the jump for NAS products.

The two transfer tests: read and write, were conducted on each NAS appliance using the 1 GB file and then a 10 GB file. Additionally, a second set of tests were conducted with Jumbo Frame enabled, i.e. the MTU value for the Ethernet controllers was increased from 1500 to 9000. All the NAS products tested to date in the Windows 7 environment have supported the Jumbo Frame configuration. I also include a baseline of sorts, which is the internal file transfer from the Corsair P64 SSD to the Western Digital 150GB VelociRaptor installed on the Intel P55 motherboard SATA connections, where the Intel P55 chipset provides the SATA 3Gb/s interface, and a Marvell 88SE9123 controller provides two ports of SATA 6Gb/s connections.

NAS Comparison Products

• 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

Support Equipment

• (1) Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3Gb/s 3.5"
• 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: ASUS P7P55D-E Pro (1002 BIOS)
• System Memory: 2x 2GB GSKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1600MHz (7-8-7-24)
• Processor: Intel Core i5-750 (OC @ 4.0 GHz)
• CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems (Delta AFB1212SHE PWM Fan)
• Video: ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 8.840.3.0)
• Drive 1: Corsair P64 SSD, 64GB
• Drive 2: Western Digital VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3Gb/s 3.5"
• Optical Drive: Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7190A-OB 20X DVD Burner
• Enclosure: CM STORM Sniper Gaming Case
• 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 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.

Since we started testing NAS units exclusively with Win 7, there aren't as many prior test results to compare with. We'll try and build up the NAS testing as best we can in the next year. In the meantime, we can compare several units from QNAP that we have on hand now. In single disk mode, the TS-219P+ comes in slightly behind the higher powered units on the 1 GB Read tests. The various combinations of faster CPU, more memory, SATA 6Gb/s, and a 64MB cache on the latest WD Caviar Black drives give the TS-259 Pro and TS-659 Pro II a minor win in this instance. It's not much of an advantage, and it shows that in single disk mode, a lower cost unit can stay on the same lap as the big dogs. The real difference is in functionality, as the two-bay units can only support single disk, RAID 0, or RAID 1.

Moving on to the 1 GB write bandwidth test, the performance when writing 1 GB files to the QNAP TS-219P+ falls down a bit compared to the higher-end units. We'll look at some system overhead figures later that help to explain this, I think. For now, suffice it to say that, even with the least challenging case of writing to a single HDD, the average transfer speed goes up with price. It's not a total fail, by any stretch of the imagination, because for anyone who is used to USB 2.0 transfer speeds, or multi-drive towers using SATA port replication, these results are still sweet.

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 single Gigabit 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-219P+ delivers just slightly better read performance than the more costly TS-259 Pro, with improvements of about 5%. These are about 15% behind the best transfer speeds we encountered during our testing and just like the 1GB read tests, anyone who just needs a single disk, RAID 0 or RAID 1 system configuration is going to be completely happy with this kind of performance. Of course, you get none of the advantages of redundancy with a single disk or JBOD, and a lot of NAS users will want to go for one of the higher RAID configurations. For delivering files to the desktop, or streaming media to a variety of entertainment outlets, this unit doesn't have to make any excuses in the presence of much more costly companions.

In our 10GB write performance tests, the performance of the TS-219P+ loses some ground, just like it did in the 1GB write test. There's no getting around the fact that the processing power inside any NAS appliance has a big effect on write performance, even with a single disk. With any kind of RAID arrangement, the load gets even higher and it really pays to spend the money for a more powerful CPU. Any backup tasks are going to run a little slower on a lower priced unit - about half the typical internal SATA transfer rate when writing to an HDD. But not everyone is going to use a NAS as strictly a backup solution. For some users, or groups of users, it makes more sense to use the NAS as your front-line storage. In that scenario, the write performance doesn't have as much impact on the user experience. They've typically moved on to the next task after they initiate the save process, it's when you're waiting for a new file to load into an editing application that you sit there twiddling your thumbs waiting for it to load.

We're not going to look at RAID 5 performance, since the QNAP TS-219P+ don't support the RAID5 configuration that we normally use to test the large format NAS products, and we won't be able to offer much of a comparison. Instead, we're going to look a lot closer at NAS System Overhead measurements, and see if we can find the cold, hard evidence that spotlights where the bottleneck is in write performance.

NAS Comparison Products

• 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

NAS System Overhead Measurements

I've discussed the potential impact the NAS hardware has on performance in general terms so far. The consensus is that the CPU, drive controllers, memory, and network subsystems have a direct and profound impact on the throughput of a NAS device. In extreme cases where multiple drives (4+) are arranged in higher-order RAID configurations, the CPU has a ton of work to do, calculating parity bits and parsing them out to multiple data streams. In this section, I'm going to look at some results from the System Monitor capability that is available both on the host PC and on the QNAP Turbo NAS server.

Let's start off looking at CPU usage on the NAS server. During a straight data transfer from the PC to the single disk on the TS-219P+, the results show the Marvell 88F6282 SoC device completely maxed out at 100%. The two blocks in the chart represent two different sets of files being transferred, with a break between them. The fist block represents ten 1GB files transferred by one Windows command, and you can see little dips where the CPU paused between each file. The second block represents one 10GB file, transferred the same way. Any dips in CPU utilization in this section are due to system wait states thrown in by some other sub-system crying "Uncle" for a brief period of time. The little blip on the left occurred when I deleted 20GB of data from the target directory on the NAS, to get it ready to accept the file transfers from the PC. It's interesting how you can get a 50% load by just deleting 11 files from the allocation table.

The memory subsystem on the QNAP TS-219P+ is not being taxed by these file transfers at all. Unless you plan to use the NAS for all of the "extra" things it can do, as a media server and such, don't worry about the fact that it only comes with 512MB of memory capacity. That's plenty, at least for the basic disk functions.

The network interface is getting more of a workout than the memory, but it is still running well below the throughput limits of the Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) interface. There's a lot of extra capacity here, as there should be, given that many of the larger NAS devices are running multiple disks in RAID configurations with a single GbE connection. The larger, and more highly specified QNAP units (TS-x59...) all have dual Ethernet connections that allow for teaming via IEEE 802.3ad/Link Aggregation, that in certain cases allows for almost double the network throughput. This is only going to be required in rare cases, where both systems connected this way have the raw transfer speed to make it necessary. That's the sort of thing you're only going to see in a corporate LAN room, at least for now. One day, I'm going to load up one of the big NAS units with high end SSDs in RAID 0 and let it rip; then we'll see where the system bottlenecks are.

The network throughput scales right along with the disk throughput, as seen here. In this test, I was using a more sophisticated file transfer program, called Rich Copy (v4.0.217.0.) It's sort of a Microsoft product, in that it was developed by Ken Tamaru while he worked at Microsoft, but it was never a real product with Marketing support; it was just thrown in as a freebee on several versions of their server software over the years. It is still available for download via TechNet, but it is not supported by Microsoft, and some bugs that have been reported have not been acknowledged or addressed by the developer. Its main strength is that it copies several files simultaneously in a multi-threaded operation, which can drastically reduce the time required for multi-gigabyte file transfers. It also has an easy-to-use GUI, with a status window that aids in benchmarking. It will not copy open files, so it has limited usefulness as a backup utility, but for trying to squeeze the maximum throughput out of a NAS, it's excellent. In the following chart, you see the effect on the network load as a multi-file transfer operation finishes up, and the number of active threads goes down in discrete increments toward the end. The last file was much bigger than the others, so the long plateau at ~20 MB/s is the throughput with one thread running.

In contrast, the host PC is just loafing along during these file transfers, with the notable exception of the HDD, which is spinning right along at 10,000 RPM, with the heads chunking away. The CPU is running below 10% utilization, memory usage is essentially zero, and the network interface is running around 300 Mb/s, well below its 1,000Mb/s capacity.

I hope this section showed you some objective reasons why the infrastructure that any NAS product brings to the table is important to its overall performance. As the number of drive bays goes up, the hardware requirements increase as well, and the price has to follow. I know it's disheartening to see that you don't get great economies of scale on the larger NAS units, but it would be even more of a shame if they didn't perform up to their true capabilities because the hardware was holding them back.

Now, let's look at some Final Thoughts, and then move on to our Conclusion and Product Ratings.

NAS Comparison Products

• 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

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)

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-219 fits that description, if you employ it in a RAID 1 configuration. With one drive failure, your data is still available and accessible. The NAS device stays online the entire time while the failed drive 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. A larger NAS with more drive bays offers the possibility of increasing the redundancy with RAID 5/6/50/60, but for a SOHO environment, RAID 0 is generally adequate. Remember, we're not talking about losing data here, we're only talking about the ability to keep working uninterrupted, if one drive should fail. If two drives fail, it's time to pull the local backups off the shelf.

I guess I was an early adopter, or at least I was in the early majority. I bought my first NAS in 2005, after my wife's Dell desktop shredded the first of several hard drives. While my NAS from the past has been sitting in one spot for most of those six years, the world of NAS products has not. New products available today offer so much more functionality and additional features that it boggles the mind. Most of the advances have been in the area of software, but the hardware has also kept pace. PATA became SATA; 10Mbps became dual Gigabit NICs with failover; "locked-in-a-box" (AKA: The Brick) became hot-swap RAID clusters; one button & one light became 4-line LCD displays. However you look at it, the range of capabilities available today looms high over what we had to choose from in the not too distant past.

I'm writing this article from a much different perspective than our Executive Editor. He runs an IT company and I support a small network for a home office. That being said, we both recognize the intrinsic value of network attached storage products. I bought my first one six years ago and it does automatic backups every night at midnight and 1:00 AM for the two primary workstations in the house. When I hear it light off at midnight, I know it's time to either finish my article or go to bed. Then the snooze alarm kicks off an hour later, if I'm still up. It performs well and looks stylish even today, if a bit outsized. It looks like this:

All of the QNAP TS series product in this article offer so much more capability than my old, simple NAS. Just as our small business has evolved, so too have the tools available. We're looking at creating a website and a blog to go along with it, and maybe a forum. All these can be hosted from one of these new versatile NAS devices, acting as a server. This kind of capability goes far beyond the simple remote access tools provided by Windows Home Server. Quite frankly, unless you are getting Windows Home Server for free from your MSDN account and you can repurpose an old computer that's sitting in the corner unused, all these NAS systems reviewed here on Benchmark Reviews are a much better value. If your Windows based server is only going to be used for serving out files, sharing printers and managing backups, one inexpensive NAS does all this at less than half the cost.

When you add in the new features that QNAP has added recently, like RAID 10, Real-time Remote Replication, ElephantDrive Cloud Storage, Download Station V2, MyCloudNAS Remote Access, and USB Wi-Fi Network Adapter Support, it's obvious that you get so much more with this solution package. The fact that you can get access to all these capabilities with an IT department is icing on the cake. The very fact that Microsoft offers four version of Windows Storage Server tells me that most end-users would be foolish to try and implement any of the MS solutions without professional services getting involved, at least for a portion of the selection and integration process.

So, what conclusions can we draw, particularly about this affordable, two-bay TS-219P+ Turbo NAS server? Click NEXT to find out, and discuss...

QNAP TS-219P+ 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. 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 conclusion, as it represents our product rating for the sample received which may differ from retail versions.

The performance of the QNAP TS-219 P+ Turbo NAS server was solid, but it lost some ground in the Write testing due to the lower power CPU. The beefed up Intel® Atom D525 1.8GHz Dual-Core processor makes all the difference in performance, compared to the Marvell ARM-based solution in the TS-219P+. The lack of USB 3.0 was a disappointment, as USB 2.0 is such a throughput bottleneck and eSATA is generally more expensive and difficult to implement for portable use.

The best read performance for the TS-219P+ was 93 MB/s, and the best write speed was 58 MB/s, which are both solid, but not outstanding. If the intended use is primarily as a backup device, it may be worth it to jump up to an Intel-based NAS, which will have much better write speed. OTOH, if you are mostly going to use the NAS as a file server, read performance is more important, and the TS-219P+ does much better in that scenario. That's how I would use it in my setup, as front-line storage in RAID 1, with backups going out to an external drive via the eSATA connection.

The smaller, two-bay form factor of the QNAP TS-219P+ doesn't allow for the use of a display on the front of the unit, but once you get it connecting to the network, the v3.4 software makes for an easy configuration process. Even with the status display, you're going to do most of your work through the software interface, anyway. The status LEDs for activity on: HDD1&2, LAN, and eSATA were helpful to verify what was going on with the unit. Ditto for the flashing indicators and audible status alarms, they were mostly intuitive and I needed just a brief look at the manual to make sure I understood the signals correctly. 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 the business. The side and top panel is a one-piece titanium colored section with a fine grained brush finish. The brighter finish adds a bit of elegance to the visual design, plus it doesn't show fingerprints. IMHO, it fits in perfectly with its intended environment, the small office or a sophisticated home office.

The construction quality of the TS-219P+ exceeds that of many computer-based appliances. The data center crews are all hardware junkies for the most part, and they like their gear to radiate superiority. QNAP takes the level of excellence that is required to win over that finicky community and applies it across the product line. Enjoy the trickle-down effect where you can, even if it's from the data centers on Wall St. and not the banks on Wall St. Every QNAP product I've ever used had the same attention to build quality, even the lower-priced units.

The QNAP TS-219P+ Turbo NAS network storage server is going to have a lot of curb appeal to a tech-capable SOHO organization that can take full advantage of all the capabilities and functions it offers. Most of the applications are well designed and documented, to the point where most resident geeks can handle setup and administration. 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. The QMobile app for handheld devices, to stream music, digital pictures, and videos from a QNAP NAS server directly to your mobile device, is another example. 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.

The QNAP TS-219P+ Turbo NAS is ideally suited for the SOHO environment; its size, performance and features aren't going to be a big hit in the corporate enterprise market. The smaller two drive bay devices included in this test only allow for RAID-0 or RAID-1, but that's probably enough for many small businesses, or the home office. Before we discuss the pricing in detail, remember that these systems are not discretionary items for most businesses, they are a necessary expense. The inevitable costs for not having a robust data management system in place are usually 10-100 times higher than any of the prices you will see in this paragraph. As of June 2011 the TS-219P+ model was listed at NewEgg for $349.99 . If you need the wealth of features the top TS-x59 Turbo NAS series provides, and need more storage space, the TS-459 Pro II might be the logical choice at $949.99. As the number of spindles goes up, the need for a faster, more powerful CPU increases the overall cost in a non-linear way. As I said, if you're business relies on data, you can't afford NOT to have a robust storage strategy.

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 TS-219P+ Turbo NAS server seems ideal for quite a few SOHO applications. You really can't get by with anything simpler, and while some may need more storage space, the two-bay TS-219P+ hits the target for smaller business users.Pros:

+ 93 MB/s read performance
+ New features in v3.4 software are SOTA
+ Support Apps for multiple cloud services
+ Support App for Mobile access
+ Small size, low cost makes it more accessible to small businesses
+ Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Level Migration
+ Hot-swap RAID storage
+ RAID 0/1/JBOD disk configurations
+ SATA 3Gb/s HDDs cheaper, more compatibility
+ Two eSATA ports for additional storage expansion or backups
+ Very low power consumption

Cons:

- Marvell 88F6282 system controller has to work pretty hard
- No USB 3.0 ports available on TS-x19P+ models
- Write performance might slow down backups
- Some capabilities will be too daunting for a novice SOHO user
- Many consumer HDDs not suitable for drive arrays, enterprise units are $$$

Ratings:

• Performance: 9.00
• Appearance: 9.00
• Construction: 9.50
• Functionality: 9.25
• Value: 8.75

Final Score: 9.1 out of 10.

Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.

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