Hardware

While consumer NAS units usually try to throw some curves into the mix so as to make the drive arrays more home office friendly, QNAP’s no-nonsense approach means the TS-669 Pro is a battleship of a device. Measuring 6.89 x 10.12 x 9.25 inches and constructed from sheet metal and dense plastic, it’s sturdy enough that we’d consider putting it under a desk as long as it was reasonably out of the reach of idly-swinging feet.

Up front there are six individual drive bays, each hot-swappable and with a security lock, topped with a two-line LCD to show status and settings; a pair of buttons alongside allow you to navigate through the simple menu structure. Each bay gets status LEDs, and there’s a front USB 2.0 port with an instant-copy button for quickly offloading content from an attached drive or memory card (in a USB reader).

On the back, meanwhile, QNAP gives you more than the average number of ports for a NAS. There are a further four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 and two eSATA, along with a VGA port that’s reserved for maintenance use; two gigabit ethernet ports handle networking duties. You also get a total of three fans, one dedicated to the power supply and the other two 90mm fans for keeping the drives from overheating. In use, there’s a noticeable whirr but not a tremendously intrusive one, though it’s more suite to the home office, study or workplace than the living room.

Inside, there’s a 2.13GHz dual-core Intel Atom processor with 1GB of RAM preinstalled; a single spare SO-DIMM RAM slot will take either 1GB or 2GB chips to take the total to 3GB. That runs QNAP’s custom Linux OS, which supports just about every drive spanning and redundancy format you could hope for (Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 5, 5 + Hot Spare, 6, 6 + Hot Spare, 10, 10 + Hot Spare, along with online RAID expansion and use of external drives hanging off the USB and eSATA ports) and is managed through the usual browser-based interface.

QNAP positions the TS-669 Pro as a NAS suitable for small and home businesses, but there are plenty of media features ideal for home users. Like Synology systems we’ve reviewed, there’s the ability to set it up as a file or FTP server, a backup server for Apple Time Machine or various third-party Windows clients, a webserver, or a standalone BitTorrent downloader. It can also collect video from up to four IP cameras simultaneously, or share up to three USB printers to network clients.

Meanwhile, it will work as an iTunes server or a generic UPnP media server, streaming to mobile devices, smart TVs and other hardware, and if you plug in a USB soundcard or speakers you can use the TS-669 Pro as a standalone music jukebox. It will serve up photo galleries and sync them to Facebook, Blogger and other sites, as well as stream them remotely to the iOS and Android QMobile apps. It’s also open to official and third-party extensions, which will turn the NAS into anything from a SqueezeBox server for home media streaming, an Asterisk VoIP system, or a WordPress host.

Performance

All of that functionality would be for nothing if the TS-669 Pro couldn’t keep up with network traffic. We used six 1TB Western Digital Black 7200rpm 1TB drives with SATA 6 Gb/s interfaces and 64MB of cache, set up in a RAID 10 array. The QNAP was connected to a 1Gbps ethernet switch; we tested with a Windows 7 PC using SAMBA, also with a gigabit ethernet connection, and then with an OS X Lion Mac, using FTP (since SAMBA is not natively supported in OS X).

On the PC, using 4GB files, we saw read speeds of 178 MB/sec and write speeds of 138 MB/sec. On the Mac, again using 4GB files, we managed 211 MB/sec read speeds and 206 MB/sec writes. Those numbers, under OS X at least, are impressively close to QNAP’s own figures, and were certainly sufficient to run backups (either using Apple’s own Time Machine or the supplied copy of QNAP NetBak Replicator for Windows) in the background in short-order.

As for the remote access apps, we tried QNAP’s software for iPhone and Android, and were quickly accessing files and media stored on the TS-669 Pro. Obviously the experience depended significantly on the speed of our mobile connection and the upload speed available to the QNAP itself.

Wrap-Up

With street prices hovering around the $1,000 mark, the TS-669 Pro TurboNAS isn’t cheap, and you’ll need to factor in the cost of drives, too. It would certainly pay for a whole lot of cloud storage, if sheer terabytes are your primary concern. What most cloud storage doesn’t give you, however, is the flexibility that the QNAP offers.

For home users, there’s a huge breadth of media options, everything from simply using the TS-669 Pro as a hub for your photos, music and video, to DLNA streaming to an Xbox or PlayStation, phone or tablet, or as the centerpiece of a Sonos or Squeezebox multi-room audio setup. The Android and iOS apps are neatly designed and functional, and with none of the time consuming uploading of music and video that cloud locker services demand, we were up and running in no time at all.

For businesses, meanwhile, there’s the promise of speed and the convenience of a huge amount of flexibility in what the TS-669 Pro can be for you. Need a solid backup box with redundancy? With six 1TB drives we had a 3TB RAID10 array with high levels of both redundancy and performance. Need an FTP server, or an email server, or a printer server, or a VPN server? The QNAP will do it all, simultaneously, as well as monitor your IP webcams and more.

Flexibility costs, as does knowing exactly what drives are being used to maintain your backup. The convenience of the cloud is great, but if you want a pro-level data storage and sharing system and you take backup seriously, the QNAP TS-669 Pro TurboNAS should be on your shortlist.

The device claims to be the industry’s first business-class NAS deice with next generation tech inside like support for 6Gb/s SATA III ports. The enclosure supports up to five hot swap 3.5″ or 2.5″ SATA HDDs up to 3TB each for a total capacity of 15TB. The device has 1GB of DDR3 RAM inside and that RAM can be updated to 3GB.

The NAS enclosure supports both eSATA and USB 3.0 ports with dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces with load balancing and fail over. It will also support multiple RAID levels including RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 6, 10+hot spare, 5+hot spare, or 6+hot spare. The device also supports virtualization with advanced iSCSI services.

The TS-112 is the baby of the range, a single-drive box which can be expanded via USB or eSATA, and works as a home file server, DLNA/UPnP streamer, USB printer sharer – for up to three printers – and SqueezeServer functionality. There’s also optional standalone wireless use, with a USB WiFi dongle, together with a gigabit ethernet port.

The TS-212 does much the same as the TS-112 but accommodates two drives with data protection. It has the same feature set as the one-drive version, including Full HD 1080p movie streaming. Finally, the TS-412 packs a full four drive bays and offers a choice of Single Disk, JBOD, RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 6/ 5 + hot spare setups. No word on pricing at this stage, but all three will go on sale in February 2011.

Press Release:

QNAP Debuts New Affordable High Performance Turbo NAS Server Family for Emerging HOME, SOHO, and Prosumer Users

New TS-x12 Lineup Includes 1, 2, and 4-drive Models Featuring Embedded Marvell 1.2GHz CPU and 256MB of DDRII RAM, Delivering Great All-around Performance, Low Power Consumption, and a Wealth of Applications for Home Networks.

Taipei, Taiwan, January, 2011 – QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Media Players today announced the TS-x12 lineup of affordable high performance Turbo NAS servers intended for the fast-growing home and SOHO market segment. The new models utilize the latest Marvell 1.2GHz processor and include 256MB of DDRII memory and Gigabit LAN ports, offering up to 8TB of networked storage with a unique blend of solid performance, high reliability, and advanced features at very affordable price points. The TS-x12 series includes the 1-drive TS-112, 2-drive TS-212, and 4-drive TS-412.

NAS is becoming a popular addition to home networks as they solve the problem of how to centrally store and share digital content among computers in the home – especially in mixed Windows/Mac networks. QNAP’s new TS-x12 models are easy to attach to existing networks and provides easy file sharing within the network, centralized backup of all networked computers, website hosting, printer sharing, even recording of surveillance video from IP cameras.

“The new TS-x12 series Turbo NAS servers offer affordable high performance coupled with ultra-low power consumption and virtually noise-free operation,” said Tony Lu, Product Manager from QNAP. “Home users no longer need to sacrifice performance for lower cost NAS; and the new TS-x12 series offers advanced features like RAID and iSCSI support, making them an incredible value for the money.”

The new TS-x12 models also improve the multimedia experience and capabilities for home users. The built-in UPnP media server (TwonkyMedia) feature of the TS-x12 series supports numerous UPnP-compliant media players such as the Sony® PS3 and Microsoft® Xbox 360 gaming consoles. Users can even use their iPhone and Android phone to stream music and video or view digital photos stored on the NAS in real-time from anywhere they have a Wi-Fi or 3G connection.

Availability
The TS-x12 series will be available starting in February through popular commercial distributors, resellers, and retailers globally.

The new NAS servers have a Marvell 1.6GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM. The server also has a Gigabit LAN port for fast access with data transfer rates as high as 100MB/sec. The line includes the 1-drive TS-119P+, 2-drive TS-219P+ and 4-drive TS-419P+ NAS devices. The drives allow smartphone users to remotely access files and stream music stored on the NAS devices.

They are all compatible with PC, Mac, Linux, and Unix operating systems. The storage devices are appropriate for backing up computers, hosting websites, home surveillance recording, and lots more. They can also be stand-alone servers for hosting various file types. Supported drives include both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA offerings with up to 2TB of storage each. The dual and quad drive version supports RAID 0/1/5/6 and the single drive version supports RAID 0/1.

That means it’s capable of handling MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, XVID, H.264, H.263, WMV9 and VC1 encoded media in a vast number of different container formats (AVI, MPEG/MPG, VCD (ISO, MPG, NRG), DVD (VOB, IFO, ISO, NRG), WMV, ASF, TP, TS, TRP, M1V, M2V, M4V, M2P, M2T, M2TS, BDMV/ BD ISO, MTS, MOV, MP4, RMP4, MKV, MOD and 3GP), which is before you get to the various image and audio file types supported.  Then there’s the online media support, including Flickr and Picasa photos, Apple movie trailers, Internet radio, Mediafly and weather forecasts; you can also use the NMP-1000P as a standalone BitTorrent downloader.

Connectivity includes ethernet (wireless is optional), two USB 2.0 host (for hooking up external storage, optical drives or even keyboard/mouse peripherals), a USB 2.0 device port (for treating the QNAP as an external drive), two eSATA (one Host, one Device), HDMI v1.3a, component (Y, Pb, Pr), composite, analog stereo out and an S/PDIF optical port.  No word on pricing or availability.

Press Release:

QNAP New NMP-1000P Delivers Digital Home Experience with Premium-quality Video, Audio, and the Ease of File Sharing and Backup Capabilities

New NMP-1000P Networked Player with High Performance Wolfson Stereo DAC is Ideal for Audio and Video Enthusiasts Looking to Playback Wide Range of Multimedia Content while Enjoying the Crisp 1080p Videos and Dolby® and DTS Multi-Channel Surround Sound in Addition to the NAS Features and Internet Media Streaming Capability.

Taipei, Taiwan, September 2010 – QNAP Systems, Inc., a leading manufacturer of world class NAS servers, NVR Video Surveillance Systems, and Network-based Media Players today announced the NMP-1000P Network Multimedia Player, a unique new product for audiophiles and AV enthusiasts. NMP-1000P features the latest Sigma Designs® video/audio decoder that is capable of displaying ultra realistic full HD movies with advanced menu navigation, crystal clear next-generation Dolby® and DTS multi-channel surround sound, high-quality lossless music, digital pictures with background music, and other multimedia content. NMP-1000P is also powered by a high performance Wolfson stereo digital to analog converter for truly outstanding audio experience.

What’s more, the intuitive user interface of NMP-1000P makes it a snap to download movie covers and related information, and to discover and catalog content from any connected storage device or network drives. NMP-1000P retains Turbo NAS functionality for backup of all networked computers, convenient cross-platform file sharing among Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX, multiple user accounts and access right management, and remotely access to media files with the built-in Web File Manager and FTP. NMP-1000P even streams thousands of TV shows, news, podcasts, music, photos, and other content from Mediafly™, Apple Movie Trailers, CNN, SHOUTcast, Internet radio service, Flickr, Picasa, and more.

“NMP-1000P is truly the missing piece in today’s digital homes for enjoying premium-quality picture and sound,” said Jason Hsu, Product Manager of QNAP Systems, Inc. “Today’s users demand that contents be available on the fly and they don’t want to deal with a multitude of different devices and interfaces to make it happen. NMP-1000P is the culmination of QNAP’s extensive experience in developing network appliances and software applications which can satisfy the consumers’ need to get the content they want from virtually any source, and play it with the best video and audio quality on the living room TV using a single networked device.”

NMP-1000P can be connected to a home network via wired or wireless 802.11b/g/n (a variety of compatible wireless USB adaptors are sold separately) network connection. NMP-1000P can host a user-supplied 3.5-inch SATA hard drive with up to 2TB capacity for local content storage plus hi-speed USB and eSATA external connections for storage expansion, as well as directly connected to PC via USB and eSATA for fast data transfer, all within a sleek compact set-top box with a remote control and friendly user interface for easy navigation.

The TS-239 is a 2-drive NAS server and the TS-439 is a 4-drive server. Both of the devices use the new Atom D410 single-core processor. Both of the devices are compatible with VMware’s vSphere4 ESX 4.0 virtualization platform. The new servers both ship with version 3.2 of the QNAP NAS management software.

The NAS devices support iSCSI service, SPC-3 Persistent Reservation for clustering, and Windows Server 2008. Also supported is DFS folder aggregations, user list import, and IPv6. Backups using Apple Time Machine are now supported and files on the devices can be accessed over HTTP and HTTPS connections.

The TS-410 has four hot-swappable drive bays with up to 8TB of total capacity and supports 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch HDDs. Inside the slick case of the storage device is a Marvell 800Mhz CPU and 256MB of DDRII RAM. The device can be configured for RAID 0/1/5/6/5+ spare and JBOD.

The TS-410 also supports iSCSI Target service with Thin Provisioning and dual Gigabit LAN ports. Four USB ports are included with one on the front panel and three on the back along with two e-SATA ports for expanding the storage capacity via external drives. The storage solution works with Windows Mac, and Linux and supports DLNA media players like the PS3 and Xbox 360. The TS-410 will ship in October at an undisclosed price.

Video overview after the cut

Connectivity includes gigabit ethernet (with an optional wireless adapter), component and composite video, S-video, coaxial and optical digital audio outputs and a number of USB ports.  There’s also USB and eSATA ports which are used to hook the NMP-1000 up to a computer and use it as an external hard-drive, handy for when you want to dump your media collection onto it.

As well as media playback, you can also use the QNAP as a backup drive for your home network, an FTP server for remote access, and as a standalone BitTorrent downloader.  It’ll play more file-types than are worth listing here – full list here – including Xvid, H.264 and DVD ISOs, and comes with a remote control.  No word on pricing, but it’ll apparently be available worldwide imminently.

Press Release:

QNAP NMP-1000 Brings Networked Video, Audio, Digital Pictures And Other Digital Content Into The Living Room

New Home Network Appliance Unique Blending of Set-top Box Player and Networked Storage Capable of Delivering Cinema Quality Video and Audio to the Home Theater

Taipei, Taiwan, September 2009 – QNAP Systems, Inc, a world-class manufacturer of Network Attached Storage (NAS) servers today unveiled a unique new network appliance that can best be described as a set-top player crossed with a NAS server. Computer users around the globe face the dilemma of how to centrally store, manage, and playback growing amounts of digital content spread around the home on multiple computers.

“QNAP ‘s ground-breaking NMP-1000 Network Multimedia Player is the definitive product that bridges the gap between the home network and the living room” said Meiji Chang, CEO of QNAP Systems, Inc. “Users are clamoring to centrally store and enjoy all their digital content in the living room and the NMP-1000 just fits the bill” Mr. Chang added.

The new NMP-1000 incorporates an internal hard disk drive that easily catalogs digital pictures, videos, music, and other content from computers on the home network and can effortlessly play them back in the home theater with the included remote control.

The new NMP-1000 connects to the home network via wired Ethernet (wireless adapter ready) and to an HDTV via HDMI or Component interfaces, or Composite & S-Video interfaces for standard-def TVs. The NMP-1000 is capable of playing back smooth Full HD 1080p video and crystal clear audio; turning digital picture slide shows, home videos, purchased content, and even shared iTunes® libraries into a viewing/listening experience worthy of the living room. Because the NMP-1000 is Internet connected via the home network, you can even browse digital pictures & albums from Flickr™ or videos from YouTube™. The “10-foot” user interface makes it a snap to select content for viewing with the included remote control, and the NMP-1000 supports a very wide range of formats for playing back digital pictures, videos, movies, and music. Because the NMP-1000 incorporates technologies found in its popular Turbo NAS servers, it can also be used to automatically backup computers on the network and also for easy file storage and sharing. The NMP-1000 is equally at home on Windows®, Macintosh®, Linux, and even UNIX-based home networks.

The NMP-1000 is fully DLNA™ compliant and features advanced technology including HDMI 1.3 support, powerful Sigma Designs® video/audio hardware decoders, and a host of advanced networking support hidden under the hood. Set-up and the overall user experience of the NMP-1000 are exceptionally easy and enjoyable.

Availability
The NMP-1000 is worldwidely available now. Please visit the QNAP website for additional product information and to locate a reseller or distributor. www.qnap.com

Both new servers have four drives and can work with 1U racks and are hot-swappable. Maxed out, these servers can hold up to 8TB. Both also can hold 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch hard drives. They have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor along with 1GB of RAM plus a 87.3MBps transfer speed.

These servers can be set up with RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 5+ configurations. They also have iSCSI Target service and dual gigabit LAN ports. Both servers work with Windows, Mac, Unix and Linux systems and feature AES 256-bit encryption. You can get both NAS servers by the end of the month though pricing has not yet been revealed.

Unlike the Acer Aspire easyStore AH340-UA230N also announced today, the SNAP NAS does not run Windows Home Server.  That doesn’t leave it short on functionality, though; as well as RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 6/ 5 + hot spare, single, JBOD, Online RAID Capacity Expansion, and Online RAID Level Migration setups, it offers AES 256-bit encryption, remote access and more.

The twin ethernet ports can either offer failover provision in case one connection fails, be used with load balancing to increase overall throughput, or even have independent IPs to allow the NAS to be access from two different workgroups.  New drives are automatically included into the RAID array, and there’s a one-touch copy button which transfers files from drives plugged into the front-panel USB port onto the SS-439, or vice-versa.

With four low-power HDDs the SNAP SS-439 Pro Turbo NAS uses just 18W, and the fan automatically responds to temperature to reduce power consumption and noise.  The NAS is available now, priced at around $800.

Press Release:

QNAP Unveils the First 2.5″ SATA, 4-bay, Intel Atom-based SS-439 Pro Turbo NAS

TAIPEI, Taiwan –(Business Wire)– May 21, 2009 QNAP Systems, Inc. today announces the first 2.5″ SATA HDD, 4-bay, Intel Atom-based SS-439 Pro Turbo NAS dedicated to SMB and SOHO users. Designed with Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB DDRII memory, and DOM (Disk on Module) architecture, the SS-439 Pro is the most compact, powerful, and power-saving 2.5″ 4-bay NAS that supports RAID 5/ RAID 6 for highly secure data protection. The NAS supports four 2.5″ SATA hard drives which are featured with high stability, low power consumption, low vibration, and longer life expectancy. With excellent cooling and energy-saving design, the power consumption of the NAS with four hard drives installed is as low as 18W. Moreover, the SS-439 Pro supports 3 USB 2.0 ports and 2 eSATA ports for storage capacity expansion and backup destination, and advanced features such as built-in iSCSI target service (max 8 iSCSI devices) with Thin Provisioning, Online RAID Capacity Expansion, Online RAID Level Migration, AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, Wake on LAN, automatic policy-based IP blocking, instant SMS and email alert, BT and eMule download, schedule power on and power off, 2 Giga LAN ports, 4 IP cameras for network surveillance, etc.

“The SS-439 Pro is a compact, silent, and power-saving server which is ideal to work for long hours in the office. When four low power 2.5″ hard drives are installed, the power consumption of the NAS is only 18W, which is almost the same as an energy-saving light bulb. It is an environment-friendly storage solution that largely saves the electricity expense of the users and minimizes pollution to the earth,” says Jerry Deng, Product Manager from QNAP.

The SS-439 Pro is a powerful server of diversified features, e.g. network server, FTP server, web server with built-in phpMyAdmin, Joomla, MySQL/SQLite, editable php.ini, printer server etc. The exclusive QPKG software expansion feature and the Surveillance Station (network surveillance) are also provided.

For more information about the SS-439 Pro Turbo NAS, please visit http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=120.

About QNAP

QNAP Systems, Inc. is a dominant provider of Linux OS embedded network-attached storage (NAS) and network surveillance system. We have released numerous NAS and NVR series, providing our customers high performance and high reliability backup and security solutions.