Nearly every home office or small business needs some sort of central data server, which is one reason why NAS units have been flying off the virutal shelves lately. Many of these networkable storage units are little mini-servers that not only keep your data safe, but offer multimedia capabilities (like TwonkyMedia and iTunes support). Does having a dedicated web server, print server, or BitTorrent server strike your fancy? If so, then you should look at some of these flexible networked appliances.
QNAP has been producing quality networked appliances for a while. One of their most popular products is the TS-409 Pro, which stuffs a whole lot of Linux-embedded servers into one small box. Now QNAP has released a 1U version of this flexible server, which should appeal to small IT shops that need to fit their servers in a rack. Its multimedia capabilities will certainly appeal to the home theater nut, as it allows you to literally have terrabytes of movies instantly available, to create your own video-on-demand service.
Multi-functional All-in-one NAS Server
TS-409 Pro supports multiple file sharing protocols for users to share files across Linux, Unix, Mac, and Windows platforms. Abundant valuable server functions including File Server, FTP Server, and Printer Server, etc., are supported to satisfy the business needs. Meanwhile, Windows ADS (Active Directory Service) is supported to help create an easy-to-access environment and lower the maintenance cost. With the dual support of MySQL and SQLite, SMB & SOHO users can easily set up their own web and database servers. Also, encrypted remote replication and backup to external devices are supported to enhance data protection. Various data storage and management mechanisms- FTP server with SSL/TLS encrypted technology, SSH login, and web page SSL login enable users to transfer, store, and share data securely.
A solution for present and future
The flexible RAID Expansion and Migration features lower the total cost of ownership. With Online RAID Capacity Expansion, users can select to purchase the most cost-effective hard drives for initial server setup and upgrade to larger ones in the future. All the stored data will be kept and seamlessly moved to the newly installed hard drives without turning off the server. With Online RAID Level Migration, users can start from one drive firstly and add more to upgrade the RAID level in the future with the data retained.
Easy setup, low-cost maintenance
TS-409 Pro adopts silent fan and power-saving design which is excellent for long-term operation and deployment in small business environment without server room. The hot-swap design is supported for replacing failed hard drive of a RAID configuration without turning off the server to ensure non-stop services and minimize maintenance cost and effort. Besides, the HDD S.M.A.R.T. provides complete information of the hard drive status to prevent potential physical drive failure. The comprehensive log system summarizes the detail data access records and connection status to server administrator. All error and warning messages can also be sent via e-mail alerts for ease of maintenance.
High Performance, High Reliability, Disaster-proof NAS for Business
The Most Advanced RAID Management with How-swap Design
To ensure the data security, TS-409 Pro offers advanced disk configurations for RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 5 + Spare, Single, and JBOD. Meanwhile, TS-409 Pro supports hot-swap design which offers the non-stop and easy-to-manage service. When HDD failure occurs, the administrator can be alerted by e-mail alarm and LED indication. The failed drive can be replaced by hot swapping without turning off the server. The intelligent data rebuilding features allow users to the new drive without suffering from any system downtime.
Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration
TS-409 Pro supports online RAID capacity expansion and online RAID level migration.
| With Online RAID Capacity Expansion, users can select to purchase the most cost-effective hard drives for initial server setup and upgrade to larger ones in the future. All the stored 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. |
| With Online RAID Level Migration, users can start from one drive firstly and add more drive members to upgrade the RAID level in the future with the data retained. There is no need to turn off the server during the process. |
S.M.A.R.T & Advanced HDD Health Scanning (HHS)
Comprehensive Event Log System
The Most Complete Backup Solutions
Data backup may sound time and effort-consuming for most users. QNAP’s Turbo NAS now brings you the enterprise-class technology to make backup extremely simple and efficient! The intelligent automatic backup software, NetBak Replicator, is provided for users to perform real-time synchronization or schedule backup from multiple PCs to TS-409 Pro. Furthermore, the data in TS-409 Pro can also be backed up to external FAT format hard drive. TS-409 Pro also works well with other backup software, e.g. Acronis True Image, CA BrightStor ARCserver Backup, and EMC Retrospect.
Support Windows ADS
Sharing files across Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix
Secure data storage, access, and sharing
Data stored on TS-409 Pro is well protected: Server manager can create user ID and password, and define the authority and quota of each user. - IP filter control: Users can allow or deny specified IP connections to TS-409 Pro.
- SSL Security (HTTPS): TS-409 Pro can be accessed and configured by web browser securely.
- Remote login your TS-409 Pro by SSH (secure shell) or Telnet connection.
- Secure FTP: Share and transmit your data over SSL/TLS (Explicit) encryption. – – – -Passive FTP port range setup is also supported.
- Smart FTP policy control: The maximum number of all FTP connections and a single account can be configured.
- Encrypted remote replication: Data on TS-409 Pro can be backed up to another QNAP NAS product over the Internet securely.
| File Server The principle purpose of file server is for data storage and sharing. Data security and access management are the major concerns of most users. TS-409 Pro allows server manager to create user ID and password, and define the authority and quota for each user. Thus, personal data stored on TS-409 Pro is well protected. |
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| FTP Server Having troubles with sending large files by e-mail due to the limited capacity? You can establish your own FTP server by using TS-409 Pro. You can manage the access authority of the FTP server and share your files with your friends or customers easily in a few steps. |
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| Encrypted Remote Replication Encrypted remote replication provides high level of data protection. Files can be backed up from TS-409 Pro to other QNAP NAS products in remote locations. Advanced options including data compression, block-level incremental backup, and data synchronization are supported to optimize the bandwidth and time for data backup. |
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| Web Server with Built-in phpMyAdmin With the built-in phpMyAdmin, Joomla! and dual support of MySQL and SQLite, SMB & SOHO users can easily set up their own web server. With the editable php.ini support, there is no need of going through all the hassles of setting up a web server. You can either develop programs by yourself or download a variety of open-sourced applications, such as online shops, forums, blogs, etc., over the Internet. |
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| MySQL Server TS-409 Pro is the most affordable choice as a standalone database server for system integrators. It can be flexibly applied in various deployments such as a database server of another web server in remote site or as an additional backup database server to achieve system redundancy. |
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| Printer Server You can share your printer device over the network by simply connecting USB printers to TS-409 Pro’s USB port (Max. 3 sets) and enabling the printer sharing function. |
UPS Support
Share Folder Management
Server Managers can hide or show certain folders in the directories for some security reasons while creating the folders for the first time.
One touch USB auto copy
When a USB device such as digital camera, digital camcorder, or pen drive is connected to the front panel USB port, data in the USB device can be backed up to TS-409 Pro, or data in TS-409 Pro can be backed up to external USB device automatically by simply pressing the USB copy button. In the meantime, an external storage device can be connected to TS-409 Pro via USB port for alternative data backup.
Web File Manager
TS-409 Pro provides Web File Manager for you to easily download, upload, and manage the files on the server by web browser.
Network Recycle Bin
Built-in DDNS support
TS-409 Pro supports dynamic DNS (DDNS). You can register a unique domain name from a DDNS service provider and assign it to your Turbo NAS. There is no more need to remember a lengthy IP address!
The outside of the box is remarkably simple. The front of the unit has four hot-swappable drive bays, each of which are unlocked by a simple key. Also on the front is a small power and reset button and USB port (more on that later).
The sides of the unit have holes for included rack-mount hinges. Also on the sides are holes for standard server rails, but no rails are included.
The rear of the unit features an AC in and three exhaust fans (one for the power supply, and two to expel heat from the chasis). Also on the back is a recessed reset button (which allows you to reset the NAS to factory defaults), a single LAN port, and two USB ports. The major external differences between the TS-409U and the TS-409 Pro (other than the 1U form factor) is the inclusion of an internal power supply (the Pro uses an external power brick), and the drive access.
Let’s Open Her Up
Opening the case is very easy. Just unscrew some tiny screws on the top and slide the lid open. It appears that the TS-409U uses nearly the exact same motherboard as the TS-409 Pro, but there have been a few changes to accomodate the new slim form factor. Instead of a single quiet exhaust fan, the 409U has two smaller exhaust fans. The SATA cables used are “L” type plugs, so they can fit inside the case. Each SATA cable is clearly labeled 1 through 4 to easily determine which SATA port maps to which drive bay. The power plugs in the Pro version were perpendicular to the board, but the U version has the power plugs parallel to the board, so they look like they plug into the sides. The front USB port is plugged into a lead on the motherboard. Front LEDs are also tethered to the board via a ribbon cable.
Nearly every thing else is identical, including the Marvel C500 (500MHz) processor. This chip has a high-performance Ferocean CPU core with integrated 32/32 KB L1 cache. You can read all the technical specs on the processor here. The same Marvel ethernet chip is present, as well as four 128MB Hynix DDR2 memory chips (for a total of 512MB) soldered directly onto the board, so it cannot be upgraded.
A Marvel 88SX7042-BDU1 chip is included and functions as a RAID controller. This same chip can be found on Adaptec RAID controllers. A Marvel 88E1118-NNC1 chip provides the gigabit ethernet.
There is an awful lot of wasted space in this 1U case. QNAP used the same board as their Pro version, which orients the LAN and USB ports where they are, thus determining the current orientation of the board.
It’s good to see that the board has many solid-state capacitors, which is a good sign of future reliability. There are several lower-quality Sanyo WG capacitors where the drive power is (on the top right of the board), however.
The board also comes with a JS28F640-J3D75 TSOP Flash Eprom, which contains the Linux operating system and embedded software. It is in TSOP 56 style with an access time of 75 nanoseconds. It is also the lead-free successor of the previous E28F640J3A.
The included power supply is from Channel Well Technology, which is a relatively unknown company in the US market. It is rated for a maximum of 200 Watts, which is nearly four times what the 409U typically requires. Here is the rating of the PSU:
Channel Well 200W PSU Specifications
* although the technical specs of the 3.3V and 5V add up to 121W, the PSU notes that the total power on these rails is 80W max |
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Physical installation is rather easy and straightforward. The unit is designed to fit in a standard rack, so standard rails can be attached to the sides. Sadly, no rails are included with this unit, but it does come with two front mounting brackets. Unfortunately, the weight of the unit is so heavy that the brackets will bend without some sort of support (preferably side rails).
Installation of the drives should be familiar to any IT professional. Each of the four drives are accessible from the front of the unit, and can be pulled out in hot-swap fashion. To unlock a drive, simply insert the included key. You can then pull on the front pastic hinge, and pull the drive bay out.
Any standard 3.5″ SATA hard drive can be mounted to the empty drive bay. Screws are included, and are mounted to the drive’s underside. Once the drive is mounted, it’s all a matter of sticking the cage back into the unit and locking it. The drive is recognized as soon as it makes contact. I’ve seen some hot-swap mechanisms that cut power to the drive when the bay is unlocked (like the Vantec EZ-Swap bays reviewed here), but QNAP’s bays do not function in this way.
The web interface is divided into 9 main sections, each with their own icon. The sections are broken out below.
Home
A splash page with direct links to all the other categories’ subsections
Quick Configuration
This 5-step wizard walks you through configuring your server, which is usually done during first install.
System Settings
Here is where you configure your server’s network name, Date & Time (it can automatically synchronize with an atomic clock), configure an external SMTP server (for administrative alerts), and view your system settings.
Network Settings
This section is where all network configuration settings are modified. This is also where you enable or disable network services such as Apple Networking, FTP and Web servers. TCP/IP Configuration is where you modify your server’s static or dynamic IP addresses. Microsoft Networking allows you to add the TS-409 Pro as a member of your Domain or Workgroup, and even support WINS (if anyone still uses that).
You can configure a Web File Manager so that you can access all files on the server via the Internet through a web browser. The Multimedia Station is where you can enable the server’s multimedia capabilities. You can use Multimedia Station from any device with a standard web browser (like the Sony PSP or another computer), or you can enable the UPnP MediaServer, which allows devices like the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 to connect to and stream your media files. You can even enable an iTunes service to share your media files for clients using iTunes.
One of the niftier features of the server is the Download Station. This download manager application is similar to GetRight, as it allows you to queue up files for automatic download, and supports HTTP, FTP, and BitTorrents. By default, all downloaded files end up in the Qdownloads share, but you can change this to any share you like. This is great for those who download large files in big chunks (like a RARed high-definition movie) as you can let your server download all night without your computer being on. Unfortunately, transferring several gigabytes of downloads to your main PC is rather painful… and since the network is so slow you really can’t unZip them on the server. The Download Station had a serious bug in the TS-109 in which all Zip files were corrupted, which required a Zip repair tool before you could even begin extraction. Fortunately, this new version works perfectly.
When you enable the Web Server you can create dynamic websites using PHP and MySQL. It even comes with the popular Joomla Content Management system. It’s not really setup to support multiple websites, virtual directories, or any other advanced features, but is good enough for light duty work. Once enabled, all you have to do is plop your files in the Qweb share, which becomes the website’s root. If you are hosting your website via cable or DSL, then you can enable the DDNS Service, which updates your website’s IP address if it ever changes.
Device Configuration
This is where you configure the SATA Disks, manage your RAID arrays, configure attached USB drives and printers
User Management
This area allows you to create new users, manage passwords, manage access to pre-defined network shares, and configure new network shares. You can even define a quota for all users, or individual users.
Network Share Management
This section allows you to manage the default network shares (Qusb, Qmultimedia, etc) and create new ones. Unfortunately, you cannot rename the default network shares, so if you want the web server to actually pick up the files, you are stuck with the Qweb directory. All of the configuration data is stored on the primary volume, so if you change your RAID around then you’ll have to redo these network changes.
System Tools
This section allows you to customize the server and configure back-end stuff. You can define the threshold for email alerts, perform a soft boot, configure standby mode, configure a USB-based UPS, view hard disk SMART information, update the system firmware, configure the “USB one-touch copy button”, change the interface’s logo, configure automatic backup to a local or remote disk, set an IP filter, configure remote login, and configure the Network Recycle Bin.
The Network Recycle Bin is one of the niftiest features an NAS can have. As many Windows users have probably noticed, when you delete files on a network drive, they bypass the protection that Windows’ “recycle bin” offers. Enabling a Network Recycle Bin ensures that no users can accidentally delete a file… instead the file is moved to the hidden recycle bin on the server. There is no threshold before being flushed, so you must manually login to the server and clean out the Network Recycle Bin to recover any space.
System Logs
This area shows changes to the server, important activity, and current status (such as online users, CPU usage and drive temperature). Using this tool is was easy to see how effective the exhaust fan is… my hard drives never got warmer than 91 degrees, keeping them safe and happy.
Device Configuration
This area is where you define your actual disk arrays. The screen shows you all installed Physical Disks, and how the are currently configured. You can create new arrays by clicking on one of the “New Disk Volume Configuration” icons, and the system will show you the options available to you. If you created a RAID 0 array but really wanted a RAID 1 array, then this option will not be available until you free up your existing array.
Thankfully the web interface supports AJAX, meaning that the page shows you the drive’s state in real time without a page refresh. When the drive is formatting, you get real-time feedback, rather than having to refresh the page to check the status. This feature becomes even more crucial if you migrate an array, where checking status is mandatory.
The RAID Management Tool is where you can upgrade your RAID arrays. Unfortunately, your options are very, very limited. When you click on this section you are presented with all of the options available for your current array, and there really aren’t any unless you’re running RAID 5. You should be able to upgrade a Single Volume to a Linear Disk Volume (JBOD), or add a drive to an existing JBOD volume, but these options are not available… perhaps in a future firmware update.
As it stands, the only upgrade path you have is upgrade RAID 1 to RAID 5, upgrade RAID 5 to RAID 6, or add a spare to RAID 5. You can upgrade the capacity of a RAID 5 or 6 array, but this is a very lengthy process of:
- removing the HDD #1 and plugging in a higher capacity drive
- wait for the data and parity information to replicate across the new drive
- remove drive #2 and insert higher capacity drive #2
- wait for the data and parity information to replicate across drive 2
- remove drive #3 and insert higher capacity drive #3
- wait for the data and parity information to replicate across drive 3
- the server will then resize the volume
This is what the drives partitions look like. Unless you can read EXT3 then you’re hosed.
This process can take tens of hours to complete, and there is the possibility of something screwing up. The whole purpose of a RAID array is that your data is online, even when you’re doing system maintenance. While this is technically true, all services will be painfully slow while the migration is taking place. It would actually be much quicker to backup your data, rebuild a new larger array and copy data back… well, it would be if the device had decent network speeds
Since the unit is Linux I found that I could telnet and login to the unit and copy files to an attached USB drive without touching the network. Oh, and don’t even think about trying to connect a drive to a Windows machine… once Windows boots it writes a flag to the drive and it cannot be read by the TS-409 without re-initialization. You plug it up to a Windows machine and you’re looking at a time-consuming and frustrating recovery scenario.
Features that would be considered standard are absent from this version of the TS-409. For example, you cannot add another drive to a JBOD array (something even a consumer version of Windows can do). You also cannot upgrade a RAID 0 or 1 to a larger RAID 0 or 1 (something that any professional RAID card supports).
The TS-409U is pretty easy to get up and going, and has many flexible features.
Even though the system runs on Linux, it can still crash or act wonky. On several occassions an attached network client’s mapped drives become unavailable for no apparent reason. I have several mapped network drives, and sometimes when I clicked to access them I would get an error that “the requested resource is unavailable”. I would not be able to reconnect the drive because the share was already in use… so I would have to unmap the drive and reconnect to the network share. I could map a new network drive on a different drive letter, but things would get messy. This doesn’t happen often, but it is very annoying, and not something I would expect from an expensive network appliance.
You can also make the unit crash and reboot with the included BitTorrent client. Most of the time the client works flawlessly, but if you start a job that have absolutely no seeds, then the server gets so busy with retries that it hard reboots. Again, not something that I expect from an expensive network appliance.
The unit sips electricity, especially when compared to a full-blown server. Electricity usage was measured using a Kill-a-Watt power meter, and the TS-409U was measured during different states. Below is a chart that details the usage of this unit. All drives used were Seagate 500GB SATA drives.
QNAP TS-409 U Electricity Usage
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Based on the results, typical electricity usage of the TS-409U is between 50 and 75 watts. Based on a 75W estimate, it will take 13 hours to reach 1 Killowatt hour, which is the basic unit that most utilities bill at. If you are billed $.08 per KW hour, then this unit will cost sixteen cents a day to operate, or around $58 a year. Compare that with a 200W server, which costs $.40 cents a day to operate, or $140 a year.
As in our previous TS-409 Pro article, network performance was tested using loads of various sizes. All storage devices vary in their throughput depending on the file size, so the network devices were tested using file sizes of 32 megabytes all the way up to 1 gigabyte. We also tested using different operating systems.
Most NAS appliances are not full-blown computers, and therefore do not have the same performance as two computers in a peer-to-peer scenario. As can be seen from out tests, the QNAP performs better than other units, but is not the most powerful one, either. Its read performance is about as much as you can expect from a networked appliance, but the write performance is about average.
From our experience with the last TS-409 Pro, we determined that the best balance between flexibility, redundancy and storage is to configure the unit as RAID 5, which is what we did our performance test in. The TS-409 delivers different throughput with each of its array types, but none of them offer a significant throughput advantage (compared to a standard PC), because frankly all of the RAID methods are slow. So, we chose RAID 5 not because of its throughput, but because it’s the only option that allows you to upgrade your storage easily.
We also tested the unit from different operating systems. Some people have noticed that network performance is slower from Windows XP to Vista, partially due to Vista’s auto-tuning network. Read here how to tweak Vista’s auto-tuning network. We did find that XP had slightly more network throughput to the TS-409 than Vista, and OS X yielded the best file copy times.
Nearly every home office needs most of the features this NAS delivers. The TS-409U functions as a file server, data depository, backup server, print server, download client, web server, multimedia server… and much more. There can be much debate as to which type of NAS to buy. Some prefer the Linux appliance route, while others prefer Microsoft’s flexible Windows Home Server.
If you need reliability and 100% uptime, then you’ll probably want to go the Linux route. The whole point of a multi-drive NAS is that you will never have to deal with a data recovery scenario. The NAS has many RAID options, but if you ever think you’ll need to upgrade capacity, then you better start off with a RAID 5 array, which will ensure 100% uptime, even during the migration. The tradeoff to RAID 5 is that you can only access 66% of the total array.
Windows Home Server uses a differnt methodology: it has a huge JBOD array, and does a daily backup of only the files you specify. The advantage to this method is that you can mix and match drive capacities, and utilize up to 100% of your drive capacity. Of course, the disadvantage comes when a drive fails.
If the TS-409U were priced about the same as its bulkier brother then it would be a much better value. The TS-409 U costs nearly $200 more than the TS-409 Pro. The Pro version is nice and cute, but doesn’t lend itself well to fitting in a rack. If space consolidation is a concern to you, then the extra money may be worth a 1U appliance. The unit’s performance targets the SOHO market, but any small business that needs a 1U will desire more performance than this NAS delivers. For about the same price, you can buy an entry-level (or used) server that will perform many times better.
If you absolutely have to have a 1U server, using the TS-409 over a standard server will save you about $100 a year in electricity. Although a traditional entry-level server costs about the same as the TS-409U, it will be much noisier, produce more heat, and cost more to operate. Over 1U servers, the TS-409U has a much lower total cost of ownership.
Of course, the flip side of using a standard server is that you would have to build all the functionality into the unit and maintain it. Home users would fare better by using a Windows Home Server, which uses a different method of backing up data, but is more flexible and gives you more usable drive space.
The TS-409U is a great unit: just like the TS-409 Pro. The killer is the extra price for the 1U case, which doesn’t make it as good a value as the Pro version.
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