QNAP's TS-EC1279U-RP 12-bay Flagship Rackmount NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on April 29, 2013 4:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Enterprise
- Storage
- NAS
- QNAP
Miscellaneous Factors and Final Words
The QNAP TS-EC1279U-RP is a 12-bay NAS, and there are many applicable disk configurations (JBOD / RAID-0 / RAID-1 / RAID-5 / RAID-6 / RAID-10). Most users looking for a balance between performance and redundancy are going to choose RAID-5. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild duration testing as well as power consumption recording with the unit configured in RAID-5 mode. The disks used for benchmarking (OCZ Vector 120 GB) were also used in this section. The table below presents the average power consumption of the unit as well as time taken for various RAID-related activities.
| QNAP TS-EC1279U-RP RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||||
| Activity |
Duration (HH:MM:SS) |
Power Consumption (Outlet 1 / W) | Power Consumption (Outlet 2 / W) | Avg. Power Consumption (W) |
| Diskless | 40.95 | 50.51 | 91.46 | |
| Single Disk Initialization | 43.48 | 53.71 | 97.19 | |
| RAID-0 to RAID-1 (116 GB to 116 GB / 1 to 2 Drives) | 00:12:41 | 44.99 | 54.22 | 99.21 |
| RAID-1 to RAID-5 (116 GB to 233 GB / 2 to 3 Drives) | 00:25:27 | 44.95 | 54.03 | 98.98 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (233 GB to 350 GB / 3 to 4 Drives) | 00:41:42 |
46.56 |
55.56 |
102.12 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (350 GB to 467 GB / 4 to 5 Drives) | 00:40:51 |
48.63 |
57.87 |
106.5 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (467 GB to 584 GB / 5 to 6 Drives) | 00:37:23 |
50.58 |
60.1 |
110.68 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (584 GB to 700 GB / 6 to 7 Drives) | 00:40:39 |
51.81 |
61.72 |
113.53 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (700 GB to 817 GB / 7 to 8 Drives) | 00:36:41 |
52.8 |
62.82 |
115.62 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (817 GB to 934 GB / 8 to 9 Drives) | 00:41:33 |
55.03 |
64.24 |
119.27 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (934 GB to 1051 GB / 9 to 10 Drives) | 00:42:17 |
57.66 |
65.39 |
123.05 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (1051 GB to 1168 GB / 10 to 11 Drives) | 00:42:34 |
60.44 |
66.7 |
127.14 |
| RAID-5 Expansion (1168 GB to 1285 GB / 11 to 12 Drives) | 00:44:23 |
61.72 |
67.49 |
129.21 |
| RAID-5 Rebuild (1168 GB to 1285 GB / 11 to 12 drives) | 00:22:31 |
58.47 |
65.13 |
123.6 |
Unlike Atom-based units, RAID expansion and rebuild don't seem to take progressively longer as the number of disks increase. Coming to the business end of the review, the pros and cons of the unit must be analyzed while keeping in mind that the unit comes in at less than $5000.
Pros:
- High end features such as ECC RAM for mission critical environments
- Upgradable with 10G network cards
- Minimal performance hit when encryption is enabled
- Affordable price tag considering available feature set
Cons:
- Firmware and UI need rework and updates for usability and feature set parity with competing NAS vendors (Eg.: Automatic RAID level management / Disks can't be shared across multiple volumes / Encryption can only be on a per-volume basis and not on a per-folder basis etc.)
- Target market for this unit may find a CLI (command line interface) guide useful
- Firmware releases should go through more QA.
The last point was triggered by a new firmware update[ 3.8.2 Build 20130301 ] which we installed just as the review was about to go live. We tried to do some volume expansion experiments, but the unit became unresponsive twice during the process. We didn't encounter any such issues with the previous firmware release [ 3.8.1 Build 1205 ]. Strangely, the new firmware update got pushed through the NAS web UI, but, is not available yet on QNAP's website. I am willing to cut QNAP some slack here, but, definitely, the firmware QA must be improved. On the hardware side, the unit could also do with some noise dampening (the fans run without modulation during the startup sequence, but that is probably not much of a deal when the unit is placed in a server room).
In closing, the balance of feature set and price tips the recommendation in QNAP's favour. More stable firmware would make the deal for prospective consumers even sweeter.
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23 Comments
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Jeff7181 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
EMC, Hitachi and NetApp provide enterprise class NAS and SAN arrays. This, nor any, QNAP product is anywhere near that level.Walkeer - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
agreed, plus NAS is not really enterprise anyway since these is SANdavegraham - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Ganesh,having worked in the storage industry (and now working for an enterprise and carrier networking company doing data center architecture and design) QNAP, Drobo, et al. aren't names that carry any weight for enterprise-class storage. The systems I deal with (for example, EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K) are considered "enterprise class" storage systems (99.999% uptime, SSD caching and tiering, finely tuned atomic memory and storage access, multiple active processing storage engines/directors, fibre channel/FCoE/iSCSI front ends, extensive API command/control sets, replication [local & remote], snapshotting/cloning, etc.). As Jeff7181 notes below, these stand alone in a class by themselves.
cheers,
D
Walkeer - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
agreed, this is a SOHO toy...jaziniho - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
Unless this comes in a model with dual controllers (not just dual PSUs), then it's squarely in the SMB rather than enterprise space.Support for SAS as well as SATA disks would also be high on list of potential requirements for enterprise. With RAID rebuild times on large drives so long, you need disks with decent reliability to give you more confidence in making it through the rebuild.
aloginame - Saturday, May 11, 2013 - link
I agree with the fact that this QNAP is not really a "Enterprise" or "High-End" solution for NAS, however, I have to disagree when it is being compared to something like EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K, for those are really SAN solutions and not NAS.golemite - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
Hi Ganesh, any chance of getting reviews of lower end rackmount NAS systems like the Synology RS812/812+?ganeshts - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
We have the Synology RS10613sx+ in the pipeline, but it costs approx. twice that of the TS-EC1279U-RP and caters to users who require more performance / features.mmayrand - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
So, you spend $3500 for box plus 12 SSD (not free) and you get the 1/3 of the effective bandwidth of a single SSD plugged in a $300 PC. Is there a point to these NAS boxes?davegraham - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Mmayrand,the concept behind a NAS box is shareable storage across N-number of users in a SoHo or SMB environment. at that point, it makes more sense to have a common pool of storage that can be "protected" (remember, RAID is NOT backup) and utilized more efficiently, than a scattered or siloed collection of independent disk in a laptop or desktop.
it also is a basic requirement for most virtualization (the concept of shared storage) solutions to maintain high availability and portability for virtual machines within a cluster. As a standalone box, you're right, you can hit better performance #'s because you're just straddling a PCIe bus vs. ethernet. however, change the venue and you're looking at a more ideal solution.
D