QNAP TS-451 Bay Trail NAS Performance Review
by Ganesh T S on July 28, 2014 9:00 AM ESTMiscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks
It is expected that most users would configure the QNAP TS-451 in RAID-5 for optimal balance of redundancy and capacity. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in RAID-5. The disks used for benchmarking (Western Digital WD4000FYYZ) 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-451-4G RAID Expansion and Rebuild / Power Consumption | ||
| Activity | Duration | Avg. Power |
| Single Disk Init (4TB in JBOD) | - | 19.47 W |
| 4 TB JBOD (1D) to 4 TB RAID-1 (2D) | 8h 42m 12s | 31.73 W |
| 4 TB RAID-1 (2D) to 8 TB RAID-5 (3D) | 24h 58m 25s | 42.36 W |
| 8 TB RAID-5 (3D) to 12 TB RAID-5 (4D) | 26h 25m 47s | 52.84 W |
| 12 TB RAID-5 Rebuild (4D) | 9h 14m 48s | 54.37 W |
Similar to the Seagate NAS 4-bay we saw last week, the rebuild process takes much less time compared to the RAID expansion process. The time taken for the various RAID modifications are amongst the lowest of all the four-bay NAS units that we have evaluated so far. Starting with the next review, we will have comparison graphs for these aspects.
QNAP also enables access to the NAS over the Internet through automatic port forwarding (UPnP). There is also a Cloud Link beta service which utilizes relay servers operated by QNAP to achieve the same functionality without the port forwarding setup. Our experience indicated that the beta tag for Cloud Link is not unwarranted. The myQnapCloud.com service also ties in with the Qfile mobile app for access to the NAS contents over the Internet from a mobile device.
The differentiating aspects of the TS-x51 series are obviously the virtualization and transcoding features. In our evaluation so far, the QEMU-based Virtualization Station app works really great for the average consumer (though power users coming off a Hyper-V or VMWare background may miss some features that they take for granted). The hardware transcoding features have not been evaluated in full depth yet, but, in our limited experience, there are still quite a few rough edges - we can't say for sure yet whether it is substantially better than the Intel Evansport-based Synology DS214play. Based on paper specifications, it should definitely be. Hopefully, by the time we get to detailed coverage in a month or two, we can decide one way or the other.
Coming to the business end of the review, we find that QNAP's choice of Bay Trail for this market segment makes quite a bit of sense. For the SMB and high-end SOHO markets, the Intel Avoton and Rangeley platforms are the best bet. For home consumers and power users looking for a media server solution with mobile app support and ability to take advantage of Quick Sync, NAS units based on Bay Trail parts such as the Celeron J1800 make more sense. With the TS-451, QNAP has delivered a NAS that can handle a large number of simultaneous connections without drop in performance, a pre-requisite for a powerful media server. It also ticks all the boxes for a full-featured solution.
We do have use-cases in mind for evaluating the virtualization and transcoding features of the TS-451 for the upcoming articles. That said, it would be interesting to see what readers want to see evaluated when it comes to running virtual machines on a NAS, as well as what they would like to see done for evaluation of the real-time transcoding features. The feedback would be of great aid in shaping up the second and third parts of our TS-451 review.
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DanNeely - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
@Ganesh This question is asked in some form on almost every NAS review. Would you consider addressing it by adding a build vs buy page to the base review template?ganeshts - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
Yes, that is a good idea. Let me add it to the template in the concluding remarks section.DanNeely - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
Thanks. Will it be showing up as an update to this review; or in the next one?ganeshts - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
I think you already have a great set of points above, maybe I will just reserve it for the next article :)DanNeely - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
Those were off the cuff and need some cleanup (if nothing else I switched wording halfway through) and the DIY section probably needs expanded; but feel free to use them as a starting point.zodiacsoulmate - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
Ok I donno that cause in previous NAS review I didn't see anyone mentioning that, and this NAS is a little pricier than other ones...BMNify - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
if you are going to do that then you better cover the less linked type of base kitfor instance
http://www.xcase.co.uk/rackmount-server-systems/mi... 4 hot swap custom itx case for £118.80 Incl. VAT
just add a http://www.newegg.com/global/uk/Product/Product.as...
ASUS P9A-I/C2550/SAS/4L Mini ITX Green and Space-Saving Server Board DDR3 1333/1600 ECC/Non-ECC UDIMM 4 x MiniSAS connector(Marvell 88SE9485 x 2)
(up to 16 SAS/SATA 6G HDD connections)
want to go larger then put that in something like the
http://www.xcase.co.uk/rackmount-cases/2u-rackmoun...
X-CASE RM 208 2U WITH 8 HOTSWAP BAYS AND RAILS £107.94 Incl. VAT
http://www.xcase.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache...
if you need more later then go for something like the X-CASE RM 212 PRO, 12 BAY HOTSWAP SERVER CASE £238.80 Incl. VAT
or even the more generic NORCO RPC-4224 4U Rackmount Server Case with 24 Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS Drive Bays £253
see ,it easy to build to a given price if you forget the toy dual core antiquated Marvell ARMADA™ 370 soc and you even get far more for less than this crazy £591.60 for an ugly looking steel box and generic single board computer without any hard drives installed...
BMNify - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
oc thats a mind bending 1004.77 US Dollar at current rateshttp://www.span.com/product/Qnap-Desktop-NAS-TS-45...
Qnap Desktop NAS TS-451 4-Bay, JBOD/RAID 0/1/5/6 , empty case for £591.60
OC you could always go the conservative view and still end up with a better data throughput
usng something like the GA-J1900N-D3V Built-in Intel® Celeron™ J1900 (2.0 GHz) quad-core processor and dual gigabit Ethernet ports and pci slot to ...£61.17
DanNeely - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
Honestly, the hardware you're suggesting looks like DIY enterprise architecture more than a typical DIY NAS build. AT does do an occasional article on big enterprise boxes; but 8+ bay boxes are only a very small portion of the NAS coverage here. If we do get a DIY NAS article I'd expect it to be done with inexpensive hardware and at most a 6 drive configuration in addition to a 4 drive one. The 4 drive config would IMO be mandatory for comparison purposes since most of the existing reviews are for systems with that config.BMNify - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
if its good enough for www.servethehome.com and http://forums.nas4free.org/http://www.servethehome.com/Server-detail/istarusa...
http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=60&...
then its more than good enough for .anandtech to cover these options on a regular basis, after all readers want to know and be informed about the current options available to them, the options i mentioned above were based on the fact you can get HOTSWAP able hardware cases for far less then these ripoff consumer empty steel box's and SBC that cast them pennies on mass, and yet if you look you the enc consumer can actually find new and better kit such as the mentioned GA-J1900N-D3V Built-in Intel® Celeron™ J1900 (2.0 GHz) quad-core for far less to build than the lesser dual core Celeron™ J1800 that the qnap-ts451 uses....
if you dont need/want 4-in-1 Trayless Hot-swap Backplane then just use the available generic £25 pc box's etc.... OC the ASUS P9A-I/C2550/SAS/4L Mini ITX gets a special mention as its an all in single board computer you the end consumer can get behind if you feel you will need/want tp add sas to sata cables and drives as you see fit over a longer time frame.....
a one off cost that's more expandable as you add data to your LAN devices etc....