Qnap TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS review

Qnap's latest TS-439 Pro is the first Atom powered NAS appliance on the market, with a wealth of new features including IP SAN support, the new Surveillance Station and AES-256 volume encryption, as well as a new Ajax-based web interface.

We put in a couple of 1TB WD GreenPower SATA drives and used the appliance's LCD display and control pad to set up a mirrored array, which took around four hours to complete. Qnap's Finder utility finds the appliance on the network and then it's over to web management.

The new interface opens with an Apple iTunes-style cover flow menu. The administrative interface is easy to use with a tree menu for fast access to the myriad features.

Atoms aren't known for speed but the TS-439 delivered good results in our real-world performance tests. Copying a 2.52GB video clip between the appliance and a Broadberry Cyberserve dual 2.8GHz Xeon X5560 server over Gigabit returned average read and write speeds of 41MB/sec and 35MB/sec.

FTP speeds were even better with the FileZilla client reporting read and write speeds of 60MB/sec and 46MB/sec. Power consumption is commendably low, with the GreenPower drives drawing around 34W under normal usage and no more than 37W under load.

The appliance only supports up to eight iSCSI targets, but setting them up is easy as IQNs are already configured for you, so you just decide on the target size and whether to use CHAP authentication. Qnap's new Virtual Disk works by declaring iSCSI targets on other Qnap appliances to the T439-Pro, which then exports them as network shares.

Qnap's remote replication copies folders to a remote appliance, encrypts and compresses the data, and runs incremental copies once a full backup has been taken. The NetBak Replicator software backs up local data to the appliance, it supports Windows Server systems, and there's a Download Station utility for the remote retrieval of files using BitTorrent, HTTP and FTP.

Multimedia functions include a UPnP media server, iTunes server and a Multimedia Station. The new Surveillance Station takes the feed from up to four IP cameras and provides live view, and recording and motion-detection services.

We tested surveillance features with Axis 216FD, 213PTZ and 207MW IP cameras and had no problems integrating them with the appliance. All feeds could be viewed from a single window, recording schedules set up and, for the 213PTZ we could also remotely control its pan, tilt and zoom functions.

For general network storage duties, the Atom processor is clearly up to the task, handling our speed tests well. The new management interface is very welcome and Qnap delivers an excellent range of storage features for the price.

Author: Dave Mitchell