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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mschira - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
I was wondering if one could install a proper Linux on these systems, such as Fedora.Then one could use it as a medium powerful computation server with lot's of local storage.
Has anybody tried that?
Cheers
M.
watersb - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
It's a bit late for coffee, so please forgive me for not finding a price in the review.This looks like an interesting product, but I'm a ZFS zealot. Running ZFS with only 4 GB RAM isn't going to fly.
That said, I am *very* interested in anything resembling a mid-range NAS. Storage is a real pain point, and it is tough to build acceptable storage out of cheap disks. So thanks for reviewing this thing!
ganeshts - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
Price is $5K (MSRP), but retailers are selling it at prices ranging from $3500 to $5000davegraham - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Watersb,Use Nexenta Community Edition (uses OpenIndiana + ZFS) on top of a supermicro server with the same 12 drive bays (and SAS drives) and I'd kill this particular box AND have a more robust solution to boot.
D
watersb - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Thanks, Ganesh, for the pricing info.Dave, that's such a good idea, I switched to OpenIndiana in 2009. I'm running 8 2TB drives as four mirrored pairs with a $100 LSI controller. But it will be quite some time before I have the budget to upgrade to a server motherboard with more than 16GB ECC RAM.
ZFS deduplication is *expensive*, folks. Don't do it. I tried adding a 60Gb SSD for L2ARC but it turns out that I would be better off with 60GB of *swap* to hold the deduplication tables.
My kung fu is weak. But I've been running this system through numerous hardware failures, PEBKAC events, and system software updates, and I haven't lost any data. Solaris isn't bulletproof, but it does warn me of impending drive failures before I lose anything.
Sorry for the long rant -- but it IS possible to play with "enterprise" class system configurations on lousy hardware if you are willing to waste^W commit some time doing so.
Walkeer - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
I do not understand either why such powerful NAS has only 4GB or RAM looking at the RAM prices these days...davegraham - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
can you please nix the usage of the word "enterprise" from your reviews? These QNAP boxes (and pretty much any other storage device y'all review these days) are Commercial, SMB, or Consumer level devices at best. Enterprise describes a category of business that would never use this based on uptime, data integrity, performance, and capability requirements.ganeshts - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
Hmm.. Not sure why you are doubting the performance and capability of these units. With SSDs, they form a very good storage backend for medium sized work groups. Uptime and data integrity - These need more QA, but with the stable firmware version, I really had no trouble keeping it bombarded with data accesses for days togetherGigaplex - Monday, April 29, 2013 - link
Read your very own "cons" section. This is exactly why Enterprise wouldn't look at it. As for performance? I've got a dirt cheap home build Llano box using 5 WD Green drives in software RAID 5 and it easily reaches 250-300MB/s transfers. This system had 12 SSDs. Colour me underwhelmed.Walkeer - Thursday, May 9, 2013 - link
I understand you have 10Gb network at home right? Or InfiniBand 4x perhaps? Else I do not see how you push 300MBps over 1Gb line... or you are talking about your desktop? Man, this article is about NAS...