News QNAP shows off Atom-powered NAS boxes

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/05/03/qnap-shows-off-atom-powered-nas-boxes/1

 

They do look awesome, but £450 for 2-bay BYOD NAS is really steep. I recently picked up the (ageing but excellent) D-Link DNS-323 2-bay, BYOD, for £80. Granted it's not as feature packed, but even so it's almost overkill for my needs. I suppose q-nap is targeting business users more than home users with its offerings.

 

Yep pretty much. I've just been playing with the TS-259 today and the interface is pretty damn tasty. Just a shame Windows iSCSI is so ****ing **** and can't connect to it.

 

qnap hands down makes some of the best nas boxes around.

 

nice

 

I'd probably still go for an ARM-powered NAS. Atom reminds me too much of cheap netbooks to want to have it as part of some critical piece of infrastructure.

 

Do you have an inside scoop that Atom systems are more prone to failure than other options, or is this one of those irrational things?

 

Chenbro Mini-ITX case, Jetway Mini-ITX Atom board, OpenFiler (which, yes, includes iSCSI target support.)

A lot cheaper than £450, and that's with 4 disk bays instead of two!

 

Atom ITSELF is not more prone to failure - if anything BECAUSE the Intel chips are completely designed manufactured by Intel alone are more reliable [EDIT: TSMC did take over some Atom orders iirc actually]. ARM parts are almost always designed by one person, fabbed by another so by default there is more likelihood for issues.

Atom products fail because the manufacturing quality is low. They are priced low so the components used WITH them fail, not the hardware itself.

HourBeforeDawn - I am leaning that way, but haven't seen enough of the competition to warrant a full conclusion. Anyone can chuck any old **** hardware together and make their own NAS box. I have been through several (literally) DIY boxes and they all failed in software, somehow, eventually (except my parents FreeNAS box which lasted 4 years until last month). In contrast the software interface for this thing is fantastic, although I can't comment on long term use yet. In the two years since I last reviewed a QNAP product it's leaps and bounds ahead though. You'll get the most value providing you need ALL it has to offer - so a multi-user environment is certainly better because you buy it for many people = cost per use is low.

I still think QNAP is missing a trick by not slimming it down and cutting the price though. Also, these are pro-sumer/business parts - with consumer ones Marvell ARM based. I still don't think the Atom components are the best solution though for high throughput - if it's using the NM10 that has **** SATA performance, and the NM10 only has 4x PCI-E lanes. Once you take out two for each Gigabit Ethernet that leaves two more - you can't plug a RAID card into that. I think QNAP needs to concentrate on the internal hardware more, because it seems anemic. This is the only area where a DIY one is better, but try building a DIY on the cheap and tiny with two integrated network cards teamed up. I doubt you will easily - remember the Gigabit connection is still the biggest bottleneck once you start getting into multi-disk throughput.

 

Just use any decent Asus board which comes with 2 GB ethernet ports (i.e. 2 ports)

 

Tom's has a performance review of the TS-459 too.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/n4200-ts459-pro-intel-atom,review-31885.html

 

I have just finished building a home-made NAS box from parts of old PC's I have lying around and put freeNAS to use on it booting from a flash. It uses an old Pentium D 3.51 Ghz and with only 512mb of 233mhz RAM it still puts other NAS boxes to shame speed-wise.

So I ask you... Why spend money on something that you can make from that dusty metal box sitting under your stairs??

And also you have got to factor in the price of the hard drives themselves which in my scenario is the ONLY cost. So why buy your hdd's and then spend more? For the fun of it? Or because the NAS retailer has convinced you of a feature that you don't need and will probably never use?? Suffering from 'I'll get it just in case I need that feature' syndrome much??

 

@meaty pete: you do have a point, and I was leaning in the same direction for a long time. Also, like others on these boards I considered buying miniitx hardware and rolling my own that way. However, no matter how I tried I could not match the pre-made offerings for size, features and noise/power consumption without spending massively more money than the £80 +disks I ended up paying for my DNS-323.

 

interesting device. still not sure what to get. NAS or MacMini + FW dual drive unit with RAID support

 

QNAP sent us the 8 bay model to review, its live on my site, IM me if you want the link I wont cross promote on here as that feel shady ^.^ we will be reviewing the 459 later and their media center with it. Overall fantastic NAS, we have many other models reviewed on my site as well.

 

now it's time to wait for the response from synology

 

Looks nice but I'd rather build one myself