With ability to store a large size of data comes great responsibility. Heh, sounds like a corny line from a movie doesn't it? But it’s true. Entrusting someone with your precious data should not be taken lightly. If you are a family person then you probably have a bunch of home made movies and pictures of kids and other important files on your computer. But what if you are running out of room? Looking for that ideal perfect place to store your files but not sure about the cloud yet? You should consider getting yourself a small network attached device to keep all of your important files and memories safe. QNAP has been in the storage market from day one and has established itself as a leader amongst personal and company network devices. Whether you have family pictures or are just interested of running a web server from the comfort of your own home, QNAP can help. QNAP features a wide range of applications which you can download from the app store for free and well what’s better than free? Packaging Very recently we have reviewed a similar product from QNAP, TS-251+. You can check out or full review right here -> (QNAP TS-251+). Both TS-251+ and 253A have a lot in common. Even packaging. What QNAP is really concentrating on is the customization in their devices. You can get exactly what you need for whatever you are planning to use these NASes. As you can see from packaging everything is nice and simple. There is no gotchas or silly advertisements. What you see is that you get really. In the front of the packaging there is a sticker with some of the features you are going to find inside of TS-253A unit. I do have to mention that this unit comes with remote control. Just like you would protect your precious files, QNAP is protecting the NAS during shipping with handy foam and cardboard combination box. When I opened the box nothing was lose and the actual NAS unit was secured in the foam packaging. You really don't need much to get started. Couple of screws, power supply and a pair of cat 5e network cables are included with the unit. Most of the QNAP NAS units come with remotes so you can enjoy and experience every feature that it has to offer with ease. I do strongly recommend looking over the Quick Installation Guide if this is your first time setting up storage devices as such. Depending of what model you are looking to purchase, you should consider purchasing hard drive capacity as QNAP NAS offers bare bone units but also units with hard drives in a bundles. Currently QNAP offers TS-253A bare bone (no drives), 2x3TB drives and 2x4TB drives. Hardware Specifications Ordering P/N TS-253A-4G | TS-253A-8G CPU 14 nm Intel® Celeron® N3150 1.6GHz quad-core processor (burst up to 2.08GHz) Floating Point Unit ✔ Hardware Encryption ✔ (AES-NI) GPU 8th generation Intel HD Graphics System memory TS-253A-4G: 4GB (2 x 2GB) TS-253A-8G: 8GB (2 x 4GB) Memory Expandable Up To 8 GB Total Memory Slots 2, SODIMM DDR3L-1600 (*For dual-DIMM configurations, you must use a pair of identical DDR3L modules.) Flash Memory 512MB Maximum Number of Hard Drive 2 Hard Disk Drive Hot-swappable 3.5" or 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s, SATA 3Gb/s hard drive or SSD LAN Port 2 x Gigabit RJ-45 Ethernet port USB 4 x USB 3.0 port (Front:1, Rear:3) Support USB printer, pen drive, and USB UPS etc. Video Output 2 x HDMI, up to 4K 2160P Ultra HD support Audio Input 2 x 6.3mm microphone jacks (dynamic microphones only) Audio Output Line Out Jack (for amplifier or headphone amplifier) LED Indicators Status, USB, HDD 1-2 LCD Panel Mono-LCD display with backlight Buttons System: Power button, USB one-touch-backup button, Reset button IR Receiver ✔, Support QNAP RM-IR002, RM-IR003 and MCE-compatible Remote Control Other Interface Kensington security slot, console port (system maintenance) Alarm Buzzer System warning Form Factor Tower Dimensions 150(H) x 102(W) x 216(D) mm 5.91(H) x 4.02(W) x 8.5(D) inch Weight Net: 1.74 kg (3.84 lbs) Gross: 2.92 kg (6.44 lbs) Power Consumption (W) System sleep mode: 1.18W HDD standby: 8.38W In operation: 14.43W Temperature 0-40˚C Relative Humidity 5~95% RH non-condensing, wet bulb: 27˚C Power Supply 65W AC adapter, 100-240V Fan 7cm quiet cooling fan (12V DC) Software Specifications Operating System QTS 4.2 (embedded Linux) Power Management Wake on LAN Internal hard drive standby mode Scheduled power on/off Automatic power on after power recovery USB and network UPS support with SNMP management System sleep mode (S3) Supported Client OS Windows 7 (32/64-bit), Windows 8 (32/64-bit), Windows Server 2003/2008 R2/2012/2012R2 Apple Mac OS X Linux & UNIX Access Right Management Batch users creation Import/Export users User quota management Local user access control for CIFS, AFP, FTP, and WebDAV Application access control for Photo Station, Music Station, Video Station, and File Station Subfolder permissions support for CIFS/SMB, AFP, FTP, and File Station Supported Browsers Microsoft Internet Explorer 10+ Mozilla Firefox 8+ Apple Safari 4+ Google Chrome Domain Authentication Integration Microsoft Active Directory (AD) & Domain Controller support LDAP server, LDAP client Domain users login via CIFS/SMB, AFP, FTP, and File Station Multilingual Support Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish myQNAPcloud Service Private cloud storage and sharing Free host name registration (DDNS) Optional myQNAPcloud SSL certificates (DDNS) Auto router configuration (via UPnP) Web-based file manager with HTTPS 2048-bit encryption CloudLink for remote access without any complicated router setup myQNAPcloud connect for easy VPN connection (Windows VPN utility) File System Internal Hard Drive: EXT4 External Hard Drive: EXT3, EXT4, NTFS, FAT32, HFS+ Qsync Sync files across multiple devices with SSL secure connection Selective synchronization for only syncing specific folders Use team folders as a file center for greater team collaboration (maximum sync tasks: 32) Shares files by links via e-mail Policy settings for conflicting files and file type filter support Version control: up to 64 versions. Unified privilege management Unified configuration management Supports central configuration mode Supports remote erase/restore Supports shared folders sync Supports Windows & Mac OS Networking TCP/IP (IPv4 & IPv6: Dual Stack)1 Gigabit NICs with jumbo frame (failover, multi-IP settings, port trunking/NIC teaming) Service binding based on network interfaces Squid Proxy server Proxy client DHCP client, DHCP server Protocols: CIFS/SMB, AFP (v3.3), NFS(v3), FTP, FTPS, SFTP, TFTP, HTTP(S), Telnet, SSH, iSCSI, SNMP, SMTP, and SMSC UPnP & Bonjour Discovery USB Wi-Fi Adapter Support Web Administration Multi-window, multi-tasking based system management Smart toolbar and dashboard for neat system status display Dynamic DNS (DDNS) SNMP (v2 & v3) Resource monitor Network recycle bin for file deletion via CIFS/SMB, AFP, and File Station - Automatic Cleanup - File Type Filter Comprehensive logs (events & connection) Syslog client/server System settings backup and restore Mobile app: Qmanager for remote system monitoring & management Security Network access protection with auto-blocking: SSH, Telnet, HTTP(S), FTP, CIFS/SMB, AFP CIFS host access control for shared folders FIPS 140-2 validated AES 256-bit volume-based and shared folder data encryption2 AES 256-bit external drive encryption2 Importable SSL certificates Instant alerts via email, SMS, beep, push service, and LCD panel3 2-step verification File Server File sharing across Windows, Mac, and Linux/UNIX Windows ACL Advanced folder permissions for CIFS/SMB, AFP, FTP Shared folder aggregation (CIFS/SMB) Storage Management Storage Space Utilization monitoring QNAP flexible Volume/LUN with thin provisioning and space reclaim3 Disk volume types RAID 0,1, JBOD, single Supports storage pools Supports volume/LUN snapshots Snapshot clone Snapshot vault Snapshot replica Snapshot agent for Microsoft Windows and VMware vSphere Online volume expansion Online storage pool expansion Online RAID capacity expansion and online RAID level migration SMART data migration Storage expansion via a QNAP UX-500P/UX-800P expansion unit JBOD enclosure roaming SSD read-only/read-write cache Bad block scan and hard drive S.M.A.R.T. Bad block recovery & RAID recovery Bitmap support Powerful All-in-one server FTP Server FTP over SSL/TLS (Explicit) FXP support Storage Plug & Connect Creating and mapping shared folders by QNAP Windows Qfinder Pro Creation of and connection to iSCSI target/LUN File Station Supports mounting cloud drives (such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive, Yandex Disk and Box). Supports mounting remote shared folders through FTP, WebDAV or Microsoft networking (SMB/CIFS) Supports opening documents via Office Online, Google Docs or Chrome Extension (Edit Office files in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides) Supports ISO Mounting (Up to 256 ISO Files) Supports sharing download links and upload links Drag-n-drop Files via Chrome and Firefox Browsers Photo, music, and video preview and playback with hardware-accelerated transcoding File Compression (ZIP or 7z) Creation of and sending download links for sharing public files with expiration date and password protection Supports displaying subtitles (*.SRT, UTF-8 format) - Supports slideshow playback in media viewer Mobile App: Qfile for file browsing and management iSCSI (IP SAN) iSCSI target with multi-LUNs per target (Up to 256 targets/LUNs combined) Supports LUN mapping & masking Online LUN capacity expansion Support for SPC-3 persistent reservation Supports MPIO & MC/S iSCSI LUN backup, one-time snapshot, and restoration iSCSI connection and management by QNAP Windows Qfinder Pro Virtual disk drive (via iSCSI initiator) Stack chaining master Max No. of virtual disk drives: 8 Transcode Management Transcode video files to 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p and 1080p resolution Automatic video transcoding for watched folders Hardware accelerated transcoding support Embed subtitles into videos for background transcoding Surveillance Station Supports over 3,000 IP cameras Includes 4 free camera licenses, up to 40 camera channels by purchasing additional licenses3 Instant playback to check recent events Visual aid by e-map Playback and speed control using the shuttle bar Video preview on playback timeline Intelligent video analytics (IVA) for advanced video searching Surveillance client for Mac Mobile surveillance app: Vmobile (iOS and Android) Mobile recording app: Vcam (iOS and Android) Backup Station Remote replication server (over rsync) Real-time remote replication (RTRR) to another QNAP NAS or FTP server Works as both RTRR server & client with bandwidth control Real-time & scheduled backup Backup versioning for RTRR Snapshot support for RTRR/Rsync Encryption, compression, file filter, and transfer rate limitation Desktop backup with QNAP NetBak Replicator for WindowsⓇ Apple Time Machine backup support Data backup to multiple external storage devices Synchronizes with cloud storage: Amazon S3, ElephantDrive, Symform, Dropbox, and Google Drive Third party backup software support: Veeam backup & replication, Acronis True Image, Arcserve backup, emc retrospect, Symantec Backup Exec, etc. VPN Server Secure remote access: PPTP、L2TP/IPsec & OpenVPN VPN services Max number of clients: 30 Print Server Max number of printers: 3 Supports Internet Printing Protocol Print job display and management IP-based and domain name-based privilege control VPN Client Supported VPN protocols: PPTP & OpenVPN services PPTP Authentication: PAP, CHAP, MS-CHAP, MS-CHAPv2 PPTP Encryption: None, AES 40/128 bit, AES 256 bit OpenVPN Encryption: None, AES 40/128 bit, AES 256 bit Transmission package monitor OpenVPN port control OpenVPN link compression Cloud Backup Station Amazon S3 Amazon Glacier WebDAV-based cloud storage Microsoft Azure OpenStack DLNA Server Supports DLNA/UPnP TVs and players such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Supported audio formats4: AIFF, APE, DSD (DSF, DFF), FLAC, M4A, M4A Apple Lossless (ALAC), MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV (PCM, LPCM), WMA, WMA PRO, WMA VBR* Support CUE indexing file for APE, FLAC audio format. Video and Audio On-the-fly Transcoding3 AirPlay & Chromecast Streams videos, photos and music from NAS to Apple TV or Chromecast via File Station, Music Station, Photo Station, Video Station or mobile app (Qfile, Qmusic, Qphoto or Qvideo). Note: The Media Streaming add-on app must be installed from the QTS App Center. Q’center (NAS CMS) Multiple NAS monitoring Utilization history reports Unified configuration management Visual display reports Monitor NAS behind NAT routers with Q’center Assistant Virtual appliances supported byMicrosoft Hyper-V and VMware ESXi HD (HybridDesk) Station 3.0 Playback videos, music, photos on TV with Kodi via HDMI Watch various online content such as YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Shoutcast, etc. Web browsers (Chrome, Firefox) Supports international keyboards, input and mouse Supports QNAP Qremote app and the official Kodi remote app Supports user login permissions A variety of applications are available including Skype, Plex Home Theater, and more Up to 7.1 channel audio passthrough is supported Note: - The playback and quality of some video files may be affected by the system’s CPU and GPU decoding abilities. OceanKTV Use the NAS as a karaoke machine. Display songs by artists, languages, and favorites. Enhance the experience with effects such as tuning echo, key, or applause Control the playlist with a mobile app. Supports keyboard, mouse and remote control (RM-RF001/ RM-IR002). Note: Microphone not included. Virtualization Station Supports Virtual Machine (VM) creation to run operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Unix and Android Supports VM import and export Supports VM cloning & snapshots Supports VM backup and restore VM console can be displayed via HDMI output - QVM HTML5-based shared remote console Supports three different networking modes: Isolated, External-only and Bridged iTunes Server Audio and video sharing for Windows® & Mac iTunes Container Station Supports LXC and Docker Download applications from the built-in Docker Hub Registry Supports one-click installation, container export/import & console mode Supports auto port forwarding Supports auto-start containers Supports downloading Docker certificates App Center Over 100 official and community software add-ons such as Photo Station, Music Station, Video Station, Download Station, Notes Station, Signage Station Qsirch Supports full-text search Supports Near Real-time Search Bar chart to show data distribution Supports previews for photos, music, videos, Gmail, PDF .etc Show search results using thumbnails or a list Supports search Chrome extension 1 Not all IPv6 services are supported. 2 Data encryption functions may be unavailable in accordance with the legislative restrictions of some countries. 3 This feature may vary by model. 4 DRM-protected content is not supported.Designs and specifications are subject to change without notice. Closer Look at QNAP TS-253A TS-253A is a rather small device. Its dimensions are 150(H) x 102(W) x 216(D) mm (5.91(H) x 4.02(W) x 8.5(D) inch), which is no longer than a gallon of milk and no wider than a CD case. The weight of this particular unit is just under 4lb (without the drives). TS-253A has two hard drive sleds which are mounted in the front. In fact all of QNAP NAS products have this front facing sled design. To remove the sleds you simply lifts the sled handle and remove the drive. This makes installation very smooth and easy. On the front left side of the unit there are status indicators so you can quickly identify issues or upstate of your device. On the bottom portion of the front bezel you will find Power & Copy buttons and single USB 3.0 port. You can attach an external hard drive or even connect a USB printer to TS-253A. TS-253A is air cooled. Air is being pulled from the front and the side of the enclosure to the back. This is done by using a PWM 70mm fan. On the back of this device I found a reset button, maintenance port, two HDMI ports, three USB 3.0 ports, two network interfaces, two microphone in interfaces, one 1/8 inch audio out jack, power connector (DC12V) and a security hole. This particular NAS device could be used as a media server. Watch movies, listen to movies and slide show all of your favorite pictures, this device really does have lots to offer. To navigate through the screens you can use nifty remote which is provided by QNAP. If you do not want to use the remote, you have an option of using wireless mouse and keyboard. Removing motherboard was a little bit challenging. In order to get the motherboard out I had to take a part pretty much everything including the front bezel and the rear panel. On the front of the board I found Intel CPU 1.6GHz quad-core processor. The processor is passively cooled via a heat sink. Just like in TS-251+ the board is cooled by fan in the back of the enclosure. The back of the motherboard hosts two SO-DIMM slots. The unit I am reviewing came with 4GB of DDR3-1600. This is a low voltage ram and ideal for small circuit boards that draw less power than 90 watts. Networking in TS-253A is powered by two Intel I210AT chips. These chips offer 10/100/1000 Mbps connectivity. The i210AT chips also support advanced networking protocols such as 802.1q (VLAN), Wake-On-LAN (WOL) and jumbo frames. We won’t be covering that in this review however its worth to mention these advanced features. Super I/O controller is by iTE, IT8528E. This controller is responsible for basic inputs to the system and monitoring of hardware. Dual display ports (HDMI) are by Texas Instruments, DP139. These Controllers have Max Display Resolution 4k/2k/ at 30 frames per second. The embedded OS is DOM based (disk on module) which is installed on motherboard's SATA port. Audio output is handled by Realtek ALC262 audio controller. This controller is set on the daughter board that has two 1/4 inch input jacks and 1/8 inch output jack. There are two daughter cards in this unit. One is the dual SATA connector card that connects hard drives to the motherboard. And another is the audio input/output card that is located on the back of the device. You have an option to use either mechanical hard drives or SSD drives with TS-253A. The sleds support both 3.5" and 2.5" drives. Installation is as easy as attaching four screws to sled. To find proper mounting holes for the type of drives, look on the back of the sled for proper designation. QNAP QTS 4.2 Smart Start QNAP’s software is the same across all devices capable of running QTS 4.2. This page and the next are similar for the QNAP TS-251+ and the QNAP TS-563 that was recently reviewed. After installing the drives and plugging in the network and power cables, give the power button a tap and the NAS will power up. By default the TS-253A is set to get an address automatically. Once you have the address you can open a web browser and type in the IP address in the address bar. The first page of the initial set up is the Welcome Screen. This screen will will ask you how you would like to set up the TS-253A. If you choose home use, the NAS will enable applications such as music station, video station and photo station; these applications typically do not make sense running in a business environment. The business use option only enables services that are used for business such as Windows networking services, NFS, etc. However, the previously mentioned applications can still be installed in the App Center. Next up, you’ll want to set the NAS device name and the administrator password. The date and time are set on the next screen. You can also choose to synchronize the date and time with a network time protocol (NTP) server. The next screen in the Startup Wizard is setting up the network address. You can choose to set up a static IP address or set the NAS to get an IP address automatically from your DHCP server. In the Services screen, you’ll turn on or off what networking services you will run on the TS-253A. Windows, MAC, and Linux file sharing services are available. You can also turn on or off some applications such as Photo Station, Music Station and the iTunes server. On the next screen is where you get to decide what type of RAID array you would like to run as well as what kind of volume you’d like to use. For most home users a Static Volume is going to work just fine. After you’ve chosen the volume type, then you’ll choose the RAID array configuration. Depending on the number of disks installed and the number of disks selected, the options are Single, JOBD (Just a bunch of disks), RAID 0, or RAID 1. If you’ve never set up a RAID array before or are just curious to and want to learn more, the learn more link displays a brief page on what each of the setting means. The last page of the Startup Wizard confirms your settings. If you’d like to make changes just click on the back button. Changes are not applied until you click the Finish button. After clicking the apply button, the NAS will apply the changes you made during the Smart Start session. A page with an indicator bar will tell you how far along the NAS is in the process of applying the settings. QNAP QTS 4.2 User Interface The QNAP QTS 4.2 operating system in my opinion is very easy to navigate. There are a lot of options in the interface and I will only be covering a basic set. The Smart Start configuration wizard is not mandatory and can be skipped and you can go directly to the user interface of the TS-253A. When you first launch the UI, you will be presented with a log in screen. The default username and password is admin/admin. After logging in, you will be taken to the desktop. The desktop is very similar to a Windows or Linux based interface. Icons can be placed on the desktop as shortcuts to the applications and configuration items you most commonly use. Menus, notifications and performance information are available on the top bar of the screen. If you are like me, you’ll want to know what the hardware on the TS-253A is doing. How hot is the CPU, what’s the fan speed, network bandwidth information is all available by clicking on the gauge icon at the top right of the screen. Each of the areas can be placed on the desktop by simply clicking and dragging the title of the box such as hardware. If you were to drag the hardware section onto the desktop, you’d see the graphical representation that you see in this menu but only for that section. The same applies to system health, resource monitoring, hdd health, and storage. Background tasks is the icon that looks like papers in an inbox on the top bar. Backup status is the circular icon with a hard drive in the middle, and the error and information logs is the icon with the lower case “i” in the center. The menu is the three horizontal bars located at the upper left of the interface. Click on this brings down the menu with all the areas needed to manage the NAS. The control panel is the first item on the list. The control panel is where you will manage all the available configuration settings on the NAS. It is broken down in to four major groups: System Settings, Privilege Settings, Network Services and Applications. The System Settings sub-menu is where you can configure items such as network IP addressing, system security, backups, power management, and firmware updates. The storage manager application can also be launched from this menu. Granting users permissions to shared folder, or adding them to groups is done in the Privilege Settings sub-menu. You can also set disk quotas for the users in this area too. For those users that have a Windows Active Directory domain, you can add the NAS to the domain. This allows you to assign domain accounts vs local NAS accounts permissions to the shared folders on the NAS. The TS-253A can act as a domain controller in addition to being added to your Windows Domain. The networking services sub-menu allows you to configure the services that will run on the network. You can enable Windows, MAC, and Linux networking shares. FTP, Telnet/SSH, SNMP and network discovery and enabled and configured here as well. Typically on a shared folder on the network, when a file is deleted, it is gone. It is not stored in the recycle bin on a Windows PC or server. The network recycle bin on the TS-253A stores deleted items for shared folders when it is enabled. This functions the same way that your recycle bin does on your PC and, just like your PC it will have to be emptied occasionally as it takes up space. The applications sub-menu is where you will manage the applications that are already installed on the NAS. You cannot install additional applications from this location. By default there are a few applications that come with the TS-253A and others are installed during the initial configuration, depending on the options you choose. Going back to the menu, you’ll see the App Center option. This is where you can install and update applications from QNAP’s “app store”. There are a lot of applications that are free however, some require to you purchase additional licenses to enable or expand on certain features. A manual install option is available for those linux guru’s that want to install applications that are not available from QNAP. myQNAPcloud allows you to grant access to the NAS from any where in the world. There is an option to automatically provision certain routers. Once the configuration has been completed, you’ll need to establish a connection to CloudLink. There are options to set up Dynamic DNS so that your users do not have to try and remember an IP address but just remember a URL such as http://mycloud.modders-inc.com. On top of the NAS is a serial number that will grant access to the myQNAPcloud service. Finally, we will tackle the Storage manager menu. Storage manager is where you can monitor and configure items related to the installed hard drives, configured volumes, and the RAID array. The overview page gives you a very quick glance at the storage system. It will let you know if you have any failed disks, volumes or storage pools. Utilization will show how much space each of the shared folders is using. The disks menu will give you more detailed information on each of the physical hard drives installed in the NAS. You can also run SMART tests on each disk to verify their health as well as monitoring temperatures on each disk. The information provided here can be used to determine if your drives are in danger of failing. The storage space menu is where all the RAID and volume configuration is done. There are a lot of options here and you can tweak and tune as much as you’d like. From here you can create a storage pool. Think of a storage pools as a container for your physical hard drives. A pool can only have one RAID type but you can have multiple storage pools. For example, storage pool 2 may contain disks 1 & 2 and is a RAID 0 array and storage pool 2 contains disk 3 & 4 and is a RAID 1 array with disk 5 as a hot spare. This gives you two storage pools with two types of RAID arrays. Thick and Thin volumes be created in storage pools. However, the TS253A only supports RAID types 1 & 0. A single Static volume will allocate 100% of the available space for the selected drives. It can be a little confusing determining which type of volume you’d like to use. QNAP’s help is an outstanding resource. The Storage Manager also allows more advanced features such as Cache Acceleration. Cache Acceleration allows the NAS to determine what data is used the most. It will then use the fastest disks to store a copy of the data and synchronize it back to the main storage disks. Typically you’ll want to have fast storage such as SSDs available. A typical set up may look like 2 SSDs configured in RAID 0 and 3 mechanical drives configured for RAID 5. With Cache Acceleration turned on, over time the NAS will see what data is accessed the most and move a copy to the SSDs. While there is very little improvement on transfer speeds (a single SSD can transfer more data than ate a 1 gb network link) the access times can be dramatically reduced. In the default configuration, the QNAP TS-253A only supports two drives however, QNAP does sell expansion cabinets that can be added to this NAS to allow more drives and different RAID arrays. With 2 drives and both RAID arrays taking up two disks, SSD caching is impossible. Setting up a Single Drive and using SSD Caching is possible but you lose the functionality of RAID. There are a few trade-offs. Testing Methodology System Configuration Case Cooler Master Cosmos II CPU AMD FX-8370E Motherboard ASRock 990FX Killer Ram 2 GB G.Skill F3-12800CL9q DDR3-1600 GPU Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 Hard Drives Samsung 850 EVO 256gb SSD Network Cards Dual Port Intel Pro/1000 PT Switches ALLIED TELESYN AT-9924T ADVANCED LAYER 3+ GIGABIT 24-PORT NETWORK SWITCH, Boot (2.6.6-02) Cat6E cables used for network testing. Power Supply Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W 2 Seagate 4 TB 7200 RPM desktop drives were installed and used in the NAS tests. A dual port Intel network card was installed in the test system. The QNAP TS-253A in all RAID arrays used a Single Static Volume. Network Layout For all tests the NAS was configured to use the a single network interface. One CAT 6 cable was connected to the Allied Telesis AT-9924T from the NAS and one CAT 6 cable was connected to the workstation from the switch. Testing was done on the PC with only 1 network card active; the Killer network card and the corresponding software were disabled for the testing. The switch was cleared of any configuration and left in a un-configured state. Jumbo frames was not enabled and no changes to the network interfaces was made. Software All testing is done based off of a single client accessing the NAS. To test NAS Performance I used The Intel NAS Performance toolkit. The Intel NAS Performance toolkit simulates various tasks for storage devices such as video streaming, copying files and folders to and from the NAS as well as creating content directly on the NAS. To limit caching, a 2GB G.Skill memory module was used in all tests. All options in the Performance toolkit were left that the defaults. The NAS performance test is free to download. You can pick up a copy for yourself here. All tests were run a total of three times then averaged to get the final result. RAID 0 and RAID 1 were tested. Tests were run after all the RAID arrays were fully synchronized RAID Information Images courtesy of Wikipedia JOBD or Just a Bunch Of Disks is exactly what the name describes. The hard drives have no actual raid functionality and are spanned at random data is written at random. RAID 0 is a stripe set and data is written across the disks evenly. The advantage of RAID 0 is speed and increased capacity. With RAID 0 there is no redundancy and data loss is very possible. RAID 1 is a mirrored set and data is mirrored from one drive to another. The advantage of RAID 1 is data redundancy as each piece of data is written to both disks. The disadvantage of RAID 1 is write speed is decreased as compared to RAID 0 due to the write operation is performed on both disks. RAID 1 capacity is that of the smallest disk. RAID 10 combines the 1st two raid levels and is a mirror of a stripe set. This allows for better speed of a RAID 0 array but the data integrity of a RAID 1 array. RAID 5 is a stripe set with parity. RAID 5 requires at least 3 disks. Data is striped across each disk, and each disk has a parity block. RAID 5 allows the loss of one drive without losing data. The advantage to RAID 5 is read speeds increase as the number of drives increase but the disadvantage is write speeds are slower as the number of drives is increased. There is overhead with RAID 5 as the parity bit needs to be calculated and with software RAID 5 there is more of a performance hit. RAID 6 expands on RAID 5 by adding an additional parity block to the array that is distributed across all the disks. Since there are two parity blocks in the array more overhead is used with a RAID 6 array. For a full breakdown of RAID levels, take a look at the Wikipedia article here. RAID configurations are a highly debated topic. RAID has been around for a very long time. Hard drives have changed, but the technology behind RAID really hasn’t. So what may have been considered ideal a few years ago may not be ideal today. If you are solely relying on multiple hard drives as a safety measure to prevent data loss, you are in for a disaster. Ideally you will use a mutli-drive array for an increase in speed and lower access times and have a backup of your data elsewhere. I have seen arrays with hot spares that had multiple drives fail and the data was gone. Intel NAS Performance Toolkit Results Following is the results of the Intel NAS Performance Toolkit benchmark for TS-253A and TS-251+. As you can see both of the devices are very close in performance to each other. Conclusion I have to admit. I like what’s is happening with NAS manufacturers. More and more devices I see that provide not only basic storage capabilities but also have advanced features that could be very beneficial. The QNAP TS-253A offers a bunch of advanced options to the user. Right out of the box you can have a media center with advanced features like DLNA, Web Server, SQL Server and even phpMyAdmin. Some features are not installed out of the box however, QNAP encourages its customers to use App Center to download and use over 100(and growing) approved packages for TS-253A. What I found handy is the HybridDesk Station and Surveillance Station. Hybrid DeskStation (when installed) offers a light weight desktop environment similar to Windows. Some applications which are provided to a user are Chrome, Firefox and Skype. You can freely watch your favorite you tube videos and browse Facebook however don't expect to do any gaming. Surveillance Station offers CCTV services for IP based camera networks. Surveillance Stations (when installed) can be set up to use with up to four IP cameras. If you have more than four cameras, you are required purchase an extended license from directly from QNAP. While reviewing the TS-253A I've loaded it up Media Center with family movies, images and some of the mp3 I had on hand for testing. Overall performance of this device has been nothing more than pleasurable. Home made movies were played back without any issues what so ever. What I did found handy is the remote that comes with TS-253A. Controlling speed of the slide shows and skipping audio tracks was never an issue. Temperatures of the system staid in low 40's C while streaming some movies. Fan which is controlled by the motherboard revved up a few times to keep up with the increasing temperatures however it never got higher than 1400 rpm. File transfer in this unit utilizes full bandwidth its allowed. While copying and writing files to and from the NAS I saw maximum utilization of bandwidth reaching up to 98 %. When streaming media the utilization was about 25% of the whole bandwidth (1gbps). TS-253A has two Network Adapters which could be used to balance the load however you would need managed switch to do that. Load balancing is not tested in my review as most consumers do not have manages switches in their houses. Reliability is important and this is something I do not take lightly. TS-253A offers RAID redundancy so in the event of a drive failure, your data is still unaffected. This particular unit offers RAID 0 and 1 levels. I do have to remind you that RAID 0 does not provide any protection against hardware failure. Other QNAP devices such as TS-453A and TS-653A offer other levels of RAID protections such as RAID 5 and RAID 10. What sets QNAP TS-253A apart from other manufacturers is that you get all of the benefits of an enterprise level NAS in a smaller, more affordable device. Depending on how much space you are looking to protect, you may look for extended bay devices by QNAP such as TS-453A and TS-653A. Is it worth it? Currently TS-253A retails for about 499$ USD without drives. My sample was sent out with 4GB of ram however 8GB modules are also available for purchase for about 19$ per stick (two sticks). The price vs performance vs features in this device is very well balanced. You do get what you pay for and I feel that the price of this unit is very well justified with features.
