Qnap TS-219P Turbo Nas There are two main criticisms that can be levelled at Qnap’s TS-209 range of Nas boxes: they have poor file transfer speeds and poor access to the hard drives. The TS-219P tackles those issues head on with a faster 1.2GHz Marvell processor, compared with a 500MHz Marvell chip in the TS-209P, and sensible hot-swappable bays. …
These aren't simply hard drives connected to a network adapter. The NAS is a small computer. It can run applications (like SABNZBD+) and has a variant of Linux installed. You need to see this more as an alternative to a home server - host files privately and publically, download torrents and usenet stuff. Where 2 years ago you'd need a PC to do this, now you can get an embedded box to serve that purpose.
Personally I'd buy one of the £150 Linux Intel Atom boxes now available (Acer Aspire Revo) and plug in an E-Sata drive, but this certainly has considerably more than £15 of parts in it.
Atom is the way forward with NAS. Low power, low heat, but powerful enough to make a decent little home server and not need a monster noisy power supply sucking in dust 24/7 that will go bang (as my home build PC servers frequently do!).
Sadly Qnap's Atom versions (e.g. TS-239) are even more expensive! There are cheaper alternatives.
@Bob H - These typically have a proper PC motherboard (in small form factor), processor, memory (typically 1GB these days), often a RAID card/chip, GB network adapter (or two, maybe with failover, load balancing, etc in some cases), a few peripheral ports, support for a UPS, (usually) hot swap drive bays, and a power supply on top. They're enough to make a good home server running streaming servers, web, email, etc. And then the branded ones come with all the software and packages preinstalled with easy to use interface. Even considering the mark up, there's a lot more than £15 of parts in there, and considerably more in value.
The upside is that for the price you get a very competent NAS solution with which you will have to do little tinkering, and is an almost plug'n'play solution for the average user. However, if you have the tech knowledge to tinker and want to play with stuff like FreeNAS or other Linux builds, you can go get an old PC or server off eBay for £50 and have a more useful (it can double as a more effective print, file and webserver) and expandable tool, and with components that can be repaired or upgraded at will, whereas one of these off-the-shelf NAS units are very hard to repair if they go wrong (believe me, I've tried!). Some buyers would never consider building their own NAS, so for them these commercial solutions are great. For others they are just too constrained and pricey compared to a homebuild.
Sure you can put together a small pc cheaper and use it as server, but in the end I bought a QNAP NAS and am happy with it:
- small footprint
- reasonably fast
- reasonably silent
- low power (and this ARM version needs much less power than the atom one!)
- hackable out of the box, but already very complete
I've had a 209 since November last year and in the time up to now I've only just begun to realise what it can do.
Initially I just wanted a mirrored NAS that I could store all my movies and music on after having lost 300GB worth in a hard disk crash, but soon after I realised it could:
- Stream via uPnP via built in Twonky Server
- Act as an iTunes server
- host an FTP server accessible over the internet for uploading and downloading files.
- Same as above over HTTP
- Design and Host my website, forum and blog.
- Forward IP information to a 3rd party DNS company
- Stream music through a web interface over the internet
- Host an Email server
- Host 2 printers and share them over the network
- Act as DHCP server for the network
- Connect to IP cameras on the network and act as a server for them
- backup to a USB drive via a one touch button (slow as hell for an initial load but can properly sync rather than wipe and reload everything on the target drive).
- Act as a TimeMachine backup drive (with a bit of tweaking)
- Act as a torrent and HTTP/FTP download server.
- Join the Mule file sharing network
And I'm sure there's more I'm leaving out, I've used quite a few of these features but not all of them. Sure, there are some I will likely never use but I doubt anyone will manage to use ALL of the above.
And the QNAP team are constantly pushing out updates with new features, and the QPKG facility allows third party software to be installed and accessed via the web interface.
I'm more than satisfied with my decision to buy the 209, even though transfer speeds aren't that great. If the 219 addresses these issues then I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good all round NAS product.
"Sure you can put together a small pc cheaper and use it as server, but in the end I bought a QNAP NAS and am happy with it:"
And I'm just about to do the same. Been considering a NAS box for while, this is the first one I've seen that ticks all the boxes for me.
I've actually got most of the services running on a couple (or three) PCs under Linux already. However, our sixth power cut in the last month has highlighted how much use the whole family makes of the servers, not just yours truly. So one of these, a small UPS, a couple of 1TB drives that I've already got (had been planning to upgrade a server anyway) and that should be the last time I have to talk the wife through restarting the servers. And I get my playpen servers back!
The alternative of course is to spin your own NAS using a SheevaPlug. 1.2Ghz ARM based Kirkwood processor, 512MB RAM, 512MB Flash, SDCard, USB2, 1Gb Ethernet. $99 Runs Ubuntu from flash, with plenty of room for your own stuff, stick a Western Digital MyBook Mirror on the USB port and bobs yer uncle so they say..
This what I have done, and I get the best of both worlds, near NAS formfactor, NAS power consumption, ultimate configurability and a enough resources to do the most CPU intensive tasks (like transcodiing on TwonkyMedia).
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