Benchmarking
For some quick benchmarks, I tested SMB and NFS reads and writes. I setup the unit with four 80 GB SATAII 7200 RPM hard drives in RAID5. They were formatted with Ext4 and did not use encryption.
A 6.1 GB file was transferred from my computer’s hard drive through its gigabit Ethernet interface to a Dell gigabit switch and on to the TS-809 Pro through its dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces. I simply watched GNOME’s file transfer dialog for each to provide a general idea of the speed of the unit.
Keep in mind that these results would undoubtedly be even higher with faster, higher cache drives such as the modern 750 GB and 1 TB drives.
SMB:
Read: ~27.5 MB/s = 220 Mbps throughout
Write: ~31 MB/s = 248 Mbps throughout
NFS:
Read: ~35 MB/s = 280 Mbps starting near 25 MB/s but exceeding 35 MB for more than 2/3
Write: ~30.5 MB/s = 244 Mbps throughout
I looked back at the review of the Synology DS-409+ for a quick comparison, and saw 55 MB/s read and 26.5 MB/s write for the NFS tests on that unit, with four brand new 750 GB hard drives in it. Surely, if this QNAP had newer drives in it, it would be a contender in a race.
The power consumption isn’t bad. It was about 64 W idle and ~74W load.
Final Thoughts
The QNAP TS-809 Pro is another quality unit from the Taiwanese company. The administration panel overhaul is the greatest new feature, and all units get it.
The 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of RAM makes this thing a viable intranet server or even an Internet server for a low to medium traffic site. It’s a computer in its own right-it has a VGA port and could probably support a keyboard and mouse if they’re enabled in the kernel. Not bad at all.
Because it’s probably powered by a consumer-level PSU, that PSU is likely to die at some point. This will probably happen outside of the warranty period, and will likely be irreplaceable.
I’m also concerned about the propensity of the unit to heat up quickly. The cooling may not be ideal, but it’s adequate.
At $1700, the QNAP TS-809 Pro is probably prohibitively expensive for home and small business users. Medium and large businesses and perhaps even a small enterprise could consider the TS-809 Pro. At that level, I’ll bet that some would be able to get a large chassis server, throw a bunch of 1 TB hard drives in it with a fresh copy of Ubuntu Linux or OpenSolaris and have a device which may require some configuration at first but will have easier-to-replace parts and perhaps 2/3 the cost.
ThinkComputers gives the QNAP TS-809 Pro Network Attached Storage Device a 9 out of 10 score and our Editor’s Choice Award!
Pros:
– Speedy
– Very nice administration interface
– Low power consumption for class of device
– Tech support is notoriously good
Cons:
– Service manager interfaces (download, multimedia, web file management) could use a facelift
– Prohibitively expensive for anyone but businesses
– PSU may be irreplaceable
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