| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Product | QNAP Turbo NAS (TS-869 Pro) [Website] |
| Summary | BYOD eight-bay Intel D2700 Atom RAID SATA NAS with many serving options. |
| Pros | • Cloud backup to Amazon S3, ElephantDrive, Symform • The usual extensive QNAP Feature Set |
| Cons | • Expensive • No 10 GbE option |
Typical Price: $99999 Buy From Amazon
Introduction
QNAP’s TS-869 Pro is a eight-bay version of the five-drive TS-569 Pro I reviewed last October. Like its smaller sibling, the TS-869 Pro is based on Intel’s dual-core D2700 Atom processor.
From the front side, the TS-869 Pro looks like strikingly similiar to the other recent QNAP NASes, adding three drives to the TS-569 Pro’s profile for a wider stance. The front panel has a USB 2.0 port vs. the blue USB 3.0 port found on the QNAP TS-559 Pro II.
Figure 1: QNAP TS-869 Pro Front and rear panel callouts
On the rear there is an ample selection of ports. An HDMI port (for console access and HD Station), two blue USB 3.0 ports, dual eSATA ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and four USB 2.0 ports.
Inside
Inside the TS-869 Pro is exactly the same as the TS-569 Pro with the addition of a third Marvell 88SE9125 SATA 6Gb/s and PATA Host Controller on the backplane for the additional drive slots. And when I say identical, I mean that both NASes use the same exact board, marked TS869-PRO in the photo below taken from the TS-569 Pro review.
Same board, different NAS
I’ve included the key component information in the table below, for pictures and more detailed information please see the TS-569 Pro review.
| CPU | Intel Atom Dual-Core D2700 @ 2.13 GHz |
|---|---|
| RAM | 1 GB DDR3 1333 SoDIMM (expandable to 3 GB) |
| Flash | 512 MB DOM |
| Ethernet | Intel WG82574L (x2) |
| Companion | Intel NM10 Express Chipset [guess] |
| USB 3.0 | Etron Tech EJ188G |
| Audio | None |
| SATA | Marvell 88SE9125 SATA 6Gb/s and PATA Host Controllers (x3) |
| I/O | ITE IT8721F temperature, fan and voltage monitoring controller |
| Video | Asmedia ASM1442 HDMI level shifter (console access) |
Table 1: Key component summary and comparison
The NAS was equipped for testing with four Western Digital Red 3TB drives (WD30EFRX) supplied by SmallNetBuilder. Power consumption measured 48 W with the 4 drives spun up and 33 W with them spun down. Fan and drive noise could be classified as medium-low, with most of the noise coming from the drives.
Features
Firmware at test time was 3.8.2 Build 20130301. This version includes the MyCloudNAS feature and ElephantDrive cloud backup option. This version has added another cloud-based storage feature: Symform. Symform lets you allocate a portion of your QNAP NAS in return for free cloud storage. It’s also available for Windows, MacOS and Linux (beta) systems so you can share some of your storage there.
We covered MyCloudNAS in the TS-112 review. For a run-through of V3’s other features, see the review or the online demo.
Performance
The TS-869 Pro was tested with 3.8.2 Build 20130301 firmware using our standard NAS test process.
The Benchmark Summary below shows pretty consistent Windows File Copy performance for RAID 0, 5 and 10 modes. RAID 0 write shows the highest results at 107 MB/s, with 97 and 100 MB/s for RAID 5 and 10, respectively.
File Copy read has even less variance at 106, 104 and 104 MB/s for RAID 0, 5 and 10, respectively.
QNAP TS-869 Pro Benchmark Summary
NASPT File copy results are higher than their Windows File Copy counterparts for write (134, 127, 128 MB/s) , but lower for read (92, 93, 93 MB/s) for RAID 0, 5 and 10 respectively.
iSCSI target write performance to target created on a RAID 5 volume came in at a respectable 87 MB/s, with read slightly lower at 82 MB/s.
Best attached backup performance of 112 MB/s was obtained with eSATA / NTFS, USB3 /NTFS and USB3 / FAT.
For a competitive look, I ran filtered RAID 5 File Copy charts selecting four other Intel Atom D2700-based NASes for comparison, i.e. the ASUSTOR AS-604T, Synology DS412+, Thecus N7510 and the very recently reviewed LaCie 5big NAS Pro. All RAID 5 and 10 tests are run using four-drive volumes, to not give an advantage (or disadvantage) to a NAS with more drives.
Like we’ve been seeing quite a bit with Atom-based NASes, the competitors change positions from benchmark to benchmark, but results are close enough that it would be difficult to detect a significant performance difference among the group in real-world use. The possible exception in this group is the LaCie 5big NAS Pro, which lags significantly behind the pack in three out of four benchmarks compared.
RAID 5 File Copy Performance comparison
Conclusion
Just like the TS-569 Pro and other QNAP offerings, QNAP delivers a high quality NAS, packed with performance and features. And like other QNAP products, it is relatively expensive.
As mentioned in the TS-569 Pro review, we have seen very little performance difference among the D510, D525, and D2700 Atom variants. So value-conscious buyers might want to look for a deal on less-expensive models based on Intel dual-core D5xx Atoms.
Whatever you decide, you’ll be getting a eight-bay NAS that is one of the best out there. Just not one of the most budget-friendly ones.Use the new NAS Finder and NAS Charts to compare the TS-869 Pro with other products.