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To say that QNAP's TVS-1282-i7-64G is feature rich is a bit like saying Roger Federer is a bit handy with a tennis racquet. Not only do you get twelve external drive bays, there's also an Intel Core i7-7700 CPU, 64GB of DDR4-2133MHz memory, three PCIe Gen.3 slots; two x4 and a single x8, a pair of SATA M.2 slots, four Gigabit Ethernet ports and last but by no means least, three HDMI ports.
The three Gen.3 PCIe ports give the TVS-1282 a good deal of expandability and a degree of future proofing. They support 10/40 GbE networking adapters, PCIe NVMe SSD and USB 3.1 expansion cards. The x8 PCIe slot even supports dedicated graphics cards, with a full compatibility list is on QNAP's website. If you plan on going down this route, you may well need to choose one of the 450W powered versions of the TVS-1282 (the standard PSU is 250W). One word of caution though, you will need to take care choosing cards for the pair of x4 slots as there is only around 147mm of clearance because of the proximity of the CPU cooling shroud.
Any NAS is only as good as its operating software and the TVS-1282 uses one of the best ones around, QNAP's QTS. It's a quick and easy to install OS with a graphically rich interface which is useful for first time users to navigate around the software – but for the more advanced users, delving beneath the surface reveals a whole host of features including a couple of important ones for data heavy environments; network traffic distribution and tiered storage.
As the TVS-1282 has four 1GbE NICs (plus any additional add-in cards) it can be set up so applications can use dedicated NICs to help alleviate any network traffic distribution problems. Setting up and managing these network connections can be done via the Network & Virtual Switch app which can be downloaded from the QTS App Center. Using QNAP’s powerful Qtier technology you can set up SSD caching and auto-tiering, so storage can be optimised according to how it's being stored and used. Qtier 2.0 analyses I/O read and writes of any storage pools to determine the best course of action; the most active “hot” data is moved to faster performing drives, while the less active “cold” data is migrated to slower but higher capacity drives
The TVS-1282 also usefully supports application based partitioning. When multiple applications are running on the same storage, media throughput tends to drop as the media is busy handling I/O requests from all the applications at once which can cause bottlenecks to occur in data transfers. With application based partitioning, each of the different types of storage supported by the TVS-1282; HDD, M.2 and SSD, can be configured as independent partitions for particular applications which neatly side steps the problem.
Should you start to run out of storage space with the base unit, worry not as the TVS-1282 supports QNAP's UX-500P, UX-800P and REXP-1000 Pro expansion enclosures. Both the UX-500P (5-bay) and the UX-800P (8-bay) units feature hot-swappable bays and connect to the TVS-1282 via one of the rear USB 3.0 ports. Things get a little more complicated with the 10-bay REXP-1000 Pro as it uses a SAS interface so you will need a 12 Gb/s SAS expansion card in the TVS-1282 to be able to connect to it.
We found the QNAP TVS-1282-i7-64G on Span.com for £2,961.60 (inc VAT) HERE.
Pros
- Impressive list of hardware features.
- QTS software.
- Expandability.
Cons
- The two x4 PCIe slots have a card length limit of 147mm
KitGuru says: It's a superb NAS for SMB users with a powerful OS and the ability to expand as any company grows, with support for faster networking and SSD caching should the need arise. The storage capacity can be expanded with expansion enclosures, giving you huge amounts of storage space.
