KitGuru has always been a fan of the QNAP interface construction and implementation and with the ATOM 1.8ghz processor onboard it is extremely responsive.
The panel on the left breaks down the various subsections which, after many years of development and feedback make perfect sense.
The first section is the ‘System Administration' panel which offers various security and hardware related options. You can also perform backups here and update the firmware manually if you wish. The QNAP TS-259 Pro+ offers a full wealth of Port Trunking and Jumbo Frames settings which can help improve performance, especially if multiple users are accessing the system simultaneously.
The second tier of panels is grouped under the ‘Disk Management' subcategory. This offers many options such as formatting drives, changing Raid configurations and general drive maintenance if you need it. You can turn on encrypted file systems, enable iSCSI devices and create virtual disks.
The third category is ‘Access Right Management' which offers settings to allow specific users and groups access to certain folders. You can also adjust quota rights for groups, allocating bandwidth as desired.
The networking section covers a plethora of bases for specific network demands. Microsoft and Apple networking protocols are fully supported for multiplatform networks and FTP, Telnet, SNMP and Webserver options are also supported.
The QNAP TS-259 Pro+, much like the Synology platforms we have recently reviewed allows for various media and surveillance options. iTunes and MySQL Server are also settings that can be configured to suit both business and home environments.
As we discussed earlier, the product has a variety of ports for USB and eSATA external drives, these can be used for backup purposes and for additional external storage, to offer futureproofing. Obviously when USB 2.0 is used as an interface medium then transfer rates will be limited to around 35-40mb/s under real world conditions.
The System Status category has options to allow for hardware analysis. You can see how the processor is coping under load conditions and also how much memory is being used. These panels are useful for monitoring bandwidth transfer speeds and there is a handy Process monitoring panel which works in a similar way to the Microsoft Windows monitoring.
Built like a tank, as always. love their products.
compares well against the synology 710 unit, a little slower, but not really noticeable, but more suited to business market with design rather than home market. room for both I think.
QNAP, our business uses a mixture of their older products, nice to see them sprucing up their performance with this generation.
excellent product, bit much for what I need at home, but pricing seems good.
QNAP and Synology certainly are going toe to toe. both are really delivering this year so far. its nice to see a company drive another harder