QNAP TS-451+ SOHO NAS Review
by Ganesh T S on October 29, 2015 8:00 AM ESTMulti-Client CIFS Performance for Consumer Workloads
The workloads experienced by a NAS unit in a typical home consumer setting have changed quite a bit over the last few years. Multiple mobile devices in a typical household raise the possibility that a NAS could be subject to the streaming out of multiple video files simultaneously. The popularity of IP cameras also make it necessary for NAS units to be able to record multiple video streams at the same time.
In our previous NAS reviews, we evaluated multi-client scenarios using synthetic workload traces and IOMeter. While there is nothing wrong in presenting numbers from such benchmarks, the reader is often left confused as to what those numbers might mean for his particular use-cases. Intel's NASPT benchmarking program gives us a good idea of the performance of the NAS unit when accessed by a single client. We took the source code of Intel's NASPT along with the supplied application traces and tweaked them to be able to run from more than one Windows client simultaneously in a co-ordinated manner. The graphs below present the results from tracking various metrics during the course of the benchmark runs. It must be noted that the average service times refer to what is obtained for all the traces when some of the data has already been cached in the client's memory. Unfortunately, NASPT doesn't provide any sort of guideline on what the optimal bandwidth and service times are for a good user experience.
Content Creation
The Content Creation workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 6 clients. Beyond that, we have a noticeable drop in the per-client bandwidth numbers. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
Folder Copy from NAS
The Folder Copy from NAS workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 10 clients (maximum that we tested). The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
Folder Copy to NAS
The Folder Copy to NAS workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 6 clients. Beyond that, we have a saturation of the total throughput despite being on a 802.3ad link. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
File Copy from NAS
The File Copy from NAS workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 4 clients. Beyond that, the total available bandwidth plateaus well below the link-aggregation limit, indicating an IOPS issue. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
File Copy to NAS
The File Copy to NAS workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 6 clients. Beyond that, we have a sudden spike in the average response time. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
HD Video (1x) Playback
The HD Video (1x) Playback workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 3 clients. Beyond that, we have a plateau slightly below the link-aggregation limit. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Playback.png)
HD Video(1x) Playback and Record
The HD Video(1x) Playback and Record workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 4 clients. Beyond that, we have a plateauing of the total bandwidth number. Thanks to the full-duplex nature of the NICs, we are able to cross the 250 MBps mark (thanks to the simultaneous reads and writes through the LAN). The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Playback-and-Record.png)
HD Video (1x) Record
The HD Video (1x) Record workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 4 clients. Beyond that, we have a sudden spike in the average response time. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Record.png)
HD Video (2x) Playback
The HD Video (2x) Playback workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 3 clients. Beyond that, the total available bandwidth plateaus. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Playback.png)
HD Video (4x) Playback
The HD Video (4x) Playback workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 3 clients. Beyond that, the total available bandwidth plateaus. The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
-Playback.png)
Office Productivity
The Office Productivity workload seems to get acceptable performance for up to 10 clients (maximum that we tested). The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
Photo Album
The Photo Album workload also seems to get acceptable performance for up to 10 clients (maximum we tested). The detailed table with a breakdown of all the throughput numbers as well as the service times is available here
The detailed logs from the processing of our benchmarks - inclusive of metrics such as the file open times for each workload on each of the clients - can be found here
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ant6n - Thursday, October 29, 2015 - link
I know this is a common kind of complaint under these reviews; but I often poke at NAS reviews as something that would be a nice-to-have, and then can't get myself to read past the price tag. I know these aren't really home devices. But aren't there multi-bay (4+) NAS systems with, say, an arm, for less than 300$?DanNeely - Thursday, October 29, 2015 - link
A quick search on Amazon and Google shows that there are a number of entry level 4 bay NASes for $250-300. Filtering solely by brand name, the $282 QNAP TS-431 would be my initial recommendation. Synology, the other nas maker (along with QNAP) with what's generally regarded as top flight software wants over a hundred more for the DS414j; which appears to be their cheapest 4x3.5" drive model.Savardm - Thursday, October 29, 2015 - link
I own a T-431 and so I'm always interested in these reviews because I find there isn't that many NAS reviews around. This particular review seems way more advanced then what I actually do with mine. I use mine to download/seed torrents and hold my Library of content which I access from several devices. I also really like the personal cloud features. I was worried when I bought my unit that the RAM and processor would be a major issue but it never lags. I'm not sure how it could get any better really. I think this must be because I am not using it as a typical NAS user? Anyway, all this to say, the TS-431 is the best gadget purchase I have ever made, I really do love it.ivyanev - Friday, October 30, 2015 - link
You could build a dedicated NAS for less than 300$ with the capability of 4+ drives. It is easy, and you may already have the parts. The question is do you NEED 4 drives? Why don't you get basic 1 drive unit and test if you need one. If you love it but still want redundancy you can later upgrade.random2 - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
"Why don't you get basic 1 drive unit and test if you need one."Oh, you mean an external drive? I think you might be missing the whole point of redundant storage.
Moishe - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
The cost is certainly high for a diskless system. Crazy.manly - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
With all the consolidation in the hard disk industry, I think the price curve is still somewhat dominated by the cost of 4 hard drives with TLER support. 3 TB NAS drives are somewhat affordable, but 4 TB is still a bit pricey in my opinion even for consumer NAS drives. "Enterprise" SATA drives are flat out pricey at higher capacities, because the last few manufacturers can absolutely get away with it.The QNAP TS-451 (apparently now an older model) was on sale numerous times over the past 12 months for $350 + tax. I think that's a pretty attractive price point considering the performance. IIRC, Synology's somewhat comparable units were at least $100 higher although until recently DSM had always been favored by reviewers.
The sale price may have been in anticipation of the release of the TS-451+ but since it happened somewhat frequently over the course of an entire year-long period, it was a commonly available deal here in the U.S. Not sure how aggressive QNAP will be for the year ahead though.
Dunkurs1987 - Tuesday, January 5, 2016 - link
This is the price you can expect from 8GB version. There is 2GB option available too. Should be ok with limited tasks.http://www.span.com/product/Qnap-Desktop-NAS-TS-45...
Der2 - Thursday, October 29, 2015 - link
Very nice NAS review.Reflex - Thursday, October 29, 2015 - link
One feature that I really want to see is Sync to OneDrive and other cloud providers. These days a lot of these services offer unlimited or incredibly large backups for free, and being able to sync to them frees a SOHO environment from having to find an offsite backup solution.