QNAP's new 4-bay Atom-based TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Feb 4th 2009 1:51PM
posted Feb 4th 2009 1:51PM
It's already been an exciting year for QNAP fanboys... not only has the company graced the world (and our pages) with a new 6-bay NAS, but it's already back for more. Billed as "the world's first 4-bay Intel Atom-based NAS," the TS-439 Pro Turbo NAS sports an Intel 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB memory, support for RAID 0/1/5/6/5+spare configurations, up to 6TB capacity (that's before you start adding external drives) and a whole host of server functions, including all the FTPing, DDNS, MySQL and XDove mail servin' your little heart desires. And if that weren't enough, the Surveillance Station feature supports video monitoring and recording from up to four IP-based cameras. No price listed, but we do have plenty of glamor shots for you in the gallery below.
mmmm, I love me some atom
Can we get a performance comparison between this and the drobo?
The drobo requires the drobo share to operate as a NAS. From what I have read the Drobo + Drobo share is pretty slow. That said I have not read anything about the performance of the QNAP, but their promotional materials said it was fast.
Mmm.
Fap, fap, fap....
they're no where to be found. the 6 drive version isn't available yet?
6TB max internal is pretty lame, especially with 2TB drives floating around now.
IT might support 8TB . Maybe when it was being made 2TB disks werent out yet. I would think all it would take is at most a firmware update.
Who knows...? All we know is that as of right now it's 6TB.
HMM i have no idea where they got 6TB. I took a look at all the specs on their site and their downlaodable documents and cant find a max capacity. So i wouldnt look into that 6TB max too much .
That or the 6TB is factoring four 2TB drives in a RAID 5 configuration.
Max volume size with their setups is 8TB. They will not say 8TB max until 2TB drives are on the market and they have been able to test with them.
4x1.5TB = 6TB (claimed) capacity. They probably created the press release before the Western Digital 2TB drive was launched (or the 2TB Seagate paper launched). There's no software or hardware barrier that would prevent it from running 4x2TB or higher aside from filesystem limits which can be easily circumvented through partitioning or other means.
8tb of pronos?
6TB of porn at most (2TB x4 w/raid) since all the raid configurations in the article will give you no more than 6TB. They don't list JBOD but if JBOD is supported you could store all 8TB of your porn.
i just got a TS-409 a month or two ago.
i think its more than powerful enough for all of the basic stuff.
i can't imagine what features they could add with a boost in processing power!
how does using a atom make it better? I was thinking of buying a NAS, but read so much stuff about the little operating system you can choose (and how it uses linux, which I know nothing about) that it drove me away.
You could use Windows Vista Server 2008 can't you? Or just learn something new?
You could use Windows Server 2008. Or learn something new. Your choice.
Ubuntu server is pretty nice, its a full sized OS so its nice and intuitive.
Or you could pay whatever they charge for Windows Server these days
Atom is good for this type of application because of it's low power consumption, adequate performance, and flexibility (x86 architecture).
Yea very nice and im sure at a price none of us can afford
according to smallnetbuilder.com the price is $799 which seems rather steep without any drives.
First 4 bay atom nas?
1) Chenbro home server chassis
2) Any of the 12 or so Atom Mini ITX boards floating around
3) 4x 3.5" hot swap drives
all available to me now today, all available to me about 2 months ago, and all available to me at a fraction of what this thing will undoubtedly cost. You could get some 2Tb goodness and have an 8Tb server with a dual core atom if you were feeling decadent...
I agree. You can get an Atom board with Gb ethernet for $80, a stick of ram for $20, and hard drives at a TB around $100. The Chenbro case is a little spendy, but even there, your costs are still around $400. I have no doubt this thing will be in the $600+ range.
I didn't realize you'd released them as a finished product
There are reasons for paying the extra $, though. (I've recently replaced a homebuilt server-based NAS with a QNAP TS-409.) For one, if something goes wrong with your homebrew setup, you have multiple warranties to deal with rather than just one. Secondly, power consumption and noise levels are usually lower on dedicated hardware than with a parts-built server. For me though, the reason I switched when replacing my old NAS was that I wanted it to just work. On the old box, I had to build the server, install an OS, install all the software I needed for functionality, and then troubleshoot it when it didn't all play nicely together. There's real value in that.
That being said, the cheapest solution will always be a home built system. If you have lots of time and a tight budget, that's the way to go.
I am waiting for the 2.5" drive version.
Quick... someone tell them RAID 6 requires 5 drives.
(unless they meant you to achieve RAID 6 by using eSATA drives...)
nevermind... the example used 5 disks, mod down
How do you get RAID6 requires 5 drives? RAID 6 only requires a mininum of 4 drives. It's just 2 parity stripes, so it's only 1 drive more than a RAID 5 array. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_6#RAID_6
slow!
6gb? didnt the 2tb drives just come out wouldnt that make the maximum internal.... 8gb?
Call me when we got less than 100 US NAS with four drives.
:-)
I think everyone should have one of these at home to serve their own email, websites and files for ubiquitous availability of all their data. Would make a great Myspace3.0 product (comeback). Plug it into your cable/dsl modem and go. Myspace can host the Dynamic DNS service while you can administer access for friends, family and guests.
Freaking figures. I just bought a QNAP TS-409 last week and have it set up and running as of last night. Hopefully there aren't too many upgrades in this device that would make me regret my purchase.
I was about to buy a TS-409 just before Xmas, but the store was out of stock. Glad i didn't now.
This seems to sit a bit higher on the QNAP food-chain though, so Im a bit worried how much more $$$ Ill be spending (especially with the crappy Australian dollar at the moment). Can anyone tell me the US RRP for the TS-409 so i can compare?
The TS-439 was seen at CES or some other place, and it has been on their website for the last week or so. But the official press release didn't come out until today. The current guesses about the price is $799 for the TS-439, so the TS-409 is still nice as it will probably be cheaper.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30702/242/
I have looked at many of these devices and I just cannot justify spending money on them for what they really are. I understand some users that do not know much about computer will like these for their simplicity, but when I can build something for cheaper, I really don't see the point.
I am currently working on replacing my current pieced together NAS. The current plan is to get a dedicated storage array case with room for 20 or more hard drives and run a stripped down linux distro with the main purpose to run a virtual system (not sure which one yet) and iSCSI Target since I want to share the raw discs. One of the virtual computers will then most likely run FreeNAS or Openfiler to handle the actual NAS portion of it. Then I would just add drives as I needed, make them an iSCSI target and add them to the array.
I would like to go with dedicated RAID hardware (which none of these NAS have), but it just is not cost effective, I will take the time hit to build/re-build arrays to save the money.
It's on the shop in Hong Kong for weeks already... it's not a news...
engadget, would you please hire me as a reporter?? :)
I can write English, Chinese and Japanese.. Ha Ha!!
All engadget staff must also be fluent in korean, sorry.
hire him for keeping it real fake vol. M-MM
I really don't know whether to hope that the Q in "QNAP" stands for "Quick" or not.
Looks rock solid and probably a much better product than those POS Netgear Ready NAS devices and the awful HP Media Center or whatever it is.... I have 5 LaCie drives that have been running solid for the past year and don't understand why some people rip on LaCie... http://www.atomicsub.net
...
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/es34069
I bought one in March '08.
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/boxd945gclf2
I bought one in September '08.
2GB stick of mushkin DDR2 I had sitting around...
http://www.laptopkeyboards.org/new-matsushita-uj210-bluray-bdre-burner-rom-drive-p-3475.html
Dual core Atom330 4-bay 8TB btrfs NAS with debian lenny running freenas from a internal 2.5" WD velociraptor with a UJ210 bluray burner? Priceless. (And FAST! ha ha, take that you stupid 4MByte/sec mybook WE)
... Or I could always install OpenSolaris... ;)
(Booting iSCSI off this thing with gPXE is so awesome)
Scratch that, lenny's on it now. Had freenas running on it previously.
How did you solve running all thoose 5 drive in that case with the mobo only having 2 sata ports?
Because im thinking about getting a similar setup :)
SATA-II Port Replicator.
http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp
Can you post some performance specs on your homebuilt rig? From what I've read (http://www.barrys-rigs-n-reviews.com/reviews/2008/hardware/ts-509pro/4.htm), the TS-509 can do ~65mb/sec read and 41mb/sec write using IOMeter over gigabit ethernet. Since the TS-439 looks to have roughly the same hardware specs, I'd assume it's data rates to be similar.
Having run DIY RAID in the past, I'm not all that excited about the idea of rolling my own rig again, but at a price difference of ~$300, I'd be willing to try.
Kamilion, does your SATA-II port replicator work with Solaris or OpenSolaris? Have you tried it?
He used a PCI Riser and then bought a PCI external raid controller card . The only issue I see with that is getting a raid controller that isn't too tall because only certain sizes fit in that case. Not really an "issue", but some research has to be done to find the right one. I have the same setup as him except I bought a MSI MS-9832 with 4 sata ports already built-in to the motherboard. Granted it's not a dual-core atom 330, but a single core atom is more than enough for a NAS setup. :)