QNAP TS-639 Pro Reviewed (with TS-509 Pro Retest)

[Dennis Wood]

Tim, our tests here are more or less in line with what you've found..except we have the Netgear READYNAS PRO fully populated with six drives using their X-RAID and the QNAP TS509 with five drives in RAID 5. Our 639 is no longer connected due to it's less than stellar write performance. Both Netgear and TS509 we're testing are on the same network with LACP setup (two ports each) and the test workstations are now all running 64bit Vista SP1 with 8GB RAM with 4 drive RAID 0 onboard. One of the workstations is also using a 4 core processor now. Both NAS units have been upgraded to 4GB of RAM each. Both are connected to an HP Procurve 24port switch supporting LACP.

Overall the TS509 settles in at about 55MB/s write and 80MB/s read on very large files (over 20GB)

The Netgear READYNAS PRO is much faster on the same +20GB files, settling in at about 93 MB/s write and 103 MB/s read.

Btw, for any considering 64bit Vista SP1...it's been overall much better to deal with than the 32 bit version in terms of both performance and stability. It makes about zero difference though in network throughput...although we test with relatively idle workloads. I suspect that the 64 bit OS would fare much better on the network with multiple demanding processes in the background...being that most programs are still 32bit.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the data, Dennis.

Overall the TS509 settles in at about 55MB/s write and 80MB/s write on very large files (over 20GB)

Did you mean 55 write, 80 read?

 

[Dennis Wood]

Yes..fixed that. With the newer firmware it seems write speeds on the TS509 may have increased about 10MB/s or so. I'll need to test again.

Since the firmware update we've also seen some network issues that may or may not be related..so I've got some wiresharking to do.

 

[iwod]

Dennis, how did you manage those results which are approaching the theoretical performance of 1Gbit Ethernet.

 

[Dennis Wood]

Nothing special on our network really...just a 24 port HP switch that supports 802.3ad. The trick is having a workstation that can deliver/receive the data rates required to max out the NAS units...and a NAS unit fast enough to sustain over 100MB/s. The ReadyNas Pro is the first one we've tested that is capable of doing this. You'll want to read Tim's Vista/SMB2 article and perhaps have a look at a few of my posts here. We don't use jumbo frames and we don't do any registry tweaks.

Cheers,
Dennis.

 

[dje007]

You can't see it in the photo, but there are two stacked SODIMM sockets, with the top

After looking 2 times I only see one slot in the memory bank not 2.

Dave

 

[thiggins]

After looking 2 times I only see one slot in the memory bank not 2.

Are you looking at the photo, or at the product itself?

 

[dje007]

Are you looking at the photo, or at the product itself?

The product I have one at home and have removed the memory stick and only see one slot in the memory connector.

 

[thiggins]

The product I have one at home and have removed the memory stick and only see one slot in the memory connector.

QNAP confirms that the TS-639 and TS-439 Pro have only one SODIMM slot.
The TS-509 and TS-809 Pro have two stacked SODIMM slots.

I'm sorry for the error.