QNAP Ts-231P2

Introduction

There are a lot of different NAS systems on the market and they each have their ups and downs, or rather the area where they excel which is great as there is a good chance that there is just the right model out there for your specific needs. Mainstream network-attached storage (NAS) solutions have evolved to such an extent that consumers can today pick from a wide range of affordable options knowing that the essentials - backup, media server, printer sharing and download client - will likely be taken care of with little fuss. The likes of Synology, WD and Qnap are among the first brands to come to my mind, and if you're looking for a NAS that touts a little extra in terms of innovation and feature set, it's Qnap who tends to stand out from the crowd. In addition to offering a vast portfolio of traditional NAS solutions, the Taiwanese manufacturer has developed a taste for innovative features, unique form factors and varied usage scenarios. Today I'm taking a closer look at exactly this system and will show you what it can do. Enter the TS-431P2. Should two bays be too few for you and you rather want four, then QNAP has that covered too with the TS-431P2 which is the same system, just with double the amount of drive bays. Aimed at SMB and SOHO users, this cost-effective NAS server is packed with a 1.7GHz Alpine AL-314 quad-core processor, a 4GB DDR3 RAM, a 512MB NAND flash memory and 2x 2.5-/3.5-inch SATA HDD/SSD bays. The new TS-231P2 support Snapshots so users can restore the NAS to a previous state in the event of hardware failure or when suddenly hit by ransomware/malware attacks. TS-x31P2 support SSD caching for improved IOPS performance of storage volumes and to boost overall operational efficiency.

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Specifications.

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Packaging & Contents

The TS-231P2 ships in a brown box with a small list of specifications, features and capabilities printed on it.There is a small product sticker on the front of the NAS that details the specifications and features.

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After lifting the top box cover, we will get to see a 'Welcome" message along with some hints to several Internet resources.

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Inside, the TS-231P2 is tucked away in a foam shell.

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The accessories are packaged away in an additional cardboard box.

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Except for the hard drives, the included accessories are all you will need to get the TS-231P2 up and running. The included accessories include, dual Ethernet cables, power supply, screws for SSDs and hard drives, and a quick start guide.

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The Nas

First of all the TS-231P2 is easily recognized by its white paint job while previous models have been black.The QNAP QNAP TS-231P2 is a dual bay NAS and has a considerably smaller footprint than its 4 & 5 bay cousins. The NAS measures 168.5(H) x 102(W) x 225(D) mm (6.63(H) x 4.02(W) x 8.86(D) inch) and weighs in at about 5 lbs without the drives.Each HDD you install will add about 1-1/2 pounds, depending on your choice of drive.Most users will probably be looking at 2, 3, or 4TB drives for a NAS unit like this, and they're heavier than most. It still looks like a QNAP product, and white color looks good.The chassis is plastic instead of metal, and the hard disk trays do not have locks.

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The white TS-231P2 also features a strip down the left hand side.The main entry points for cool air are through the front of the drive trays.The air that comes directly in the front passes over the HDDs and is exhausted out the rear of the unit by the large 70mm fan.The air coming in the side cools off the rest of the components on the main controller board, where the CPU is the only component with a heatsink.

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The right side does not come with the same ventilation holes.

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The right side does, however, come with a sticker on the side that explains myQNAPcloud and gives you a QR code right on the side to get things setup. I removed the code out of the picture for obvious reasons, but you can tell that this is a consumer device when you have big stickers for easy setup if not a lot of people might never know the feature exists.

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The bays don't have any fancy locks or clips, the user simply needs to pull on the tab from the bottom and the drive slides out of place.Moving on, each drive also has its own activity and power light on the front of the case, while status,LAN and USB LED indicators sit on top.

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The front of the NAS is where everything is going on. In the past, I have tested a few NAS around this size and they sometimes will have an LCD screen on the front for notifications but QNAP kept things simple with a vertical row of LED status indicators. You get one for each drive bay, one for an overall power indicator, one for LAN traffic, and the one showing when a USB device is active. This is enough to get the job done, especially when most people put a NAS like this up in a closet.

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The power button for the TS-231P2 resides on the bottom left and glows blue when active,and there's a USB 3.0 port below it for easy data transfers from portable storage devices. The big innovation the A series brings is what QNAP has dubbed a USB QuickAccess port.The USB QuickAccess port that allows you to complete the first-time installation and setup of your TS-231P2 without requiring network connectivity.

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Around the back the TS-231P2 features a pair of USB 3.0 ports,dual Gigabit LAN ports, one maintenance port,power connector,an anti-theft K-Lock Security Slot and network settings reset switch. It does not feature an HDMI Port, so all multimedia or surveillance software access is done over the network or the internet as needed. Cooling the TS-231P2 is a single 70mm fan which seems to work well. Although there isn't any redundancy built into the TS-231P2's cooling setup, an alarm will sound in the event of a fan failure. The two USB 3.0 ports are perfect for USB printers, pen drives, and USB UPS connection as well as for keyboard and mouse when you're using the HD Station.

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On the bottom side of the chassis we will find 4 rubber feet.

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The bottom of the NAS also houses a locked symbol,and an unlocked symbol.The bottom sticker lets us know of the model code name, along with the power input requirements.There are only a few small ventilation holes on the bottom of the QNAP TS-231P2 Turbo NAS chassis.

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Installation

Like all good NAS devices,the TS-231P2 allow drives to be hot-swapped during operation.The use of individual, detachable 3.5-inch hard drive trays makes adding or removing storage capacity a breeze.

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QNAP uses a newly-designed all-plastic tray to hold each drive on the TS-231P2,which reduces cost and weight for the model line.

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The drives get fixed with screws located on the bottom, not on the laterals.The drive trays easily accommodate 2.5″ drives without any additional hardware.Just use the correct mounting holes located on the bottom surface.QNAP used to not recommend mixing 3.5″ and 2.5″ drives in the same enclosure, but the advent of SSD caching in their business-class devices put an end to that restriction.

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Each tray slides in with the HDD in the vertical position and locks firmly into place with the lever on the front.Key locks are not included to secure the trays in place, which may or may not be a security requirement for you.The trays are not labeled with the chassis slot number, which sounds like a small thing.They are all physically identical and you can mix and match them all you want, until you build a drive array and then you had better remember which one goes where.If you mix them up the NAS won't recognize the array,and worst case you could end up destroying data as you try to figure out which drive is which.I always keep a stack of sticky notes around whenever I have to pull drive trays out of a NAS,just to be sure.

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Each internal drive can only be formatted with EXT4, although external drives can use FAT,NTFS,EXT3,EXT4,or HFS+ file systems.HFS+ is a newish capability for QNAP,and those who recognize it will know that it serves as the primary file system for Apple's OS X operating system.All Intel-based QNAP NAS units offer the additional option of AES 256-bit encryption and some of the larger units offer native CPU support for the recent AES-NI additions to the Intel64 instruction set. The TS-231P2 supports online capacity expansion by connecting two QNAP expansion enclosures for storing rapidly-growing data, especially ideal for storage-intensive applications such as video surveillance, data archiving, TV broadcast storage, and more. You can gradually expand the TS-231P2's storage on demand, and use the QTS Storage Manager to easily handle the NAS capacity expansion and storage expansion enclosure management. With the support of QJBOD Express (JBOD enclosures roaming), you can just connect a large capacity QNAP expansion enclosure to the TS-231P2, and migrate data to another NAS through the JBOD enclosure without network connectivity.

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Hardware

It's time now to strip down the NAS and discover what components it hides under the metal casing.To remove the single-piece top and side panel you need to remove two screws on the rear side first, and gently pull the panel up and back. You must be extra cautious during this procedure, as you risk breaking something.From this point on, it's evident that QNAP has done a wholesale redesign on the chassis.

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You can see that there's a lot of spare real estate on top of the drive cage. That will no doubt be put to use in other higher-end models for a display, and perhaps a CPU cooler. You can see why I say this is a whole new platform, right?Before we dig into the real innards of the QNAP TS-231P2,here's the "drives eye" view of the NAS.All power for the drives comes through the PCIe connection on the main controller board and makes its way towards the power portion of the two SATA connectors.The signal portion of the SATA interfaces are located right below them, and although the backplane looks like it's just a passive connector board,there are two SATA controller chips located on the backplane.The cooling fan is partially visible from here, and there is plenty of wide open space in the chassis framework for the fan to pull air through.Of course, the hard drives will fill up most of that space,but it's good that they are the only thing holding back the airflow.

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The mainboard of the TS-231P2 is small.

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In the bigger slot the expansion card that holds all SATA ports is attached.

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The top of the motherboard is dominated by the pair of SODIMM slots.Our review sample came with a pair of Adata 2GB DDR3L-1600 modules, giving a total of 4GB of system memory. The memory of this unit can be upgraded to 8GB, as the commercially available NAS RAM has 1GB.

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One heatsink cool down the cpu and chipset.Since the is TS-231P2 targeted at small businesses with simultaneous user access, it is powered by an Alpine AL-314 quad-core 1.7 GHz Cortex-A15 processor.

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Weltrend WT69P803 module maintains the operation of the LED display on the front panel of the device.

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The USB 3.0 ports are implemented via an Etron Tech EJ188H host controller,and LAN via two Atheros AR8035 chips.

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Initialization

There are multiple ways to initialize your new QNAP NAS, but my preferred method is through the QNAP Qfinder Pro tool that also can be used for a lot more than just initializing your new NAS. When launched, the Qfinder will scan your network and attempt to find uninitialized devices and if found, prompt you whether you want to set them up now.

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If we decide to navigate to the browser interface, we will be welcomed by the introductory welcome screen.

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We need to give the NAS a name and set the admin password next.

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The network connection most likely already is as you want it, but you can change that too. At least in the basics. You get a lot more network options later on.

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We also get to choose what network protocols should be enabled and whether we just pick one of the three or all of them, that is down to personal needs and usage scenarios.

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We get the choice whether we want to configure our installed hard disk drives right now or whether we want to do it later on.I need to go through all setup scenarios for my benchmarks anyway, so I might as well create one right away.The settings which will be modified will be shown in a summary screen.

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A new progress bar will appear which will tell us the current setup step the NAS is in.

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After the configuration steps have been applied, we will be invited to log in to QTS.QNAP has made further improvements to the QTS GUI starting with the 4.3 software revision.

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Setup Part I

We are all familiar now with the QTS desktop interface, which resembles a regular desktop, with multiple pages where installed applications will show up.The QTS GUI is quite easy to use and does not miss any useful features like screen widgets, information icons on the top side, multiple application pages and so on.

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The widget section will show us different information regarding the current status of the server and if we click on an item, we will be redirected to the respective menus in order get more details.

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Control Panel is the place most admins will go in order to modify most of the available settings.These are categorized in different sections like System Settings, Privilege Settings, Network Services and Applications.

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From the General Settings menu, we will be able to adjust various settings like the server name, web administration port, setting a secure connection, defining the system time, DST, Codepage and so on.

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Next we have Storage Manager, where we can define new Storage Pools, Volumes, enable Cache Acceleration and more.It even includes graphical storage utilization information on both volumes and pools.Each of the installed drives can be watched in detail and perform smart tests.All your storage pools and volumes are collected in one convenient page ? after all, they belong together. Managing and creating new ones is as easy as everything else in QTS and only takes a few clicks.

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As mentioned, you can get a full view on the volumes and t hat includes usage statistics, apps using the volume, and shared folders located here.Cache acceleration is most likely a thing that will be used when expansion units are in play, simply due to the amount of drive bays the SSDs will occupy. However, it is an awesome feature that can give your centralized server a lot more power for those IOPS intensive tasks.

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Centralized is a key word here and we also get that when it comes to snapshots. The vault will show them all, if you?ve enabled that feature.

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You might be familiar with creating new storage pools or volumes on QNAP?s systems, by it can?t hurt to show the features again. Select drives, mode, and capacity before you hit the create button.Virtual drives are supported in two ways. You can mount ISO files as shared folders through the control panel and you can also connect to remote iSCSI volumes on other systems. Connect it all for the best experience.

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Setup Part II

Up until now we only made our drive setup and got our administrator user, and that is something we need to change. The logical next step would be to create more user, some user groups, and some shared folders for all our file. All three of these settings are found in the Control Panel within the Privilege Settings.By default, we only have our administrator user and that isn?t one that we should be using for normal day-to-day activity. Luckily we can create virtually as many more as we like.

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Creating a new user only requires two pieces of information, a username and a password. But we can also assign profile pictures, description, and email addresses as well as set the rights for the user to folders and installed applications.

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Creating one user at a time can be a tedious project and luckily QTS also supports creating multiple users at once. You can either upload a text file with all the information or you can use the multiple users creation wizard.

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The wizard will create as many users as you specify with a combination of a name prefix and a number. All created users will have the same password.

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You can create private network shares for all these users too, should you want to do so.

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And that?s it, we now have a lot of users.

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There?s also a global quota setting available that counts for all users.

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Should you already have an LDAP or Active Directory service setup, then QTS also couples with these with ease.

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Just enter your authentification details and you?re good to go.

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Micro managing a lot of users can be a time-consuming process and that is where user groups come into play. By assigning users to groups, you can quickly set access rights for all included users at once rather than have to do it all manually for each single user.

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Creating a group is much like creating a user. The only required information is a name, but the group in itself won?t do us much good. We also need to add users to the group and set the permissions for the group.

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The shared folders are the backbone of your NAS as these are the ones that you can see from other systems. There are some default folders that will be created by installed applications, but you can also create all the ones you want yourself.

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Creating a new shared folder is quick. Enter a name and an optional comment. If you got more than one drive volume, you also need to pick the correct one here. Users access rights can also be controller right away for the users that you already created.

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There are some advanced functions for each folder where one of them is encryption. Sensitive data should have an extra layer of security and encryption is a great option. You can also choose to hide the share in the network surroundings and enable the recycle bin for the share ? and more.

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Virtual drives created from ISO files are even easier to create. Just select the file and it?s done.

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Within the Shared Folders section, you also find the Advanced Permissions page that allows you to enable advanced folder permissions and Windows ACL support.

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Folder Aggregation is another awesome feature, but it only works for Microsoft and Samba networks.

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We only got the choice to either enable or disable the various sharing services during the initialization, but there are a lot more available options for them and more available within the Network Services submenu within the control panel.

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Whether you?re looking for Apple or Microsoft file protocols, you won?t be disappointed.

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NFS is also supported for Linux and Unix users, just keep in mind that you might need to set the NFS access rights separately ? as usual.

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There are advanced options available for the Samba protocol, so if you didn?t spot what you were looking for before, you will find it here.

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QTS also comes with a built-in FTP server. It is basic, but it covers everything that you need from SSL/TLS encrypted connections and custom passive port settings. You can also watch online users directly from this page.

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SSH and Telnet are both available in QTS too, but you should only enable Telnet if you really need it. SSH is a lot safer to use, but it?s great to have both available when needed.

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The SNMP service is one mostly for enterprises as most home users don?t need a centralized log location.

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There are two easy ways to make your NAS visible via your network and the world and QTS has them both. The first is UPnP that can take care of all port forwarding within your router in order to make sure that the NAS and the running functions can be accessed.

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The second method is Bonjour that is for your local network discovery. You can pick which services should be broadcasted here.

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The network recycle bin is also considered a service here and in a way it is. A global setting makes sense and it can save a lot of headaches from accidentally deleted files. A more basic feature than snapshots.

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The last function within the Network services will open up another window with all the Qsync features in one place. You can quickly find apps for your devices and keep track of all connected devices.

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One of the strong points of this NAS is definitely the network connectivity and the way it is utilized. Through the virtual switch, you?re able to take full advantage of all the NAS features without having to worry about VMs taking up LAN ports for themselves. The first page here doesn?t show so much, but that comes once you open the Virtual Switch page. You?ll find those screenshots further down.

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Let us first finish with the basic network settings such as service bindings. You can limit features to the specific NICs all the way through, another awesome feature considering the possibilities with this NAS.

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Proxy and DDNS settings are important for those who need them and both are present.

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DDNS is a great way to be able to connect to your NAS from everywhere in the world despite having a dynamic IP address, but I?d recommend you use myQNAPcloud instead. It?s free and simple to set up.

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The Network and Virtual Switch is where we can create our network settings and tell our ports what their job is and where. The first page provides an overview of the four ports and also shows which connection has the priority and thereby internet connection.

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Within the Interfaces section is where we can trunk our ports as well as change the IPV6 settings should you have made the switch to the next generation here.

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Creating a new set of linked LAN connection only requires a few clicks. Select the adapter you want to include and the mode.

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The switch mode is for the more advanced users, but the GUI guides you through it all. It allows you to use the NAS as a switch too, bridging different networks.

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There are two versions of switching here, the normal switch mode and the private network mode. In both cases, it requires the ports selected to be connected to different networks.

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Wireless connections are also supported, but it requires you to have a USB Wireless adapter. Once you have plugged that in, the NAS will allow you to connect to wireless networks too, much in the same way you?re familiar with from your smart device or computer.

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A DHCP server becomes really useful here when the switching functions are turned on. Let the NAS assigned the network addresses.

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Last but not least, you can select the default gateway manually or let QTS find it automatically. The default is the first one.

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Setup Part III

As a file host, which a NAS is, we need to keep an eye on our security as well. This covers both backups of our files as well as intrusion protection and file protection. QTS features a basic access and deny system that can come in very handy, especially if you want to block anyone but yourself for a short time. You could also limit it to only known devices this way and keep strangers away.

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Hardware information is one thing, we also need to be able to control parts of it and for that, we go back to the control panel again. We can disable features such as the physical reset switch and define when drives should enter sleep mode.This is also where we can adjust the LED brightness and put it on a schedule so we don?t need to look at it at night, for example.

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Power management is important as it affects the total cost of ownership. Both EuP and WoL are supported by the TS-531X.

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A headless device such as a NAS needs to be monitored too and you can use Email, SMS, or Push notifications for this.

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The Firmware update can be performed automatically (QTS will automatically search for it), but when an automatic update is not available and on the website there is already a new QTS file available, we will have to go the manual route.

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Backup & Restore menu allows the user to save current server settings for later restoration, but also from the same menu we can reset the system to factory defaults.

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External devices can be also configured from the next menu.

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The hardware information is found within the system status function in QTS and it provides you with both hardware information on installed components as well as status and services.

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For more details, QTS has the resource monitor tab that looks very familiar to anything else in that regard. Charts and numbers tell you all the details you need to know such as CPU usage across the cores.

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The Privilege Settings group allows you to set domain security, create new accounts or user groups, set access rights, and manage the NAS' shared folders. You can also set the quotas of these shared folders here.

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Multimedia Management menu will ?instruct? the default multimedia applications where to look for indexing media files.We also have here many tabs regarding transcoding tasks.

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Applications

Snapshots allow your Turbo NAS to record the state of the system at any time. If an unexpected disaster occurs on your system, you can revert it to the previous state that the snapshot has recorded. This application note demonstrates how to create snapshots from volumes and how to revert to them using the snapshot manager. Before taking a snapshot, there must be at least one volume on your Turbo NAS. If you need to build a volume, please go to "Storage" > "Storage Space". From the Snapshot Manager you can see a synopsis of snapshots in the left window, and you can browse through folders and see files on the snapshots on the right.

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You can create a snapshot schedule.

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The app center is where you find all the really cool features, not that what we?ve seen so far wasn't cool. But with the app center you got possibilities to install almost any function onto your TS-231P2. You can quickly view all your installed apps and licenses as well as install more.There are hundreds of apps available and for the most part, they can be installed with a single click.

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We do have the File Station 5 which permits file and folder manipulation.The web-based File Station enables you to easily upload, download, and manage files on your TS-231P2 wherever there is an internet connection. Supporting file extraction, folder creation, and smart search for files and folders, the File Station also allows you to easily share files with colleagues and friends via unique URLs, email, and a shared space. What's even better, you can also directly browse and transfer files between the TS-231P2 and public cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Box, Yandex Disk and Amazon Cloud Drive through File Station, and view files with Office Online and Google Docs or directly open them with a Google Chrome office extension.

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The Video Station is a video management tool used to organize your videos on the Turbo NAS and to share them with your friends and family across the Internet. With the Video Station, you can classify your videos into home videos, movies, TV shows or music videos for your personal collection. Besides, a smart collection can be set to automatically sort out videos that match search criteria and help you neatly manage your videos.

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The Photo Station is an online photo album used to organize your multimedia content (photos and videos) on the Turbo NAS and to share them with your friends and family across the Internet. With the Photo Station, users can drag & drop photos in a virtual album, which not only spares users the effort to tediously move and copy physical files around, but also helps users save storage space, as users only need to keep one copy of their photos on the NAS when they try to create an album for a special theme. Besides, a smart album can automatically collect contents that match search criteria and help users neatly manage their photos.

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The Music Station helps you create a personal music center on the cloud. This web-based application is designed for users to play music files on the NAS or a media server, listen to thousands of Internet radio stations using a web browser and share your music collections with your friends and families. Your music collection stored on the Turbo NAS is automatically organized into categories for easy access.

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QNAP Container Station exclusively integrates LXC and Docker lightweight virtualization technologies, allowing you to operate multiple isolated Linux systems on a QNAP NAS as well as download apps from the built-in Docker Hub Registry.

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If you have ever been overwhelmed by the number of search results when looking for a file, try Qsirch ? QNAP?s unique, powerful, Google Search-like search tool that helps you find what you need. It's easy & fast!

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The Download Station is a web-based download tool enabling you to download files from the Internet through BT, PT, Magnet Link, HTTP/HTTPS, FTP/FTPS, and subscribe to RSS feeds. With the BT Search function, you can easily find BT seeds to download and make your NAS as 24/7 download center.

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Help Center does provide us with the QTS usage manual, but from there we can also browse the Online Resource or use the Helpdesk function.

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HappyGet is your personal video backup tool, which can back up your videos from cloud platforms to your NAS. In the cloud era, smart phones, tablets, and digital cameras may all be connected by the internet. They can easily be used to upload videos to cloud video platforms, such as YouTube and Picasa. However, end devices may be connected to several video platforms and people in one family may upload videos using different accounts. The NAS provides a personal cloud solution to share videos in one family. With HappyGet, you can easily back up videos from the cloud to the NAS and keep them synchronized all the time.

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Gmail backup provides Gmail backup and recovery functionality, allowing users to create individual backup or domain account backup tasks. Gmail can be backed up by schedule and the content previewed through a web management interface. Backed up mail can be restored to the original mail account or other accounts.

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Let?s not forget about the availability of Plex too.Unfortunately it does not support 4K.If that's ok for you then playing 1080p should not be a problem.

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One of the available media center streaming applications is TVMobili, which indexes the content in the desired folder and makes it available to other devices such as TVs, tablets, game consoles, smartphones and so on.

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The surveillance station only becomes relevant when you got cameras too, but then it?s awesome. Turn your NAS into a full-fledged surveillance station with recording, motion detection, and all the other bells and whistles.

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The Note Station is your office tool on the go. Create notes and calendar entries within your own secure storage location.

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If you have numerous email accounts, it can take time to visit each email portal and to log in one-by-one to check and send emails. With QNAP?s QmailAgent you can securely centralize multiple email accounts, making managing and backing up emails absolutely easy.

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Qcontactz is the perfect way to centrally manage a growing number of contacts. By leveraging the benefits of the private cloud provided by QNAP NAS, Qcontactz presents an always-online database of contact information that can be accessed from any computer or mobile device. With a few simple steps you can centrally manage all of your contacts and greatly simplify your communications processes to build a better base for your networking and interactions.

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Mobile Apps

QNAP has also put to the users disposal some free applications for mobile devices.On Android we have Qfile, which is a regular file browser for our NAS. The contents can be accessed only after we have provided valid login credentials.

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Qmanager app is more advanced, since we can see lots of system statistics but also access the App Center, Backup Station, Download Station or other System Tools.

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Resource Monitor will open when we click on the CPU/RAM dials to reveal information regarding the internal temperatures, CPU load, RAM and Swap degree of occupation, Disk usage, Bandwidth usage for each LAN port, currently running Processes, but also logged in Users.

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App Center allows us to enable/disable the currently installed applications, but also browse more apps.

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Backup Station allows accessing different backup functions like NAS to NAS, Rsync, RTTR and so on.

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We can also perform downloads directly to our NAS from the mobile phone/tablet, but also search BT files.

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From System Tools we can access connected external storage, block-list and more.

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Qmusic app will let us browse through our libraries after we log in.

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Qget will allow us to schedule the download tasks from Download Station, but also playback and save our favorite videos with the help of HappyGet II.

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The free Qmusic app allows you to listen to your terabytes of music collection on the Turbo NAS anytime and anywhere.

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VMobile is a mobile surveillance app for remote and wireless monitoring of IP cameras managed by the Turbo NAS with Surveillance Station Pro or the VioStor NVR.

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When enjoying the HD Station, rather than hardware remotes, Qremote app is so convenient to make your mobile devices as a handy remote control.

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Test System & Methology

I now begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you my test system:

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OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD
Mainboard X79 MSI GD65 - Intel SATA 6G controller in AHCI mode
Processor Core i7 3960X at default configuration
Graphics Cards GeForce GTX 580
Memory 16 GB (4x 4096 MB) DDR3 1600 MHZ
Power Supply Unit 1200 Watt
Monitor Dell 3007WFP - up to 2560x1600
OS related Software Windows 7 64-bit SP1

Using two HDD WD Red 1TB 3.5 NAS Internal Hard Drives(WD10EFRX) for testing the NAS.

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Performance

Sequential read and write performance on Atto are good. The difference between RAID1 and 0 was almost negligible, it's only with multiple connections that performance difference would become apparent.

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With reads of 110MB/s and writes of 104MB/s in CrystalDiskMark on RAID1, that's some surprisingly good numbers. Even though gigabit can handle up to 125MB/s, it's not completely achievable, so coming close to that is quite impressive.

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JBOD

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RAID0

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SHR

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USB3.0

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Performance from the unit is strong.

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Link Aggregation

Link aggregation is a method of using two Ethernet ports in parallel to provide trunking and network fault tolerance. Link aggregation with trunking feature enhances connection speed beyond the limits of any one single cable or port. The improved transmission performance is best observed in environments where multiple-client connections are present. The redundancy also creates higher link availability and avoids possible disruption occurrences.

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I am very pleased cause 193 MB/s is plenty of speed with room to spare to simultaneously run a web server,access movies and music,and save and access documents and other files.Depending on your setup especially how many files you're accessing from any single drive,whether the drive is an SSD,a RAID 0 array, a RAID 1 array, or JBOD/one disk, and what kind of quality and capability each drive has,one would easily see higher or lower speeds. Also,i wager that a person copying a large file from one link-aggregated connection to another would also be able to see much higher speeds depending on his hard drive capabilities on each machine.

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Noise, Power Consumption & Temperature

The fan doesn't spin much at lower loads, meaning the Nas is very quiet.At around 900 Rpm,the fan kicks in a little,becoming audible although never that intrusive.At full load,the fan spins much higher, and noise levels hit 33.9dBa.

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The TS-231P2 draws 19W idling.The highest figure I saw was 25W while installing the QTS software.

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The fan maintains good temperatures inside the chassis,and it spins up considerably in the upper part of overall load demand.

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Conclusion

I might as well start out with it, the QNAP TS-251P2 is one of the most amazing SOHO/Home NAS devices that I?ve yet had the pleasure to test. It is built on a solid hardware base with an Annapurna Alpine CPU and enough RAM to run a lot of apps and features at the same time without running into trouble with bottlenecks.The innovation for the newly launched model is that the dual-core, 1.7GHz Annapurna Alpine AL-212 SoC has been replaced by the AL-314 which has an unchanged clock, but the number of cores has been doubled. The maximum supported memory capacity is 8 GB. It is coupled with two Gigabit LAN ports that support linking as well as the new and unique QuickAccess port. Should you ever find yourself without a working network, then the TS-231P2 won't let you down and allow you to access all your files anyway. It can also simply be an easier or perhaps quicker way to transfer files to and from the NAS without using the network. I absolutely love this feature. Reliability is important and this is something I do not take lightly. TS-231P2 offers RAID redundancy so in the event of a drive failure, your data is still unaffected. This particular unit offers RAID 0 and 1 levels. I do have to remind you that RAID 0 does not provide any protection against hardware failure. QNAP has you covered. The TS-231P2 delivers an outstanding performance whether you use it with plain drives or encryption thanks to the built-in hardware encryption engine. iSCSI and LUNs are also supported for the best utilization of your storage and the best connection to it. QTS is QNAP's operating system and it is without a doubt one of the most comprehensive solutions that you can get. There is a feature and function for anything. It doesn't matter what kind of operation you want to use the NAS for, it is covered. From web server over streaming to storage and surveillance. This NAS device support Snapshots, allowing users to quickly restore the last safe data in case of failure. This is also especially useful for businesses for quick recovery after a ransomware attack. I feel the lack of 4K support,HDMI port and remote control is a bit of an oversight(for Soho usage).The main drawbacks are Qnap's reduced app support for its ARM-based Alpine CPU.Something that's always surprised us with the likes of QNAP is that the vast majority of software-based features are available across their product spectrum. The operating system is essentially one and the same on a $150 NAS as it is on a $700 unit, which does make the likes of the TS-231P2 somewhat of a bargain. For the cost, it is an extremely competitive NAS.

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What sets QNAP TS-231P2 apart from other manufacturers is that you get all of the benefits of an enterprise level NAS in a smaller, more affordable device.
The European prices of TS-x31P2 have in the meantime arrived from the manufacturer and these are as follows:
TS-231P2-1G: 209 Euro + VAT
TS-231P2-4G: 269 Euro + VAT
The price vs performance vs features in this device is very well balanced. You do get what you pay for and I feel that the price of this unit is very well justified with features.

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