Qnap TS-431

[testman78]

Introduction

If there's one thing that most, if not all, technology users have in common,it's that our storage needs are evolving.Many of us have more data than ever before, and whether it's on our smartphones,our PCs,our tablets or somewhere in the cloud,we often run the risk of losing the data we've spent so much time in gathering.And be honest, how many of us actually take the time to perform regular backups?Each individual's data is becoming increasingly important,and the proliferation of mobile devices is such that a network-attached storage (NAS) device now makes a whole lot of sense in the web-connected home.Data servers have been commonplace in small business or office environments for some time,but in response to market trends,manufacturers who have been successful in the workplace are now redoubling their efforts on home NAS solutions.Qnap is one such brand and the firm's latest effort,the TS-431,is a new addition to the entry-level TS-x31 series range that's described as a "budget-friendly" NAS specifically for home users looking to manage, protect and share data.The new budget range forgoes the X51's dual-core Intel Celeron 2.41GHz processor with 1GB DDR3L RAM,which is replaced by a dual-core,1.2 GHz Freescale ARM Cortex-A9 CPU,paired with 512 MB RAM.Tne new CPU offers high performance yet economical solution for backup of data, sharing and file storage with taking notes based application easy to cloud use and a wide range of multimedia features.



It ship in 1,2 and 4-bay configurations,with a predominately consumer focused role,targeted at backup,synchronization,remote access and home entertainment tasks.The new model includes dual LAN ports to facilitate dual IP settings, port-trunking modes and enables users to set up fault tolerance or link aggregation for increased data throughput.Three SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports are included for expansion and connectivity to peripheral devices and you can expect the TS-x31 series to benefit from all of the features of QNAP's latest QTS software.The TS-x31 is ideal for creating a secure private cloud, high capacity where users can store, share and access their files anywhere,anytime.The TS-x31 series allows users to create digital notes on their private cloud and share them with friends and colleagues without having to pay monthly fees and knowing that sensitive information is completely under their control and not stored on the server of a third party.Users can also enrich their notes with multimedia files stored on the TS-x31,and easy access to their notes using the mobile application Qnotes.




Packaging & Contents

The packaging for the TS-431 features the more consumer friendly white design.An image of the NAS takes front and center on the box,while features of the appliance surround the image.



By turning the packaging, we will see a more detailed description of the server functions.



We see Hardware Specifications at the left side.



Some more applications of the NAS can be observed by turning the box even further.



When you flip back the top flap, you are greeted with a thoughtful Thank You.After opening up the box, we can find the NAS along with its bundle carefully packed inside foam material.To be protected during transport even further, the manufacturer has wrapped the NAS chassis into a transparent plastic bag.



The scope of delivery for the TS-431 includes the power adapter,dual Ethernet cables,reading materials and drive screws.




The Nas

First of all the TS-431 is easily recognized by its white paint job while previous models have been black.The large area at the top that used to house the Touch-N-Go PC-less Installation feature on supporting models has been removed to provide a more sleek design.



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.The size and weight of the TS-431 are typical for a device of this class:177mm(H) x 180mm(W) x 235mm(D),and 6.6 pounds without drives installed.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.



The white TS-431 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 120mm fan.The air coming in the side cools off the rest of the components on the main controller board, where the Intel Celeron CPU is the only component with a heatsink.




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



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. The power button for the TS-431 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.



Around the back the TS-431 features a pair of USB 3.0 ports,dual Gigabit LAN ports,one e-sata port,power connector,an anti-theft K-Lock Security Slot and network settings reset switch.Cooling the TS-431 is a single 120mm fan which seems to work well.Although there isn't any redundancy built into the TS-431's cooling setup, an alarm will sound in the event of a fan failure.



On the bottom side of the chassis we will find 4 rubber feet.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-431 Turbo NAS chassis.




Installation

Like all good NAS devices,the TS-x31 series all 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.



QNAP uses a newly-designed all-plastic tray to hold each drive on the TS-431,which reduces cost and weight for the model line.



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.



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.



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.



With four 3.5″ drive bays available,there is a potential for 16TB of storage.If both capacity and redundancy are needed,RAID 5 is usually the minimum configuration.




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. Previous QNAP models with the small tower format had a complex and rugged inner frame that looked like it could stand up to mobile deployment in an industrial environment. Whether it was a 2, 4, or 6-bay device, the basic mechanical infrastructure was always the same. At some point, value engineering always beats out economy of scale, and QNAP has created a new, less expensive platform that meets all the needs of a typical home or office user and costs a whole lot less to produce. Given the increased competition in the NAS market, I think it makes perfect sense to spend more on the electronics and software, if you can save a few bucks on the case. This still a good, modern, sophisticated, mechanical design package.QNAP has not sunk to the lowest common denominator here.To reiterate, it meets all the needs of a typical home or office user,looks good doing it,and weighs a couple pounds less than the previous generation.Sounds like a millennial…..just kidding.The modular layout is quite evident:the main board takes up the whole left side of the unit,and the drive bay takes up the lion’s share of the remainder.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-431,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 four 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.



The mainboard of the NAS is really small, housing all the necessary components to support its functions.



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



As this is a budget focused model Qnap doesn’t offer users the ability to expand on the 512MB of DDR3 memory that the TS-431 comes with. In an effort to save on cost they have opted to solder the memory chips directly to the PCB. In total there are just two 256MB Micron DDR3 chips.



The settings are kept saved with the help of a CR2032 battery



The buzzer of the mainboard.



Chemi-Con polymer caps.



QNAP has gone with a 100% solid capacitor design,which is said to improve the TS-431's durability.While i don't doubt that's true to some extent,it's always difficult to quantify such claims.



The flash memory on the NAS is provided by Samsung(K9F4G08U0E-SCB0).



Genesys Logic hub controller.



One heatsink cool down the cpu and chipset.



I removed the CPU heatsink to take a good look at it.The TS-431 is powered by a Comcerto M86200G-12 Cortex A-9 dual-core processor which is designed to operate at just 1.2GHz.It features a built-in floating-point unit which enhances the overall capability of the CPU.The FPU is particularly useful in speeding up thumbnail processing, making photo viewing more fluent.While the Cortex-A9 isn’t beefy enough for real-time HD video transcoding,QNAP do include an offline transcoding option which works overnight or at other points when the NAS isn’t active,creating pre-rendered,device-optimized versions of video files.Cortex-A9 MPCore processor respectively, feature symmetric multi-processing, consistent level two cache and ARM TrustZone security.The cpu also feature Mindspeed's OPAL engine,a wire rate gigabit-speed programmable data-path acceleration engine and a complete set of I/O and peripherals, apart from supporting DDR3 with ECC.Latest protocols and elevated speeds, along with.Uses of the Cortex-A9 include a control and management processor or an incorporated control and data path processor.An API can be used to completely program and configure the network accelerators, letting the idea of SDN expand to huge-volume communications applications at the border of the network.Scalable multi-core technology from ARM is enabling a new level of energy-efficiency and performance in networking communications applications.



The rear 120mm Y.S. Tech FD121225LB fan(12 V,0.18 A,1800 RPM,34 dBA,73 CFM and 80000 MTBF).




QTS Initialization

In order to start setting up the NAS, i will download and install the QNAP Qfinder utility which will list the current configuration.



The software will offer us a Quick Setup method, which is quite automated or Manual Setup.



Then we will be prompted to confirm the current disk configuration.The next step would be to specify the NAS name inside the network, a password for the administrator account, an email address but also a desired disk configuration.



We will be able to leave the NAS obtain a network IP automatically or specify a manual configuration.



The firmware can be chosen to be uploaded automatically from the QNAP servers or we can specify a file we have already stored on our HDD.



During the setup procedure, which will take a while, we will be able to see the configuration steps and watch the progress bar.



When the configuration has been completed and the NAS has automatically rebooted, we will be informed of the operation success.In QTS 4.1 the login screen has changed slightly, but the older version is also available/selectable from the software interface.




Software Part I

We will be prompted to enter up the login username/password combination.



The interface of the QTS 4.1 OS is quite intuitive and on first boot we will be also shown a wizard to guide us through the further setup steps.



The desktop widget shows various info regarding the current system status including transfer rates, temperatures, available resources and so on.



From the Control Panel we will be able to adjust several system settings.



The Storage Manager menu will allow us to see the currently installed drives and available logical volumes.



QTS will check the HDD status regularly and update the health information inside the HDD S.M.A.R.T. menu.



Next we will be able to adjust options like the system time, login screen appearance and so on.




Software Part II

From the Network menu we can modify the current settings, also including Wi-Fi (with a compatible adapter), IPv6, Proxy, DDNS and so on.



The Hardware section allows us to modify the HDD standby times, light signal alert, write cache, but also the buzzer behavior.



Next we could access the EuP Mode Configuration menu, WoL configuration, Power Recovery and Power schedule menus.



The NAS can save the system settings to a file via the Backup/Restore settings tab, but we can also bring it to the factory defaults.




Software Part III

A separate menu is creating for dealing with External Storage devices, Printers but also UPS systems.



The System Status menu allows us to check the System Information, Network Status, currently running System Services or Hardware Information.



The Resource Monitor tab also has other sub-sections like CPU Usage, Memory Usage, Disk Usage, Bandwidth Usage or Process.



User Groups are already pre-defined by the manufacturer.



Next we will be able to check the current folders along with their sharing permissions.



If needed, we can specify a disk quota for all users, or individual.



We can enable different networking services in the next menu.



Network Recycle Bin is handy when we delete files or folders by mistake since they will be first moved to a specific folder and not deleted permanently.




Software Part V

For syncing files between different devices we can always use Qsync.



Let's also take a look a little at some of the regular applications.We can install plenty from the interface even made by 3rd party developers.



First i would like to mention the Photo Station application which allows us to organize our private photo collection, but also run slideshows.



Music Station will pick up our files from the respective folders, index them and pick up the album art from the web. Online radio can be also listened from the same interface via TuneIn.



Download Station permits file search on different portals but can also support file download from private torrent trackers.We only have to download the torrent file on our computer and drag-drop it to the Download Station window.The operation will then start automatically.



With Video Station we will be able to watch our entire video collection, after it has been processed and thumbnails have been assigned to each file.During playback, each video will open up in a new browser window (via VLC plugin).



A very important application is also File Station which helps us to organize the files on our NAS or transfer new ones from other different sources.



Backup Station helps replicating the data to another storage device, including cloud.Ηere we can also access the remote NAS to NAS backup function.



QNAP Notes Station enables you to create digital notebooks on the private cloud provided by the Turbo NAS. You can also easily leverage the rich files, photos, music and video collection stored on the Turbo NAS to enrich your notes. With the Notes Station, your digital memos are safely kept for instant access.A note on the Clipper Chrome extension.In order to use the Clipper, you need to enter your QNAP NAS IP address.



The Signage Station is a free app for the Turbo NAS. With the designing software iArtist Lite you can easily create content for a wide range of presentation, such as an animated resume to impress the interviewers, or a life memory book that is able to be shared on Facebook. Shop owners can choose from rich designing widgets to create menu boards, advertising posters, or business profiles by themselves, and easily display the eye-catching works on tablet devices to attract more customers!All the designed content can be easily uploaded to the Turbo NAS through the Signage Station, and displayed on the web browsers. Your creativity can now travel around the world!



The Surveillance Station is professional network surveillance Video Management System (VMS). Being one of the Turbo NAS standard applications, the Surveillance Station can be activated on the QTS App Center to turn the Turbo NAS into a professional Network Video Recorder (NVR) system for real-time monitoring, recording, playback, alarm notifications, Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA), and management to safeguard your assets and property when used with supported IP cameras.




Software Part VI

QNAP HD Station integrates the powerful XBMC v12 media player and web browser. You can also turn your mobile devices into remote controls by installing the Qremote app.Moreover, the HD Station supports YouTube Pairing, allowing you to select a YouTube video on your smartphone, tablet or computer and play it on HDTV via the TS-431.



TS-x31 supports only offline transcoding.With the benefit of offline transcoding, if you can only connect to an Internet connection with limited/restricted bandwidth, you can still enjoy smooth videos by selecting a pre-rendered lower resolution to play the videos via File Station, Video Station, or the Qfile app for iOS & Android without affecting the TS-431's performance running other applications. This also allows more people to play videos via streaming. The TS-431 also allows you to set a dedicated folder for automatic video transcoding.The offline transcoding for TS-451 is 18x times faster than other 4 bay atom-based NAS.



You can use DLNA-compatible devices such as HDTVs, Smart TVs, Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Hi-Fi systems to enjoy HD quality videos and high-resolution audio content such as DSD (Direct Stream Digital) audio format stored on the TS-431. You can also use the Qfile app on an iOS device to browse videos and photos stored on the TS-431 and play on the TV via Apple TV. By installing the QAirplay app, available on the QTS App Center, you can stream your media content directly on a TV via Apple TV. The media contents are streaming on Apple TV, bypassing your mobile device, thus saving the energy of your mobile device.



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.



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.



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.



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



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



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



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



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



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.



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



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.



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







Test System & Methology

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

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 four HDD (Seagate Barracuda 3TB XT 7200RPM)for testing the NAS.




Peformance

Performance on the whole is solid for a budget NAS.




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.



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 5 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.




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 31.5dBa.



The TS-431 draws 14W idling.The highest figure I saw was 41W while installing the QTS software.



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




Conclusion

Looking first at the build quality of our TS-431 it is great to see that despite this being the “value” edition of the family there are no real issues.Qnap use a sturdy chassis and while it would be great if it was all metal the thick plastic used is more than sufficient and the glossy sections do add a nice look.In terms of performance the TS-431 does everything i would expect.It has low idle power use (14w),decent transfer speeds(110MB/s read & 80MB/s write throughput) and playback of HD content over my network was flawless.You get 512MB of DDR3 memory but are unlikely to need it all unless the entire office piles in and attempts to make a connection.As always though the highlight of any Qnap product is their OS.QTS 4.1 continues to evolve at a great pace and not just with little changes… looking back a year or two shows the massive changes which have all occurred and pretty much always for the better.We’ve got Notes Station,Signage Station,Video Station Pro with license for two cameras, Music Station, Photo Station, File Station, support for AirPlay,Offline Video transcoding,DLNA and many more.QNAP has equipped quite a lot of NASes with the HDMI port and i cannot really explain why this one does not feature one,since it would have been quite an interesting option to use the product as a media center by directly connecting it to our large diagonal TV.Besides HDMI, the NAS stays quite well in the connectivity department by having three USB 3.0 ports but also dual LAN ports and one e-Sata port.We can use all these ports for connecting additional storage or printers,compatible WiFi adapters and so on.



While the TS-431 may not have the performance of some Qnap models it has more than enough for the average user but more importantly,all the functionality we would need at a more accessible price.Overall the Qnap TS-431 offers an unbeatable package right now with first-class features,decent performance and the very best operating system in the QTS 4.1.Anyone looking to take their first steps into network-attached storage should take Qnap's TS-431 into serious consideration.Launched to retail with a MSRP of 380 Euro's, this four-bay box sensibly balances price,performance and functionality to deliver an easy-to-use NAS that's primed for centralised storage in the home.