Qnap-TS 531X

[testman78]

Introduction

I'm often asked about bang for the buck NAS servers. No one wants to pay more for less, so getting a large volume of features, while retaining some volume in your wallet, is universal. When it comes to included features, QNAP takes the cake. QNAP's hardware and software features routinely outrank other products on the market, but the high feature count usually means paying a higher price.Taking into account these tough economic times, QNAP decided to offer a more budget friendly alternative to users who need a high-performance NAS without many bells and whistles that would, inevitably, boost its price.QNAP launched the TS-531X, an ARM-based NAS with the Annapurna Labs AL314 SoC. It comes with dual 10G SFP+ ports.When QNAP went high-end last year with 10GbE capability, they left an opening for lower cost units designed for true small office environments. The x69 Series fills that gap while still offering high drive count NAS products, but reduces some of the enterprise features only used in large office environments.



Up to four HDDs can be installed into this server and HDD prices are, thankfully, starting to return to normal levels (at last). Utilizing 4 TB HDDs would make the max capacity an enormous 20 TB.Regarding RAID levels, all popular types are supported.











Packaging & Contents

The NAS is shipped in a plain cardboard box without a lot of information on the outside like more expensive models do.QNAP advertises right from the start the ability to work with 10GbE interfaces, since the product can be easily upgraded.



Further down we will get to see some of the product functionality listed as icons.



A sticker on front lists the product's features, its hardware specifications, and the contents inside the package.



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



Besides the foam material,the server is also wrapped inside a transparent plastic bag.



We could find the accessories packed inside separate transparent plastic bags.We will receive the documentation leaflet,a power cable, two LAN cables but also mounting screws for both 2.5" and 3.5" drives.




The Nas

Our first look at the TS-531X gives a slight sense of deja vu over the models that we looked at past years.It sports a brushed, metal chassis.



There is only a vent on one of the two sides.



There was apparently no need for vents on both sides.



Only the front side of the TS-531X is made of plastic, but it still matches the rest of the chassis well.The frontal area does also feature a ventilation grill, which acts as intake.



The only spot that looks strange is the area that the LCD screen normally resides in, which is, in this case, simply left empty.Above the first and second drive bays are the three system LEDs, on for its current status and then LAN and USB activity.



In the top left corner, we will get to see a chromed QNAP logo.



The power button 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.



A sticker on top includes the cloud key you will need if you choose to set this NAS up online.



The five drive bays run along with the first drive to the left of the NAS and the last on the right hand side.



Like all good NAS devices, the TS-531X 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.Interestingly however the drive bays cannot be locked for better security, though there is an anti-theft K-Lock Security Slot at the rear which can be used to prevent the removal of the entire device, though not individual drives.



Round at the back of the NAS, the main bulk of the case is taken up by grill for the system fan.The one 120mm diameter fan take most of the rear side's real estate, and the smaller 40mm fan is used to cool down the PSU.Also on the right side we've got no less than two Gigabit LAN ports.Below them, for connecting different other devices, we do have two more USB 3.0 ports, along with a debug jack.Finally, there is a Reset switch that restores the NAS to its factory defaults right below the Expansion slot, and a K-Lock security slot resides in the top, left corner.



Moving to the right we have an I/O shield where the expansion card should go.The extra PCIe slot allows for the installation of a third 10GbE port for flexible high-speed network deployment.

- QNAP Dual-port 10 Gigabit 10GBASE-T Network Expansion Card: LAN-10G2T-D

- QNAP Dual-Port Gigabit Network Expansion Card: LAN-1G2T-D

- QNAP Single-port 10 Gigabit 10GBASE-T Network Expansion Card: LAN-10G1T-D

- QNAP Single-port 10 Gigabit SFP+ Network Expansion Card: LAN-10G1SR-D



The TS-531X offers two 10GbE SFP+ ports to fully support 10GbE high-speed networks, capable of delivering lightning-fast throughput for businesses that demand higher bandwidth for virtualization and fast backup & restoration for an ever-growing amount of data.The TS-531X supports multiple port-trunking modes, enabling IT administrators to set up link aggregation to increase total data transmission capability.Failover and dual IP are also supported to ensure continuous system operations.The supported port-trunking modes include: Balance-rr (Round-Robin), Active Backup, Balance XOR, Broadcast, IEEE 802.3ad, Balance-tlb (Adaptive Transmit Load Balancing) and Balance-alb (Adaptive Load Balancing).



On the bottom area of the unit, we will get to see four large and circular rubber feet.There are two small labels with its model number and power input. The labels also mentions Taiwan as the country of manufacture.




Installation

The TS-531X trays are sporting the classic design, with an aluminum body and a plastic frontal cover.The caddies can house both 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs. You will find all required screws in the bundle. Contrary to the Pro units, these caddies do not feature locks.



The hard drives directly set on the tray and screws insert on the bottom side.



We then insert the drive bay back in and put the lid on.




A Look Inside

It's now time to strip the NAS down to discover what components are hidden away inside its casing.The top cover of the unit can be lifted easily by simply removing six screws which are located in the back.With the cover to the system removed, in the top nestled above the drive bays we find a 250W PSU with an 80 Plus Bronze rating.



The Delta Electronics DPS-250AB-44D power supply has already been used in earlier QNAP products. It is only cooled by a 40mm fan, but this shouldn't be a problem since the PSU is only rated for 240 watts and modern HDDs won't need even that. Sustained power output is set as 240W when all three rails are active -- distributed as 6A on +3.3V, 12.0A on +5V, 17.0A on +12V.



Unless you are a user determined to void your warranty and persistent enough to rip your new file server apart, it is actually quite a challenge to dig into the further details on this product. QNAP has 'conveniently' made everything interlocking -- for example, the motherboard cannot be removed unless you release the SATA backplane, which cannot be removed by itself since one of the many screws are blocked off by the chassis frame. You'll end up taking apart everything, haha. That said, as shown, the motherboard is mounted on the left side of the system, facing inwards, with its back covered entirely by a piece of clear plastic, just in case in makes contact with the shell and short circuits.



The two SO-DIMM memory modules dominate the back surface of the controller board, evidence that this device has more power on tap than usual. It's very easy to upgrade the DRAM once the top cover is removed, and QNAP supports a number of memory upgrade options for the TS-531X.



This particular unit came fully populated with the maximum supported configuration, 8GB of DDR3L-1600.



Keeping things cool is a Y.S.Tech FD121225LB 120mm cooling fan. This fan is capable of moving 73CFM at 34.0 dB(A). The fan spin at 1800RPM have a max static pressure of 2.6 mm-H2O and use just 2.16W each.This fans is not only used to pull cool air through the NAS for the HDDs, it is also used to pull air past the passively cooled Processor.



Taking apart the TS-531X wasn't an easy task since many screws had to be removed in a certain order, but I, thankfully, have great experience with QNAP boxes, which made the whole process go smoothly. As you can see,I removed all components and only had the chassis left in the end.The mainboard of the NAS is really small, housing all the necessary components to support its functions.On it, we found several polymer CapXon caps.



One heatsink cool down the Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-314 quad-core SoC CPU and chipset.The heart of the unit is a quad-core ARM-based processor running at 1.4GHz along with 8/16GB of RAM, which makes it a powerful NAS drive. All this silicon muscle allows for faster file transfers and for the aforementioned media transcoding without dropped frames.The ARM Cortex-A15 quad-core processor supports DDR3, DDR3L and LPDDR2 memory.



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



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



The single PCIe slot and the battery of the mainboard.




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.



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



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



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.



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.



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.



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



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.




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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.




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.



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.



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.



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.



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



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



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



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



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



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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



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



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



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.



Whether you’re looking for Apple or Microsoft file protocols, you won’t be disappointed.



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.



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.



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.



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.



The SNMP service is one mostly for enterprises as most home users don’t need a centralized log location.



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.



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



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.



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.



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.



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.



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



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.



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.



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.



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



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.



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.



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.



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



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




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.



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.



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



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



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.



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.



External devices can be also configured from the next menu.



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.



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.



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.



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.




Applications

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-531X. 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.



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-531X 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-531X 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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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!



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.



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.



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.



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.



Let’s not forget about the availability of Plex too.



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.



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.



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



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.



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.




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:



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 five HDD WD Red 1TB 3.5 NAS Internal Hard Drives(WD10EFRX) for testing the NAS.I also put on 4X OCZ AMD Radeon R7 (240GB) SSD's that connected by Raid 5 technology(10GbE link)




Peformance

Performance on the whole is solid for a budget 5-bay NAS.



Atto ISCSI.



Atto JBOD.



Atto Raid 0.



Atto Raid 1.



Atto Raid 5.



Atto Single.



Atto USB 3.0.




10GbE

So how does that stack up to regular Gigabit Ethernet In a word Amazing.



The results here were great. Running the exact same tests as above, I was averaging 150MB/second copying a large file to the TS-531X, and a staggering 211MB/second copying a single large file off of the TS-531X. With an array of SSD drives, this performance would probably be even higher.So i decided to put inside 4X OCZ AMD Radeon R7 (240GB) SSD's that connected by Raid 5.




Noise,Power Consumption & Temperature

The TS-531X is whisper quiet. The fan was almost inaudible above the background noise level in the room and didn't top 32dBA. The hard drives were also very quiet and could be heard rustling away under load if you listened very, very carefully.



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



Power consumption was low throughout since Annapurna CPU is incredibly efficient.




Conclusion

Qnap aims to put some serious storage muscle on to your desktop with this five-bay NAS appliance that delivers more of everything.QNAP made a very wise choice when they decided to build a new series with some changes that made a significant price cut possible.You can, if you don't care about the LCD display, the lockable HDD trays, and a minor performance drop, save some money (and spend them on HDDs) with a TS-531X model.Status LEDs for System Status, USB, LAN, and activity on each HDD are integrated along the black acrylic header on the front panel. The USB 3.0 port, quick backup button and the power switch are on the left, towards the bottom. There is no front door, or cover on the front of the unit, but the exposed drive trays are nicely finished and integrate well with the remainder of the front panel.All the plastic parts are well matched in terms of color and texture. All in all, it's easy to recognize the trademark QNAP style, and that's a good thing IMHO.QNAP has an enviable reputation for quality and reliability, both very important qualities for a NAS server, and the TS-531X design doesn't mess with success.The TS-531X uses a low-power ARM-based Annapurna Labs Alpine AL-314 processor running at 1.4 GHz.I've tested other NAS with this processor before and found it to be capable of supporting high network performance bandwidth, but end users will be limited in other areas such as host-based video transcoding.This system should be the lowest NAS to feature five drive bays. This allows users to store more data at a lower price point without paying for features that often go underutilized.The TS-531X was rock stable the entire time I played with it, and it never crashed or stalled during the tests I conducted, and I had it running 24/7 for some weeks in order to complete all of the tests.The QNAP TS-531X is a very quiet NAS. It's so quiet you could easily place the unit on your desk or close to your work area without interruption. The 120mm fan also keep the NAS and the drives inside cool without making a disturbance.The real beauty of the TS-531X is in the software. The menu system is easy to follow and within seconds your NAS is configured and working exactly how you want it. Prior to writing this page I browsed the QNAP Forums to see what add-on packages were being developed and the list was massive. These will eventually join the large number of already supported applications that run on the TS-531X.Since this NAS model is mostly oriented at business applications, a HDMI port in the back is not available, but I haven't seen any issues while trying to play back high-quality video files via the Video Station or Plex from QTS.



The QNAP TS-531X Turbo NAS network storage server is clearly aimed at small and medium businesses. There are dozens of models in the QNAP storage product line, and this one has been tailored for a specific application. It's not that it can't be used in the home, but very few home networks is going to be able to effectively take full advantage of the two 10GbE connections that comes standard on this model.The large number of apps that are available and the cloud services that extend the reach of NAS storage, all contribute to a versatile system that does more than you could ever imagine a NAS server was intended to do. Some of the high-end routers are attempting to edge their way into this solution space, but for the moment the prize for the most functionality in one small net-centric box goes to the Turbo NAS server.There is no doubt that QNAP has, once more, done an excellent job, and I can assure you that this NAS is worth every cent of its price($600).The price is very competitive with other 5-bay NAS units on the market, even though without QNAP's many robust hardware and software features. I can't think of a reason not to recommend it if you need the storage space, especially considering that the price of HDDs has finally started to drop.