ASUSTOR Flashstor 12 Pro FS6712X All-Flash NAS Review

TweakTown's Rating: 90%

The Bottom Line

While initial cost of setting up the ASUSTOR Flashstor 12 Pro FS6712X is certainly high, the benefits of an all-flash NAS start with increased reliability and of course performance!

Pros

• Overall performance and 10GbE
• Twelve slot NVMe
• Memory upgradable
• All flash storage
• Attractive and unique appearence

Cons

• All flash storage setup is expensive

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon for $799 USD

Buy at Newegg for $799 USD

Buy at Amazon for $1069 CAD

Buy at Newegg for $619.21 CAD

Buy at Amazon for £789

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

It has certainly been some time since we last had an appliance from ASUSTOR in-house. We can go back nearly two years to the Lockerstor 4 when we last had a unit on the test bench. Since then, much has changed, including ADM, the firmware platform for Asustors' lineup of NAS solutions. Now, on version 4.3, we need a solid platform to get ourselves up to date, and the Flashstor FS6712X seemed appropriate after the long hiatus.

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The hardware specifications for the Flashstor FS6712X give us a modest Intel platform that includes the Celeron N5105, a four-core SoC with a boost clock upwards of 2.9GHz. ASUSTOR has allowed for memory expansion on this unit, so alongside the 4GB DDR4 SO-DIMM that is included, we do have an open slot for upgrades. The max capacity is 16GB.

Of course, the expansion includes a host of NVMe slots, twelve total for the FS6712X. ASUSTOR does not mention what PCIe Revision we are working with across the twelve slots, though we do know the CPU supports Gen 3 and has eight total lanes, which should offer around 8000 MB/s bandwidth. Connectivity for the Flashstor includes a single 10Gbe port alongside two USB 3.2 Gen 2 and two USB 2.0. HDMI 2.0 is also available alongside an SP/DIF audio output.

The ASUSTOR Flashstor FS6712X is priced at $799 barebones.

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	$799 USD	$799 USD	$799 USD	Buy
	$799 USD	$799 USD	$799 USD	Buy
	$1069 CAD	$1069 CAD	$1069 CAD	Buy
	$619.21 CAD	$619.21 CAD	$619.21 CAD	Buy
	£789	£749	-	Buy
	$799 USD	$799 USD	$799 USD	Buy
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Packaging

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The Flashstor arrived in retail packaging with a sticker at the top left with hardware information and an image of the NAS below.

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The back of the box includes more in-depth specifications of the Flashstor, including a port diagram of the unit on the left and features listed below.

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The ASUSTOR did come with a power adapter and ethernet cable.

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Unboxing, we have the NAS on the table; its unique form factor reminds me of the PlayStation 4. That said, we have hardware LEDS on the top of the unit and ASUSTOR branding on the far right.

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The front of the unit houses a single USB 3.2 Gen 2.

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Most of the connectivity is found in the rear I/O, which includes a Kensington lock on the far left, followed by the SPDIF and USB 2.0 ports. 10Gbe is next, followed by HDMI 2.0 and USB 3.2. The power input is on the far right.

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The Flashstor is unique as the drive slots are separated into two banks; the first half is available under a removable cover on the bottom of the unit, as seen above.

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Taking off the entire top cover of the system exposes the second half of the NVMe slots, which can also be used to access the DDR4 memory slots.

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To test the Flashstor FS6712X, we have four WD Red SN700 SSDs; this will allow us to compare the Flashstor 12 to the UGREEN DXP480T, which we reviewed a few months back and is also an all-flash NAS platform.

Software

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As seen above, ASUSTOR's NAS setup runs through the Control Center app.

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As seen above, further setup continues in your web browser; we start by detecting the system we are setting up.

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Next, we continue by setting an admin for the system with a password.

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We then have drives to set up. The NAS detects all four of our WD Red SN700. We chose RAID 5 using BTRFS.

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Landing on the dashboard, we see a desktop full of icons, allowing easy access to most of Flashstor's features. We note several new icons, including Dr. ASUSTOR and the Web Center.

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Running through the system, we first load up the activity monitor. This shows the system's overall performance in an overview and offers options for more detail, including tabs for CPU, Memory, and Network. On the side pane, you can access the current processes, drive usage, and settings.

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Next, we will have a small sample of the available apps for Flashstor.

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Backup and Restore offers several data backup options, including Rsync, SMB Backup, and FTP. You can also use internal backup if you have more than one volume and external backup with a USB 3.2 drive connected.

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System services can be seen above; this includes all the basics, like SMB, AFP, and NFS.

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Next up, we have the storage manager; this is, of course, where we will manage RAID arrays, volumes, and ISCSI connections.

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DR ASUSTOR, a new feature for ADM 4.2, offers health checks for the system, including its drives and support tools, if there is an issue with the system.

System Benchmarks

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We kicked off our testing of the Flashstor FS6712X with a quick run through CrystalDiskMark. The system is connected via a 10Gbe direct connection and, as you can see, offers fantastic sequential throughput, hitting 1167 MB/s read and 687 MB/s write.

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We then get into our testing with IOMeter. The first workload is a 4K Random Read, which showed the perfect scaling of the Flashstor with increasing QD. To start, we run around 2000 IOPS, quickly ramping up to 20K IOPs at QD8. This gets even better at QD64, where we see the unit peak just above 50K IOPS.

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Switching the workload to 4K Random Write, performance isn't nearly as good, but we see consistency from the ASUSTOR, which is peaking around 6000 IOPs.

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We have now switched the workload to a Sequential setup. This netted us around 400 MB/s at QD1, then ramped to a touch under 1000 MB/s by QD4. Peak speeds were reached at QD8, touching 1150 MB/s and holding steady.

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Sequential write was again consistent with the ASUSTOR; we started at 300 MB/s QD1, and peak speeds were reached at QD4, a touch under 500 MB/s.

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Our 8K 70/30 or OLAP workload wrapped up our testing of the Flashstor 12; we ended up with about 3000 IOPS QD1, which scaled up to 6000 IOPs at QD4 and peaked at nearly 9000 IOPs QD16.

Final Thoughts

The Flashstor 12 was a solid experience for me, getting more acquainted with the new ADM and current generation of appliances from ASUSTOR. It is certainly good to see the market move forward with all-flash options that deliver a classic experience that is much more refined and quicker. The 6712X even ushers in a new form factor for consumers that is overall more compact and will likely look better in an entertainment center. The twelve-drive capacity of the Flashstor 12 is fantastic, allowing for more flexibility in volume management; for me, it allowed us to test the full performance with just four drives, while any additional drive would offer more capacity for our array.

Getting into performance, our initial poke with CDM gave us a fantastic 1167 MB/s read and 687 MB/s write, thanks to the 10Gbe connection. We then pushed into IOMeter to get more complete results with higher QD workloads. This showed consistency for the ASUSTOR, with no oddball jumps throughout testing. Random read scaled very well from 2K IOPs at QD1 to 50K IOPs at QD128. Further, Random Write scaled quickly to peak performance at QD2 and 6000 IOPs. Sequential workloads, too, were very consistent, scaling rapidly to a peak performance of 1100 MB/s at just QD4 in read operations.

On the other hand, it was slower, pulling in just 550 MB/s, but it scaled quickly. OLAP was possibly the best workload for the ASUSTOR, ramping up from 3000 IOPs at QD1 to 6000 IOPs QD4; we peaked at QD32 at nearly 9000 IOPs. With testing complete, we immediately noted how well the Flashstor performed over the UGREEN, which is the better spec'd machine on paper, considering they used Core i3 and i5 12th Gen CPUs and DDR5 memory.

On to pricing, where the Flashstor 12, at $799, is nearly its competition as the market hasn't quite caught up outside of the UGREEN DXP480T that was on Kickstarter earlier in the year. That said, the UGREEN offering is no longer available and hasn't made a retail appearance yet. That said, it is certainly worth noting that twelve NVMe of any capacity isn't cheap by any means; using WD Red SN700 at its lowest capacity of 250GB would cost nearly $700 and only offer ~2.6TB of capacity.