QNAP TS-EC1279U-RP Rack Mount 10GbE NAS Review

Final Thoughts

We tested the QNAP TS-EC1279U-RP with a single 10GbE connection today, but the Intel 10GbE card does not ship with the NAS. The default configuration has four gigabit Ethernet ports that can be trunked together to give a theoretical 480 to 500MB/s transfer speed. A single 10GbE port can double that speed and you can even trunk two 10GbE ports together and put your NAS on steroids.

There are so many aspects of the TS-EC1279U-RP that we didn't cover today. The software side alone was an eleven page spread in a separate article. On the hardware side we could do something similar because the possibilities are virtually endless.

Reaching deep into the bag there are some flaws with the TS-EC1279U-RP. The biggest is the optional, read: you have to purchase them separate, rack mount rails that are needed to install the NAS in your rack. Then there is the file system. The QNAP software performs best with EXT4, but ZFS or XFS would perform even better if offered.

Anywhere the hardware is lacking is quickly made up by the outstanding software. Just calling this unit a NAS is an understatement. Web server, mail server, file server, download station, audio distribution for your office and all of that is before you even spent five minutes with the manual. Then you can tack on the new buzz words, iSCSI with 256 targets, VMWare vSphere, Citrix XenServerm Hyper V with failover clustering - the list is impressive.