Thecus N4510U Rackmount NAS Review

Introduction

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The N4510U is Thecus' entry-level rackmount NAS server for small business use. The system includes Thecus' award winning OS 5 software stack that ensures you have access to every software package in the Thecus library.

The N4510U actually has two different versions. The first is the model we're looking at today, model number N4510U-S with a single PSU. Thecus also sells a dual PSU model, N4510U-R. Our model also uses the current front face plate. Thecus will soon have a new face plate for the N4510 model name, but we're not sure what changes Thecus made.

Thecus' rackmount products are all all-inclusive unlike many other rackmount NAS. The unit ships with drive rails for 4-post racks. Nothing irritates me more than getting in a new NAS and finding that I can't properly install the NAS in a rack. Making matters worse, some rack rail systems cost as much as $200! Thecus includes rails with all of their rackmount NAS and we applaud them for doing so.

Let's take a look at the hardware specifications, then the software and finally run performance tests.

Hardware Specifications and Pricing

Modern NAS servers have moved beyond data storage through a wire network. In order to get the most out of a NAS you need to look at the extra I/O hardware and the mountain of potential software features.

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The heart of the Thecus N4510U is an Intel Atom dual-core processor running at 1.86GHz. We've seen the Atom D2550 used in a number of entry-level NAS products and it's a solid processor for NAS duty. Thecus includes 2GB of DDR3 in the NAS, double the industry standard for entry-level products.

The N4510U has four drive bays, each with a locking drive sled. The primary way to pump data to the NAS is through the two gigabit Ethernet port, but the unit also has six USB ports - two are USB 3.0 and one the front of the N4510U. The NAS also have a few multimedia functions, one VGA output, one HDMI output, a line output for audio and line level and mic level audio inputs.

As mentioned, all Thecus rackmount NAS products ship with rails for mounting the NAS in a rack. That adds to the value of the N4510U and that leads us to price and overall value of the unit.

Google Shopping reported two e-tails with the unit in stock for $561. That makes the N4510U one of the best priced rackmount NAS products on the market today. Backing up the value is Thecus' two-year warranty.

Software Features

NAS products are equal parts hardware performance and software features. One compliments the other in a balanced product. You need more hardware performance to run more software features at the same time.

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Thecus doesn't list every single software option, but it lists several. Third-party software packages can be added to the N4510U and every possible option is covered.

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Packaging

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We're not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about the packaging today. Thecus ships the N4510U in a double box package. We didn't even bring the outer box in the office since it was filthy from the shipper's conveyer belts.

Here we see the inner box that is clean and ready to go.

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There are nearly three boxes, if you count the inner cardboard that is next to the NAS after the first layer of foam.

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The rack rails are tucked inside one of the foam pieces.

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Finally, we get to actual unit itself. With all of the protection between the NAS and the outside world, I think I could drive over the package with my truck, and still not hurt the NAS.

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Inside we found the accessory package. Three physical disks are included, a universal install disk, Acronis True Image and Twonky Media. Here we also see the included rack rails that secure the back side of the NAS in a 4-post rack and two papers, one that reminds you to download the new software from Thecus.com and the other is a warranty card.

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The N4510U uses an internal power supply, so you get a standard power cable. An Ethernet cable is also provided. Screws for both fine and coarse drives (2.5" use fine and 3.5" use course) are included as are keys for the drive bays.

Thecus N4510U NAS

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Here we get our first look at the Thecus N4510U NAS. The front of the unit has a LCD display on the left side that swivels out to expose the fourth drive bay. Each drive sled is keyed so it can lock, a nice touch and impressive for a rackmount NAD that costs less than $600!

There are seven buttons on the front of the NAS. The first four are used in conjunction with the LCD display for easy navigation or to configure your NAS with a client PC. In the middle, next to the two USB 3.0 ports, is a locator button. This flashes a light on the back of the unit. I personally don't have a rack full of N4510U NAS, but if I did, trying to find a specific one on the back side would be difficult. The final two buttons are for power and to mute the internal buzzer that makes a distinct noise should anything go wrong with the unit.

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Here we get a close up look at the display. I've tested NAS products without a display and before those tests, I always thought the display was an unneeded feature. It's not something you will use every day, but when you do need it, it's nice to have.

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The display swivels out to expose the last drive sled. Here you can see the drive sleds that Thecus provides. They do lock, which is a nice touch for enterprise products, even if they are just entry-level.

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Here we see the side of the N4510U. The included drive rails provide support for the back half of the NAS, while the front rack ears secure the front. The only downside is you can't install the NAS in a dense environment, without taking the sides off of the rack, and you can't slide the N4510U in and out.

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The back of the NAS has a majority of the I/O connectivity. On the far left is a power supply that can be removed with just a couple of screws. I'm not sure who would run audio or video on a rackmount server, but the N4510U has 2.5mm audio as well as VGA and even HDMI connections. Four USB ports are on the back for printers and USP systems.

You may expect a 1U server to be loud, but the N4510U is actually quiet.

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Two gigabit Ethernet ports are the primary connectors on the back for data I/O. The ports can run on separate networks or used together in a failover setup. 803.11AD is also supported for network teaming.

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Inside we found a nice tight build with every wire tucked away when it come could.

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There is a single 2GB DDR3 SO-DIMM in one of two slots for RAM.

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I'm not really sure what we could do with it, but there is an mSATA opening on the board. I've read about modding NAS from a few specialty forums and one of these days I may have to play around and see what I can accomplish with the N4510U.

Configuration Menus

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Thecus has a special setup software that makes finding the NAS on your network easy. This is the easiest way to location your NAS and start the setup process.

Test System Setup

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Our NAS test 'system' has migrated to a full 45u rack like what you'd find in a datacenter. There are ten servers that attack the target NAS with 120 Hyper-V installations of Windows 7 64-bit, each with a dedicated gigabit Ethernet port. The systems feed to three Extreme Networks Summit 400-48 switches that link together via Extreme Network's proprietary link cable system. One switch has a two 10GbE Xenpak adapters installed. When testing NAS products with 10GbE capability, the NAS connects to the switch via single or dual 10GbE courtesy of an Intel X520-SR2 installed in the NAS.

This level of testing wouldn't be possible without the help and support from several companies, many of which have little to do with NAS products. We would like to thank AVADirect, Antec, Corsair, GIGABYTE, Icy Dock, Kingston, LSI, Noctua, Rosewill and Western Digital for their much-appreciated support.

Intel NASPT

The Intel NAS Performance Toolkit (NASPT) is a file system exerciser and analysis tool designed to enable direct measurement of home network attached storage (NAS) performance. Designed to emulate the behavior of an actual application, NASPT uses a set of real-world workload traces gathered from typical digital home applications. Traces of high definition video playback and recording, office productivity applications, video rendering/content creation and more provide a broad range of different application behaviors.

TweakTown Custom 120-Client Office Test

The TweakTown Custom 120-client Office Test uses 120 Windows 7 Hyper-V installations and custom software to stress each NAS with traces from Microsoft Office tasks. Both throughput (in Mbits per second) and latency (in milliseconds) are measured.

Western Digital RED - The NAS HDD

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TweakTown uses Western Digital RED 1TB hard drives for all of our NAS tests. You can read our full review of the Western Digital RED 1TB here.

Benchmarks - 1 HDD / JBOD

JBOD: A single or combined multiple drives and capacities linked together to form a single drive.

Note - No Data Redundancy

HD Video Playback

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HD Video Play - 720p HD stream from Windows Media Player* 256kB reads

2HD Video Play - 2x playback

4HD Video Play - 4x playback

HD Video Record

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HD Video Record - 720p HD stream, 256kB writes

HD Video Play & Record - 1 playback, 1 record simultaneously

2x HD Video Play & 2x Record - 2 playback, 2 record simultaneously

Content Creation

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Photo Album - All reads - wide distribution of sizes

Office Productivity - Reads and writes, 1kB & 4kB reads; Mostly 1kB writes

Content Creation - 95% writes; 1k, 4k & little reads; Writes up to 64kB

File / Directory Transfer

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Directory Copy From NAS - 64kB reads

Directory Copy To NAS - Predominantly 64kB writes, wide scattering under 16kB

File Copy From NAS - 4GB file copy, 64kB reads

File Copy To NAS - 64kB writes

One of the easiest ways to start with a NAS is to purchase your NAS and use an existing drive until more HDDs are purchased.

Benchmarks - 6 HDD / RAID 0

RAID 0: Normally used to increase performance and useful for setups such as large read-only NFS servers where mounting many disks is time-consuming or impossible and redundancy is irrelevant.

HD Video Playback

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HD Video Play - 720p HD stream from Windows Media Player 256kB reads

2HD Video Play - 2x playback

4HD Video Play - 4x playback

HD Video Record

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HD Video Record - 720p HD stream, 256kB writes

HD Video Play & Record - 1 playback, 1 record simultaneously

2x HD Video Play & 2x Record - 2 playback, 2 record simultaneously

Content Creation

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Photo Album - All reads - wide distribution of sizes

Office Productivity - Reads and writes, 1kB & 4kB reads; Mostly 1kB writes

Content Creation - 95% writes; 1k, 4k & little reads; Writes up to 64kB

File / Directory Transfer

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Directory Copy From NAS - 64kB reads

Directory Copy To NAS - Predominantly 64kB writes, wide scattering under 16kB

File Copy From NAS - 4GB file copy, 64kB reads

File Copy To NAS - 64kB writes

Benchmarks - 6 HDD / RAID 10

RAID 10: A Stripe of Mirrors. Multiple RAID 1 mirrors are created and a RAID 0 stripe is created over these.

HD Video Playback

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HD Video Play - 720p HD stream from Windows Media Player* 256kB reads

2HD Video Play - 2x playback

4HD Video Play - 4x playback

HD Video Record

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HD Video Record - 720p HD stream, 256kB writes

HD Video Play & Record - 1 playback, 1 record simultaneously

2x HD Video Play & 2x Record - 2 playback, 2 record simultaneously

Content Creation

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Photo Album - All reads - wide distribution of sizes

Office Productivity - Reads and writes, 1kB & 4kB reads; Mostly 1kB writes

Content Creation - 95% writes; 1k, 4k & little reads; Writes up to 64kB

File / Directory Transfer

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Directory Copy From NAS - 64kB reads

Directory Copy To NAS - Predominantly 64kB writes, wide scattering under 16kB

File Copy From NAS - 4GB file copy, 64kB reads

File Copy To NAS - 64kB writes

Benchmarks - 6 HDD / RAID 5

RAID 5: Use block-level striping with parity data distributed across all member disks.

HD Video Playback

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HD Video Play - 720p HD stream from Windows Media Player 256kB reads

2HD Video Play - 2x playback

4HD Video Play - 4x playback

HD Video Record

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HD Video Record - 720p HD stream, 256kB writes

HD Video Play & Record - 1 playback, 1 record simultaneously

2x HD Video Play & 2x Record - 2 playback, 2 record simultaneously

Content Creation

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Photo Album - All reads - wide distribution of sizes

Office Productivity - Reads and writes, 1kB & 4kB reads; Mostly 1kB writes

Content Creation - 95% writes; 1k, 4k & little reads; Writes up to 64kB

File / Directory Transfer

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Directory Copy From NAS - 64kB reads

Directory Copy To NAS - Predominantly 64kB writes, wide scattering under 16kB

File Copy From NAS - 4GB file copy, 64kB reads

File Copy To NAS - 64kB writes

Benchmarks - 6 HDD / RAID 6 and Single Client Wrap-up

Benchmarks - 6 HDD / RAID 6

RAID 6: Extend RAID 5 by adding an additional parity block; thus it uses block-level striping with two parity blocks distributed across all member disks.

HD Video Playback

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HD Video Play - 720p HD stream from Windows Media Player 256kB reads

2HD Video Play - 2x playback

4HD Video Play - 4x playback

HD Video Record

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HD Video Record - 720p HD stream, 256kB writes

HD Video Play & Record - 1 playback, 1 record simultaneously

2x HD Video Play & 2x Record - 2 playback, 2 record simultaneously

Content Creation

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Photo Album - All reads - wide distribution of sizes

Office Productivity - Reads and writes, 1kB & 4kB reads; Mostly 1kB writes

Content Creation - 95% writes; 1k, 4k & little reads; Writes up to 64kB

File / Directory Transfer

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Directory Copy From NAS - 64kB reads

Directory Copy To NAS - Predominantly 64kB writes, wide scattering under 16kB

File Copy From NAS - 4GB file copy, 64kB reads

File Copy To NAS - 64kB writes

Single Client Performance Wrap-up

Even though the Thecus N4510U only holds four drives and has a slower processor than some of the other NAS systems on the single user charts, the N4510U managed to perform better than some of the others in specific tests. Even when the N4510U didn't outright win a test on a chart, it still performed very well in that test, and to be honest, the NAS performed very well across the board.

Let's take a look at the multi-client test that uses real Microsoft Office files to measure performance in a medium sized office.

Benchmarks - Multi-Client Test

The Intel NAS Performance Tool (NASPT) is an excellent way to determine NAS performance in a single user environment. Any review that only uses NASPT assumes that only a single computer will access the target NAS at one time. We took issue with this method of testing and spent over a year designing, building, programming and finally validating the TweakTown Multi-Client Test.

The test uses Microsoft Office data recorded to traces and played back to the NAS from up to 120 client Windows 7 installations (clients). We record total throughput of all clients and average response time per client.

Over time we'll populate the two multi-client charts with several NAS products from a span of categories. The products range from a dual Xeon server with 2x 10GbE to a 2-bay NAS with a single gigabit Ethernet connection. The products will fall into their performance categories based on performance and not marketing material or opinion.

Throughput

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The Thecus N4510U hits its stride at 24 clients and the same throughput performance is seen all the way to 80 clients. I found it odd that the N4510U didn't peak and then drop off like many of the other NAS on the chart. I think the amount of RAM in the NAS, 2x more than most of the others on the chart, allows the NAS to ride the peak performance longer than most of the others.

Once we get past 80 clients, the NAS drops off in throughput and falls in line with many of the other smaller NAS products. The extended range though is important and shows us that the N4510U has a lot of potential for an 80-person office using the NAS at the same time.

Latency

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Looking at the latency, again we see excellent performance up to 80 users. At 88 users the N4510U spikes the latency, but until that point, the N450U outperforms several systems on the chart, most costing considerably more.

Final Thoughts

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Let's put this into perspective real quick. The Thecus N4510U costs less than $600, is a rackmount NAS, ships with 2GB of DDR3 from the factory, and just happens to outperform products costing twice as much in our multi-client test. It's like the little NAS server that could!

Let's look at the price first because it's an important aspect for the entry-level rackmount server market. Google Shopping returned a price of less than $600 in our search and more than one e-tailer managed to return a similar result. The lowest priced 4-bay rackmount from QNAP is $730+, the new 2-bay Synology RS214 costs nearly $560, the Synology Rack Station RS812RP, another 4-bay costs $1700 and the Asustor AS-604RS 4-bay rackmount NAS costs just over $1,100. These are the entry-level rackmount competitors to the Thecus N4510U, and the numbers speak for themselves when it comes to pricing.

We haven't tested any of these other products, so we can't comment on their performance, but when it comes to entry-level pricing, the N4510U is a bad ass. It also ships with rails, a big plus and 2GB of DDR3, twice more than the entry-level industry standard.

To be honest, we pulled more performance out of the Intel Atom 1.86GHz processor than I ever thought possible. If this was on TV, we'd say da da dah, da da dant, the Sports Center jingle on ESPN. Going into this review, just from the specs alone, I didn't expect much from the N4510U, since other products on these charts go up to 6 drives and have faster processors. This is a testament to the new Thecus OS 5 efficiency.

Looking at the performance in our multi-client test, the best test in the world for small office NAS environmental testing, the N4510U does a really good job getting to peak performance and then holding that level of performance for several more users. We peaked at 24 users and then the NAS stayed very close to that same level of performance all the way to 80 clients. The results are very impressive and make me want to go back and retest other Thecus NAS I have in the office with the new OS 5 software.

All things considered, the N4510U offers excellent value and better than expected performance for a unit that costs less than $600. This NAS is able to outperform products from other manufacturers that cost twice as much... and it includes rack rails.

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UPDATE - We just received word from Thecus that the N4510U is about to get a facelift, pictured above. A new front fascia, much like the N8900 and other high-end Thecus rackmount units, with a full length door is the upcoming enhancement. The door holds the LCD display and replaced the hinged LCD system. Internally, the updated N4510U is the same. We like the new look and full black color scheme.