Introduction

We would like to thank QNAP for supplying the review sample.

QNAP is a well-established NAS manufacturer, and their products cover all needs from home use and up to enterprise environments. Their recently released TS-x70 line consists of high-performance NAS servers which address SMB (Small and Medium-sized Business) environments or high-enthusiast users who want a top-performing NAS server for their home and have no problem paying a premium for it.

Today, we will take a close look at the TS-470. A 4-bay NAS with up to 450 MB/s read and 423 MB/s write speeds, it also supports 10GbE networking with an optional expansion card. The aforementioned speeds can be attained in a normal Gigabit network thanks to the four Ethernet ports it is equipped with from the factory; that is, if a compatible switch is used. The TS-470 can even be scaled to hold up to 36 HDDs with 144 TB raw capacity through these optional REXP-1600U-RP RAID expansion enclosures. As you will have figured out by now, this isn't an entry level NAS, but a really powerful option that can handle everything you will throw at it.

This NAS not only comes with four Gigabit Ethernet ports, but also an Intel Celeron 2.6 GHz dual-core CPU, which is more than enough to handle its needs, and 2 GB DDR3 RAM. It can also take SSDs, which can be used as cache drives to boost transfer speeds; that is, in addition to plain HDDs since this NAS supports SATA III. However, its most important feature is probably QNAP’s excellent operating system, a custom-tailored Linux edition that offers a multi-windowed, multi-tasking GUI. QNAP put all their years of experience in building NAS servers into making a really sleek operating system that even allows inexperienced users to get the most out of NAS servers. There are also plenty of extra application packages we will take a close look at in this review, which then allows this unit to meet nearly any challenge head on, boosting the server's usability tremendously.

The only downside of all the above is that the end user has to pay for the software since thousands of hours have been spent on its development, which many fail to understand. Fact is that many users still judge these NAS-ready solutions solely by their hardware, overlooking the support and software these come with. A FreeNAS-based solution can surely be much cheaper and even more powerful, but it will lack the platform-oriented software and will come with limited support. But enough with the long prolong: We made our point, detailing the price of these ready and obviously more expensive NAS solutions over custom-made ones and are now ready to skip to the TS-470's specifications.