Exterior

Although it only has four 3.5" drive bays, the inclusion of a great number of features and additional bays for the smaller drives and an internal PSU are responsible for a larger size than is normally the case. It is also quite heavy, and to such a degree that we thought QNAP shipped it with pre-installed HDDs.

A sticker at the face of the NAS mentions the three roles it can play as a Thunderbolt DAS, NAS, and SAN. DAS is storage directly attached to a system, NAS is network attached storage, and SAN is storage mounted through the iSCSI protocol or by using a fibber channel.


The sticker at the top of the NAS depicts the cloud key, which you'll need for the server's initialization through the cloud.


The trays don't feature locks, which is a shame. However, you are able to lock the trays in place through the switches depicted above.


Here's a view of the server's internals with the trays removed.


We didn't expect plastic trays in such an expensive NAS. QNAP should use metal ones instead.


Here are the two SSD trays. These also feature lock switches.


Like the HDD trays, the SSD trays are also made of plastic.


Here is a view of the 2.5" drives' spots.


QNAP shows you how to unlock the trays.


There are no ventilation holes on either side of the NAS.


Four plastic stands are installed at the bottom of the NAS to keep it in place securely regardless of the surface it is put upon. There is also a small label with the model number and its power-input specifications. The label mentions Taiwan as the country of manufacture.


Things get serious at the rear since there are a ton of I/O ports, which makes the professional orientation of this NAS clear. The most interesting ports are installed on PCIe expansion cards with two 10 Gbit Ethernet and two Thunderbolt 2 ports. A very nice surprise is the on/off switch on the PSU. This is one of the very few NAS servers to feature a PSU with an on/off switch, which can prove useful in a variety of situations.