QNAP TS879-Pro 8-Bay NAS Review

Keeping the 869Pro in mind for the sake of comparison and to outline a larger point when it comes to raw numbers, when we look at the speeds that have been experienced on the 869Pro and 879Pro, there is little difference to be seen. What has to be taken into account though is that these two units are aimed at to slightly different markets.

The slightly cheaper and lesser specified 869Pro is a cracking unit and for the SMB market that its pushed for, it’s ideal, but its downfall is when there is going to be a very large number of users trying to connect to and utilise it at once, this is where the Atom CPU and lower 1GB or RAM will start to struggle and the performance drop will be noticeable.

Consequently, this is where the 879Pro comes into play. Its larger 2GB of RAM and more importantly its higher class of CPU are more suited to an environment with more users, which in turn put a heavier work load upon the NAS. Naturally what this translates to is that given the same large number of users, the 879Pro will be able to sustain a higher transfer speed to what the 869Pro can deliver. To top this off, if the need for speed is still a high priority, then the ability to drop in another NIC with either two more 1GBE ports for up to four way link aggregation or a 10GB fibre channel card which uses the likes of SFP+ networking to deliver a connection speed that will deliver high volumes of data in low times, is there and ready to go by simply installing a [compatible] card and letting the system take it from there.

Saying whether or not to buy this particular NAS is not necessarily a clear cut choice. This is not because it is not a good system, in fact it is great, but it all comes down to relative cost and getting the right tool for the job. By all means any SMB or SOHO user can get one, but it may be a case of getting a system that can not be used to its full potential when the lesser spec 869Pro can do the same job just as well and for less money If there are a large number of users that will need to connect to the NAS and/or the higher speed 10GB connection is required then with out a doubt the 879Pro would be the one out of the two to choose.

Sticking with relative choices, there is obviously a cost difference, and for those that don’t necessarily need the 879Pro over the 869Pro right now but want to future proof them self just in case the need for more power does arise, then do expect to pay almost double the price with the 869Pro coming in for around £900.

Given time ,I will aim to start pushing systems like this that bit further to see and show the performance difference that an i3 processor has over Atom and how a Xeon based NAS is better still and this will be done by connecting multiple users to the system simultaneously and getting them all to request, read and write data concurrently to record how the systems handle the load. Until then though I can only but recommend this system for the larger businesses or users that have a heavier demand for speed over the Atom based offerings that I have looked at before. Because of the flexibility to upgrade the NICs to faster options, the close range of performance across the RAID arrays and the extra reserve of power that the i3 has over Atom based NAS’ this has to be one of my favourite systems for now, a fairly expensive one at that, but its a small price to pay when you need lots of data shared – and fast.