QNAP TS-EC1279U-RP review

QNAP’s NAS appliance boasts Intel's quad-core Xeon E3 processor, upgraded firmware and excellent remote management, making it a dream for SMBs.

IT Pro Verdict

The storage features in QNAP’s NAS appliances just keep on getting better and its cloud services are currently the best available. The lack of physical expansion is an issue but we can’t fault the TS-EC1279U-RP for its myriad network services, backup facilities, IP SAN features and stunning performance.

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IP SAN features are top-notch as the appliance supports 256 iSCSI targets, LUN backup to other storage devices and thin provisioning. Select the latter during target creation and it'll only use a small amount of space to start with which will have blocks dynamically added as space is used up.

QSM 3.6 adds some interesting extras as the appliance can now act as a proxy server, LDAP server, Syslog server and a VPN server. Anti-virus measures are provided so you can set up scan schedules for selected folders and place infected files in a local quarantine area.

QNAP MyCloud

The new MyCloudNAS Connect app makes light work of creating a PPTP VPN connection to the appliance's advertised services

Cloud-based performance is excellent

We were impressed with QNAP's MyCloudNAS hosted service when we reviewed its TS-559 Pro II. This latest version adds a new Connect Windows app which provides secure remote access to the appliance.

It takes the hard work out of creating a standard Windows PPTP VPN connection profile as users just enter the URL of the MyCloudNAS service plus their username and password. We found this worked well as after adding a PPTP port forwarding rule to our router, our test users could connect to the appliance over a secure encrypted link.

The Connect app displays all public and private services on the appliance you are permitted to access. Performance is reasonable with our 2.52GB test video clip copied to a PPTP enabled client at an average of 9MB/sec.

Hosted cloud backup has also been improved as along with Amazon's S3 and ElephantDrive, you now have support for the Symform service. After entering your provider account details in the web interface, you can select local folders to be backed up regularly for off-site storage.

QNAP

We installed an Emulex dual-port 10-Gigabit card in the appliance without any problems

For 10GbE performance we linked the appliance to Dell PowerEdge R515 and Broadberry dual Opteron 4100 rack servers. These were running Windows Server 2008 R2 and equipped with Emulex 10GbE dual-port adapters.

Dave Mitchell
Dave Mitchell

Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.

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