This is not the first time that we have seen QNAP introduce this 9 storage bay chassis and in fact, this is technically the third generation of this style of device from them. Arriving in a frankly incredible compact form (measuring just 18.2 × 22.4 × 22.4cm) this system manages to house a huge amount of storage but is only fractionally larger than their traditional 4-bay NAS series. With increased measures towards cooling featured around the chassis, as well as as a remarkably clean and clear internal bay structure, you can definitely see that a lot of work has gone into the design of this casing. One thing I will highlight is that I’m glad the system arrived with a CAT6 cable and not a CAT5e. Recently I have noticed a number of ways in which some brands have cut corners, small as they might be, in saving costs and it’s still annoying to me when a 10GbE equipped system arrives with a CAT5e cable. I’m pleased to see that the TS-h973AX is not among those devices.

SSD Caching Monitor and Advisor – Allowing you to scale your SSD cache as needed, or get recommendations on how much you need While the QuTS hero software is laden with advanced features, the learning curve is gentle as it looks and feels very similar to the standard QTS firmware. That said, we spotted one difference right away: our three 14TB Seagate IronWolf NAS HDDs were assembled into a 24TB RAID5 storage pool in five minutes, while the job could have taken a day under QTS. Note: At least 1 GB RAM is required. The maximum number of channels supported varies by NAS model, network configuration, and camera settings. For more information, visit https://www.qnap.com/go/qvr-nas-selector.

Optional Accessories

The maximum number of channels supported varies by NAS model, network configuration, and camera settings. For more information, visit https://www.qnap.com/solution/qvr-face/en-us/ Then you have KEY applications that are used on the QNAPNAS system that moves into tailored data access and use, such as: QuMagie – Facial and Thing recognition application to help you retrieve, tag and catalogue photos by its use of AI to actually ‘view’ all your years of photos and let you search by the contents of them, not the file names. Multimedia Console – one portal access point to manage media access, searching, indexing and transcoding on your NAS device.

RAID Z – Multiple RAID levels allow flexible capacity utilization. RAID Triple Parity and Triple Mirror deliver higher levels of data protection. QTier – The QNP intelligent, multi-layer tiering system that works to optimize your SSD and caching configuration Space Saving Efficiency – Inline data deduplication, compression, and compaction reduce file size to conserve storage capacity and optimize performance. Warning: Using unsupported modules may degrade performance, cause errors, or prevent the operating system from starting.Access-Anywhere with myQNAPcloud – Safe and secure remote access over the internet to your storage systems, apps or just file storage Internally, things are kept tidy and well-spaced. Removing all of the available storage trays shows us a very clean selection of media interfaces. No loose cables, no separate data and power connectors, things are very structure inside this system. That is plenty of ventilation on the base of the device but there does seem to be less ventilation on either side of the main plastic chassis than I would ideally like, especially for a 9-bay storage system. I had this system running for several days during testing and comparisons and during that time, temperatures were not a problem, but still, I would have liked to have seen a little bit more ventilation on such a compact device. Overall I genuinely like the design and structure of the TS-h973AX hardware so far, although there is the odd placement of things that I take slight issue with. An AI-powered photo management app, supporting automated photo categorization with AI Albums, iOS® Live Photo display, and powerful search tool for ultimate photo management and sharing solution. Host multiple virtual machines and containers to run a wide range of applications on the TS-h973AX.

Container Station – much like the VM app, Container station lets you mount and access smaller virtual tools and GUIs, then access them over the network or internet.Above are a few of my software overviews that cover the general GUI and system of QuTS Hero on the TS-h886, as well as RAID rebuild and storage management overviews of the system to give you some idea of what the TVS-x88X can and cannot do: Inside the plentiful external box, we find both the NAS and a small box of accessories. These accessories include a first-time setup guide, external PSU, mains power cable, screws and keys for the individual media bays and an ethernet cable for connecting the device to your existing router or switch. All quite standard stuff it has to be said but short of the storage media, it’s everything you’re going to need to set this system up.

Install high-performance U.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSDs or SATA 6Gb/s SSDs in the dedicated SSD slots for cache acceleration and improved random I/O. QTS is the operating system for entry- and mid-level QNAP NAS. WIth Linux and ext4, QTS enables reliable storage for everyone with versatile value-added features and apps, such as snapshots, Plex media servers, and easy access of your personal cloud. System That large cooling fan (measuring 140mm), although almost disproportionate on a system of this scale, is exactly what this triple storage tier system needs and although the RPM can be adjusted by the user, it is recommended that it is left to adjust automatically. It is certainly the biggest single rear cooling fan I have ever seen in a desktop NAS, but understandable nevertheless. Photo, Video and Music Station – Multiple file type tailored applications to access data in the best possible way that is suited to their output – along with smart searching, playlists and sharing

QSAL (QNAP SSD Antiwear Leveling) – RAID-level SSD lifespan is automatically and regularly detected to prevent simultaneous SSD failure, improving your data protection and system reliability. QuTS hero is the operating system for high-end and enterprise QNAP NAS models. With Linux and ZFS, QuTS hero supports advanced data reduction technologies for further driving down costs and increasing reliablility of SSD (all-flash) storage. System The actual number of virtual machine instances may vary by the memory installed on NAS (e.g. 1 VM= 1 thread for 1 vCPU and 1GB memory). Please expend memory if needed.