QNAP TS-219P+ NAS Server Review

Manufacturer: QNAP Systems, Inc.
Product Name: QNAP TS-219P+ NAS Server
Model Number: TS-219P+
Price As Tested: Available from NewEgg for $349.99

Full disclosure: The product used in this review was supplied by QNAAP Systems

Network storage is a concept that many people use without a second thought in corporate environments, but what about at home? In addition, a larger number of people are beginning to utilize cloud services, and most of those services include some storage capability. What if you could implement both, easily and with one device? All that and much more is readily available in a Network Attached Storage server from industry stalwart, QNAP. The TS-219P+ Turbo NAS uses a modern, energy-efficient 1.6 GHz Marvell ARM-based processor with 512 MB of DDR3 system memory to drive this storage server. A single Gigabit Ethernet network interface feeds data to the CPU, and then it's sent to two SATA 3Gb/s drive bays offering single disk, JBOD, and RAID 0/1 configurations. Benchmark Reviews recently examined the QNAP TS-659 Pro II Turbo NAS in detail, and now we compare the performance of this smaller unit against other network attached storage servers.

The TS-219P+ NAS server has lower capacity than most NAS units in the market, but I'm willing to bet that there are more two-bay NAS devices sold than any other configuration. If you need both very high capacity and redundancy too, you need to implement RAID 5 at a minimum, and that means at least three disks and a much bigger NAS. If your medium-term data needs can be covered by 2-3TB of storage, you're a good candidate for a smaller two-bay unit like this one.

Three features dominate the discussion of network storage hardware: data capacity, data security, and data transfer speed. In the last couple of years there has been a growing emphasis on the software side, and the current crop of NAS devices offer a dizzying array of applications to help manage and distribute the data, and provide several new ways of accessing that data. In the past, this level of control and communication has been limited to the corporate world, because you needed an MSCSE to figure them out. QNAP has always aimed for the high end of the NAS server market with performance and features such as dual Gigabit Ethernet with failover, a full range of RAID functionality, and a diverse, feature-rich user interface. Now, they've upgraded the software suite with some outstanding new features, and we'll look at both its capabilities and ease of use.

Benchmark Reviews has tested a number of QNAP products: the QNAP TS-119 NAS single-disk offering made for home users, and the Goliath QNAP TS-809 Pro 8-Bay NAS for the storage needs of large businesses. Most recently we tested a 4-bay QNAP TS-459 Pro Turbo-NAS and the 6-bay QNAP TS-659 Pro II. Let's see how this new two-bay device compares to its big brothers and little sisters.

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