14 DAY TRIAL // With the market for network-attached storage (NAS) devices being the promising segment that it is, it’s unsurprising to hear that a new product has emerged. QNAP's latest device, however, seems to offer a somewhat wider array of features than previous gizmos, through its increased storage capacity and support for a significant number of software and hardware features that make it suited for advanced server applications, storage and file sharing. Known as the Turbo NAS TS-559 Pro, the gadget runs on an Intel Atom D-510 1.66GHz dual-core CPU and has 1GB DDR2 RAM.
The TS-559 Pro has five hot-swappable drives and can use storage units of both the 3,5-inch and 2.5-inch form factors, in RAID 0/1/5/5+ hot spare/6/ 6+ hot spare, and JBOD configurations. When five 2TB units are used, the total storage space reaches as high as 10TB.
In addition, the NAS product supports online RAID capacity expansion, online RAID level migration and RAID recovery, as well as 256-bit AES encryption, and Apple Time Machine backups. There is also support for advanced features, such as DOM architecture with fail-safe dual OS, scheduled power on/off, Wake on LAN, and HDD S.M.A.R.T. Furthermore, it boasts five USB ports, two eSATA ports and is pre-installed with the QNAP NAS version 3.2 management software.
"Businesses are looking to cut IT costs, be greener, and move more IT functions into the cloud" said Laurent Cheng, Product Manager of QNAP Systems, Inc. "QNAP’s Business Series helps achieve these goals by delivering Turbo NAS servers that can fully take advantage of cloud computing environments while being very energy efficient."
End-users will likely be interested in knowing that the QNAP Turbo NAS TS-559 Pro has been certified as compatible with VMWare's vSphere4 (ESX 4.0) virtualization platform. This platform is “the industry's first cloud operating system that offers a way to reduce IT costs and increase responsiveness.”
The product has already been listed in Europe, at a price of 922.50 Euro (without hard drives).