Introduction

In the past most home users resorted to buying cheap low end PC’s just to act as a file server in cases where they have more than 1 PC in the household and everyone wants to share files among each other as well as store important data as backups. Until recently I myself had an old P3 machine in the corner of the house simply acting as a file server and doing other minor networking tasks as well as audio streaming. However with the introduction of Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems we now have the ability to do these tasks with much ease and with hardly any effort at all.

We have been reviewing a few NAS products in the past few months and if you are keeping up with new hardware devices coming out, you would have noticed the plethora of manufactures coming out with these devices. Today we look at a popular contender in the NAS market called QNAP. QNAP has been in the industry for many years now and has received significant popularity for their feature rich and high performance NAS systems. The device we’re looking at today is the TS 109 Pro Turbo Station NAS system which is aimed at the SMB & Corporate market.

The TS-109 Pro supports many valuable functions like File Server, FTP Server, Printer Server, etc. to satisfy the needs of SMB and SOHO users. Even though the TS 109 Pro is built on a very small footprint, it packs a 500 MHz processor, 128MB of DDR II RAM and a bucket load of features. Let’s take a look at the specs:

Features & Specifications:

Create your own File Server in the easiest way
The basic purpose of File Server is to allow users to store and share files. Users often concern that their private data or confidential files would be accessed by others. TS-109 Pro allows server manager to create user ID and password, and define the authority and quota for each user. Thus personal data stored on TS-109 Pro are well protected.

FTP Server simplifies the data sharing
Having troubles with sending large files by e-mail due to the limited capacity? You can establish your own FTP server by using TS-109 Pro. You can manage the access authority of the FTP server and share your files with your friends or customers easily in a few steps.

Backup Server with the most professional auto-backup software
Data backup may sound time and effort consuming for most users. QNAP’s Turbo Station now brings you the enterprise-class technology to make backup extremely simple and efficient! The most intelligent automatic backup software, NetBak Replicator, is provided for users to perform real-time synchronization or schedule backup from multiple PCs to TS-109 Pro.

Enhanced data protection by optional RAID-1 mirroring
Imagine, your server’s hard drive crashes and you lose everything. What would you do to have it back? QNAP’s exclusive Q-RAID 1 provides the ultra-high-level redundancy, which helps to keep a real-time synchronized mirror in your external USB or eSATA hard drive box. In case the main storage is damaged, the backup disk can be installed to TS-109 Pro to resume normal operation

Remote Replication
Remote Replication provides a superior level of data protection. Files can be backed up from TS-109 Pro to other QNAP NAS products in remote locations. Advanced options including data compression, block level incremental backup, and data synchronization save tremendous bandwidth and time for data backup.

Establish your interactive Web Server
Owning a web server is no more a dream! With the dual support of MySQL and SQLite, SMB/ SOHO users can easily set up their own web server. With the editable php.ini support, there is no need of going through all the hassles of setting up a web server. You can either develop programs by yourself or download a variety of open-sourced applications, such as online shops, forums, blogs, etc., over the Internet.

MySQL Server
TS-109 Pro is the most affordable choice as a standalone database server for system integrators. It can be applied flexibly in various deployments such as a database server of another web server in remote site or as an additional backup database server to achieve system redundancy.

Share your printer resource by Printer Server
You can share your printer device over the network without duplicating investment by simply connecting a USB printer to TS-109 Pro’s USB port and enabling the printer sharing function.

UPnP Media Server (with built-in TwonkyMedia Server)
TS-109 Pro is a perfect media storage center and it works well with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compliant media players. You can play the photos and videos on TV. In addition, you can listen to your favorite music and Internet Radio on your Hi-Fi System.

Multimedia Station for photo sharing
Now you can share photos with your family and friends by TS-109 Pro. By uploading your photos to TS-109 Pro, the server automatically generates a web-based photo album with thumbnails and details, such as date, resolution, focal length, aperture, etc.. You can browse and share the digital photos in a convenient way!

Enjoy continuous download independent of PC
TS-109 Pro serves as a continuous BT Download ( BitTorrent ), FTP, or HTTP download center without turning on your PC. The great web-based interface allows you to manage the download tasks anytime, anywhere!

Share your music by iTunes Server
Music fans and Apple enthusiasts will be certainly rocked by the coolest music-sharing feature of TS-109 Pro! All your MP3 music can be collectively stored and streamed to Mac or Windows PC. Just turn on the iTunes program and enjoy all the music around your home network!

Support Windows ADS
With Windows ADS (Active Directory Service) support, you can deploy your Turbo Station in small business environment easily! It enables Windows domain users to easily access the shared data with the Active Directory authentication. This not only saves server manager’s time and effort in creating duplicated groups and accounts, but also lowers the maintenance cost by centralized management.

Sharing files across Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix.
TS-109 Pro is specially designed for different users to share the files across Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix environment.

No fan design
The fan used inside a device is for the purpose of cooling system, no matter how quiet it is, the fan has to be activated for air ventilation. Somehow, it is inevitable to generate intermittent chirping noise which distracts your work or diminishes your enjoyment. TS-109 Pro adapts no fan design approach by using silver/ black aluminum case for thermal dissipation. It provides an absolute quiet working environment for you!!
For more details about fanless design

One touch USB auto copy
When a USB device such as digital camera, digital camcorder, or pen drive is plugging into the front panel USB port, data in the USB flash disk or digital photos in your camera can be backed up to TS-109 Pro automatically by simply pressing the USB copy button.

Unique advanced HDD health scanning (HHS)
No idea how’s the health status of your centralized storage hard disk? TS-109 Pro is embedded with HHS technology which lets you to perform checking disk and bad blocks scanning to prevent potential data loss.

Unique Web File Manager
TS-109 Pro provides unique Web File Manager function for you to easily download, upload and manage the files on the server by browser.

SSL Security (HTTPS)
You can access and manage your Turbo Station by using web browser securely. All connections between PC and NAS including user ID, password, files, download tasks, etc. are encrypted in SSL tunnels and are well protected.

Remote management of download tasks on multiple Turbo Stations
QGet is powerful P2P download management software provided with QNAP’s Turbo Station series. QGet can be installed on any Windows computers for users to simultaneously manage BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP download tasks of multiple Turbo Station servers.

Network Recycle Bin
Can you imagine if you delete an important file on the NAS by mistake and lose it forever? You don’t need to worry now! The files deleted from the network shares of the TS-109 Pro will be moved to a particular recycle bin folder. You can restore your data anytime in case of unintended file deletion.

Built-in DDNS support
TS-109 Pro supports dynamic DNS (DDNS). You can register a unique domain name from a DDNS service provider and assign it to your Turbo Station. There is no more need to remember a lengthy IP address!

Establish a PC-less Home Multimedia Center by Using QNAP NAS and PS3 or Xbox 360

All the multimedia contents stored on QNAP NAS can be automatically shared to a PS3 or an Xbox 360 in the home network. Users can play their stored photos and videos on a TV, or listen to the music via their Hi-Fi system. QNAP NAS can be a perfect home storage and sharing center for establishing a PC-less, HD video-playing (via PS3, video resolution up to 1080p), highly accessible, and power-saving digital home theatre.

The unit comes in a colorful and very informative box.

Closer look at the unit

The unit is well packed inside the box and the package includes the power adapter, stand, Installation CD, and Ethernet cable.

Taking a look at the front of the unit you see status indicators for HDD, eSATA, LAN and power. You’re also offered a USB port for easy attachment of a USB drive, a Copy button to copy data from a USB drive to the device and a power button.

Going to the rear of the unit you see the power input, Gigabit Ethernet port, eSATA port and 2 USB ports.

The outer shell is made of aluminum and it has a light gun metal color to it. You would notice that the TS 109 Pro does not come with any fans unlike many other NAS devices. The aluminum shell is designed so that it acts like a large heat sink to dissipate the heat.

Before you can start the TS 109 Pro you need to install a hard drive to it. The unit supports upto 1TB of storage, so depending on your budget and requirement you have a wide array of choices here. We used a 250GB Samsung SATA II drive for our unit. To install the drive you simply need to slide the top half of the cover out towards the rear connectors to expose internals of the TS 109 Pro. As you can see from the picture, it’s a very simple design and does not require much skill for the physical installation.

You need to slide in the drive so that the data and power connectors click in place right at the back and there after tighten the sides using the screws provided to keep the drive in place.

That’s all there is to the physical installation. Thereafter we connected the unit to a gigabit switch to go through the next step of the installation. Once you insert the provided CD, you will be offered the following screen.

First you install the QNAP Finder so that you can identify the device in the network. When the TS 109 Pro is first found you will get a window as follows.

Click Yes and it’ll go about the installation process of configuring your NAS. Once everything is done you will be offered a link which will take you to the web management window.

I like the layout QNAP has offered in the web management window as you have direct access to the Web file manager, web server, multimedia station and download station soon as the home page opens.

It’s best that you first go into the administration section to setup all the required services, folders and permissions for folder access before doing anything else on the device.

The interface is very easily laid out and functions are self explanatory.

The QNAP TS 109 Pro is a very feature rich NAS with QNAP themselves stating that this is a 12 in 1 powerful NAS server. The TS 109 Pro can act as a file server, FTP server, web server, print server, download station and many more.

All the network services are easily accessible through the network settings tab. Here you can configure each section as you wish and proceed to the next section.

One of the features I like about the TS 109 Pro to Synology Inc’s software setup is that all the root folders are created at startup to avoid any misconfigurations such as services which requires the folder to have the specified folder name to work.

User access can be restricted to folders you create and you also have the option to integrate the TS 109 Pro to a Windows Active directory domain and restrict user access to domain users as well without having to create new users.

With the help of HDD health scanning (HHS) technology the TS 109 Pro is able to tell you the health of your hard drive and prevent any potential data loss in advance.

Uploading files to the TS 109 Pro can be done in 3 ways;

FTP
Windows Network file sharing
Web File manager web interface

A nice little feature I know most of you would really find useful is the Network Recycle Bin.

Normally when you access a file server and delete a file on the server it does not go into any recycle bin. However if you enable this service, any file/folder you delete on any network share will be automatically saved in the Network recycle bin. There are so many of us who accidentally delete network files and have had to resort to backups to restore them. But now this feature will allow you to restore them without a problem.

A common feature among most NAS products out there is the bit torrent download program. The TS 109 Pro also has this feature so that you can setup downloads to happen through your NAS rather than PC, eliminating the need for you to have your PC turned on all the time. It’s a handy feature to have if you’re a big time downloader. The program is also capable of supporting FTP and HTTP transfers.

If you want to share pictures and video clips among users there’s also a multimedia station which displays all your pictures and video clips in an easy to browse manner.

The web server feature on the TS 109 Pro comes with support for MySQL and SQLite. It also offers fully editable php.ini support so you can customize feature rich websites if you’re into that sort of thing. We installed two installations of WordPress on it and it worked without a hassle. It was extremely easy to setup and get going. However performance is slightly less than a fully fledged web server if you got a database driven website, so don’t rely on it too much if your website has high loads.

Even though the TS 109 Pro is a single bay device, it has support for RAID 1 through a feature called Q-RAID 1. Q-RAID 1 allows for high level of redundancy on single bay drives by allowing you to connect an additional USB or eSATA drive which can act as the redundant hard drive. In the event that your main drive fails, the backup can be installed to resume normal operation within minutes. This is certainly a unique feature from QNAP that I haven’t seen other manufactures doing on their single bay NAS devices.

There’s also a powerful network backup software called NetBak Replicator which allows multiple PC’s to backup data onto the TS 109 Pro. All that’s required is to install the software from the provided CD. It allows you to schedule your backups as well, and will run automatically in the background.

On the subject of backups, another feature of interest is the Remote Replication. This feature allows the TS 109 Pro to backup data to other QNAP NAS devices in remote locations.

A recent firmware release saw the implementation of a TwonkyMedia Server which allows you to effectively make the TS 109 Pro a media centre PC by plugging it to a PS3 or Xbox 360. This is again a very neat feature as you can replace that bulky media center PC with a much sleeker looking TS 109 Pro in your living room. If you would like to know more about this cool feature, click on this link. There’s also a Youtube demo showing its capabilities.

To test out the performance we’ll be comparing the performance to two NAS products from Synology which we have reviewed in the past.

Performance

Conclusion

As the performance graphs show the TS 109 Pro is more of a mediocre performer when looking at raw performance. The main factors working towards QNAP’s TS 109 Pro is its lengthy list of features offered. From the pricing point of view, the TS 109 Pro retails at AU$499 (Around US$340) which is significantly high for a single bay NAS device with no hard drive. If QNAP is to compete with other manufactures pricing will need to be reevaluated as you can get 2 bay NAS devices with almost similar features from slightly less.

Other than that, the QNAP TS 109 Pro is a very solid product. It may not be the fastest performing NAS system out there for a single bay device, nevertheless QNAP seems to be putting their bets on more features to win over user acceptance. Since there’s no external cooling fan, the TS 109 Pro runs extremely quiet at a slight cost of producing more heat than normal.

The TS 109 Pro was extremely easy to setup and operate and features like Q RAID 1, Web server, Backup features, Multimedia Server, TwonkyMedia Server are all very impressive which users will certainly enjoy having.