I previously wrote about my impressions of the DroboPro, and in case I was not clear, I was not impressed.
I recently read the announcement of the new QNAP TS-859 Pro, and from the literature it seemed like a great device, high performance, feature rich, and power saving.
The TS-859 Pro is now available, and I compared it with the DroboPro, and against a regular W2K8R2 file server.
The TS-859 is taller than the DroboPro, the DroboPro is deeper than the TS-859, and the width is about the same.
Before I get to the TS-859, let’s look at the DroboPro information and configuration screens.
The OS is Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, but the steps should be about the same for Vista and Windows 7.
All but the DroboCopy context menu screens are listed below.
DroboPro information and configuration:
The dashboard believes there are no volumes, but Windows sees an unknown 2TB volume:
Creating a new volume:
As the dashboard software starts creating the volume, Windows will detect a new RAW volume being mounted, and asked if it should be formatted.
Just leave that dialog open and let the dashboard finish.
The dashboard will complete saying all is well, when in reality it is not:
The dashboard failed to correctly mount and format the volume.
Right click on the disk, bring it online, format the partition as a GPT simple volume.
The dashboard will pick up the change and show the correct state.
Email notifications are configured from the context menu.
The email notifications are generated by the user session application, so no user logged in, no email notifications.
DroboPro does not provide any diagnostics, even the diagnostic file is encrypted.
Unlike the DroboPro that comes with rudimentary documentation, the TS-859 has getting started instructions printed right on the top of the box, and includes a detailed configuration instruction pamphlet.
The DroboPro also has configuration instructions in the box, printed on the bottom of a piece of cardboard that looks like packaging material, and I only discovered these instructions as I was throwing out the packaging.
I loaded the TS-859 with 8 x Hitachi A7K2000 UltraStar 2TB drives.
On powering on the TS-859 the LCD showed the device is booting, then asked me if I want to initialize all the drives as RAID6.
You can opt-out of this procedure, or change the RAID configuration, by using the select and enter buttons on the LCD.
I used the default values and the RAID6 initialization started.
The LCD shows the progress, and the process completed in about 15 minutes.
Unlike the DroboPro that requires a USB connection and client side software, the TS-859 is completely web managed.
The LCD will show the LAN IP address, obtained via DHCP, login using the browser at http://%5BIP%5D:8080.
The default username and password is “admin”, “admin”.
Although the initial RAID6 initialization took only about 15 minutes, it took around 24 hours for the RAID6 synchronization to complete.
During this time the volume is accessible for storage, the device is just busy and not as responsive.
Unlike the DroboPro that shows no diagnostics, and generates an encrypted diagnostic file, the TS-859 has detailed diagnostics.
Unlike the DroboPro, email alerts are generated from the device and does not require any client software.
SMB / CIFS shares are enabled by default.
iSCSI target creation is very simple using a wizard.
While configuring the TS-859, I ran into a few small problems.
I quickly found the help and information I needed on the QNAP forum.
Unlike the DroboPro forum, the QNAP forum does not require a device serial number and is open to anybody.
The TS-859 default outbound network communication, SMTP, NTP, etc,. defaults to LAN1.
I had LAN1 directly connected for iSCSI and LAN2 connected to the routable network.
NTP time syncs were failing, after switching LAN1 and LAN2, the device could access the internet and NTP and the front page RSS feed started working.
Make sure to connect LAN1 to a network that can access the internet.
When I first initialized the RAID6 array, drive 8 was accessible and initializing, but didn’t report any SMART information.
I received instructions from the forum on how to use SSH to diagnose the drive, and after replacing the drive, SMART worked fine.
What I really wanted to do was compare performance, and to keep things fair I setup a configuration that had all machines connected at the same time.
This way I could run the tests one by one on the various devices, without needing to change configurations.
The client test machine is a Windows Server 2008 R2, DELL OptiPlex 960, Intel Quad Core Q9650 3GHz, 16GB RAM, Intel 160GB SSD, Hitachi A7K2000 2TB SATA, Intel Pro 1000 ET Dual Port.
The file server is a Windows Server 2008 R2, Intel S5000PSL, Dual Quad Core Xeon E5500, 32GB RAM, Super Talent 250GB SSD, Areca ARC-1680 RAID controller, 10 x Hitachi A7K2000 2TB SATA, RAID6, Intel Pro 1000 ET Dual Port.
The DroboPro has 8 x Hitachi A7K2000 2TB SATA, dual drive redundancy BeyondRAID, firmware 1.1.4.
The TS-859 Pro has 8 x Hitachi A7K2000 2TB SATA, RAID6, firmware 3.2.2b0128.
The client’s built in gigabit network card is connected to the switch.
The server’s built in gigabit network card is connected to the switch.
The TS-859 Pro LAN1 is connected to the switch.
The TS-859 Pro LAN2 is directly connected to the client on one of the Pro 1000 ET ports.
The DroboPro LAN1 is directly connected to the client on one of the Pro 1000 ET ports.
The DroboPro is configured as an iSCSI target hosting a 16TB volume.
The TS-859 Pro is configured as an iSCSI target hosting a 10TB volume.
The difference in size is unintentional, both units support thin provisioning, the DroboPro maximum defaults to the size of all drives combined, and the TS-859 maximum defaults to the effective RAID size.
The client maps the DroboPro iSCSI target as a GPT simple volume.
The client maps the TS-859 Pro iSCSI target as a GPT simple volume.
The first set of tests were done using ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46.
Intel 160GB SSD:
Hitachi A7K2000 2TB SATA:
DroboPro iSCSI:
TS-589 Pro (1500 MTU) iSCSI:
TS-589 Pro Jumbo Frame (9000 MTU) iSCSI:
Read performance:
| Device | Speed (MB/s) |
| Intel SSD SATA | 274 |
| Hitachi SATA | 141 |
| TS-859 Pro Jumbo iSCSI | 116 |
| TS-859 Pro iSCSI | 113 |
| DroboPro iSCSI | 62 |
Write performance:
| Device | Speed (MB/s) |
| Hitachi SATA | 141 |
| Intel SSD SATA | 91 |
| TS-859 Pro Jumbo iSCSI | 90 |
| TS-859 Pro iSCSI | 83 |
| DroboPro iSCSI | 65 |
Summary:
The next set of tests used robocopy to copy a fileset from the local Hitachi SATA drive to the target drive backed by iSCSI.
The fileset consists of a single 24GB Ghost file, 3087 JPG files totaling 17GB, and 25928 files from the Windows XP SP3 Windows folder totaling 5GB.
DroboPro iSCSI:
| Fileset | Run 1 (B/s) | Run 2 (B/s) | Run 3 (B/s) | Average (B/s) |
| Ghost | 67998715 | 66449606 | 61345194 | 65264505 |
| JPG | 47376106 | 34469965 | 28865504 | 36903858 |
| XP | 33644442 | 21231487 | 18780348 | 24552092 |
| Total | 149019263 | 122151058 | 108991046 | 126,720,456 |
System load during Ghost file copy to DroboPro:
TS-859 Pro iSCSI:
| Fileset | Run 1 (B/s) | Run 2 (B/s) | Run 3 (B/s) | Average (B/s) |
| Ghost | 94824771 | 103356597 | 102596286 | 100259218 |
| JPG | 50591459 | 51817921 | 55830439 | 52746606 |
| XP | 39133922 | 38128876 | 37972580 | 38411793 |
| Total | 184550152 | 193303394 | 196399305 | 191,417,617 |
TS-859 Pro Jumbo iSCSI:
| Fileset | Run 1 (B/s) | Run 2 (B/s) | Run 3 (B/s) | Average (B/s) |
| Ghost | 91427745 | 113113714 | 112684967 | 105742142 |
| JPG | 49525622 | 51203544 | 51477482 | 50735549 |
| XP | 31910014 | 37429864 | 37699130 | 35679669 |
| Total | 172863381 | 201747122 | 201861579 | 192,157,361 |
System load during Ghost file copy to TS-859 Pro Jumbo:
This test uses the same fileset, but copies the files over SMB / CIFS.
Server SMB:
| Fileset | Run 1 (B/s) | Run 2 (B/s) | Run 3 (B/s) | Average (B/s) |
| Ghost | 108161169 | 116949441 | 115138722 | 113416444 |
| JPG | 53969349 | 56842239 | 55586620 | 55466069 |
| XP | 15829769 | 17550875 | 19336648 | 17572430 |
| Total | 177960287 | 191342555 | 190061990 | 186,454,944 |
TS-589 Pro SMB:
| Fileset | Run 1 (B/s) | Run 2 (B/s) | Run 3 (B/s) | Average (B/s) |
| Ghost | 64295886 | 65486617 | 63494735 | 64425746 |
| JPG | 52988736 | 52633239 | 53177864 | 52933279 |
| XP | 14345937 | 15703244 | 15506456 | 15185212 |
| Total | 131630559 | 133823100 | 132179055 | 132,544,238 |
Summary:
In terms of absolute performance the TS-859 Pro with Jumbo Frames is the fastest.
For iSCSI TS-859 Pro with Jumbo Frames is the fastest
For SMB the W2K8R2 server is the fastest.
If we look at the system load graphs we can see that the DroboPro network throughput is frequently stalling, while the TS-859 is consistently smooth.
This phenomena has been a topic of discussion on the DroboPro forum for some time, and the speculation is that the hardware cannot keep up with the network load.
Further speculation is that because the BeyondRAID technology is filesystem aware, it requires more processing power compared to a traditional block level RAID that is filesystem agnostic.
So let’s summarize:
The TS-859 Pro and the DroboPro are about the same price, around $1500.
The TS-859 Pro is a little louder than the DroboPro (with the DroboPro cover on).
The TS-859 Pro is not as pretty as the DroboPro, arguable.
The TS-859 Pro has ample diagnostics and remote managament capabilities, the DroboPro has none.
The TS-859 Pro has loads of features, the DroboPro provides only basic storage.
The TS-859 Pro is easy to setup, the DroboPro requires a USB connection and still fails to correctly configure, requiring manual intervention.
The TS-859 Pro outperforms the DroboPro by 52%.
The TS-859 Pro will stay in my lab, the DroboPro will go 🙂
Pieter Viljoen's Blog 
Excellent Review! – Looking to upgrade some old servers in the main service center. We have two TS-639 in branch offices for over a year… -QNAP Great products! Thanks DeVenice CEOCybernetics Data Security<>Investigation
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Hi, I just read the review and also the specs from the qnap website. I have to say that I'm not impressed and rather stick with my own solution.Main point: they say that typical SMB performance drops from 100MB/s to about 20MB/s or less when LUKS encryption is used (using raid-6).I have a self built linux (ubuntu 9.10) fileserver with a 3ware raid controller, using 8x1TB in raid-6, also with luks AES-256 encryption. OK the cpu is more powerful, but also just a 2 year old dual core intel CPU (on a tyan server mainboard). I get 600MB/s read and write performance, with encryption (and without as well). This is local performance of course, using SMB I get 100MB/s for a single client because the gigabit network is the bottleneck.I need encryption and the qnap cpu really is way too weak to use encryption without performance loss.
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The encrypted log protecting proprietary secrets is a red herring. I've read de-crypted logs from Drobo (not Pro) and there's more info in the patent filing for BeyondRAID than the logs. My thoughts on why the logs are encrypted run along several tangents:- you CAN see the CPU, memory usage and boot diagnostics. Hardly proprietary other than telling you how underpowered the box is. The most interesting info for the user is SMART status (yes I know that the usefulness of this is limited), several temperature readings and whether BeyondRAID is having problems with a drive but is not yet ready to plug the drive out.- if the logs are encrypted your are forced to buy DroboCare after the first year. Otherwise you're blind if a drive acts like yours in slot 2 did.Cynical? Yes but I don't really see DRI as a customer friendly company.I've been back and forth on a DroboPro purchase for some time. I have a Drobo and a QNAP TS-439 and for the price the TS-859 offers more performance. I just don't need all of the other stuff that QNAP comes with. If QNAP bundled an iSCSI initiator with it it'd be perfect.
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Excellent review – I was just comparing these two devices and your review was just what I needed to help make my decision.
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QNAP looks good. The only big problem that you did not address is their miserable warranty policy.QNAP will not honor the 1 year warranty direct. You MUST send it back to the reseller. Because their resale chain is so sparce, you don't have much opportunity to purchase from the folks you trust and know will honor the return if things go South.I'd love to buy a QNAP for my current iSCSI capable NAS need — but I won't because of the lousy warranty policy.
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I'm assuming the desktop and rack-mount 859s offer the same level of performance?How convoluted is the process to rebuild/expand a volume?
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QNAP iSCSI performs so much better because it is based on LIO Target (www.linux-iscsi.org). LIO supports all advanced SCSI commands necessary for VMware ESX 4 and vSphere 4 certifications, and it implements them very efficiently (the Drobo performance lacking under ESX).LIO became the standard generic multiprotocol (iSCSI, FC, FCoE and InfiniBand) Linux target with Linux kernel version 2.6.38.
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Great review. Thanks for sharing.But I think Bart is onto something that perhaps was overlooked. When the QNAP was pushed hard you might have been very near the limitation/bottleneck of network performance. I would expect that any decent multi-drive SATA array to have at least somewhat better performance than a single SATA drive that you used in your benchmark.It would also be helpful to know the disk I/O queue length during the test.In my own experience, I have found that 2 different storage arrays may have similar performance results due to a network constraint for example but they can have vastly different end user experience (i.e. disk latency) while operating under load.
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I no longer have these devices to perform more tests with, but in my newer tests I did exceed 1Gb/s by using two Gb connections and MPIO, see:https://blog.insanegenius.com/2011/07/synology-ds2411-performance.htmlhttps://blog.insanegenius.com/2011/07/synology-ds1511-vs-qnap-ts-859-pro.html
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