Introduction
QNAP has released a QuTS Hero-based OS with the QNAP TS-h886. How do you like this NAS? What kinds of connections are there available on this beast? Let’s find out!
Specifications
CPU: Intel® Xeon® D-1622 quad-core 2.6 GHz processor (burst up to 3.2 GHz)
CPU Architecture: 64-bit x86
Floating Point Unit: Yes
Encryption Engine: (AES-NI)
Hardware-accelerated Transcoding: Yes
System Memory: 16 GB UDIMM DDR4 ECC (2 x 8 GB)
Maximum Memory: 128 GB (4 x 32 GB)
Memory Slot: 4 x Long-DIMM DDR4
Flash Memory: 5GB (Dual boot OS protection)
Drive Bay: 6 x 3.5-inch SATA 6GB/s, 3GB/s + 2 x 2.5-inch SATA 6GB/s, 3GB/s
Drive Compatibility: 3.5-inch bays:
3.5-inch SATA hard disk drives
2.5-inch SATA hard disk drives
2.5-inch SATA solid-state drives
2.5-inch bays:
2.5-inch SATA solid-state drives
Hot-swappable: Yes
M.2 SSD Slot 2 x M.2 22110/2280 NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 slots
SSD Cache Acceleration Support: Yes
2.5 Gigabit Ethernet Port (2.5G/1G/100M): 4
5 Gigabit Ethernet Port (5G/2.5G/1G/100M): Optional via an adapter
25 Gigabit Ethernet Port: Optional via an adapter
Jumbo Frame: Yes
PCIe Slot: 2
Slot 1: PCIe Gen3 x8
Slot 2: PCIe Gen3 x8
USB 3.2 Gen 1 port: 3
Form Factor: Tower
LED Indicators: System status, LAN, USB, Disk 1~8, M.2 SSD 1~2
Buttons: Power, Reset, USB Auto Copy
Dimensions (HxWxD) 231.9 × 292.9 × 319.8 mm
Weight (Net): 8.5 kg
Weight (Gross): 10.11 kg
Operating temperature: 0 – 40°C (32°F – 104°F)
Relative Humidity: 5-95% RH non-condensing, wet bulb: 27˚C (80.6˚F)
Power Supply Unit: 250W PSU, 100~240V
Power Consumption: Operating Mode, Typical: 75.79 W
Tested with drives fully populated.
Fan: System fan: 2 x 80mm, 12VDC
CPU fan: 1 x 90mm, 12VDC
Sound Level: 20.4 dB(A)
System Warning: Buzzer
Kensington Security Slot: Yes
Max. Number of Concurrent Connections (CIFS): 8000
Extract
For this review I use the following:
– 4x WD Red 6TB HDDs
– 2x Kingston KC600 1TB SSDs
– 2x Kingston KC2500 1TB NVMe PCIe x4 SSDs (not shown in this photo).
– 2x Samsung 970 Evo 1TB SSDs
– QNAP QM2-2P10G1TA (PCIe slot)
QNAP delivers a package with accessories, with the TS-h886.
– 2x UTP cable,
– 1x power cable,
– Manuals, etc.,
– Cooling fins for an onboard NVMe SSD,
– Tools to screw on the brackets – so that you cannot just remove the SSDs/HDDs,
– Screws to hold the SSDs/HDDs in place.
At the top left of the QNAP TS-h886 are two SSD slots. I fill both of these with the Kingston KC600 1TB SSDs.
The SSDs are held in place by ‘clicking’ them into their casing.
As we are used to with every NAS, by pushing the bay into the slot, contact is made with the SATA connection.
Both sides of the NAS are ‘bare’.
At the back are 4 locks at the top left. Only two slots in total can be used. The extra ’empty’ slot is there to provide space for a graphics card, for example.
On the left are four 2.5GbE ports, below that, are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 port connections (one on the front – with a ‘direct-copy’ button), and below that is a reset button. At the bottom left is a Kensington lock to attach the NAS to a table leg. 😛
The NAS uses two fans and an extra fan underneath for the PSU. In addition, there is a physical button to completely turn off the NAS.
Remove a few screws and the cover can be slid away.
The blower at the bottom left ensures that the CPU is kept cool by the passive block.
The great thing about this NAS is that there are quite a few options. At the bottom left are two M.2 22110/2280 NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 slots.
By default, this model comes with 16GB (twice Transcend 8GB DDR4 2666Mhz ECC). But thanks to the four memory slots, up to 128GB (four times 32GB) of ECC memory can be put in the TS-h886. Together with the Xeon Quad-core, you should then be able to get pretty ahead!
At the top right is a PCI slot. On the other side of the board is the other slot.
This makes it easy to fill the two NVMe slots with two SSDs.
Later during the benchmarks, I use the two Kingston KC2500 1TB NVMe PCIe x4 SSDs in these two slots.
For now, we put the two Samsung NVMe SSDs in the QM2-2P10G1TA.
This expansion card has a 10GbE connection and two NVMe SSD connections – so it’s a fine expansion! 😉
Once the SSDs are screwed into place, we throw a slice of cheese on top (thermal paste slice on the SSDs).
Tighten and lock!
Once turned on, the back of the QM2-2P10G1TA shows that the SSDs both are working. These flickers when the SSDs are being used. This also applies to the 10GbE connection, but I did not have that available at this time.
It is time to start up the little beast.
QNAP has incorporated lighting into the TS-h886. This can be turned off via QuTS settings. The screen will turn off after a short while.
Software
Installing the TS-h886 is child’s play.
You can choose to actually install QuTS Hero, or just use QTS.
During the installation, you are immediately prompted to download the latest firmware.
The little beast gets a name and learns to take its first steps. In this case, I call my NAS, NASI – super original too! Password is of course qwerty.
If you have your own NTP server within the organization, then it can be selected, manually is of course also allowed!
Just as important is to give the NAS a static or dynamic IP. Fortunately, with the little screen (if you leave it on dynamic) you can see eventually what it has become.
The menu also allows you to set which file transfer services to enable.
Resume what you made of it. Apply you will be asked if you want to empty the storage media. After that, the NAS rattles for a while and QuTS Hero is installed in a few minutes.
The QuTS Hero login screen looks like this. The login screen can be configured as desired, with even your custom messages.
QNAP asks if you agree with their data & privacy policy and then the party can start.
Let’s start right away with creating a storage/partition and share. QuTS Hero throws quite a few information screens at it in the meantime, I’ll spare you them (this review is already getting long enough).
In this case, I set up the two PCIe M.2 SSDs as RAID 0.
Through the menu, you can choose to enable ‘over-provisioning’. This ensures that, for example, only up to 90% can be used. SSDs should never be allowed to reach almost 100%, which also extends the lifespan. QNAP also takes this into account.
There is also a possibility to set a guarantee for a snapshot space, this means that, for example, 20% can be reserved so that snapshots can also be stored. With the above, you would reserve 30% by these two options, of which in total (snapshots included) 90% of the SSDs are used.
QTS and QuTS Hero have the option (on virtually all data pools) to set an alert. For example, a mail/beep/notification is displayed on the screen when this threshold has been reached.
A small summary indicates what you have chosen.
Then an overview is given from the Storage & Snapshots menu with what has been set.
In the meantime, the four WD Reds are also placed in a storage pool.
Time to enable the cache acceleration.
Cache acceleration allows SSDs to temporarily ‘cache’ data so that the data can be written to the TS-h886 faster. Just a quick description; when data from multiple locations is written to the NAS, the HDDs can quickly reach their max. Cache acceleration ensures that the ‘extra’ data is written somewhere for a while.
In this case, I’m using the two Kingston SK600 1TB SSDs.
From the menu, you can select which folders should use the caching.
Once connected, you can see what the Hit Rate is via the graph at the top right – provided the Cache Acceleration is used.
QNAP has a pretty active community, so there are a lot of applications to install. In addition, there is also a possibility to install 3rd party applications.
Fortunately, the standard ‘App Center’ already has a lot of apps.
The nice thing about QNAP is that there is an option to install the apps on different volumes. Suppose you have a volume with SSDs and a volume with HDDs. Then you can eventually choose to transfer an application in its entirety to another volume. For example, if you have an application that needs to be on an SSD, it can be transferred within a short time.
The current apps are displayed in the ‘App Center’ under the heading ‘My Apps’.
Yes, there is also an option to install Ubuntu on the QNAP (besides of course the ‘Container Station’ and ‘Virtualization Station’). When a graphics card is also put in the TS-h886 (I hear the 3080 is easily available…), then Ubuntu Desktop can also be controlled through peripherals and a monitor.
The ‘Control Panel’ is also quite extensive, so the NAS can be set up as desired. The only negative of this is that with several tabs a new window is opened where the settings should be changed again.
Let’s say you click on Storage & Snapshots – while you’re in your control panel, a new window will open. Since it works like this with several options, it feels a bit messy. Ideally, I would have liked to see a button saying ‘click here to open Storage and Snapshots’.
When you are looking for an option in the Control Panel, you are almost continuously clicking away the extra windows instead of looking around in your current window.
I have described a further explanation of the features in the Control Panel in my review of the QNAP TVS-872XT. [url=https://tweakers.net/productreview/238146/qnap-tvs-872xt.html#part_4
]This can be found here!/url]
Mobile App
QNAP also has an app with QManager that allows you to control your NAS.
In the home screen, add the NAS, enter the IP address, and account information and press connect. The first overview shows the ‘health status’ of the NAS.
There are also quite a few options in the app. For example, updates can even be performed from the App Center and software can even be installed.
The resource monitor displays information about temperatures, system usage, etc.
At the bottom, there are several tabs where CPU, RAM, Storage, Bandwidth, Processes, and Users can be viewed and managed.
For example, under the Processes tab, all running processes are displayed. And under the users tab, the users that are connected to the NAS (via which service – e.g. Samba, HTTPS, etc.) are displayed.
Through the menu, background tasks can also be monitored. This shows, for example, if a RAID is scrubbing.
Users can be managed under the Privilege Settings. A tab further is also a possibility to manage the user groups and also to adjust the shared folders.
The great thing about the app is that it is easy to disable or enable a service. If you don’t always want to leave an FTP or SSH open, it can easily be turned off or on using the app.
The apps in the App Center can also be managed via the app. Thus, the currently installed apps can be managed. In addition, it is also possible to install additional apps via the app.
Although there are options to be kept continuously informed via push messages, e-mail, etc., there is also a possibility to view the logs via the app (I’ll spare you the logging ;)..)
In any case, you can keep an eye on who is logging in to the NAS via the connection logs.
Of course, there is also a backup that can be set up via the app.
In addition, the download station can also be operated via the app to download your daily portion of Ubuntu installations… ahum…
The external devices can be managed under the System tools tab. One tab further allows users who are on the ban list to be managed.
The last tab ensures that the NAS can be restarted or even updated.
Personally, I think it’s a great app, there are plenty of options to configure/monitor the NAS.
Before I started my review of the TVS-872XT at the time, I had to get used to QTS a lot. I was very used to DSM from Synology. Yet, I must confess that once you keep playing with QTS you get used to it. It’s like switching from one OS to another OS. Many things are the same, and yet there are also differences. Both work in their way, and that makes it kind of interesting.
QuTS Hero is a kind of improvement of QTS in my opinion. A nice OS if I do say so myself! 🙂
Benchmarks
Testing the QNAP TS-h886 I try several ways.
The situation is as follows: from a computer from a PCI-e (WD Black) and 10GbE adapter on the motherboard (ASRock x570 Creator) via the M408-4C switch to the 10GbE PCI-e slot in the TS-h886.
Cache acceleration is on, where I’m using two 1TB Kingston SSDs. This is set up so that it should help the NVMe SSDs, and the HDDs.
Test 1:
From the PC to the TS-h886, a file of ~45GB is written at just under 750 MB/s.
Test 2:
From the TS-H886 back to the PC, the same file is written at approximately 760 MB/s.
Both test 1 and test two do not use cache acceleration.
Test 3:
In this test, we write the file of 45GB to the 4 WD Red HDDs. These 4 HDDs use the cache acceleration with the two 1TB Kingston SSDs.
The file is written at about 330 MB/s – which I don’t think is bad for 4 hard drives.
The funny thing is that no cache acceleration was used here either – according to the storage & snapshots menu.
Test 4:
Of course, we are also curious about what happens when it is written back to the PC, from the TS-h886.
Writing the 45GB file goes from 4 hard drives at about 490 MB/s.
Test 5:
Even though the cache acceleration does not show that it does anything – at least not visible in the Storage & Snapshot menu, I wonder how much of an impact it will have if I run tests 1 through 4 without the cache acceleration setting on the two folders.
Redo Test 1:
When redoing the first test, it maxes out at ~742MB/s. So it does not touch the 750MB/s of the first test.
Redo Test 2:
Writing from the NAS to the PC in this case is about 773 MB/s – quite stable by the way! This again is faster than the 760MB/s of test 2.
Redo Test 3:
Writing from the PC to the HDDs in the NAS is noticeably slower with the cache acceleration. Here it fluctuates tremendously between 240 and 290 with an occasional peak of 350 MB/s.
Redo Test 4:
And lastly, we try one more attempt to write the 45GB file from the HDDs back to the PC.
This is also about 480-490 MB/s.
Test 6:
I’m pretty curious, which is why I’m turning it around. What if I set the Kingston SSDs as primary RAID-0 and the PCI-e NVMe as cache acceleration? Will this make a difference in the benchmark?
Although I don’t get the 1.1GB/s/10GbE, I find the TS-h886 very fast.
Somehow it is also understandable that a 10GbE speed does not necessarily have to be achieved in a NAS with 6 bays for HDDs and 2 for SSDs (and 2 NVMe SSDs).
Okay, time to get back to the test itself; writing the PC to the TS-h886 (with the 2x 1TB Kingston SSD in RAID-0 resulted in 730 MB/s, where huge drops were generated. That’s crazy. Could it be the switch?
Test 7:
It is now quite late at night – 3 a.m. My curiosity makes the time fly by :D. Tomorrow I will move the NAS to another 10GbE switch, connect the TS-h886 to it, and a direct cable to my 10GbE ASRock x570 Creator PC.
In the TS-h886, I’ll put two Kingston NVMe SSDs (SKC2500M81000G) in RAID0.
See what that does to the speeds!
During overwriting, the file is written at approximately 400 MB/s.
Test 8:
And back to the PC from the h886, it goes again at 770 MB/s.
Test 9:
Single NVMe (onboard) Kingston SSD with thin provisioning – without cache acceleration provides approximately 400MB/s of data transfer, with peaks of 430 and dips of 330.
Test 10:
Single NVMe (onboard) Kingston SSD with thick provisioning – without cache acceleration we get the same speed – about 400 MB/s.
Conclusion
After a fair amount of testing, we can conclude that between 750 and ~770 MB/s is a max. For a NAS with 6 HDDs and 4 SSDs (2x 2.5″ and 2x NVMe – if you don’t put a PCI-e slot in it of course), it is pretty decent.
In any case, it’s fast enough in my opinion to fill up the NAS in no time! 🙂
What struck me is that QuTS Hero is easier than QTS itself. Setting up a shared folder, partitions/data pools is also much easier in my opinion than with QTS. In my opinion, they can also implement this at QTS.
Testing and benchmarking this NAS also creates a lot of storage pools, and shares underneath.
Conclusion
With the TS-h886, QNAP has, in my opinion, put a very good NAS on the market.
QuTS Hero uses ZFS, whereas QTS generally uses EXT4.
I find QuTS slightly nicer and smoother to work with than QTS.
The hilarious thing about such a QNAP NAS is that you can also just put a graphics card in it so that you can control the NAS via a monitor + peripherals. QNAP also has a lot of other options to populate the PCI-e slots, such as a QM2-2P10G1TA card, which I used.
For an amount of about 1600 euros, I think it is a highly-priced NAS. Although it can accommodate 6 (which is also quite a bit) HDDs, you can always look at an expansion bay (such as a TL-D800C 8-bay) to expand the disk space.
In addition, with the SSDs, which are also catching up with TBs today, it is also possible to create extra disk space.
Although there are four 2.5GbE network ports in the h886, it would have been nicer if there was also a 10GbE option. I understand that for redundancy and trunking four times a 2.5GbE is very nice – after all, you hang them on different switches to exclude a single point of failure, but that was just a nice extra option. Anyway, you can keep wishing for so much… I also wish for a Ferrari Portofino with a pack of butter, but I keep missing out. For the time being, I keep doing it with my Alfa Romeo Giulia, which still has a bit of Italian hum.
Anyway; the QNAP TS-h886 is a nice product. It works fine, there are plenty of options in the OS and there are plenty of connectivity options (and even extensions are possible).
The QNAP TS-h886 gets 5 out of 5 stars from me.
