With the latest Intel Skylake generation of processors we expected NAS vendors to start designing NAS units around the updated platform. The new QNAP TVS-x82 series of NAS units utilize consumer Intel Skylake processors to provide more performance both in terms of CPU as well as GPU performance. QNAP is one of the NAS vendors who builds NAS units designed to accelerate video transcoding with integrated GPUs. With Intel Skylake underpinnings, the new NAS units have a significantly faster CPU and GPU combination for video transcoding work.
The two lines announced are the TVS-x82T line and the TVS-x82 line. The TVS-x82T has built-in Thunderbolt and dual 10GbE networking. For those using Apple PCs and some Windows PCs or 10GbE networks, this is an easy way to get started with NAS units. The TVS-682T and TVS-882T both have two 2.5″ bays with the former having four 3.5″ bays nad the latter having six 2.5″ bays. The TVS-1282T has four 2.5″ bays and eight 3.5″ bays.
The TVS-x82 series utilizes the same 6, 8 and 12 bay chassis but has additional processor options. The other major difference is that instead of Thunderbolt and 10GbE standard, the units have the ability to expand to 10GbE and 40GbE via an expansion slot. This can both lower initial purchase price as well as provider higher-end networking capacity. By the end of 2016, users should consider 10GbE networking as the minimum for NAS units as the price of switches and adapters has gone down and SoC support for high speed networking has gone up. 1GbE storage is slower than most of today’s hard drives let alone SSDs. These NAS units are all capable of saturating a 10GbE link with appropriate drives.
We have not seen these units show up for sale yet, but expect availability soon as they hit channels. The QNAP value proposition includes an awesome software management interface which you can see in our recent review.
Hey Patrick, thanks for posting. I was reading up on the TVS-1282T on QNAP’s website (https://www.qnap.com/i/useng/product/model.php?II=233); marketing has done a great job here, but still, these things look amazing!! Being a novice to intermediate SMB IT administrator at best, makes me consider going this route instead of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials for my next home/office server (https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/upgrading-windows-home-server.9406/). Any thoughts on that?
If you are a novice administrator I really like the QNAP setup. Very easy to get running and these systems now have so much power that you can run VMs/ docker containers easily.
They definitely seem impressive. I looked into QNAP (actually NAS in general) to replace my Windows Home Server four years ago and was not impressed, but it seems these newest products have come a long way. The other thing I’ve always been concerned about what quality of hardware. Are these units (TVS-x82T TVS-x82 lines) better build quality (server components), or not, or do you know yet? :) Obviously the processor isn’t, so I’m assuming the motherboard isn’t either.
Perhaps a good question for the forums. We have not tested the new units that were released this week. The hardware we saw in our last QNAP review was solid: http://www.servethehome.com/qnap-tvs-ec1280u-sas-rp-review-part-1-the-hardware/
I personally like to have an out of band management port, but the TVS-EC1280U-SAS-RP has been working well for us so that has not been needed.
What do you have the TVS-EC1280U-SAS-RP doing for you, if you don’t mind me asking?
It is in the data center lab. It has been an iSCSI and NFS store, docker and VM host, storage for ESXi, Hyper-V and Xen. Very busy little machine.