QSAN XCubeNAS XN5004T 4+1 bay NAS review

1. Introduction2. Qsan XCubeNAS XN5004T / Packaging / Bundle3. Qsan XCubeNAS XN5004T / Design4. Qsan QSM OS5. Usability6. Testing Methodology7. ATTO Disk Benchmark8. Intel NASPT9. Backup / Restore10. Encryption Performance11. Workload Scenarios12. Real Life File Testing13. Power14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

QSAN may be a new name to some people looking to buy a NAS, but they have been around for quite some time, since 2004 in fact, but their products are more likely to be found in the enterprise market segment. The XCubeNAS XN5004T is one of QSAN's products aimed lower down the food chain, to the SMB user.

The design of QSAN's XCubeNAS series certainly makes the NAS standout from the usual run of plain-looking black or grey boxes and it is pleasing on the eye. The design is rather clever as allows easy access to the memory slots via a side panel rather than taking the enclosure apart. The removable side panel also hides another clever feature of the XCubeNAS design.

QSAN have come up with a novel approach to providing the ability to support SSD caching without sacrificing any of the main storage capacity. As well as the four (in the case of the XN5004T) main drive bays there is a fifth hidden 2.5in drive bay which can be used to house an SSD drive to take care of caching operations. The bay is only revealed when the side access panel is removed.

The XN5004T has a degree of future-proofing built into it as there is a single PCIe Gen3 x8 PCIe slot. Our review system came with a 10GbE networking card installed in the slot but it also supports 40GbE networking and Thunderbolt 3 cards.

Any NAS is really only as good as its operating system and QSAN's QSM (QSAN Storage Manager) is very good. Quick and easy to install, even using the five-page customised option it takes next to no time to setup. The Linux based software looks pretty run of the mill at first glance but dive into it and it reveals itself to be a powerful and feature rich business-focussed OS.

Instead of the usual EXT4 or even Btrfs file systems, QSM uses the more advanced ZFS file system. Originally developed at Sun Microsystems, ZFS uses 128-bit architecture and combines the usually separate volume manager and file system roles into one. This combining of the two roles allows the file system to be aware of any underlying disk structure using storage pools to manage physical storage. It has replication, deduplication, compression, cloning, data protection and snapshot support built into it.

QSM supports a range of features that business users will find very useful especially when it comes to backing up and protecting data including XReplicator, WORM, XMirror and Rsync. XReplicator is a powerful backup app that allows the easy backup an image of a disk, partition, folder or file. WORM (Write Once Read Many) technology protects data from unauthorised modification by allowing the data to be only available for reading in user-defined periods. XMirror offers flexible data protection through synchronisation in a number of ways while Rsync allows for real time remote backups of data with the added protection of encryption.

QSAN's QSM may not have the plethora of apps supporting it that you'll find with the likes of QNAP's, Asustor's or Synology's operating systems but instead what you do get is some serious enterprise-grade storage flexibility especially when it comes to backing up or securing data.

We found the basic XCubeNAS XN5004T on Span.com for £974.40 (inc VAT) HERE. A QSAN 2-port RJ45 10GbE card adds around £800 to that price tag.

Pros

• 4+1 drive bay design.
• QSM OS.
• ZFS file system.
• Overall Performance.

Cons

• App support is weak.
• Pricey.

KitGuru says: QSAN might not be a familiar name, but with the XCubeNAS XN5004T they have brought their expertise in providing storage solutions for the enterprise market segment, down to the SMB user with a powerful 4+1 bay business-focused NAS.

 

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