qnap ts 886 review QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero Review

QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero Review

Our QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero review for today will discuss all about this NAS from QNAP.

In July 2020, QNAP launched the TS-hx86, its first desktop QuTS hero NAS series. One of the models under this series is the TS-886, which is equipped with the Xeon D-1600 processor.

This newly released NAS is a solid yet affordable solution for high-end businesses. Now, let’s see what the TS-h886 QuTS Hero has to offer, and if it’s something suitable for your needs.

QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero Packaging

Here in our QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero review, we’ll first look into the NAS’ packaging.

As expected from an enterprise solution, the TS-h886 QuTS Hero’s box is more about function and protection than aesthetics.

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For a desktop unit, it comes in an incredibly huge box. It appears like every other desktop solution in their line of products, and everything’s kept simple and neat.

Although its design is kept minimal, there’s a sticker on top that displays the system’s details and specifications. These are mainly about using the NAS, its hardware, and software.

Aside from the TS-h886 itself, you’ll find various accessories. For the cables, these include two Ethernet cables, two 10GBASE-T Ethernet cables, and a power cord.

Additionally, there are flat head screws in the box. 18 are for the 3.5″ HDD, and 24 are for the 2.5″ HDD. Also, you’ll find three M.2 SSD heatsinks.

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The NAS also comes with a quick installation guide for everyone’s convenience.

QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero Review – Design and Functionality

Our QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero review will now focus on the functionality and design of the TS-h886 QuTS Hero.

For its external chassis, the NAS features an LCD panel on its front area. It may seem like just a small feature, but the LCD panel presents excellent real-time details related to some aspects.

These include network connections, detailed alerts, and internal operations that offer real-time status information about the TS-h886 QuTS Hero.

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You can acquire many of this information by remotely logging in. However, it will not be as quick as pressing the panel in front of the NAS. In front of the TS-h886 QuTS Hero is a front-mounted USB copy switch under its power button.

At the top and sides of its chassis, there’s less ventilation available. It’s not what we’d expected from such a powerful NAS, but it’s not something to worry about.

QNAP likely opted for this design due to its front-mounted ventilation and huge amounts of rear cooling that’s present.

Since this NAS sports a metal chassis, it’ll produce more noise and hum compared to other similar solutions. Remember, the TS-h886 QuTS Hero is an enterprise-grade solution. With that, only several NAS servers in this storage category have low noise and impact.

HDD Trays

The primary storage area of the TS-h886 QuTS Hero can handle up to six SATA hard drives. What’s more, each has a dedicated load and click tray. Together with this, each bay features a dedicated LED light for drive access and health.

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For the 3.5” hard drive media, you won’t need a screwdriver during installation. Here, you can set up 2.5” SSD media if you want since there are screws and screw holes available.

If you think about it, this somewhat undermines the entire 3-tier storage. That’s if you consider that there are two dedicated 2.5” SSD bays present.

To entirely populate the NAS with 26TB hard drives gives you a huge degree of available storage. It’s a huge plus even in dual and single parity RAID setups like RAID 5 and 6.

SSD Bays

Next are the SSD bays present on the TS-h886 QuTS Hero’s front section. These allow you to install SATA-based solid-state drives.

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It can be utilised via Qtier (tiered storage) or raw access with volumes directly on the SSD layers. These also consist of their own configuration for preset RAID.

You can utilise smart caching to get the best available output on your data. Or you can use each storage tiers for various user workgroups with their arrangement of data access speed.

Cooling Fans and Ventilation System

Our QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero review will also discuss the NAS’ ventilation system and cooling fans. Its rear is almost entirely dedicated to the passive or active cooling systems.

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There are many familiarities in the design when comparing the TS-h886 QuTS Hero with other desktop solutions from QNAP. So, it’s difficult to ignore the dedicated amount of space for ventilation on the NAS’ rear backplane.

This specific spot for cooling on the side of the chassis works with a huge internal cooling fan. You can find this at the top of the NVMe bays and memory modules.

We like that this NAS has a huge space for cooling. It features active and passive measures that work simultaneously for outstanding performance. Moreover, it features two huge rear-mounted fans that instantly and accordingly adjust their RPM to retain cool internal temperatures.

These fans work perfectly across both the storage media and internal PCBs. Also, you can manually adjust these if you wish to.

USB Ports

Two extra USB 3 Type-A ports are at the bottom of the NAS’ rear. Each port supports numerous storage devices, peripherals, network interface, plus business hardware like audio/visual devices and UPS’.

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The TS-h886 QuTS Hero does not come with a visual port like the HDMI. With that, there isn’t any support for KVM or keyboard+mouse. Despite this, the NAS has support for graphics cards, opening its doors to functions in surveillance, virtualisation, and lots more.

Its USB 3.0 ports let you link several QNAP NAS expansion products like the RAID inclusive enclosures (TR Series). If not, you can also link to their JBOD customisable products (TL Series). Note that this series requires you to install the PCIe upgrade card.

Power Supply Unit

The TS-h886 QuTS Hero comes with a 250W PSU, which is quite huge for a 6-hard drive NAS. However, this is entirely understandable because of the arrangements for expandability.

When the NAS is occupied with media while being in full access, QNAP claims that it runs around 75.79W. Given the PSU’s wattage, we understand why the system requires an internal PSU. But of course, this will likely boost the need for cooling within the case.

Connectivity

The TS-h886 QuTS Hero features a total of 4 copper RJ-45 LAN connections. Each of these supports up to 2.5GBe. Factoring in port trunking or link aggregation, it means that the NAS can support 10GbE. However, it’ll require a supported network switch to achieve it.

Continuing our QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero review, we will discuss the different key features of this NAS.

Key Features of the QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero

Intel Xeon D1600 Processor with up to 128 GB DDR-4 ECC Memory

The TS-h886 QuTS Hero utilises the Intel Xeon D1600 series processor, and it comes with DDR-4 ECC memory. With that, it can spot and correct one-bit memory errors upon occurring. As a result, it effectively prevents data loss and downtime.

The NAS also supports up to 128GB RAM, allowing it to handle higher and heavier workloads. This reliable NAS solution delivers high performance, making it ideal for demanding business IT environments.

SSD caching for Enhanced IOPS with M.2 NVMe SSD

This NAS comes with two M.2 NVMe Gen 3×4 SSD slots and two 2.5” SSD bays. These allow flexible configuration for SSD caching to boost IOPS performance while decreasing storage volume latency. It’s ideal for virtual machine applications and databases.

The TS-h886 lets you leverage your storage capacity and performance even without occupying 3.5” drive bays.

Quad-port 2.5GbE for High Bandwidth

The TS-h886 has four native 2.5GbE RJ45 LAN ports that are backwards compatible with 1G/100M. This feature allows you to use existing CAT5e cables to improve network speeds from 1 Gigabit to 2.5 Gigabit.

Additionally, it supports Port Trunking and failover to meet the bandwidth and reliability demands of various apps and tasks. These include transferring large files, virtualization, real-time application, and high-speed backup or restoration.

QNAP also offers several managed and unmanaged 10GbE/2.5GbE switch options. These aid organizations in executing secure, high-speed, and scalable network environments without additional cost.

Transfer Business Data to the Cloud and Access Cloud-Based Data with Low Latency

The TS-h886 is integrated with mainstream cloud services. It deploys cloud storage gateways and local caching enabled using M.2 SSD slots. With that, organizations can utilise the cloud for storage, backup, and data recovery while enjoying low-latency access.

Using the TS-h886 allows for having secure and versatile, yet cost-effective hybrid cloud applications.

Upgrade Your Current Storage by Switching Operating Systems

While the TS-h886 uses the QuTS Hero operating system, you can switch to QNAP’s standard QTS. If you have a QTS-based NAS, you can migrate drives from there to the TS-h886.

5-Year Warranty Extension

The TS-h886 is backed by a 3-year warranty with no additional cost. If you want, you can purchase an extension to have up to 5 years of warranty coverage.

Specifications

Let’s now focus on the specifications of this NAS here in our QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero review.

The TS-h886 QuTS Hero uses the Intel Xeon D1622 quad-core 2,6GHz processor with bursts up to 3.2GHz. It also sports the 64-bit x86 CPU architecture, plus the AES-NI encryption engine.

Four 2.5GbE ports accelerate file sharing across devices and teams. It also works for multimedia transmissions and virtual machine applications.

You’ll find two M.2 NVMe, Gen3x4 SSS slots where each offers up to 3.2GB/s of bandwidth. This is a necessary feature to allow SSD caching for enhancing random read/write performance.

There are also two PCIe slots for 10GbE | 5GbE | 50GbE and 25GbE adapters. It’s also compatible for QM2 cards, as well as entry-level graphics cards for boosting application performance.

For TS-h886 QuTS Hero’s system memory, it’s 16GB U-DIMM DDR-4 ECC, while its maximum memory is 128GB.

There are a total of four long DIMM DDR-4 memory slots present on the NAS. The DDR-4 ECC memory determines, then corrects errors of single-bit memory. It’ll then display increased reliability for critical applications.

The NAS uses a 5GB dual boost OS protection flash memory and has an operating temperature of 0 to 40-degrees Celsius.

The TS-h886 QuTS Hero measures 231.9mm x 292.9mm x 319.8mm (HxWxD), and weighs 8.5kg. Also, the NAS consumes 75.79W when operating regularly, and has a sound level of 20.4 dbA.

Hands-on with the QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero

This time on our QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero review, we’ll get our hands on this NAS. First, let’s discuss the QuTS Hero operating system and see how it works.

Setup of the TS-h886 is incredibly simple and is only a matter of installing the Qfinder Pro tool in order to locate the NAS on your network and then start the setup wizard. Once the setup wizard is started, simply follow the on-screen prompts and you will have the NAS setup in about 5 minutes or so.

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QuTS Hero Operating System

Today’s businesses need dependable storage systems since data, VDI popularity, 8K media, and various IT trends continue growing. With that, QNAP created the QuTS Hero, a new operating system merging the standard QTS and 128-bit ZFS file system.

The QuTS Hero offers full data protection, versatile storage management, and optimised performance for you to meet various business-critical apps. This operating system also simplifies business-critical tasks.

Self-Healing for Data Integrity and Reliability

Data integrity makes applications and databases reliable. With SSD adoption growing, there are higher data loss risks for businesses since data recovery from dead SSDs is difficult.

QNAP focused on data integrity while designing the operating system by integrating it with ZFS. It utilises end-to-end checksums for spotting and correcting silent data corruption caused by defective hardware, firmware bugs, or metadata errors. ZFS also automatically repairs any damages by utilising data from other mirrors before passing the data to applications.

QuTS hero is also considered as Write-Once, Read Many Times compliant. It’s to guarantee that once data is written, it can’t be modified further.

You’ll be setting a retention period for months, days, or even years. Then, the Enterprise policy will allow protected folders to be deleted yet prevents anything inside from being removed or modified individually.

When it comes to the Compliance policy, it’s tougher than the Enterprise policy. This is because the only way to remove the folder is by deleting the parent storage pool.

Tiered-Storage Setup for a QuTS Hero NAS

Basic requisites for configuration are similar to QTS. With that, it’s best to follow certain steps to have optimal storage performance and efficiency for the NAS.

File Transferring Performance

Unlike the QNAP QTS operating system, the QuTS Hero operating system provides enhanced data transmission capacity and performance. It realises the full potential and efficiency of the 10GbE data transmissions. The QuTS Hero can readily outperform the QTS in numerous small file transfers.

In-line data compressions aid in enhancing the QuTS Hero’s data transferring performance. When trying it for simultaneous file transfers from numerous clients, enabling in-line data compression enhances the QuTS Hero’s performance.

This setup makes it much faster than the QTS or the QuTS Hero without in-line data compression.

Allows for Efficient Multi-user Access Control and Added Business Tasks

The TS-h886 QuTS Hero offers centralised data storage. And together with the QuTS Hero, it allows fast, cost-efficient, and close to limitless snapshots for one LUN/shared folder. What’s great is that it’s without utilising too much storage space.

This will allow for faster offsite backup for recovery-planning while simultaneously mitigating ransomware threats.

The QuTS Hero supports JumpCloud’s LDAP. It is a cloud-based service that facilitates authentication and user management for secure access to files that are NAS-based.

The JumpCloud is easy to use and lets you self-serve even without acquiring help from IT staff. This makes it extremely ideal for small-scale workgroups or businesses with a lesser user base.

QuTS Hero In-line Data Compression + Deduplication for Smoother Video Editing

The NAS has high-performance, scalability, and high-capacity features which makes it the best solution to store high-resolution media files. In addition, QNAP provides their NAS with 5GbE, 10GbE, plus the Thunderbolt connectivity. It also includes the PCIe expansion for 10GbE | 25GbE | 40GbE connectivity to meet distinct application needs.

With the QuTS Hero’s self-healing capacities, you can guarantee data integrity by immediately detecting, then correcting data corruption.

In-line data deduplication and compression can help enhance the amount of data to be written. For the ZIL, it can better improve the write data speeds from video editing workstations.

Even with four to eight people editing and transferring videos together, collaborative workflow stays smooth and streamlined. The company’s NAS-optimised search engine also helps track down certain files within the storage arrays.

Strong Data Protection and Flexible Capacity Utilisation with RAID Z

The system supports standard RAID setups while adding the support of RAID Triple Parity. It’s needed to protect against three-disk collapse, and Triple Mirror for identical copies of all information kept on the disks.

Moreover, it’s designed to handle data petabytes. Here, RAID Z exhibits an excellent tool for creating ready to use increased capacity RAID in just seconds.

Multi-level Cache Technology + Read/Write Enhanced Performance

The ZFS continuously aids the main L1 ARC (memory read cache). It also supports L2 ARC (SSD 2nd level read cache), and ZIL (ZFS Intent Log).

L1 ARC functions with the L2 ARC to lessen the requirements of hard drive access while simultaneously enhancing read performance. As for the ZIL, it’s best for applications with big synchronous random write workloads like databases. It’s because data is written on ZIL first, then on the storage to help lessen latency then improve the write performance.

Pool Overprovisioning for Guaranteed Write Performance

With Pool Overprovisioning, you can flexibly reserve space in a storage pool. It’s to allow fresh data to be written in one entire block even when the pool almost reaches its capacity.

This process will improve the performance of the fragmented pools. For write-intensive workloads, as well as performance-demanding apps, you can set increased pool over provisions for increased write performance.

App Centre

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The QuTS Hero comes with the entire App Centre ecosystem, allowing you to improve your TS-h886 QuTS Hero’s functions.

Via the App Center, we saw 97 available applications for the TS-h886 QuTS Hero. Its key backup applications are present and have HBS 3, HybridMount plus, and Qsync Central. It also comes with HDP (Hyper Data Protector) which offers data protection to Hyper-V and VMware-virtualised environments.

HBS – Comprehensive Backup

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HBS centralises restoration, backup, and synchronisation while featuring Qu-Dedup technology. It’s to deduplicate backup information at the source to boost restoration and backup.

HBS is an excellent asset for managing and controlling 3-2-1 back-up approaches.

This tool consolidates restore, backup, and syncing functions into one QTS application. It’s for a convenient and secure data transfer to local storage spaces. Plus, the process lets you develop data backup efficiency, disaster recovery, and file syncing remotely or on the cloud.

To make it easier, this application offers data storage plans and full disaster recovery. What’s more, it conveniently supports synchronisation services and online storage in different clouds. These include Alibaba Cloud, Google Drive, Microsoft, OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and a lot more.

Thanks to its extremely responsive graphical UI, the Hybrid Backup Sync lets you perform numerous backup tasks efficiently. You can have a centralised and straightforward task management function at your disposal. It will then provide you with the possibility to analyse detailed information regarding your activity’s status and its details.

With this solution, you can create several backup processes and sync or restore from the overview page. It allows you to confirm the use of storage space and immediately checks the status of current operations. The results provide you with positive outcomes, highlighted errors and warnings, plus the total number of errors available.

Hybrid Backup Sync also lets you check backup processes from other NAS devices to centrally manage all processes easily. The application allows alarm recording to immediately review error messages and warnings to avoid critical delays in tasks.

Virtualisation and Containers

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Virtualisation Station and Container Station both assist economical and flexible virtualisation applications. The Network & Virtual Switch applications enhance the interoperability between the NAS, containers, virtual machines, and physical network interfaces.

It’s done simultaneously while completing easy arrangements of both physical and virtual networks.

Boxafe

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Boxafe lets you sync or backup calendars, emails, and contacts from Google’s G-Suite, as well as Microsoft’s Office 365. These will get stored on the NAS to protect enterprise cloud data.

Not only that, but Boxafe offers NAS-based backup assistance for Office 365 and G-Suite cloud accounts. For the Malware Remover, it keeps the data on your NAS safe.

The TS-h886 QuTS Hero can utilise and host virtual machines like the Ubuntu Linux Station and Container Station. Not only that, but the Virtualisation Station applications are available as well.

Cloud Gateways

Cloud Gateways have more than 20 mainstream cloud service providers. Not only that, but it has the HybridMount cloud gateway, as well as the VJBOD Cloud gateway services.

These will let you readily install public cloud storages on the TS-h886 QuTS Hero. Doing so will provide you with near-unlimited storage and low-latency access.

HybridMount

HybridMount integrates QuTS hero with current cloud

storage services while allowing low-latency admission to the cloud via local caching. You can utilise the HybridMount to put your public cloud storage and file servers to the NAS. From there, you can freely enjoy centralised and streamlined file management for all your storage spaces.

VJBOD Cloud

VJBOD is a solution for streamlining cloud backup from your NAS to the cloud object storage. With this solution, identical data will be shifted to the cloud.

Backup data will then appear indistinct in the cloud object storage. It will make it safe to back up any sensitive data to the cloud. Plus, you can utilise the TS-h886 QuTS Hero as a cache between the cloud and clients.

Protection Services

The TS-h886 QuTs Hero comes with a couple of protection services of its own. This is present since snapshots can be easily replicated to other QuTS’. You can access the SnapSync service from the Storage & Snapshots app. Then, synchronise it to the remote QuTS device in real-time or to a schedule.

For ISCSI LUN and shared folders, this NAS can support up to 65,535 snapshots. It features the copy-on-write technology for instant snapshot creation that doesn’t affect data writing.

Snapshot creation procedures with the TS-h886 are the same as for QTS. You select a folder or iSCSI LUN, set a schedule, then decide how many snapshots it will retain.

Smart snapshots save space since these only occur after data changes. The last one can be immediately restored by browsing NAS snapshots via File Station 5 application.

Fibre Channel Support

Installing a Fibre Channel card into the TS-h886 QuTS allows it to be added to an existing SAN environment. It’s an affordable solution that meets the requirements for high-performance storage and backup.

SAN or storage area networks provide reliable performance. With that, the NAS becomes a preferable solution for post-production environments requiring fast, low-latency data transfers.

The TS-h886 also provides a high-capacity data centre that is FC-compatible, making it ideal for professional video studios. Also, it comes with powerful data reduction, self-healing, impressive IOPS performance, and complete backup & restoration features.

File Management

The QuTS Hero operating system also utilises the vast range of file management applications of QTS-based NAS units.

File Station lets you browse and manage files in your NAS and cloud data. For easy file searching, it comes with intelligent QSirch. QFiling is a tool for customisable long-term storage and archiving.

Additionally, the SSD Caching Monitor and Advisor lets you scale your SSD cache when necessary. You can get recommendations on how much SSD caching is needed.

QTier is a multiple-layer tiering system that optimises your SSD and caching configuration.

With QSync, the NAS allows data synchronisation and multiple hardware environment backups. Also, it enables creating a scaled and customisable backup network between multiple devices.

Aside from creating backup networks, this NAS features Access-Anywhere with myQNAPcloud. It allows you to remotely access your storage systems, files, and apps.

Microsoft Active Directory provides cross-platform control on Active Directory processes.

Finally, the TS-h886 also has QuDeDupe, a suite of deduplication tools for creating backups between multiple directories and devices. It allows holding the same data once, but these are recorded in all locations.

This way, your backup data becomes smaller while consuming less bandwidth.

Performance

Of course, we also tested the TS-h886 to see how well it performs.

First, we started our performance tests with its 2.5GbE speeds. Its sequential read and write rates didn’t go lower than 2GB/s. When transferring files, its average read and write speeds were also around 2GB/s.

After that, we tested the 10GbE connectivity, which gave us sequential speeds that didn’t go lower than 8GB/s.

Overall, the TS-h886 delivered excellent performance during our tests. It was fast, and we didn’t experience any issue throughout file transfers, data backup, recovery, and other tasks.

QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero Review Summary

The TS-h886 from QNAP is an excellent solution for businesses that highly prioritize data integrity and recovery. The ZFS-based QuTS comes with all the best features of QTS. Additionally, it combines these with more impressive features for storage saving and data protection.

For its price, the TS-h886 QuTS Hero is a diskless unit that is worth the purchase. Not only does it have great features, but it also comes with multi-Gig ports and 16GB memory. Moreover, it’s a future-proof solution, and we can see that QNAP carefully designed and created this NAS.

As we end our QNAP TS-h886 QuTS Hero review, we’re highly recommending this NAS for its superior data protection features. If you want to get your hands on this product, check out the company’s store locator to find authorised retailers.