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The label on the front of the device clearly indicates the contents, as well as a number of the hardware and software attributes that this particularly interesting solution from QNAP promises. This is by far the most affordable ZFS solution that the company has produced so far and although it clearly has a business focus, there are a number of presentation elements here that are more familiar to prosumer desktop buyers, more accustomed to the x53D and x73 series previously released. Inside the plentiful external box, we find both the NAS and a small box of accessories. These accessories include a first-time setup guide, external PSU, mains power cable, screws and keys for the individual media bays and an ethernet cable for connecting the device to your existing router or switch. All quite standard stuff it has to be said but short of the storage media, it’s everything you’re going to need to set this system up. Host multiple virtual machines and containers to run a wide range of applications on the TS-h973AX. QTier – The QNP intelligent, multi-layer tiering system that works to optimize your SSD and caching configuration
Install high-performance U.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSDs or SATA 6Gb/s SSDs in the dedicated SSD slots for cache acceleration and improved random I/O. QNAP reserves the right to replace partial parts or accessories if the original is no longer available from its manufacturer/supplier. Any replacement would be fully tested and verified to meet strict compatibility and stability guidelines and will deliver identical performance to the original. That large cooling fan (measuring 140mm), although almost disproportionate on a system of this scale, is exactly what this triple storage tier system needs and although the RPM can be adjusted by the user, it is recommended that it is left to adjust automatically. It is certainly the biggest single rear cooling fan I have ever seen in a desktop NAS, but understandable nevertheless. Note: At least 1 GB RAM is required. The maximum number of channels supported varies by NAS model, network configuration, and camera settings. For more information, visit https://www.qnap.com/go/qvr-nas-selector. Above are a few of my software overviews that cover the general GUI and system of QuTS Hero on the TS-h886, as well as RAID rebuild and storage management overviews of the system to give you some idea of what the TVS-x88X can and cannot do:Space Saving Efficiency – Inline data deduplication, compression, and compaction reduce file size to conserve storage capacity and optimize performance. The maximum number of channels supported varies by NAS model, network configuration, and camera settings. For more information, visit https://www.qnap.com/solution/qvr-face/en-us/ There is an additional 2x SATA SSD bays that, once again, are plastic and screwless in their design. drives in all of these bays are held in place by plastic clips that line-up directly with the screw holes inside each bay. This is by no means mandatory and the TS-h973AX arrives with more than enough screws for 2.5/3.5″ media to be more rigidly installed if you prefer. The SATA SSD installed in these bays are generally regarded for use as additional cache towards the hard drive storage array, allowing their high performance and IOPS benefits to be passed on to the larger, more affordable, but slower hard drive RAID array. QTS is the operating system for entry- and mid-level QNAP NAS. WIth Linux and ext4, QTS enables reliable storage for everyone with versatile value-added features and apps, such as snapshots, Plex media servers, and easy access of your personal cloud. System
QuMagie – Facial and Thing recognition application to help you retrieve, tag and catalogue photos by its use of AI to actually ‘view’ all your years of photos and let you search by the contents of them, not the file names. QuTS hero is the operating system for high-end and enterprise QNAP NAS models. With Linux and ZFS, QuTS hero supports advanced data reduction technologies for further driving down costs and increasing reliablility of SSD (all-flash) storage. System This is not the first time that we have seen QNAP introduce this 9 storage bay chassis and in fact, this is technically the third generation of this style of device from them. Arriving in a frankly incredible compact form (measuring just 18.2 × 22.4 × 22.4cm) this system manages to house a huge amount of storage but is only fractionally larger than their traditional 4-bay NAS series. With increased measures towards cooling featured around the chassis, as well as as a remarkably clean and clear internal bay structure, you can definitely see that a lot of work has gone into the design of this casing. Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish QSAL (QNAP SSD Antiwear Leveling) – RAID-level SSD lifespan is automatically and regularly detected to prevent simultaneous SSD failure, improving your data protection and system reliability.
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While the QuTS hero software is laden with advanced features, the learning curve is gentle as it looks and feels very similar to the standard QTS firmware. That said, we spotted one difference right away: our three 14TB Seagate IronWolf NAS HDDs were assembled into a 24TB RAID5 storage pool in five minutes, while the job could have taken a day under QTS. Likewise, although the system features other arguably more pedestrian Ethernet ports, even these are 2.5 GbE each, meaning they are are 2.5 x the performance bandwidth available compared with traditional ethernet. These 2.5GbE ports also support trunking / link aggregation, which means that the system can combine these ports together to create a 5GbE (500MB per second) connection to be used in conjunction with the 1000MB per second port previously mentioned. Overall, that is a huge amount of performance available externally and this in conjunction with the triple-tier storage available and higher performing ZFS file system is a hugely ambitious and impressive architecture at this price point. QNAP TS-h973AX NAS Review – Internal Hardware
That is plenty of ventilation on the base of the device but there does seem to be less ventilation on either side of the main plastic chassis than I would ideally like, especially for a 9-bay storage system. I had this system running for several days during testing and comparisons and during that time, temperatures were not a problem, but still, I would have liked to have seen a little bit more ventilation on such a compact device. Overall I genuinely like the design and structure of the TS-h973AX hardware so far, although there is the odd placement of things that I take slight issue with. Internally, things are kept tidy and well-spaced. Removing all of the available storage trays shows us a very clean selection of media interfaces. No loose cables, no separate data and power connectors, things are very structure inside this system. Note: Use only QNAP memory modules to maintain system performance and stability. For NAS devices with more than one memory slot, use QNAP modules with identical specifications.
RAID Z – Multiple RAID levels allow flexible capacity utilization. RAID Triple Parity and Triple Mirror deliver higher levels of data protection. Warning: Using unsupported modules may degrade performance, cause errors, or prevent the operating system from starting. The actual number of virtual machine instances may vary by the memory installed on NAS (e.g. 1 VM= 1 thread for 1 vCPU and 1GB memory). Please expend memory if needed. Photo, Video and Music Station – Multiple file type tailored applications to access data in the best possible way that is suited to their output – along with smart searching, playlists and sharing
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