QNAP TS-H973AX-8G - NAS Server

I have been using Thecus for the last 10 years, going from a 2 bay to two 5 bay chassis in the last 5 years and I ended up losing faith in Thecus due to firmware updates causing massive issues to the point I was unable to retrieve 25TB of Data from a 50TB array. So enter the QNAP, my very first non-Thecus NAS device and so much better than Thecus, everything works, everything is solid and modern. The only negative difference is the lack of 5 x 1GB ethernet ports and built-in Mini UPS, but I can do without those, the only other downside is noise generated by the drives. The Thecus had 5 drives stacked on top of each other whereas the QNAP stacks them side by side and the noise level and vibration can be heard and felt a lot compared to the Thecus, but it is a ... MoreI have been using Thecus for the last 10 years, going from a 2 bay to two 5 bay chassis in the last 5 years and I ended up losing faith in Thecus due to firmware updates causing massive issues to the point I was unable to retrieve 25TB of Data from a 50TB array. So enter the QNAP, my very first non-Thecus NAS device and so much better than Thecus, everything works, everything is solid and modern. The only negative difference is the lack of 5 x 1GB ethernet ports and built-in Mini UPS, but I can do without those, the only other downside is noise generated by the drives. The Thecus had 5 drives stacked on top of each other whereas the QNAP stacks them side by side and the noise level and vibration can be heard and felt a lot compared to the Thecus, but it is a sacrifice I can live with, just having to use anti-vibration and noise dampening mats to solve part of that issue, drive seeking noise is still a lot more audible than Thecus. Overall, this device with its support for 64GB DDR4 RAM (of which I currently have 16GB but will soon be going to 32GB), 2 x U.2 ports (which I am populating with Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe SSD's with U.2 converters), the 5 x 3.5" bays (which I have 4 x 16TB Seagate Iron Wolf Pro drives) and the 2 x 2.5" SATA SSD bays (I have 2 x 1TB Iron Wolf SSD's for Cache acceleration) proves to be a might combination and solid, it comes equipped with enterprise hardware in the ethernet ports as not many people have a switch capable of 10GB or even 5GB or 2.5GB but when consumer devices are capable of those connections, then this will be ready, along with the U.2 interface which is more enterprise but with converters available to fit fast NVMe's into, you can utilise the U.2 bays with 3500mb capable drives and benefit from it a cheaper price than buying U.2 SSD's. It has taken some time to get used to the interface and how everything works as QNAP seems to have an application for most things that are either provided by them or 3rd parties but not always built-in and some have costs or licence fees attached to them, but generally easy to use once you get a handle of QNAP's terminology (not always what you would expect a setting or service to be as QNAP have named certain things as a product rather than a service with a QNAP name). I am very happy with this product, very, very, very happy really after the horrendous issues I had with Thecus products!!

Good solid NAS, you get a lot of functionality for the price.

Amazing!

Game changer! Couldn't be happier.

David's review of QNAP TS-h973AX 9-Bay Desktop NAS (Network-Attached Storage) Enclosure

Pros: Tiered storage, zfs format.Cons: None found yet.

Fantastic for video editing

This was my first NAS setup for video editing, and it's been fantastic. A bit involved to set up, but the capabilities it has are incredible once you watch a few tutorials. I'm connected to mine through a 10g ethernet connection, using an ethernet to thunderbolt adapter to go into my MacBook Pro. It's nearly as fast as the thunderbolt RAID I have on my desk, but much larger and more powerful.

Great lab disk enclosure

Works as advertised. Supports VAAI storage primitives iSCSI and NFS. Easy to configure and using QuTs Hero with ZFS. Excellent performance and flexibility, as well as dedupe and compression with external cloud storage providers as replication targets. Ordered U.2 - 2xNVMe trays and have 8TB of NVMe RAID0 across 4 PCIe lanes for massive cache performance. Easily maxxed out the system RAM to 64GB using non-ECC DIMMs works great even without using QNAP provided RAM. 10Gbe networking bonded with the 2x2.5Gbe ports for 15Gbe trunked to commodity switch is fantastic. Five 7200rpm x 18TB HDD, 4xNVMe 2TB and 2x4TB SSD for 11 total drives and 106TB raw storage even only using 9 bays. This thing is incredible for a home lab setup for vSphere.

Keep your clients footage safe

This is a great enclosure for anyone who's looking for a raid system to protect client footage. I can edit my 6k & 8k footage straight from the drives without proxies.

Learning Curve

I recommend doing your research before buying one of these cause their is a learning curve but worth it

Yonggang's review of QNAP TS-h973AX 9-Bay Desktop NAS (Network-Attached Storage) Enclosure

Pros: Good spec of hardwareCons: Acoustic & UI