What are NAS for with all their storage in SSD

In recent months, commercial NA servers are appearing that aim to have all their storage flash, that is, to use SSD drives with either a SATA or NVMe interface to provide the best possible read and write performance. We all know that SSD drives can’t keep up with hard drives in terms of storage capacity or euro per GB of data, however, why do manufacturers release these very specific models? Today in this article we are going to explain what NAS are for with all their flash storage.

What are NAS for with all their storage in SSD

Features of the QNAP TS-h1290FX

The manufacturer QNAP has recently launched a new NAS server called QNAP TS-h1290FX, a real beast in terms of hardware features, since it is a really powerful device with many possibilities for expansion. Next, we are going to explain all its hardware characteristics.

Processor and RAM

The main processor of this NAS is the AMD EPYC 7232P , an 8-core, 16-thread processor capable of speeds up to 3.2GHz, with 64-bit x86 architecture and an AES-NI encryption engine to greatly speed up work encryption and decryption with the AES algorithm. This equipment comes with a total of 64GB of RAM memory in 8 modules of 8GB each, but this RAM can be expanded up to 1TB of capacity (8 x 128GB of DDR4 RDIMM).

As you can see, we have very advanced hardware, really powerful to deal with any type of task, including the complete virtualization of operating systems through Virtualization Station, or the use of Docker containers with Container Station.

Storage

The main feature of this new NAS is its storage, and it has a total of 12 bays to accommodate 2.5” drives . Being 2.5” drives, we can fit 2.5″ hard drives that have much less capacity than their 3.5” counterparts, we also have the ability to fit SATA3 SSDs inside them, and we even have the possibility of installing U.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 units to have the best possible performance and squeeze the SSD units to the fullest.

As you can see, this new NAS is specifically designed with the aim that all its storage is SSD . Of course, the QuTS hero or QTS operating system (you can choose which one to install) will allow us to create all-SSD storage pools, we also have the ability to use SSD cache acceleration with certain drives, and lastly, we have tiered storage if you have a 2.5” hard drive installed that has a higher capacity.

connectivity

The connectivity of this NAS is really complete, and we have the following ports:

  • 2 2.5G Multigigabit ports , support for Jumbo Frames and Link Aggregation.
  • 2 SFP28 ports at a speed of 25Gbps, supports Jumbo Frames and Link Aggregation.
  • 3 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports at 5Gbps, to connect any hard drive inside it easily and quickly.

Other very important features of this new NAS model is the incorporation of several PCIe ports to add expansion cards and increase its possibilities even more. We will be able to install 10Gbps network cards, dedicated graphics cards and we could even install QM2 cards with more SSD storage through its M.2 ports. Below, you can see the available PCIe slots:

  • Slot 1: PCIe Gen 4 x16
  • Slot 2: PCIe Gen 4 x16
  • Slot 3: PCIe Gen 4 x8
  • Slot 4: PCIe Gen 4 x16

As you can see, at the level of connectivity this new model is high-end, and we have great versatility.

Do these new all-SSD NAS make sense?

These powerful NAS servers with all their flash storage have a very specific audience, such as graphic designers, photography professionals and also video professionals. Of course, due to its characteristics, this type of equipment is also ideal for carrying out a very intensive virtualization of operating systems, since we have a lot of RAM and a very powerful processor with many cores.

Of course, in addition to having a NAS of this type, it would also be highly recommended to have a less powerful equipment that is specifically oriented to storage, this way, when we finish making all the content on the all-flash NAS, we can spend all data to secondary storage so you don’t quickly carry SSDs.

Taking into account the budget that we need for a NAS of this powerful style, and that later we will also need another one to store all the content, it is clear that these devices are aimed at medium and large companies in the multimedia industry.