Qnap’s TS-h1290FX all-Flash NAS impressed us when we tested it as this compact desktop appliance delivered a performance that would appeal to teams running demanding workloads such as real-time 4K/8K video editing. Its AMD EPYC power, massive memory capacity, and integral support for U.2 PCIe NVMe Gen 4 and SATA SSDs did come with a high price tag and for those with more modest budgets, Qnap now offers the TS-h1277AFX.
At first glance, the TS-h1277AFX looks identical to its predecessor as it uses the same sleek desktop chassis with twelve SFF hot-swap drive bays at the front. It’s all change inside though, as this model supports SATA SSDs only, is powered by an 8-core 3.8GHz AMD Ryzen 7 9700X CPU and its base 32GB of memory is the faster DDR5 variety which can be upgraded to a very usable 192GB.
You still get dual 2.5GbE multi-Gig network ports but the embedded 25GbE SFP28 ports in the TS-h1290FX have been replaced with copper 10GbE ports which are also multi-Gig. The PCIe Gen 4 slot count has been reduced from four to three but that still offers plenty of expansion potential with the appliance supporting Qnap’s dual-port 10GbE, 25GbE, and 100GbE cards.
Qnap TS-h1277AFX review: Build quality
The TS-h1277AFX looks good on the desktop and the panel above the drive bays incorporates a backlit LCD screen showing details on all network ports and their IP addresses. The chassis is constructed of sturdy pressed steel and removing the metal cover reveals the Ryzen CPU in the center and mounted by a very large active heatsink.
Usefully, Qnap has provided the base 32GB of memory on a single stick and the four DIMM slots means you can upgrade to 128GB without having to replace it. Cooling is handled by two 9cms diameter fans and during all our performance tests, we found the appliance to be whisper quiet.
At the rear, you have Type-A and Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps ports and another new feature is video from the CPU’s embedded Radeon iGPU is piped through to an HDMI 1.4b port. The appliance is also compatible with a wide range of GPGPU cards and Qnap has even fitted two extra cables to provide additional power for them.
Qnap TS-h1277AFX review: Software features
The ‘h’ in its name indicates the TS-h1277AFX is aimed at Qnap’s QuTS hero OS which is a superior choice over QTS if you want the best data protection features. They’re both very easy to use and present almost identical web interfaces but the ZFS-based QuTS offers near unlimited NAS share and iSCSI LUN snapshots, end-to-end checksums, encryption, and two WORM (write once, read many) policies for protecting NAS share data from tampering, and ransomware attacks.
It includes compression and the base memory enables deduplication which requires a minimum of 16GB. RAID options are more extensive as along with the usual suspects, QuTS supports triple parity RAID to protect against three drive failures and triple mirroring which stores identical copies of data on three drives.
Apps are in abundance with over 110 available for the TS-h1277AFX. All security and backup apps are available and include Qnap’s Security Center, Hybrid Backup Sync (HBS) 3, and Hyper Data Protector (HDP) with the latter now linking up with the free NetBak PC agent for block-level backups of Windows servers and PCs.
Along with optional cloud storage, the myQNAPcloud service provides remote access and administration of registered NAS appliances and once you’ve created a Qnap ID, you can use the new Hybrid Backup Center (HBC) cloud service. Currently, in beta, HBC provides centralized remote management of HBS backup and restore tasks for multiple appliances.
Each appliance requires HBS 3 and the HBC agent installed which allows you to create backup and sync jobs from the cloud portal, choose sources and destinations, schedule them, monitor them in real-time, and load a topology view to see all backup activity. A smart feature is the option to declare remote appliances as targets and if Qnap’s RTRR (real-time remote replication) service isn’t loaded, the HBC agent will install it for you.
Qnap TS-h1277AFX review: 10GbE performance
For our 10GbE lab performance tests, we fitted eight 1TB Western Digital Red SA500 SATA SSDs and created a single RAID5 array. With a NAS share mapped to a Dell PowerEdge R760xs Windows Server 2022 host, we recorded 9.2Gbits/sec and 9.3Gbits/sec for sequential reads and writes with the same results returned for random operations.
IP SAN speeds over 10GbE are equally impressive with a 1TB iSCSI target also returning Iometer sequential read and write speeds of 9.2Gbits/sec and 9.3Gbits/sec and the same rates for random operations. Moving up to a dual 10GbE MPIO link to the iSCSI target delivered sequential read and writes of 18Gbits/sec and 18.3Gbits/sec while random operations recorded 18Gbits/sec and 17.8Gbits/sec
Swapping to 4K block sizes delivered solid I/O throughputs for the MPIO iSCSI link with Iometer reporting 294,200 and 313,900 IOPS for sequential reads and writes and 294,050 and 82,900 IOPS for random reads and writes. We noted our random write IOPS test pushed the Ryzen CPU to around 90% utilisation but with all other tests, it never strayed above 20%.
Qnap TS-h1277AFX review: Is it worth it
Value is comparatively good as the price for the TS-h1277AFX with 32GB of memory starts at a shade over £3k – around £1,300 less than the entry-level TS-h1290FX. It’s also a more sensible choice for businesses that want to use cheaper SATA SSDs as they won’t be paying extra for the privilege of support for expensive PCIe NVMe SSDs.
It still represents a considerable investment but the appliance’s powerful combination of AMD Ryzen 7 9700X CPU and DDR5 memory delivers extremely good performance over 10GbE with high IOPS rates for random reads and writes. The TS-h1277AFX is a solid choice for content creators and video editors that need fast access to data and Qnap’s QuTS hero software delivers a wealth of features including great data protection services.
Qnap TS-h1277AFX specifications
|
Chassis |
Desktop |
Row 0 – Cell 2 |
|
CPU |
8-core 3.8GHz AMD Ryzen 7 9700X (max boost 5.5GHz) |
Row 1 – Cell 2 |
|
Memory |
32GB DDR5 ECC UDIMM (max 192GB) |
Row 2 – Cell 2 |
|
Storage |
12 x SATA SFF SSD hot-plug bays |
Row 3 – Cell 2 |
|
Expansion |
3 x PCIe Gen 4 slots |
Row 4 – Cell 2 |
|
Network |
Embedded 2 x 2.5GbE and 2 x 10GBase-T (all multi-Gig) |
Row 5 – Cell 2 |
|
Other ports |
2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1, HDMI 1.4b |
Row 6 – Cell 2 |
|
Power |
Internal 500W PSU |
Row 7 – Cell 2 |
|
Management |
Web browser |
Row 8 – Cell 2 |
|
Warranty |
5 years standard |
Row 9 – Cell 2 |
