QNAP TS-832PX-4G NAS, 8 bays, 2 × 10GbE SFP+, 2 × 2.5GbE, 4 GB

Eight hot-swap bays take 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA drives. Supported levels are RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60 and JBOD, along with hot spare variants in which a standby drive takes over automatically when another fails. Arrays can be expanded or migrated while online. When the bays fill up, you can attach TR-004 or TR-002 expansion enclosures, or one TL-D800C, TL-D400S or TL-D800S JBOD.

Two 10GbE SFP+ ports connect the NAS to a fast switch or workstation and speed up large files, backups and video transfers. Two 2.5GbE RJ-45 ports fit an ordinary network. The ports support Port Trunking and failover, so if one link drops, traffic continues over another. The SFP+ ports need an SFP+ transceiver or a DAC cable.

The Annapurna Labs AL324 is a quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57 processor running at 1.7 GHz. QNAP emphasises its energy efficiency, and typical consumption is 50.9 W. Memory is 4 GB of DDR4 at 2400 MHz on a SO-DIMM. With a single slot, an upgrade means swapping in a larger module, up to 16 GB. Three fans keep the noise level at 19.6 dB, according to the manufacturer.

This model has no built-in M.2 slots, but the PCIe Gen 2 slot takes a QNAP QM2 card that adds M.2 SATA or NVMe SSDs for caching and Qtier auto-tiering. The same slot also accepts a 5GbE or 2.5GbE network card, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 card or a QNAP Wi-Fi 6 card that lets the NAS create its own wireless network.

Up to 256 block-based snapshots per NAS and 64 per volume let you restore files that were deleted or damaged by ransomware. File sharing works over SMB/CIFS, AFP and NFS, Qsync keeps files identical across devices, and Hybrid Backup Sync backs up to another NAS, a remote server or OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox. HybridMount and VJBOD Cloud link the NAS with cloud storage.

Small and medium businesses that need eight drives of capacity and 10GbE connectivity without a separate network card. Media producers, architects and design studios whose large files benefit from a fast network. Offices where the NAS runs day and night, and an efficient ARM processor with quiet cooling matters more than virtual machine performance.