Performance
The 809 was tested with our standard NAS test processes. I upgraded to the latest 2.1.6 Build 0428T and used the Samsung HE103UJ 1 TB drives installed by QNAP. Tests were run with four drives configured in RAID 0 and 5 with a 1000 Mbps LAN connection.
Backup
I first checked backup performance with the results summarized in Table 1 along with the TS-509 Pro's for comparison. Best performance is surprisingly with the USB drive NTFS-formatted! You can check the 809's backup rankings for FAT and EXT3 formats, where it ranked fourth and sixth.
| Product | QNAP TS-809 Pro Backup Throughput (MBytes/s) |
QNAP TS-509 Pro Backup Throughput (MBytes/s) |
|---|---|---|
| USB - FAT32 | 19.8 | 19.2 |
| USB - EXT3 | 20.3 | 24.1 |
| USB - NTFS | 22.7 | 21.3 |
Table 1: Attached backup throughput test summary
I also tested Remote Replication for NAS-to-NAS backup to a TS-439 Pro. Table 2 summarizes the results for full backups of the test folder without and with the encryption option (SSH connection) enabled, which really slows things down.
| Product | QNAP TS-809 Pro Backup Throughput to QNAP TS-439 Pro target (MBytes/s) |
QNAP TS-439 Pro Backup Throughput to QNAP TS-809 Pro target (MBytes/s) |
|---|---|---|
| NAS-NAS | 31.89 | 33.07 |
| NAS-NAS (SSH encrypted) |
10.24 | 11.16 |
Table 2: Networked backup throughput test summary
Benchmarks
Figure 5 presents a summary of the benchmark tests run for the 809 with RAID 0 and 5 write and read plotted. Performance boost at the smaller file sizes isn't extreme for either RAID 0 or 5 writes and read performance is pretty flat across all file sizes tested. As with the TS-439 Pro, you don't give up a lot of speed by using RAID 5 vs. RAID 0.
Figure 5: Performance benchmark summary
RAID 0 and 5 Performance with a 1000 Mbps LAN connection averaged over the 32 MB to 4 GB file sizes and with cached results above 125 MB/s removed from the average is summarized in Table 3. The 809's lower ranking in the RAID 0 write test is due to the effects of removing cached performance from the calculations.
| Product | QNAP TS-809 Pro Average Throughput (MBytes/s) |
Chart Rank |
|---|---|---|
| RAID 0 Write | 74.3 | 4 |
| RAID 0 Read | 84.5 | 1 |
| RAID 5 Write | 65.8 | 1 |
| RAID 5 Read | 80 | 1 |
Table 3: Average throughput summary
Performance - Competitive
Since the 809 stands alone as an eight bay NAS (at least among the products that I have tested), I'll have to compare it against six and one seven bay competitors: NETGEAR's ReadyNAS Pro, QNAP's TS-639 Pro and Thecus' N7700.
For RAID 5 write (Figure 6), the products clearly cluster in two groups, the higher-performing TS-809 Pro and Thcus N7700 and the (relatively) lower performing ReadyNAS Pro and TS-639 Pro. At the largest file sizes, there is around 20 MB/s separating the two groups!
Figure 6: Competitive RAID 5 write comparison - 1000 Mbps LAN
For RAID 5 read (Figure 7), the 809 actually comes out on top across all "large" file sizes. Note the big drop in the N7700's throughput above 512 MB.
Contest #29 Results 
