Review on 🚀 Enhanced QNAP TS-431XeU-2G-US 4-Bay 1U Rackmount NAS Featuring Integrated 10GbE Network for Optimal Performance by Jerry King

This is a new late 2017/early 2018 rackmount NAS that I bought. The device arrived in a box with two foam inserts for protection. Nothing fantastic. It came with rack mounting kits that fit a standard 19" rack, with two pullers that can be easily rack mounted and removed. I connected this NAS to four 4TB Western Digital NAS drives. Installation wasn't difficult, but it took overnight to fully initialize the entire setup to RAID 5 with encryption enabled. Very good quality and low noise fans. PPTP, OpenVPN and L2TP. A surveillance station that can be operated as an NVR with two licenses. You have to pay more if you want to connect more cameras to the dash cam, which costs around $70 each, which is a little pricey, but you only have to pay once. QNAP has its own app store, and many of them are free to download and use. The learning curve is not steep at all, but it does require some basic technical knowledge of networking and storage terminology. Once you have everything set up, you can leave it as is and forget about it. I don't have SFP+ on my network, but two 1GB NICs are fast enough. It has four USB ports to which you can connect an external drive or UPS for monitoring purposes. It's a $550 rackmount model that you can't beat, especially for its features and small size (1U with 12-inch screen). Depth). So why 4 stars and not 5? There are some areas that obviously and cheaply should be added. For example, at least one of the USB ports can be placed on the front for easy access. 4 rear? In addition, the device only has 4 HD status LEDs, 2 network adapters and 1 SFP+ LED. It would be very useful to have a small message capable display on the front to show relevant information about the NAS. I also have a QNAP TS-453 Pro and it has everything but it's getting old so I upgraded to a newer model. The installed model is $150 more, are you kidding? You can get 8GB of RAM for less than $40 if you shop high. I have attached some photos for reference. If you find this review helpful, please give me a thumbs up. Many Thanks. Product update 1: January 29, 2018 - A week after receiving this NAS, I noticed that a remote backup application called Hybrid Backup was not working. The symptom was that when trying to backup from my new NAS to my old one, I couldn't use the dropdown menu to select my old NAS because they are on the same subnet. However, if I uninstall the Hybrid Sync app, I can use the good old backup/restore app for scheduled remote backups. I contacted QNAP support a few times about this symptom. The first tech I spoke to said I was using an unsupported memory module which I knew was complete nonsense. Then I spoke to the second technician, like the first technician he had several remote sessions of TeamViewer and could not understand it. To date, a new Hybrid Sync application has been released that immediately eliminated this error. Therefore, I have a feeling that QNAP engineers were not informed of this error or there was an internal communication problem. If these errors are found or reported, the technician does not have to provide the caller with a workaround. All they had to do was report the bug to the development team and debug it. It's a little frustrating for this small episode, but other than that this device still works great and is stable. No other issues have been found yet. Product update 2: 03/06/2018. The system was very stable. The only time I had to restart it was because of a firmware update, which is always a must. I've found that the reboot time can vary from 10 to 17 minutes, which is significantly longer than my Intel Celeron-based 453-Pro. Last but not least, although the device is equipped with three fans, it gets a bit warm when placed on top of another 1U network device. It is recommended to leave some space (maybe 1/2U?) at the top of the NAS for better ventilation.