Thecus N5500 Review
The Thecus N5500 is the upgrade to the long standing Thecus N5200B Pro. The Thecus N5500 is a 5 bay, dual gigabit iSCSI NAS device that is advertised as offering excellent data throughput. Also the release of the Thecus N5500 marked the launch of an all new Thecus Ajax administration interface. So is the Thecus N5500 as good as they say, and what about the new Ajax interface? Read on to find out what the team @ ExpertsInStorage.com thought..
Date Of Review : 4th February 2010
Manufactured By : Thecus [http://www.Thecus.com]
Price As Supplied : £489.95 + VAT Diskless
Supplied By : ExpertsInStorage.com [http://www.ExpertsInStorage.com]
Firmware Version As Tested : 3.01.00.4
Thecus have always had the reputation for providing solutions with bags of performance. However in the past the administration interface was far behind the competition, not as slick and no where near as user friendly. So with the launch of the Thecus N5500 with an all new Ajax interface, have Thecus finally managed to achieve both feats in one package. Certainly we was very impressed with the new Ajax interface. It really shows what Thecus can do when they really put their minds and their very capable R&D team together. It has always been a major criticism of earlier products, the old administration interface although functional looked dated. Well welcome to the new age, and what an improvement.
Take a look for yourself at the all new Thecus Ajax interface. If you are an existing Thecus customer, are have used the old Thecus administration interface, be warned this improvement may shock you!
You can download a high quality MP4 format video directly from here.
Well, we hope you enjoyed the video.. such a huge leap in functionality and user experience. We think Thecus have been taking a very close look at the QNAP interface, looks very familiar to us. Anyway so its plain to see that the new Ajax interface is a winner. So now back to the hardware itself.
The Thecus N5500 is a very similar design to the Thecus N5200B Pro that it upgrades. The only visible difference is the introduction of a front door that covers the drive bays. Other than that they are practically identical. The Thecus N5500 is fitted with an Intel® Celeron™ M 1.86GHz processor together with 1GB DDRII memory and Dual 128MB redundant DOM modules. The introduction of Dual DOM modules is also a first, and this means that the OS that actually runs within the unit itself is protected by a mirror copy. This dual DOM design should in theory eliminate any issues of units not booting due to a power off during firmware upgrade for example, as if anything should happen to the OS during the firmware upgrade, you have the option of booting from the other DOM module. Very clever we think.
The Thecus N5500 also supports JBOD and multiple RAID configurations, RAID 0,1,5,6 & 10 are supported. You can also have more than one RAID volume within the unit. Add the fact that the unit also supports Snapshot and you can instantly see that from a data protection point of view Thecus have everything covered. For those who need iSCSI the Thecus also supports this from within the standard firmware, and also allows for four units to be stacked together to form one big volume. Multiple file systems can also be selected, these include EXT3, XFS and ZFS.
Rather than QPKG’s such as QNAP have for their units expansion, Thecus have modules. These modules allow for additional features to be easily added to the standard unit should you wish to do so. Currently there are modules available for MySQL, IP Cameras and also Web Server. The modules available are not nearly as vast as that which QNAP have to offer.
So how does the Thecus N5500 measure up when it come to performance? First as a straight NAS device, Windows share under Vista.
The Thecus N5500 NAS test results showed ;
Minimum Write Throughput : 9.4 MB/s
Maximimum Write Throughput : 95.6 MB/s
Average Write Throughput : 68.3 MB/s
Minimum Read Throughput : 9.5 MB/s
Maximum Read Throughput : 117.0 MB/s
Average Read Throughput : 87.2 MB/s
The Thecus N5500 confirmed itself as a very high performance NAS device, with both high results in Write & Read. It showed a consistent level as well, with virtually no low spots.
How about the Thecus N5500 iSCSI Performance?
The Thecus N5500 iSCSI test results showed ;
Minimum Write Throughput : 5.4 MB/s
Maximimum Write Throughput : 106.4 MB/s
Average Write Throughput : 77.7 MB/s
Minimum Read Throughput : 5.8 MB/s
Maximum Read Throughput : 116.9 MB/s
Average Read Throughput : 82.2 MB/s
The Thecus N5500 iSCSI came in much as expected after its NAS results, confirming that this is one unit that deserves its high performance billing.
StorageReviews.co.uk / ExpertsInStorage.com Conclusion
The new AJAX administration interface combined with the Thecus N5500 results in a rather compelling and difficult solution not to choose if your in the market for a 5 bay high performance solution. Clearly the results we achieved show the unit to be well within most users needs for data transfer. The price point is also very attractive, at under £500 + VAT it would have to be considered a bargain.
The team @ ExpertsInStorage.com think that the Thecus N5500 deserves to be a big selling product in the UK. Its a great solution and Thecus are at last showing the world that not only can they engineer products that are built to last, but that the applications and administration interfaces have not been overlooked or forgotten. The only caveat is that Thecus are playing catch up when it comes to external modules and expandability, such as the level of plugins that QNAP already offer. However it is clear that Thecus are now moving forward, at pace and they are certainly a brand to watch in 2010.
The StorageReviews.co.uk & ExpertsInStorage.com Team Award The Thecus N5500 A Score Of 9.
