NAS: QNAP TS-219P II

To start with, the TS-219P II which is part of the long 'two bay' family of QNAP falls in the middle if you categorize this family on features. The TS-219P II comes with Marvell 2.0 GHz processor which gives quick processing capability along with 512MB DDR 3 RAM and 16 MB flash memory. The previous QNAP NAS box we reviewed was the TS-459 Pro II which is a 4-bay device with Intel Atom 1.8 GHz processor and 1 GB DDR3 RAM. The two bays of TS-219P II can hold 2.5” and 3.5” hard drives or SSDs (up to 6 TB) which gives users the flexibility to choose the drive type and storage capacity. But the feature which would really stand out for business users is the hot swap ability, if you have RAID configured. The two drives in this NAS box could be configured for JBOD, RAID 0, or RAID 1. The interface is quite impressive and the sliding menu reminds you of a tablet.

Installing this NAS is simple. Just hook it to your network to get the IP address assigned to it by your DHCP and point your browser to the assigned IP. You would be asked to upgrade the firmware and select features that you want to configure your NAS with. Now you can start working on the NAS. The file server on TS-219P II can also be used as a multimedia, Web, and MySQL server.

Bottomline: A feature-rich 2 bay NAS box that supports hot swapping, which makes it a fail-safe storage option.