Storage

QNAP TS364 NAS – Review

QNAP brings us this time to review the NAS TS364. It is a small size model, designed for what it would be the top of the input segment. That would be households that have a high amount of data that they want to store, and those small businesses that, without needing large amounts of storage, need a high-quality NAS because of the importance of their files and documents.

One of its great qualities is the option of using the M.2 ports with SSDs of this format to act as additional storage, and as a cache to access the most used data. It is part of what explains why this model is very high-end for home users and small businesses, despite using a rather small number of bays for a NAS.

We thank QNAP for giving us the product for review.

preview Items Price
QNAP TS364-4G NAS QNAP TS364-4G NAS 586,07 EUR

Unboxing

The box in which the QNAP TS364 NAS comes is still in line with what QNAP has accustomed us to. A sticker that summarizes everything that the product itself contains.

They include crucial data such as the Intel Celeron CPU model, the M.2, HDMI, and RJ45 ports, and the format of RAM it uses.

Opening its box, we see that it is perfectly protected with custom foam and protective plastic to prevent possible scratches.

In the accessory box you will find the cables, which include the connection to the electrical network; additional warranty papers, and additional spare screws for the bays.


QNAP TS364-4G NAS Design

The design of the QNAP TS364-4G NAS is characterized by being one of the simplest and most minimalist possible. White color, which can make the dust quite noticeable and have to be cleaned often.

This model leaves behind the displays of seven lines to focus on various colored LED pilots. Each of the lights indicates the status of the NAS, the LAN network, and each of the five storage units it may have. It is much more convenient than a single display for absolutely everything, so you can quickly find out what the problem is with the NAS.

The front USB 3.0 port is also appreciated for instant backup or quick data and file transfers.

At the rear, almost the entire surface is taken up by the NAS's ventilation grill. You can also see the reset button, two USB ports, a single 45 Gb RJ2,5 LAN port to connect to the network, the HDMI output port and the connection to the current.

Its lower part has many micro-ventilation grilles so that in the event that hot air accumulates at the back, the air has another outlet. The NAS is supported by four small-area but quite sturdy and thick commas.

To open the QNAP TS364 NAS, you need to unscrew three screws on the back. This is how you can insert the bays with the storage drives or connect the M.2 drives.

There are those who might think having to unscrew every time we want to physically handle the hard drives can be uncomfortable. True, but this segment not designed to constantly swap out your hard drives. The idea is to install it with the three hard drives and the M.2 drives as an acceleration mode as an extreme case, and end. On such a small scale there is no need to physically manage the hard drives.

Looking for something more sustainable than something scalable and highly interoperable. Likewise, removing the cover is not a complicated process, and it also gives some physical security to the hard drives themselves.

The QNAP TS364-4G NAS is designed to be a static and sustainable system, not a scalable one.

Thinking from the family point of view, if this would be the NAS of the house in which everyone has their space, a private house can have a baby, whose photos would be stored in the NAS so that they do not get lost, or a pet , or exposed to possible accidental drops of liquids. Thus, the disks are more protected from physical agents.

This model is characterized by being one of four 3,5″ or 2,5″ hard drive or SSD bays. This amount for many demanding users may be scarce, mainly due to redundancy, since it is recommended to have at least four to be prepared for problems with read or write failures.

But one of its positive points is that supports RAID 5 layout format. This particular format is especially compatible with any number of hard drives that our system has to ensure that in the event of minor failures, we do not lose data.

These are the bays that come standard on the QNAP TS364-4G NAS. They are made to support 3,5″ drive models, while if we want to use 2,5″, we will have to buy and a separate adapter.

Look inside the structure. The three bays are appreciated, and how the NAS design is incredibly compact. The bottom hard drive is just a few millimeters from the motherboard's heatsink, but still has plenty of room for ventilation.


Physical specifications of QNAP TS364-4G NAS

  • 86-bit x64 CPU architecture-
  • Intel UHD Graphics graphics processors.
  • floating point unit.
  • Encryption engine (AES-NI).
  • Hardware accelerated transcoding.
  • One 4 GB SODIMM DDR4 RAM module
  • Maximum memory capacity of 16 GB with 2 modules of 8 GB DDR4.
  • 5 GB of flash memory with dual-boot operating system protection.
  • Bay for 3 SATA 3,5″ drives at 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s
  • Compatibility of 3,5″ SATA hard drives, 2,5″ SATA drives and 2,5″ SATA solid state drives. An optional 2,5" drive tray base (TRAY-25-NK-BLK03) is required to install 2,5" drives
  • Two M.2 Slot 2280 PCIe ports.
  • Two PCIE Gen 3 ports.
  • SSD cache acceleration support.
  • 2,5GbE port (2,5G / 1G / 100M)
  • Wake-on-LAN (WOL).
  • JumboFrame.
  • USB 3.2 Gen 1 port.
  • Two ports USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type A port.
  • HDMI 1.4b output up to 4096 x 2160 at 30 Hz.
  • Tower format.
  • LED indicators System status, LAN status, USB status, status of each of the hard drives, and status of the M.2 SSDs.
  • Power, Reset and USB Copy buttons.
  • 142 × 150 × 260mm in size.
  • 1,64 kg of weight.
  • Operating temperature from 0 to 40 °C
  • Storage temperature from 20 to 70°C
  • Relative humidity 5 ~ 95% relative humidity non-condensing, wet bulb: 27˚C
  • 65W adapter, 100 – 240V
  • 32.8W power consumption
  • Tested with fully loaded units.
  • Fan 1 x 92mm, 12V DC
  • System Warning Chime
  • Kensington security slot.
  • Maximum of 1.500 simultaneous connections.

software specifications

  • QTS 5.0.0 as operating system
  • Compatible with Apple Mac OS 10.10 or higher
  • Compatible with Ubuntu 14.04, CentOS 7, RHEL 6.6, SUSE 12 or higher versions of Linux
  • Compatible with IBM AIX 7, Solaris 10 or higher UNIX.
  • Compatible with Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 10 and 11.
  • Support for Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox browsers. All of them must be updated.
  • Supports Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swiss, Thai and Turkish.
  • Group storage.
  • SED group storage.
  • Maximum of 308 TB per storage pool.
  • Maximum 128 storage numbers.
  • Maximum of 250 TB per storage unit. It requires 4 GB of RAM.
  • Maximum of 512 shared folders
  • Expansion with JBOD.
  • Compatible with VJBOD and VJBOD Cloud.
  • Compatible with iSCSI Service
  • Compatible with Fiber Channel Service.
  • File-based iSCSI LUN.
  • Block-based iSCSI LUN.
  • Maximum of 250 TB of LUNs. At least 4 GB of RAM is required.
  • Maximum of 256 LUN targets.
  • Dedicated LUN software includes LUN Mapping, LUN Masking, WWPN Alias ​​Import/Export, FC Port Group, FC Port Binding, IO Multipath, LUN Online Expandability, LUN Capture along with LUN Replication and Cloning.
  • Self Tiering. It requires 2 GB of RAM memory.
  • Compatible with RAID configurations.
  • RAID Expansion by adding disks or replacing them.
  • RAID Hot Spare globally and locally.
  • RAID Sync/Rebuild/Scrubbing
  • EXT4 indoor unit
  • Compatible with EXT3, EXT4, NTFS, FAT32, HFS+, and exFAT external drives.
  • Disk SMART Scan
  • Disk SMART Data Migration
  • Ironwolf Health Management
  • Secure Erase
  • SSD life estimate.
  • External device manager
  • Mount Smart Phone (MTP)
  • Compatible with FTP servers.
  • Maximum of 1024 FTP connections.
  • Up to 4.096 local user accounts.
  • Up to 512 local groups.
  • Up to 200.000 domain or group accounts.
  • domain security.
  • Domain controller.
  • Shared folder permissions.
  • Advanced shared folder permissions with AFP, CIFS/SMB, FTP and File Station.
  • Windows ACL with CIFS/SMB.
  • User quota.
  • Group fee.
  • Resource monitor.
  • SNMP V2 and V3
  • Network recycle bin.
  • Log system and notification center up to a maximum of 3,000 events per hour
  • SmartFan.
  • On and off programming.
  • Compatible with IPv4 and IPv6 protocols
  • virtual switch
  • VLAN
  • DHCP server.
  • DDNS.
  • Network access protection with auto-blocking of SSH, Telnet, HTTP(S), FTP, CIFS/SMB and AFP
  • security assistant
  • malware remover
  • FIPS 256-140 CAVP Validated AES 2-bit Volume Encryptor
  • Two-step verification.
  • Allow and Deny List
  • access protection
  • Firewall
  • vSphere Web Client Plugin
  • VMware vSphere VAAI for iSCSI
  • VMware vSphere VAAI for NAS
  • Windows ODX
  • Windows Agent/VMware Snapshot
  • HTTP/HTTPS TLS 1.0/1.1/1.2/1.3 connections
  • Support for WebDAV connection
  • Support of 32 virtual hosts
  • Q-sync.
  • HybridMount
  • HBS (Hybrid Backup Sync)
  • HyperData Protector
  • boxing
  • Qsirch
  • WhatMagie
  • Free antivirus support.
  • Support for McAfee antivirus.
  • qvpn
  • HDStation
  • LDAP server
  • RADIUS
  • SQL server
  • License Center
  • Media Console
  • Photo Station
  • music station
  • VideoStation
  • DownloadStation
  • Note Station
  • Qfiling
  • Media streaming extensions
  • QmailAgent
  • QuWAN
  • DA Driver Analyzer
  • Q'center
  • Q'center server
  • Q'center Agent
  • Virtualization Station
  • Container Station
  • linux-station
  • QVRPro
  • QVR Elite
  • QVR ProClient
  • QVR Center
  • QVR Guard
  • QVRHuman
  • QVR Face

Why is RAID 5 important for QNAP TS364-4G NAS?

We have to make a very quick presentation of what is RAID, although if you want to delve much deeper we have an article that explains it well and in more detail. Stated in a very simple and basic way, it is a way to join multiple storage units in a system. Be it SSDs or HDDs, on a PC or on a NAS. The choice of RAID system prioritizes security or speed of data reading and writing as appropriate.

Depending on the type of system and the use that will be given to it, it will be more efficient and appropriate to configure it in RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5... The RAID number is the configuration mode that the system has. Each of them has a different purpose.

One of the features with which this QNAP TS364-4G NAS stands out is that it can be configured in RAID 5. What is special about this configuration? Well, it is a distributed system with parity, so that each of the system's disks has a data parity block from other disks to ensure redundancy and thus data security.

raid storage level 5

This allows reconstruction of stored data in the event of a hard drive problem. In the case of a NAS system, we talk about the very few chances of a hard drive failing, multiplied because several hard drives are used at the same time. It's a long shot but it's always there, and it should not be dismissed, especially if we store important data there, whether on a personal or professional level. In RAID 5, the parity block is stored on a different drive than the different data blocks involved.

At least three hard drives are required to ensure data redundancy with parity. Only allow one drive to fail at a time. If two units are damaged simultaneously, we can lose the stored information. In the event of an error during the restore process, the data will also be corrupted and lost.

With RAID 5 we don't recommend using normal hard drives, so you have to go the extra monetary effort and go for hard drives that are made and intended to be used for NAS. Especially if this NAS is being used by a small company that does not require a larger and more capable model because it does not have the capacity or the need for it.

TPU and Artificial Intelligence applied to NAS

The M.2 ports allow you to put storage units that serve as cache, and to increase the total storage capacity. Another of its uses is Artificial Intelligence TPU units. These TPUs have many possibilities for massive data management, even for the most basic users or small businesses.

Let's say we take a lot of photos, and it's hard for us to organize them because they number in the hundreds. The Artificial Intelligence of the TPU will allow us to have photos and videos well organized by categories already stored much faster. In its day we explained that an advantage of having a NAS like QNAP instead of Google Photos is that we can't say no to Google and stop it from using our photos to improve its artificial intelligence algorithms for facial recognition. With a TPU, you will be totally limited to the photos we put on the NAS and you won't have to share the photos with other algorithms.

There is also the case that small businesses, by their nature, cannot leave any space in their business unused, and the same applies to NAS. How? Well, making the NAS where the copies of the security recordings are stored as required by law. Using a TPU with artificial intelligence, facial recognition can be entered to detect faces recorded by the security system. And this is just one case of applied artificial intelligence.

This explains the high cost of the QNAP TS364-4G NAS, compared to other brand products. We can find them with more bays and with the ability to change the disks hot, but this one is focused on those who want the novelties offered by the use of TPU through M.2 connections.

Gallery


QNAP TS364 NAS experience and conclusion

What stands out most about this model is how it has reduced the format to a simpler one with fewer displays and with fewer RJ45 ports, removing the usual configuration of two 1 GB ports for one 2,5 GB, which is more connection using fewer cables. The option of M.2 ports is a considerable addition, but it increases the price for the most demanding.

QNAP's software is one that we are familiar with, and it is one that works extremely well, and it is one that we are most familiar with. We understand that adapting to a system takes time, but as a company, user or family understands the QNAP system, easy operation feels almost professional.

  • Raid 5 compatibility.
  • NVMe M.2 ports for performance.
  • Model simplification
  • No unnecessary display, everything is very concise pilots.
  • Compatible with TPU via M.2.
  • Its price may be somewhat high for what is a NAS focused on home users.
  • Adapters have to be purchased to fit the 2,5″ drives into the bays.

We recommend the QNAP TS364 NAS to small businesses and the most demanding and enthusiastic users who want a small but powerful NAS.

Show more

Benjamin Rosa

Madrileño whose publishing career began in 2009. I love investigating curiosities that I later bring to you, readers, in articles. I studied photography, a skill that I use to create humorous photomontages.

Related publications

Leave your comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

Button back to top
Close

Ad blocker detected

This site is financed through the use of advertising, we always ensure that it is not too intrusive for the reader and we prioritize the reader's experience on the web. But if you block ads, some of our funding will be reduced.