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Overall, this is a very good entry level NAS. The RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, so 4G is what you get, and the Celeron is only dual core. However for something that is intended to do disk serving, perhaps with some Plex use, and some other applications, for this price range, it is good enough.
QTS doesn't have ZFS support, but it has a lot of really nice features. For example, a plugin to securely back up one's WordPress files, as well as software to back up Windows and other machines to the NAS. Since I have other network appliances doing this, and this NAS is something I bought for a project, I mention this, since it can be something that makes this worth picking up. In fact, if a household doesn't have a NAS, they should consider one, if only as a place for backups, or offloading files from their main machines.
QNAP's software, QTS, excels at syncing to cloud providers. It works well with all of them, but iCloud.
As for ZFS support, booting from Ubuntu media, via hitting the delete key while it boots, installing Ubuntu on an external USB drive, or one can install it on a SSD in an internal slot, works well. Since QTS isn't tough to reinstall, I used "blkdiscard -f -v -s" to erase the small eMMC drive (which surprised me, because the eMMC drive supported a cryptographically secure erase), and left it empty. This way, it will always boot from the SSD.
From there, Ubuntu works well. The two hard disks got ZFS (which normally comes with QNAP's midrange to higher end offerings), and the other SSD is now a ZIL (write cache). Add Samba and even though one doesn't have the bells and whistles QTS has, it works very well and has top notch security. I enrolled the NAS in Ubuntu Pro, so it can fetch updates without rebooting.
Overall, for its price range, it is definitely something people can use. It can be used by virtually anyone, and provides a lot of useful options. If one is Linux savvy, then it can be repurposed with Debian, Ubuntu, or one's distribution of choice.
Just be aware of its limitations. It does have 2.5 gigE, and a PCIe card, but has a dual core Celeron and four gigs of RAM. This puts it on the edge of using ZFS (definitely one isn't going to be using ZFS deduplication). However, it is well made, reliable, and allows for hot-swapping drives, which is all important.
For my use, which is a NAS dedicated to a project, it is a solid choice.
| Hard Drive | Mechanical Hard Disk |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
