This is not the first time that we have seen QNAP introduce this 9 storage bay chassis and in fact, this is technically the third generation of this style of device from them. Arriving in a frankly incredible compact form (measuring just 18.2 × 22.4 × 22.4cm) this system manages to house a huge amount of storage but is only fractionally larger than their traditional 4-bay NAS series. With increased measures towards cooling featured around the chassis, as well as as a remarkably clean and clear internal bay structure, you can definitely see that a lot of work has gone into the design of this casing. Photo, Video and Music Station – Multiple file type tailored applications to access data in the best possible way that is suited to their output – along with smart searching, playlists and sharing Install high-performance U.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSDs or SATA 6Gb/s SSDs in the dedicated SSD slots for cache acceleration and improved random I/O. QTS is the operating system for entry- and mid-level QNAP NAS. WIth Linux and ext4, QTS enables reliable storage for everyone with versatile value-added features and apps, such as snapshots, Plex media servers, and easy access of your personal cloud. System

Warning: Using unsupported modules may degrade performance, cause errors, or prevent the operating system from starting. While the QuTS hero software is laden with advanced features, the learning curve is gentle as it looks and feels very similar to the standard QTS firmware. That said, we spotted one difference right away: our three 14TB Seagate IronWolf NAS HDDs were assembled into a 24TB RAID5 storage pool in five minutes, while the job could have taken a day under QTS.QuMagie – Facial and Thing recognition application to help you retrieve, tag and catalogue photos by its use of AI to actually ‘view’ all your years of photos and let you search by the contents of them, not the file names. Note: Use only QNAP memory modules to maintain system performance and stability. For NAS devices with more than one memory slot, use QNAP modules with identical specifications. Note: The application is available in the App Center and in virtual appliance marketplaces (VMware vSphere ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V). Multimedia Console – one portal access point to manage media access, searching, indexing and transcoding on your NAS device. Then you have KEY applications that are used on the QNAPNAS system that moves into tailored data access and use, such as:

Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish Inside the plentiful external box, we find both the NAS and a small box of accessories. These accessories include a first-time setup guide, external PSU, mains power cable, screws and keys for the individual media bays and an ethernet cable for connecting the device to your existing router or switch. All quite standard stuff it has to be said but short of the storage media, it’s everything you’re going to need to set this system up.QTier – The QNP intelligent, multi-layer tiering system that works to optimize your SSD and caching configuration An AI-powered photo management app, supporting automated photo categorization with AI Albums, iOS® Live Photo display, and powerful search tool for ultimate photo management and sharing solution. Access-Anywhere with myQNAPcloud – Safe and secure remote access over the internet to your storage systems, apps or just file storage

Cloud storage gateways realize hybrid cloud applications by working with the cache space reserved on NAS to ensure low-latency data access to the cloud. Space Saving Efficiency – Inline data deduplication, compression, and compaction reduce file size to conserve storage capacity and optimize performance. That is plenty of ventilation on the base of the device but there does seem to be less ventilation on either side of the main plastic chassis than I would ideally like, especially for a 9-bay storage system. I had this system running for several days during testing and comparisons and during that time, temperatures were not a problem, but still, I would have liked to have seen a little bit more ventilation on such a compact device. Overall I genuinely like the design and structure of the TS-h973AX hardware so far, although there is the odd placement of things that I take slight issue with.

vJBOD and Hybrid Mount – Gives you the ability to mount cloud storage as a visible drive within the NAS (and the apps access it as if it was local) or mount a % of space from your NAS onto another as a virtual chunk of space to use Ventilation throughout the device is taken care of in a few small ways. The storage bays have sufficient spacing around them to allow air to pass over the storage media, internal PCB and heat sinks. There is the large rear fan we will talk about in a bit and there are ventilation holes on one side of the chassis and across a large area of the base. QNAP reserves the right to replace partial parts or accessories if the original is no longer available from its manufacturer/supplier. Any replacement would be fully tested and verified to meet strict compatibility and stability guidelines and will deliver identical performance to the original. That large cooling fan (measuring 140mm), although almost disproportionate on a system of this scale, is exactly what this triple storage tier system needs and although the RPM can be adjusted by the user, it is recommended that it is left to adjust automatically. It is certainly the biggest single rear cooling fan I have ever seen in a desktop NAS, but understandable nevertheless.

The maximum number of channels supported varies by NAS model, network configuration, and camera settings. For more information, visit https://www.qnap.com/solution/qvr-face/en-us/ SSD Caching Monitor and Advisor – Allowing you to scale your SSD cache as needed, or get recommendations on how much you need QSAL (QNAP SSD Antiwear Leveling) – RAID-level SSD lifespan is automatically and regularly detected to prevent simultaneous SSD failure, improving your data protection and system reliability.QuTS hero is the operating system for high-end and enterprise QNAP NAS models. With Linux and ZFS, QuTS hero supports advanced data reduction technologies for further driving down costs and increasing reliablility of SSD (all-flash) storage. System