QNAP releases world's first Thunderbolt 2 NAS, the TVS-871T
QNAP releases world's first Thunderbolt 2 NAS, the TVS-871T
A brief recap about Thunderbolt 2 first is necessary. Essentially it improves upon the first generation Thunderbolt interface by combining the originals two 10Gbps bi-directional channels into a single 20Gbps bi-directional channel. Total bandwidth hasn't changed, but the single 20Gbps bi-channel will allow for more bandwidth intensive applications, like editing 4K videos.
The QNAP TVS-871T is the world's first Thunderbolt 2 NAS and was designed for media professionals looking to streamline bandwidth intensive 4K workflows.
To help them do so, the QNAP TVS-871T is powerful by NAS standards. It is powered by either a quad-core Intel Core i5 or Core i7 "Haswell" processor and comes with 16GB of RAM and a 512MB of SSD cache.
It also has the ability to simultaneously and independently run Ethernet services alongside its Thunderbolt 2 network with zero bandwidth interference. It features two Thunderbolt 2 ports that can connect to two separate systems and also two 10Gbe (10Gbps) Ethernet ports.
It also has eight hot swappable disk trays that can accommodate either 2.5 or 3.5-inch drives. And if that's still not enough, storage can be added by using QNAP's new Thunderbolt 2 NAS expansion enclosures, which will allow the TVS-871T to scale up to a whopping 448TB.
The QNAP TVS-871T is available now. No pricing details have been given, but the older QNAP TVS-871 was over US$2000, so don't expect the TVS-871T to come cheap.