The QNAP ES1686DC ZFS Intel DUAL Controller active-active NAS

QNAP's dual controller revolution commenced back in 2016 with the QNAP ES1640DC model, the only company in its category to attempt such an audacious move, with a cost-effective solution to bring active-active High Availability to the masses. This could have back-fired quite badly if the solution was not adequately backed up with the required support and compatibility.

For us at SimplyNAS it turned out to be one of the most successful products within our QNAP armor. The number of solutions we have designed around the Dual Controller product has been tremendously impressive. As with everything in technology change is an essential part for progressing to the next level.

Enter the QNAP ES1686DC ZFS Intel DUAL Controller active-active NAS, at first in appearance not much seems to have changed, only the minor tweaks that were long overdue, and some of the customer driven wish list features have been added esthetically. On closer inspection it is clear this is major upgrade, thank fully not a CPU add and model number change to warrant a higher price like others.

Delivering enterprise high availability, the ES1686dc Enterprise ZFS NAS features Intel® Xeon® D processors, dual active controllers, up to 512 GB DDR4 ECC memory, SAS 12Gb/s, and ZFS that supports logical volume management. The ES1686dc runs the latest QES 2.1.0 operating system that supports near-limitless snapshots, SnapSync, block-level data deduplication, and inline data compression. Whether being used as a mission-critical file server, virtualization server, VDI, medium-sized data center, video streaming, surveillance storage, and efficient file backup & recovery, the ES1686dc helps your business to achieve service-level agreements for performance and uptime.

The Model Pedigree

• Introducing the 4-core budget striven ES1686dc-2123IT-64G, driven at the core with an Intel® Xeon® D-2123IT 4-core/8-threads 2.2 GHz processor (burst up to 3.0 GHz), 64 GB DDR4 ECC memory (32 GB per controller).
• Closely followed by the impressive 8-core ES1686dc-2145NT-96G comprising of the Intel® Xeon® D-2145NT 8-core/16-threads 1.9 GHz processor (burst up to 3.0 GHz), 96 GB DDR4 ECC memory (48 GB per controller).
• The ultimate 128G memory and 8-core ES1686dc-2145NT-128G model featuring the Intel® Xeon® D-2145NT 8-core/16-threads 1.9 GHz processor (burst up to 3.0 GHz), 128 GB DDR4 ECC memory (64 GB per controller).

The Quintessential Features

Next-generation Enterprise ZFS NAS: High-performance and near-zero downtime high availability.

Active-Active high availability with optimal storage efficiency. Powered by two Intel® Xeon® D processors, the ES1686dc features a dual active-active controller architecture that provides failover/failback operations as the standby controller can quickly take over if one controller breaks down. Redundant hot-swappable power supplies and cooling fans are also included to provide businesses with near-zero downtime high availability.

Multi-level cache technology with both read and write. The ES1686DC simultaneously supports main memory (up to 512GB) read cache (L1 ARC), M.2. SSD secondary cache (L2 ARC), and NVRAM memory write cache (ZFS Intent Log) to meet performance demands for various challenging enterprise applications. If unplanned power outages occur, the system can write cache data from the battery protected DRAM to M.2 SSD through Copy to Flash (C2F) to ensure data is not lost. When selecting the configuration for your needs you must ensure the size of the M.2. SSD's selected are not compromised.

PCIe expansion for 40GbE high-speed networks. The ES1686dc provides two PCIe Gen3 x8 slots connected to the CPU, allowing the installation of the lightning-fast 10GbE/40GbE network cards to boost virtualization, media streaming, and other bandwidth-demanding applications.

Installing Mellanox® Smart NICs further adds support for iSER for improved VMware® virtualization performance. You can also install a QM2 expansion card (QM2-4P-384) to add four additional M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe SSD slots to burst reading performance with SSD caching, or a SAS expansion card (SAS-12G2E) for connecting up to seven 16-bay EJ1600 v2expansion enclosures to seamlessly expand the potential storage capacity over 1PB, with unprecedented performance of up to 48Gbps per host connection.

QES 2.1.0 – ZFS-based optimized for all Flash performance. Not only does the QES 2.1.0 provide reliable data protection, recovery, and business-class features, it is also optimized for flash storage and can drive outstanding performance for all-flash storage arrays to accelerate mission-critical services and eliminate challenges in VDI environments.

Deduplication and compression to maximize VDI storage performance. In VDI environments where there could be over 90% duplicate data from OS images and applications that are spread over virtual desktops, the QES-powered ES1686dc provides businesses with the most cost-effective remote virtual desktop platform and mission-critical information warehousing.

Streamlined remote backups with nearly limitless snapshots and SnapSync. The ES1686dc supports up to 65,535 snapshots for iSCSI LUN and shared folders (if 1 snapshot is created every hour, 24 snapshots per day, then up to 7 years worth of snapshots can be created without needing to delete any) and replicates snapshots to remote servers by using the block-level SnapSync. In the event of a primary site failure, SnapSync assists businesses to resume essential services in the shortest possible time.

Self-Healing ensure data integrity and reliability. Designed with a focus on data integrity, a fundamental aspect of storage security and reliability, the QES-based ES1686DC uses its end-to-end checksums to detect and correct silent data corruption instigated by hardware defects, bugs in firmware or metadata errors. If integrity violations are detected, QES automatically repairs the damage using data from the other mirror before the data is passed to applications.

The Warranty Promise

Standard 5-year warranty. The ES1686dc is backed by a 5-year warranty at no extra cost. This premier warranty demonstrates QNAP's dedication to your essential business needs for continuous operations and non-interrupted services.