The well-known manufacturer of NAS servers QNAP, has launched today its second switch in the QNAP Guardian range, the new model is the QNAP QGD-1602P and it is much better than the previous model. In this article we had the opportunity to analyze in detail the QNAP QGD-1600P , a very interesting device because it integrates all the switching functions and virtual machines can also be installed to act as a router, Windows or Linux VMs, and a large number of possibilities, by incorporating the QTS operating system with all the functionalities.
Main features of this new switch
This new QTS-integrated manageable switch has undergone a major hardware upgrade, all with a host of major enhancements to provide the best possible wired performance.
Characteristics of its connectivity, ports and internal bays
This switch has several host ports that can also be used for switching, we have a total of two 10Gbps SFP + ports to provide maximum performance, in these two ports we can connect another switch to have a 10Gbps uplink, and also a NAS server with this type of connectivity. We also have another 2 5GBASE-T ports and 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports , all these 6 ports act as superior link ports to basic networks, although they also provide connectivity to devices that we connect via cable.
Regarding the integrated switch, we have a total of 8 2.5GbE Multigigabit ports , four of these ports are PoE with the 802.3bt standard (90W of output power), another four 2.5GbE Multigigabit ports are PoE + with the 802.3at standard ( 30W of output power), and finally, we have a total of 8 Gigabit Ethernet ports with PoE + ports with the 802.3at standard (30W of output power). This QGD-1602P switch has two models, with different processor and RAM, but also with different maximum PoE Budget, the lower model supports up to 200W, and the upper model supports up to 370W.
Other features of this high-performance switch are the incorporation of two USB 3.0 ports to connect external hard drives or an expansion bay, we also have two PCIe 3.0 x4 ports that will allow us to install 10GBASE-T network cards to have 10Gbps connectivity Through RJ-45 connector, we could also install QM2 cards to use SSD or Qtier cache, USB 3.2 Gen 2 expansion cards (10 Gbps), and even wireless adapters with the Wi-Fi 6 standard. Finally, we have 2 bays to host 2.5 ”hard drives or SSDs , to use this equipment as a small NAS server, where we can centralize IP camera recordings, host virtual machines and much more, and we even have two M.2 NVMe SSD slots for further accelerate NAS server performance.
Hardware features
This new QGD-1602P switch has two versions, the basic version consists of an Intel Atom C3558 processor, this processor is Quad-Core at a speed of 2.2 GHz , it has support for Intel QAT technology, it has a floating point unit, and it even has AES-NI acceleration. This model comes with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and can be expanded up to 64GB of RAM , ideal for using virtual machines that have a large consumption of RAM. This hardware is optimal to host up to 4 virtual machines without problems, but we must take into account the power of the CPU.
The top version of this QGD-1602P switch uses a 2.2 GHz octa-core Intel Atom C3758 processor , it comes with 16GB of DDR4 RAM by default, but it can be expanded up to 64GB . This equipment is suitable to host up to 6 virtual machines, although we must take into account the power of the CPU and the operating systems to be virtualized.
Software features
Regarding the software characteristics, on the one hand, we have the operating system of the switch which is QSS, to use all the layer 2 management functions. In addition, it also integrates the operating system of the QTS NAS servers, this will allow us to access and directly control the data processor by QSS, the internal bandwidth of the switch is 20Gbps, to speed up the calculation between the end devices and the hosts. Of course, this team is compatible with QuWAN which is QNAP’s SD-WAN solution to build full mesh IPsec VPN between QNAP teams. Thanks to Virtualization Station and the possibility of using Docker containers, we will be able to install the Ubiquiti UniFi Wi-Fi driver, install FreePBX, a complete firewall-oriented operating system such as PfSense, the RouterOS operating system from Mikrotik, and even OpenWRT and the platform Zabbix monitoring system.
This equipment is a really interesting all-in-one for small and medium-sized companies that need an all-in-one, the functions of a manageable switch with PoE, the functions of a NAS server, and virtualization, with the aim of reducing costs compared to buying everything separately.
We recommend you visit the official website of the QNAP QGD-1602P model where you will find all the details of this interesting new team.