The well-known NAS server manufacturer QNAP has launched a new high-end manageable switch with all 10G ports, perfect for small and medium-sized businesses where they need high transfer speeds over the local network. Nowadays, it is very common to find NAS servers that have 10G connectivity, and we can make the most of their storage from both RAID hard drives and SSD units, because lower speeds cause a bottleneck. The new QNAP QSW-M3212R-8S4T It is a piece of equipment specifically designed for places where we need a medium-width rack switch, in order to place another similar model and save space in the closet.
In recent years, the manufacturer QNAP has given a lot of importance to network electronics such as professional routers and also high-performance switches. Until QNAP began to market its switches, and specifically the manageable models with 10G ports, we had to use models from other manufacturers since we did not have the possibility of having everything with the same brand. We now have a wide range of switches, both unmanaged and manageable, so it will fit our needs perfectly.
Main features
The QNAP QSW-M3212R-8S4T switch is a high-performance model, it has a total of 12 10Gbps ports distributed across 4 10GBASE-T Multigigabit ports and 8 SFP+ ports at 10Gbps. In this way, we will be able to have great speed in each and every one of its ports. Other important characteristics are that we have one RJ-45 console portand we also have one Gigabit Ethernet port for out-of-band switch management, perfect for forming a management network specifically aimed at the administration of all network equipment. On the front of the switch is where we have all the ports, including the RESET button to restore the equipment to factory settings, since we must take into account that it is a manageable model.
On the back of this switch we have the AC power socket, the power supply is internal, it has a maximum consumption of 80W. This device has a total of two fans to extract hot air from the interior, perfect for properly cooling the internal components. We must remember that 10G electronics heat up much, much more than Gigabit or 2.5G electronics, so it is necessary that we have very good ventilation. The dimensions of this switch are 43.3mm high, 207mm wide and 199.5mm deep, it has a net weight of 1.48Kg.
Other important features of this switch are that it has a MAC table of up to 16K entries, it also has Jumbo Frames at 9K length, as well as a switching capacity of 320Gbps and non-blocking capacity of up to 160Gbps.
The features of the QSS operating system for this managed switch are the same as always. We have very advanced management of network ports, we also have VLANs to segment traffic correctly and isolate networks from employees, guests, etc. Of course, this model has Link Aggregation, so we can do link aggregation of 2 or more 10G ports, which translates into really high bandwidth, generally we will configure it towards a NAS server. Other important functions are the RSTP protocol to avoid loops at the link layer level, the LLDP protocol, IGMP Snooping and even ACL (Access Control Lists) as well as QoS or quality of service, to prioritize certain packets over others.
As you can see, this model is really interesting, and joins others like the QSW-3216R-8S8T which is a similar model but not manageable, and also the QSW-M3216R-8S8T which is manageable, but has 8 10GBASE-T ports and 8 SFP+ ports at 10Gbps. QNAP is launching a whole family of medium-rack width equipment, with the aim of combining several models and satisfying the needs of its customers.
