I’ve recently purchased a Mediasonic raid box [ http://amzn.to/2kBVqbA ], only to have the thing turn out to be a POS and I believe the reason for several kernel panics on my new iMac. As a result, I’m doing what I probably should have done in the first place and going to invest in a NAS. After some browsing of posts, it looks like QNAP is much better than Synology for price and technical support.
I’ve got 4x8TB red drives I recently picked up, and currently have them in RAID5. I’d like to continue using this, and will rebuild the array in the NAS I purchase, after exporting all data to other drives.
I’ve got both Windows and Macs in my home, and had the original intention of using the new iMac to transcode when necessary.
I don’t have any 4k content as of now, but may see a slow accumulation in the future to take full advantage of my Samsung TV.
I’ve been looking at the QNAP TS-451A, but the Celeron chip has a little hesitant, as notated in the Plex compatibility guide.
Looking to spend anywhere from $400-$600 probably, and am open to any suggestions. Thanks in advance for any and all help!!
It has the J3455 CPU with ApolloLake GPU for hardware transcoding. If you look in the Synology forum, you’ll have direct comparison from those who are using the same CPU with hardware transcoding and having great success with it.
QNAP does give you the more ‘hands on’ GUI at less cost.
As for migrating, Why not buy the 8 slot now and migrate up as you need? A bigger chassis now is less than a new chassis later >:)
Thanks for the feedback. As far as buying more now for later, I’m currently in an apartment now, and hope to build a standalone server once I get in a house in the next couple years…but maybe the 8-bay is the best solution? I’ve currently got the 4 drives and would love to add more, but currently don’t even fill those up–currently at about 8TB of my 24TB available.
Ideally, I’d love to have something that works as my Plex server, as well as additional other file management (pretty low hanging fruit), all within a pretty simple to manage package–I’d love to not have to dig into the code for the add-ons to work. If that means spending a little more money, then I’d probably be open to that as well
On QNAP, the one thing I had to think about, which is why I raise here, is initial volume creation in QTS 4.3.3. I do not know if QTS 4.3.4 will change this limitation so prepare for the worst.
When sizing the volume initially, use the advanced option.
It will show you the maximum volume size with that iNode size.
Quick math in your head. Max drive size * Max number of drives
If you have all the bays full, make sure you change the inode size so you can buy bigger drives later without reformatting the whole volume… UGLY procedure as you must offload it.
Increasing inode size (about 32KB works for me yields ~96 TB = 8 x 12TB HDs) will let you allocate the inode structure now (important)
If you do that. It just ‘works’.
As a bonus, those with M.2 SSD slot
Install the M.2 first and setup QTS
Now install the HDs. This makes them the 2nd volume (CACHEDEV2_DATA)
Apps, like PMS, live on the SSD and blazing quick
Your media is on the HD as it should be.
Do it this way and it does ‘just work’. It works damn good too
Not going to lie…a little over my head as a novice, but seems simple enough. Imagine once I’m familiar with the QNAP system it’s not too bad.
You mentioned an 8-bay as an option to future-proofing, andwhile browsing Amazon posts, the TS-853A is only a bit more expensive than the TS-453B that you recommended, would this be a good option of the 8-bay variety? Or does the TS-831X make more sense? And I presume it’s possible (based on what you mentioned with respect to 32kb), to insert more drives later without much issue in the 8-bay?
If this works, I may hop on the 8-bay train and upgrade drives as I go–been watching BB sales on 8TB and shucking as I go.
QNAP doesn’t support NVME on my motherboard. Check the docs for the unit.
To give you a comparison, this is fairly serious hardware. There are a few folks who’ve built bigger having seen my configuration.
TVS-1282, i7-6700, 32 GB, 1TB SSD M.2, 2x 500 GB 2.5", 8x 6TB WD Red Pro (7200 RPM), USB 3.1 adapter card.
To keep everything in the house fed properly and be able to use the Syno for volume backup without killing anyone else , I added the HPE-1820-24g managed switch… It provides LACP. Through LACP, it can and does handle 468 MB/sec, of the theoretical 480 MB/sec max, sustained using 4 gigabit strands.
The safe part with the SSD as the QTS main volume is you can use their wizard and learn on the HD array with it by trial & error with no ill effects to anything else.
Be smart and take your time. Config it, try it. If not to your liking, delete the the HD volume and do it again. It’s quick enough
What I wrote is only really applicable when you see it in front of you. Sorry about that. I see those images in my mind and am writing as I read over them. (How my brain works but makes it REALLY hard to ‘unsee’ something hahaha)
With the WDs and the QNAP (which is quicker than Synology), here’s the quick performance metric of what 8 WDs can provide to the NAS.
It’s reading from the RAID volume, independent of the filesystem, bypassing all caching, so it’s showing raw RAID I/O capability. It slows down only a little when reading through the file system
[~] # dd if=/dev/mapper/cachedev2 of=/dev/null bs=2M count=50000
50000+0 records in
50000+0 records out
104857600000 bytes (97.7GB) copied, 74.681691 seconds, 1.3GB/s
[~] # dd if='/share/CACHEDEV2_DATA/4k/Chappie (2015) [4K]/Chappie (2015).mkv' of=/dev/null bs=1M
56000+1 records in
56000+1 records out
58720861538 bytes (54.7GB) copied, 50.726086 seconds, 1.1GB/s
[~] #
