Excellent video, as always! Kudos for taking the efforts, very much appreciated! I've done my comparison of QTS vs QuTS (on an QNAP TVS-872XT, i5 with 16GB memory, to name one) and indeed noticed the performance-increases. Quite significantly btw when there is a need to do operations on the RAID array indeed. For example, replacing HDD's and rebuilding/resyncing, that will take often minutes on QuTS and minimum more than a full day on QTS. (and sometimes even longer) We used to use QTier but ceased using it; there are benefits for using it, until you encounter issues (with HDD, SSD), or want to change QTier, you can then very easily lose all your data if not careful (QNAP does warn for that, but still, you do need the expertise or the guidance from QNAP Support if you want to tinker, change or fix the storage of a system that is using QTier. Using regular cache is much more forgiving in such desperate scenarios). That's the one drawback I personally have with QTier, it is such an integral part of the storage, when there is an issue you need to make damn sure that you know what you are doing. Tip for those with a QNAP that can do QuTS Hero but can't seem to give that choice in the initial menu when defaulting (and thus losing all the data!!) the QNAP; download the QuTS Hero firmware and locally upload it during the step that the QNAP gives you the option to check if the firmware is current. I looked long and hard to QuTS Hero and wholeheartedly agree with all of your comments, Robbie. There is one (minor) thing I did notice when I compare QTS to QuTS Hero, the free space is a wee bit less when using QuTS Hero. I have to redo my tests, but I believe it was around 10%. But the benefits of QuTS Hero outweigh QTS, I strongly believe. So much so, that I'm "converting", where possible, our PT's of storage to QuTS Hero. (and upgrade to 10GBe all around too) Too bad that QNAP does not support QuTS Hero on the older TVS-1282 series, I had a small hope back then. Small tip if you want to migrate data from one QNAP to another QNAP; QNAP Support recommended to use your local PC to copy data from one QNAP to another. We normally would use one of QNAP's otherwise excellent tools but often ran into file-naming issues; Especially when you run a mixed-enviroment with AFP- and SMB shares, as they both have different(!) sets of "illegal" (extended) characters that can not be used in file-names etc. As AFP is depreciated anyways, SBM (v3) is strongly recommended. And the "fix" would be to mount the old (AFP) share and mount the new share in SMB3, and copy the files from old to new, "converting" the offences that way. Kudos to QNAP for making the adoption for a long-time QTS-diehard to QuTS Hero such a do-able experience! To me the only very-very bad for QuTS Hero is indeed QVR Pro, that is either bad marketing (choice) by QNAP or they ran into issues with the (ZFS) storage or, they really like the cash-grab of annual subscriptions. Perhaps it is indeed a better choice to stick to QTS when one considers QVR on a QNAP...
I use Q-tier and now am a bit worried about your comments. Are there any best practices you would share with me? I have a 453E with 4 WD Red 4tb drives in RAID 10 and 2 WD Red 1tb nvme's. So far it has run fine. I went with all the defaults it suggested and never thought about it. Having a TB of extra storage and all my stuff I reuse being on the tier seemed like a no brainer?
@@km3481 Apologies, I did not want to scare-monger you! (YT does not allow for publishing links here so you have to use search for the mentioned below, sorry about that) QTier is, according to many sources (including NASCompares, whom I have in very high regard) useful mostly in business environments. And, only really useful if you have the 3-tier of storage; HDD, SSD and NVMe's. Only HDD and NVME's (thus 2-tier) is not very useful for QTier. Simply by the fact that QTier moves(!) around data depending on how often it is used. (so-called hot- and cold-data). Whilst I have been using QNAP since 2002 both for my work and privately, I had been using QTier mostly in the business environment. It is when you want to cease using QTier is becomes danger-close (read: risk of losing your data) if not careful. I noticed on several occasions, when there were issues with the storage (for example a bad sector) the replacement-procedure (of the HDD, in such a case) would take several days(!), and I believe(d) QTier negatively impacted the time compared to a non-QTier environment. To answer your question: If you search NASCompares website for QTier you can find some excellent write-ups about QTier, including suggestions, best-practices and such. If you search SPANdotCOM YT-channel for QTier, you will also find some excellent videos about it. On QNAP's website you can also find some information, and I would suggest to search for "How to use QNAP Qtier™ to conduct Auto Tiering and optimize your storage performance?" to get you started. My biggest beef about QTier is the fact you can easily add it and change the parameters but removing QTier, unlike caching, is a way lot harder to do. (I strongly recommend contacting QNAP Support before attempting to ask for guidance & step-by-step). As your data within QTier is *moved* so data on your 2x WD 1TB NVMe's only exist there and need to be *moved* away to your HDD before you can cease QTier. In my personal opinion QTier was developed back in the days (it is quite old, October 2015) when the hardware (CPU, 2GB or 4GB RAM, PCI-e lanes & such) were not that speedy yet. Nowadays, with the (QNAP) NAS having plenty-speed (and width) PCI-e lanes, and plenty of CPU power and free RAM etc, the need for QTier, especially in the pro-sumer arena (and lower) is less and less. Which I believe is noticeable as QNAP does not publish much nowadays about QTier. It was an excellent solution when the hardware could not keep up, and I believe those days are gone/less needed. Caching is often good enough and rarely affects data-integrety when things do go wrong (hardware-errors such as HDD)
@@InspectorGadget2014 Thanks for the explanation. I have used qnap for 20 years or so, never tried qtier. For my application is works fine so far, I will be careful if I ever need to stop using it. I bought the best m2.nvme I could find for this purpose. I back up often, so I should be good!
hey mate. first of all very good video as usual. I bought a TVS-h674. Which I mostly wanted to use as virtualization enviroment as well as scasi extension for my physical machines over 10gbit lan. I went with qts hero because I really did not know the detailed differences. What ppl need to know if they want to utilize the nas hardware to the fullest (for example multipe vms). If you install qts hero the zfs service by default is reserving 70% of your ram. My nas came with 32 gb of ram and I ran into issues very fast after i installed a view windows system as vms. I was confused at the beginning because I did not initially saw the issue why I could not start some vms because it told me I have not enough ram available. Took me quiet some time to identify the issue there. You can set the reserved ram for the zfs service from max 70% to min 40%. I personally hate that i can not put GB numbers into the setting. I think using percentages is horrible. After upgraded to 64 GB in order to run the vms I needed I am still very unhappy that I can only set it to 40% at 64gb. So be aware that you can not freely assign the amount of ram in this os if you are using the zfs OS. I think i will reinstall the nas and switch to qts because being forced to assign 25gb in my setup just for the zfs service is just crazy and a waste of resource that I could use somewhere else. Just to clarify. It is reserved RAM. So even if its not using it right now you can't use it for lets say virtual station! It simpy won't allow you starting the vm.
Great information as per usual from your videos, thank you. I've been binging your QNAP videos because I am upgrading my PLEX server from a maxed out 1019+ with dx517 to the tvs-h874 i7 as the hardware is MILES ahead of synology at this point, sadly because I quite enjoy the simplicity of the synology. Looks like QTS with EXT4 is best for my PLEX build when I want to add drives and ultimately multiple TL-D1600S bays. Seems easier for future expansion.
Qts storage upgrade capabilities is a big factor for many buyers to not upgrade to QuTS hero. Its much more versatile. lets face it, not many people are going to invest 1000 €$ in to a 8/10 bay NAS and then spend 2000€$ in 8tb HDD. Those that buy this type of solution will buy newer hdd as needed to increase their storage pool.
Thank you so much! I love all your videos very helpful! Just a side note that it seems they have updated the QuTs Hero system since this video was recorded to now allow for expanding the pool like QTS does - so another win for QuTs Hero. Correct me if I'm wrong please.
A good, informative video. Perhaps a bit unbalanced on the ZFS vs. mdraid+lvm+EXT4 side, as you barely started mentioning ZFS' advantages (IMO data integrity is more important than - say - inline compression; and it's *the* reason I chose ZFS). Not sure you plan to go into such level of detail, though.
Many thanks, certainly interesting viewing. I've purchased a TS-873A with 32GB ECC RAM and have been perplexing over QTS or QuTS Hero. Based on your video, indications are the AMD CPU won't have the legs for QuTS in an ideal world.
I have the same 873A unit with 64GB RAM and all volumes with enabled deduplication and compression. A few virtual machines with mixed Windows/Linux and many docker instances. Performance is more than good. The only drawback is negligible de-duplication but it's more a limitation of ZFS.
Camera license, is not per camera anymore, but per channel, meaning if you record all at low setting, and you record event at higher setting, that is 2 licenses per 1 camera....
I'd be interested in seeing more about how ZFS expansion is managed on QuTS. I run ZFS now and have years of experience with it but nobody seems to adequately cover how QNAP's ZFS management compares to conventional/DIY ZFS when talking about things like mirrored VDEVs. That's particularly important when the budget may not allow for a complete DIY build but a QNAP system needs to be configured for the best performance possible (which still maintaining decent protection). I don't mean TrueNAS Scale etc either - there are a ton of reasons I won't ever use that.
Why does it cost for licenses for QUTS cameras after 2 “free” when QTS does not until after 8 cameras are used? I require 8 to cover my animals and property, but am forced to spend money on top of extra cameras? Am I missing something?
Thanks for this great video! What about using ZFS with Virtualization station? ZFS seems to want to hog up at least 40% of the NAS ram leaving next to nothing for VMs.
Add more RAM (careful about compatibility; you don't have to use the expensive QNAP branded modules, but can't throw anything in either). Don't use deduplication, it's a memory hog. As a last instance, decrease the amount of RAM reserved for ARC. ZFS likes to use your RAM; that, and not being able to expand or migrate RAIDs, is the price you pay for superior data integrity features.
@@alexsarbu3978 I upgraded to 64GB of ECC ram in my QNAP and ZFS is now using 40% (minimum setting) of 64GB instead of 40% of 32GB.. Why percentages and not values IDK...
I use ZFS and Virtualization Station to manage four VMs (and Container Station has six). I put the VMs and containers on SSDs for speed but they all run smoothly.
Hello, I own a TS-664, equipped with 4x20TB HDD - raid5 + 4TB nvme cache read Intel Celeron N5095 4-core/4-thread processor, burst up to 2.9 GHz equipped with 32GB ram. connected to UPS Operated as media server, file server, photo server, computer backup device. Will I benefit from switching to "QTS hero"? Or due to the cpu, will the performance of the NASU be reduced? I am considering "QTS hero", for its work with data integrity security... If the NAS retains the performance of the QTS, I'll switch. I'm hesitant because to load and transfer all data, services, accesses, many users... is not easy ;) Thanks for the answer
Is the zfs file system faster to work with MacOs finder? I now use the qts and copying files or changes names of files are taking for ages. Copying Big files from my Mac to the Nas is super fast with 10gbe. But working with the files on the Nas is super slow on the Nas. Also not searchable. Many many thanks! 🙌
hello thanks for your videos but my question is on a Qnap model# TS-453D (4 Bay). I just purchased before X-mas 2022 and the problem is that [myQnapcloud] Wan IP Address changes with a different IP address every 10 minutes (that's 6 different IP addresses an hour) what setup, did I truly miss in the beginning! any help would be appreciated.
Disclaimer. Noob here that needs help. So what is best for someone like me that will get a tvs-h874 mostly for Plex. Seems Ext4 is easier if you want to add disks later to a pool to increase storage? E.g. If I start with 2 disks mirrored for all my media and then want to add disks to increase capacity later? Perhaps a smarter way to do this? Also seems that Ext4 is more widely accessible on other OSs like Windows and Mac should I ever (for some bizarre reason) want to stick the drive in a external USBC enclosure to read the data of a ext4 formatted disk on windows laptop or macbook.
dude, you talk to much. just get to the point of the video. we dont need to know why warnings are on the screen or why your running split screen with different zoom levels. you could make a 40 min video into a 10 min video and lose nothing at all just by cutting out all the extra chatter.
Excellent video, as always!
Kudos for taking the efforts, very much appreciated!
I've done my comparison of QTS vs QuTS (on an QNAP TVS-872XT, i5 with 16GB memory, to name one) and indeed noticed the performance-increases.
Quite significantly btw when there is a need to do operations on the RAID array indeed. For example, replacing HDD's and rebuilding/resyncing, that will take often minutes on QuTS and minimum more than a full day on QTS. (and sometimes even longer)
We used to use QTier but ceased using it; there are benefits for using it, until you encounter issues (with HDD, SSD), or want to change QTier, you can then very easily lose all your data if not careful (QNAP does warn for that, but still, you do need the expertise or the guidance from QNAP Support if you want to tinker, change or fix the storage of a system that is using QTier. Using regular cache is much more forgiving in such desperate scenarios).
That's the one drawback I personally have with QTier, it is such an integral part of the storage, when there is an issue you need to make damn sure that you know what you are doing.
Tip for those with a QNAP that can do QuTS Hero but can't seem to give that choice in the initial menu when defaulting (and thus losing all the data!!) the QNAP; download the QuTS Hero firmware and locally upload it during the step that the QNAP gives you the option to check if the firmware is current.
I looked long and hard to QuTS Hero and wholeheartedly agree with all of your comments, Robbie.
There is one (minor) thing I did notice when I compare QTS to QuTS Hero, the free space is a wee bit less when using QuTS Hero.
I have to redo my tests, but I believe it was around 10%.
But the benefits of QuTS Hero outweigh QTS, I strongly believe.
So much so, that I'm "converting", where possible, our PT's of storage to QuTS Hero. (and upgrade to 10GBe all around too)
Too bad that QNAP does not support QuTS Hero on the older TVS-1282 series, I had a small hope back then.
Small tip if you want to migrate data from one QNAP to another QNAP;
QNAP Support recommended to use your local PC to copy data from one QNAP to another.
We normally would use one of QNAP's otherwise excellent tools but often ran into file-naming issues;
Especially when you run a mixed-enviroment with AFP- and SMB shares, as they both have different(!) sets of "illegal" (extended) characters that can not be used in file-names etc. As AFP is depreciated anyways, SBM (v3) is strongly recommended.
And the "fix" would be to mount the old (AFP) share and mount the new share in SMB3, and copy the files from old to new, "converting" the offences that way.
Kudos to QNAP for making the adoption for a long-time QTS-diehard to QuTS Hero such a do-able experience!
To me the only very-very bad for QuTS Hero is indeed QVR Pro, that is either bad marketing (choice) by QNAP or they ran into issues with the (ZFS) storage or, they really like the cash-grab of annual subscriptions. Perhaps it is indeed a better choice to stick to QTS when one considers QVR on a QNAP...
I use Q-tier and now am a bit worried about your comments. Are there any best practices you would share with me? I have a 453E with 4 WD Red 4tb drives in RAID 10 and 2 WD Red 1tb nvme's. So far it has run fine. I went with all the defaults it suggested and never thought about it. Having a TB of extra storage and all my stuff I reuse being on the tier seemed like a no brainer?
@@km3481 Apologies, I did not want to scare-monger you!
(YT does not allow for publishing links here so you have to use search for the mentioned below, sorry about that)
QTier is, according to many sources (including NASCompares, whom I have in very high regard) useful mostly in business environments.
And, only really useful if you have the 3-tier of storage; HDD, SSD and NVMe's. Only HDD and NVME's (thus 2-tier) is not very useful for QTier.
Simply by the fact that QTier moves(!) around data depending on how often it is used. (so-called hot- and cold-data).
Whilst I have been using QNAP since 2002 both for my work and privately, I had been using QTier mostly in the business environment.
It is when you want to cease using QTier is becomes danger-close (read: risk of losing your data) if not careful.
I noticed on several occasions, when there were issues with the storage (for example a bad sector) the replacement-procedure (of the HDD, in such a case) would take several days(!), and I believe(d) QTier negatively impacted the time compared to a non-QTier environment.
To answer your question:
If you search NASCompares website for QTier you can find some excellent write-ups about QTier, including suggestions, best-practices and such.
If you search SPANdotCOM YT-channel for QTier, you will also find some excellent videos about it.
On QNAP's website you can also find some information, and I would suggest to search for "How to use QNAP Qtier™ to conduct Auto Tiering and optimize your storage performance?" to get you started.
My biggest beef about QTier is the fact you can easily add it and change the parameters but removing QTier, unlike caching, is a way lot harder to do. (I strongly recommend contacting QNAP Support before attempting to ask for guidance & step-by-step). As your data within QTier is *moved* so data on your 2x WD 1TB NVMe's only exist there and need to be *moved* away to your HDD before you can cease QTier.
In my personal opinion QTier was developed back in the days (it is quite old, October 2015) when the hardware (CPU, 2GB or 4GB RAM, PCI-e lanes & such) were not that speedy yet. Nowadays, with the (QNAP) NAS having plenty-speed (and width) PCI-e lanes, and plenty of CPU power and free RAM etc, the need for QTier, especially in the pro-sumer arena (and lower) is less and less. Which I believe is noticeable as QNAP does not publish much nowadays about QTier. It was an excellent solution when the hardware could not keep up, and I believe those days are gone/less needed.
Caching is often good enough and rarely affects data-integrety when things do go wrong (hardware-errors such as HDD)
@@InspectorGadget2014 Thanks for the explanation. I have used qnap for 20 years or so, never tried qtier. For my application is works fine so far, I will be careful if I ever need to stop using it. I bought the best m2.nvme I could find for this purpose. I back up often, so I should be good!
@@km3481 Glad to hear/read that! Rather a fair warning then not being aware at all and finding out the hard way. So you should be all good!
hey mate. first of all very good video as usual. I bought a TVS-h674. Which I mostly wanted to use as virtualization enviroment as well as scasi extension for my physical machines over 10gbit lan. I went with qts hero because I really did not know the detailed differences. What ppl need to know if they want to utilize the nas hardware to the fullest (for example multipe vms). If you install qts hero the zfs service by default is reserving 70% of your ram. My nas came with 32 gb of ram and I ran into issues very fast after i installed a view windows system as vms. I was confused at the beginning because I did not initially saw the issue why I could not start some vms because it told me I have not enough ram available. Took me quiet some time to identify the issue there. You can set the reserved ram for the zfs service from max 70% to min 40%. I personally hate that i can not put GB numbers into the setting. I think using percentages is horrible. After upgraded to 64 GB in order to run the vms I needed I am still very unhappy that I can only set it to 40% at 64gb. So be aware that you can not freely assign the amount of ram in this os if you are using the zfs OS. I think i will reinstall the nas and switch to qts because being forced to assign 25gb in my setup just for the zfs service is just crazy and a waste of resource that I could use somewhere else. Just to clarify. It is reserved RAM. So even if its not using it right now you can't use it for lets say virtual station! It simpy won't allow you starting the vm.
Great video. Really respect and appreciate what you are doing in the niche NAS sector.
Great information as per usual from your videos, thank you. I've been binging your QNAP videos because I am upgrading my PLEX server from a maxed out 1019+ with dx517 to the tvs-h874 i7 as the hardware is MILES ahead of synology at this point, sadly because I quite enjoy the simplicity of the synology.
Looks like QTS with EXT4 is best for my PLEX build when I want to add drives and ultimately multiple TL-D1600S bays. Seems easier for future expansion.
Epic ! Exactly what we needed. Many thanks Robbie.
Qts storage upgrade capabilities is a big factor for many buyers to not upgrade to QuTS hero. Its much more versatile. lets face it, not many people are going to invest 1000 €$ in to a 8/10 bay NAS and then spend 2000€$ in 8tb HDD. Those that buy this type of solution will buy newer hdd as needed to increase their storage pool.
Thanks again, I was going to ask the question on difference.
Thank you so much! I love all your videos very helpful! Just a side note that it seems they have updated the QuTs Hero system since this video was recorded to now allow for expanding the pool like QTS does - so another win for QuTs Hero. Correct me if I'm wrong please.
A good, informative video. Perhaps a bit unbalanced on the ZFS vs. mdraid+lvm+EXT4 side, as you barely started mentioning ZFS' advantages (IMO data integrity is more important than - say - inline compression; and it's *the* reason I chose ZFS). Not sure you plan to go into such level of detail, though.
Many thanks, certainly interesting viewing. I've purchased a TS-873A with 32GB ECC RAM and have been perplexing over QTS or QuTS Hero. Based on your video, indications are the AMD CPU won't have the legs for QuTS in an ideal world.
I have the same 873A unit with 64GB RAM and all volumes with enabled deduplication and compression. A few virtual machines with mixed Windows/Linux and many docker instances. Performance is more than good. The only drawback is negligible de-duplication but it's more a limitation of ZFS.
Camera license, is not per camera anymore, but per channel, meaning if you record all at low setting, and you record event at higher setting, that is 2 licenses per 1 camera....
This video is exactly what I've been looking for
Awesome video. I am going to be moving away from Synology and QNAP is looking like the next best.
I'd be interested in seeing more about how ZFS expansion is managed on QuTS. I run ZFS now and have years of experience with it but nobody seems to adequately cover how QNAP's ZFS management compares to conventional/DIY ZFS when talking about things like mirrored VDEVs. That's particularly important when the budget may not allow for a complete DIY build but a QNAP system needs to be configured for the best performance possible (which still maintaining decent protection). I don't mean TrueNAS Scale etc either - there are a ton of reasons I won't ever use that.
Why does it cost for licenses for QUTS cameras after 2 “free” when QTS does not until after 8 cameras are used? I require 8 to cover my animals and property, but am forced to spend money on top of extra cameras? Am I missing something?
You are missing on something, dont be a creep
Thanks for this great video! What about using ZFS with Virtualization station? ZFS seems to want to hog up at least 40% of the NAS ram leaving next to nothing for VMs.
Add more RAM (careful about compatibility; you don't have to use the expensive QNAP branded modules, but can't throw anything in either). Don't use deduplication, it's a memory hog. As a last instance, decrease the amount of RAM reserved for ARC.
ZFS likes to use your RAM; that, and not being able to expand or migrate RAIDs, is the price you pay for superior data integrity features.
@@alexsarbu3978 I upgraded to 64GB of ECC ram in my QNAP and ZFS is now using 40% (minimum setting) of 64GB instead of 40% of 32GB.. Why percentages and not values IDK...
@@OVERKILL_PINBALL Yeah, it likes RAM :) But is the actual usage that high? (some 24 GB) AFAIK that's a maximum, but it's not reserved RAM.
@@alexsarbu3978 Thanks will have to see if I can find a way to tell what it is actuallu using.
I use ZFS and Virtualization Station to manage four VMs (and Container Station has six). I put the VMs and containers on SSDs for speed but they all run smoothly.
Is there an advantage between the OS when used for Plex media server?
QTS is free
Qt hero costs money
Synology own pro model? Did you mean qnap? In the surveillance part
Hello,
I own a TS-664, equipped with 4x20TB HDD - raid5 + 4TB nvme cache read
Intel Celeron N5095 4-core/4-thread processor, burst up to 2.9 GHz
equipped with 32GB ram. connected to UPS
Operated as media server, file server, photo server, computer backup device.
Will I benefit from switching to "QTS hero"?
Or due to the cpu, will the performance of the NASU be reduced?
I am considering "QTS hero", for its work with data integrity security...
If the NAS retains the performance of the QTS, I'll switch.
I'm hesitant because to load and transfer all data, services, accesses, many users... is not easy ;)
Thanks for the answer
Is it possible to show the differences in IOPs and transfers?
Is the zfs file system faster to work with MacOs finder? I now use the qts and copying files or changes names of files are taking for ages. Copying Big files from my Mac to the Nas is super fast with 10gbe. But working with the files on the Nas is super slow on the Nas. Also not searchable. Many many thanks! 🙌
What about encryption? I have an encrypted volume which holds very sensitive information. How would I do that with QuTS?
hello thanks for your videos but my question is on a Qnap model# TS-453D (4 Bay). I just purchased before X-mas 2022 and the problem is that [myQnapcloud] Wan IP Address changes with a different IP address every 10 minutes (that's 6 different IP addresses an hour) what setup, did I truly miss in the beginning! any help would be appreciated.
Maybe something is wrong with your router or ISP? Even in setups with variable public IPs, I've never seen it change so often
How i can give permission to multiple domain user without creating user groups?
Disclaimer. Noob here that needs help. So what is best for someone like me that will get a tvs-h874 mostly for Plex. Seems Ext4 is easier if you want to add disks later to a pool to increase storage? E.g. If I start with 2 disks mirrored for all my media and then want to add disks to increase capacity later? Perhaps a smarter way to do this?
Also seems that Ext4 is more widely accessible on other OSs like Windows and Mac should I ever (for some bizarre reason) want to stick the drive in a external USBC enclosure to read the data of a ext4 formatted disk on windows laptop or macbook.
what did you use for plex ext4 or zfs ?
dude, you talk to much. just get to the point of the video. we dont need to know why warnings are on the screen or why your running split screen with different zoom levels. you could make a 40 min video into a 10 min video and lose nothing at all just by cutting out all the extra chatter.
Dude it isn't even a 40 minute video.