I recently bought a TS-873A and have been using it for a couple of weeks. Very, very pleased with it so far. I have it fully populated with eight 20TB drives in a RAID6 on QuTS Hero. I am using my NAS as a storage server and that is pretty much it. I have installed 32GB of ECC memory and a pair of M.2 500GB NVMe sticks in a RAID1 for the system pool. I thought about upgrading to 10GBe but after a couple of weeks I don't really think I need it. I am using my NAS mostly for high resolution digital audio and 4K movies, and frankly 2.5GBe is providing plenty of bandwidth for Kodi and J-River Media Center running on my workstation.
I got my 673A last week and so far I am very happy with it. Price is much more reasonable than TVS-672XT. The only thing I miss is probably a Thunderbolt 3 port. I have added a MSI 1650 Nvidia to it for my Tensorflow docker project and it runs like a charm. I am running QTS rather than QuTS because I have only 2 disks in it at this moment, and ZFS cannot scale by adding more disks to it.
I'm thinking of the 673A, moving from 253Be when I realised you can't RAID 5 using TR002 expansion. Did you look at the TVS-675 as well? I think the biggest difference is the CPU, unsure if 675 necessarily perform better.
A big thing for me is the ability to start out with something like 3 or 4 drives, and then every year add 1 new drive as we need more space. Since speed isn't usually the issue, data security is the #1 reason to use a RAID IMHO.
Would love you see you do a Intel 8 bay comparison. I know this unit doesn't have built in GPU and no HDMI port & no thunderbolt etc.... But this can still do some transcoding correct? Would love it if you could compare these units side by side. Thanks for the video... New at this so love it if you could do more set up(How to) videos as well. That would be a greate help for beginers. =D
2 clear drawbacks - qtier is not available on qtshero, it's only availble if you opt to go with basic qts but then you're losing benefits of snapshots... not to mention all the zfs features. The RAM is non-ECC, whether you go for the base 8gigs or buy their own extension to 32gigs in branded sodimms, even though they actually support ECC on the hardware side and qnap stated in the qtshero showcases that that OS variant has some extra functionality to better play with ECC memory - even Synology sells their V1500B units with ECC only options though they only allow btrfs. But qnap kind of nerfed it for market segmentation same as with h973ax, just to herald h686/h886 as the cheapest ECC ZFS appliances in their line-ups, at roughly twice the price...
Thank you for your feedback on this Marcin. It always helps to get a much fully range of opinions on this and although the utility of ECC is varied across different users (also, snapshots are available on standard QTS), everything else you state is a fair point and glad you commented. Cheers
@@nascompares Yeah I know they are, but we all know that they are often not enabled by default due to less effective implementation, whereas solutions based on ZFS/BTRFS usually come with snapshotting enabled/scheduled and more efficient in terms of speed/performance and storage space used for said snapshots...
I was looking at the more expensive 6 and 8 bay units, but prob opting for one of these and keeping the PowerEdge T340 to run ESXi on it. 4 x 4TB Red + 2 x Dell 12TB and 2 x Dell 1.6TB drives is the plan.
Hello. I own the QNAP TS-451 for a purely PC home and I'm introducing a Mac to the household soon. What obstacles and options are available for sharing files from multiple file systems?
I'm planning to buy this NAS. Question for you: if the SSD isn't listed on qnap compatibility matrix, can I still use such unsupported SSD? I've noticed that in qnap compatibility matrix, company lists firmware revision of SSD/HDD; if I use supported SSD/HDD disk model, but with newer firmware (that isn't mentioned specifically by QNAP), will I be able to use that disk in NAS? Thanks in advance for answers. Great video.
Hi Greg. Thanks for being awesome and supporting us and our content! It's tough to say without knowing the SSD. Generally, if we are talking SATA, pretty much anything goes. QNAP mainly inc the firmware as a means of dating the compatibility testing and unless it's an SED, a drive that requires a mux/adapter or one that is PCIe based, the firmware has little impact. Hope this helps bud and thanks be again for being great!
@@nascompares Thanks for anwer. The SSDs I was thinking about are Crucial MX500 1TB. These are very popular, and I found them to be very reliable. I hope qnap supports them without issues.
I was going to buy the TS-473D plus 10GBE PCIE, but then the price will be similar to the TS-H973ax. So I bought the H973AX instead. I think the only significant difference between H973AX and 873A will be the expansion options, as H973AX got no PCIE slot for GPU, additional M.2 or additional 10GBE ports. If you are looking to use functions that requires GPU/Display output then x73A series is your only option between the two.
@@RolandsBriedis Based of QNAP's website, 1050TI (PH-GTX1050TI-4G)is the most powerfull one certified to work on the 873A. Unless you want to try something crazy with a external PSU and PCIE extention cable, but there is no guarantee that their drivers will support other GPUs. FYI, ASUS PH-GTX1050TI-4G, MSI Geforce GT1030 2G LP OC and GIGABYTEGV-N1030D5-2GL Low Profile are the recommended GPUs
I'm contemplating this NAS, or the TS-h973AX or the 673D. 1 GB ethernet isn't enough, but I could use a PCIe device for that. My main concern is that I would like all the NAS apps to run off SSDs. I used to have a Windows Server where this wasn't a problem, and now I have a Asustor (DON'T BUY!!) and the app performance is horrible for VMs and databases, etc. If I get this NAS I'm wondering if it would be better to use 2x NVMs in RAID 1 and install the OS and Apps on it, or use the Qtier SSD caching. Also not sure if I would go the ZFS option as you can't just add disks to the ZFS volume (or what it's called) like you can with normal RAID. I have 4x 10 TB drives in RAID 5 now that are pretty full, so I can't just buy one or two more disks and add them to a new ZFS volume/RAID then add two more disks later. I could buy 4 more disks now (expensive though) then if I need to expand I know I can replace the disks with larger ones, and put the older ones in a storage expansion such as the TR-004. Any thoughts?
ZFS all day, if you care about your data, IMO :) Which NAS, really depends on what you are using your VMs for. TS-h973AX has more SSD bays out of the box, for those SSD volumes. It is the same CPU but it is not a powerful CPU, so running multiple simultaneous VMs on these NAS models will likely disappoint you with regards to performance. If you are serious with your VMs, then go with TVS-h1288X or TVS-h1688X
First of, remember that you can't use qtier in qtshero. So it's either qtier with mdadm/lvm/ext4 qts solution or ZFS on hero with caching or straight storage. Second, if you want to just put the raid5 disks on ext4 filesystem or other 3rd parties, they either might not be recognised in these devices or may force you to use qts and not qts hero for support, and that cuts access to ZFS. So the idea "i've already got 4 disks nearly full, i'll just transplant them and add another one to make a bigger ZFS pool out of them in this new qnap" won't be feasible. Third, in ZFS new disks are added to storage pool as groups with defined parity or jbods without, the so called vdevs to the same pool, so if you create raidz1 (akin to raid5 in zfs terms) out of 4 disks to begin with, you need to add 3 disks at least for same vdev type out of your next disks to be able to extend the same storage pool as the first one. Otherwise or if you want to use different parity/"raid" levels you need to keep'em in different pools - so you can add new disk to a pool provided you select specific not so secure configuration to begin with. Fourth, OS and apps are being installed by default on the first pool you create, so you'd have to create ssd pool first and only afterwards introduce the 3.5" devices... you can define some apps as in containers and vms and some other apps to run off of the ssd volumes/pools by reconfig later, as far as qnap stated in their showcase. You can get possibly just as good results in ZFS with a lot of RAM and ssds added as SLOG/L2ARC devices - i believe qnap has shown in their product showcase a feature to enforce caching priority for selected vms/containers etc. Fifth, Asustor now also offers ssds to be used for raw storage on most of the devices so maybe one could make those go faster in terms of app performances. but again and comparably to qnap, you need to create the ssd storage pool as the first one for the apps to land/use it by default... Sixh, regardless, these devices are coming with 4core low power chips of well more than yesteryear so don't expect brisk performance you'd get in a new gen NUC or a desktop or a server... they're good enough for their intended limited purposes but not performance per wat or performance crown holders. So the app performance may be crap, especially if you're coming from a Win Server 2019 capable heavy duty server world. Those are not 100W+ chips but rather close to 10W ;) So for good performance the 9bay 973ax allows either 3 separate pools - hdd, ssd, u.2 or 2 pools with caching if you are to rip benefits of ZFS, so for max performance you'd have to go with nearly full bays usage from the get go - otherwise you're kind of losing something. This thing on the other hand allows you to add 4 devices in raidz1 and have the other 4 bays free for the next pool extension ;) or if you go for the 673a with 3 disk vdevs... in both cases the ssds would best work as caches for the pool. 973ax nets you faster network from the get go while these get you options... to choose the underlying tech and by extension OS variant, to get as many devices in what config you want as per ZFS rules or qtiering basics etc.
Hi, please just a question. I'm going to go for a TS-873A. For security reason I set my PC Windows so that it can't recognize other local eth connections without the exact IP in advance. For example, when I connect a MacMini to the Win PC via SMB, I have forcly to know the IP dynamic address of the MacMini first (looking for it in the Mac's preferences). But the NAS hasn't a screen monitor (like the Mac), so how can I know it's dynamic IP? Thanks in advance.
The LCD will give you further information, though I'm not 100% if it will Identity the static/dynamic identity with a label. Otherwise, you network switch should denote the port (or a local IP scanner app) and you can use Qfinder Pro to configure the NAS outside the GUI
@@nascompares Thanks for Your kind reply. Last question. Scenario: QNAP is cable-connected to the PC (so the QNAP has not access to internet), but the PC has a second eth port cable-connected to modem/internet. In this scenario, would the QNAP have access to internet? Thanks in advance.
If I use a Qnap QM2-2P-344 to install 2x additional NVMEs in my TS-873a is it going to work? I have 8x Seagate Exos X20 18tb, 2x Firecuda 530s 1tb each for cache acceleration and a QXG-10G2TB for dual 10Gbe network support to do all my video editing from 2x systems simultaneously. So as I sais I was thinking to add to 2nd pci-ex gen x4 a QM2-2P-344 and buy another 2x NVMEs to set them as Raid0 for fast video editing when dealing with 4k, 6k raw video files. What do you think? Is it going to work? Last I'm a little aware that the expansion card with 2 nvmes will be so close to my QXG-10G2TB regarding heating and temperature! Forgot to mention that I use QuTS Hero and Raid10 for the 8x Exos drives.
PS: I'm quite surprised that for memory QNAP has not opted for ECC memory, almost a requirement for a ZFS system? After looking further into this machine, it appears that QNAP wants to serve the "more-affordable"-market space. I rather buy a NAS with too much that I may want to use later than a cleaned-up, cheaper version that I may need to replace if I want more..
ZFS does not suffer more or less than any other storage system, by using non-ECC memory. The reason ECC memory if often recommend for ZFS/BRTFS storage solutions, is because of "complete protection". Those filesystems have great protection on the FS layer, but ZFS can't control if the RAM is feeding garbage to the FS. ECC memory will just ensure more reliable memory that won't corrupt data. With the quality of RAM sticks today, it is unlikely that you will see a difference using ECC vs non-EEC. I would only deem ECC memory required on a business critical NAS and especially if workflow contains a lot of small writes, from things like database applications.
Not a requirement, just a nice to have... though as far as qnap stated in their showcases, ECC mem is supported, they're just not using it by default for, presumably, cost benefits. But probably it's more of a product placement/market segmentation of feature sets out of the box that are fully tested and approved and quaranteed/validated by qnap. Otherwise you could end up with appliances that are better than hX86 lines for less than a third or half the price of the units qnap would rather have you buy from them for the peace of mind...
It would be good if you could add real power consumption measurement to your NAS review videos. With and without HDD just to get some confirmation on the information from the specification.
I have tried to address power consumption before and its turned out to be alot more complex that I hoped. Getting a mains adapter that records use was easy - but keeping that information relative has been tougher. relative from one NAS to another and relative to any single HDD/SSD (ie so many potential configurations and each will provide a different result). I AM working on this though and will likely produce a series on this very soon, but as a separate series of videos rather than integrate them into the individual review vids - they are long enough already. I have to explain NAS in those as if the person watching has no idea about the concept as it's still quite niche - imagine explaining a new PC - but having to explain the concept of computers in a review too! I hope, somewhere in this long winding response, I replied to your question!
Thanks for your great answer! I see you are on top of this topic. For most of the privat user the NAS is in idle for about 80%. So i think especially the consumption in idle (hdd spin down) is the most important.
I am still thinking back and forth because of power consumption. Beside real consumption measurement (rather than only spec) it would be great to have also detailed video about all power saving options Qnap NAS is offering. Which are available? How to setup them? What's the saving?
I have to agree with the comment below on those plastic trays, even their higher-end like the TVS-h1688x & TS-h886 are using those cheap plastic trays. Major letdown for quality's sake, I believe. Back to the TS-873A, I'm getting the impression that QNAP more recently is starting to release cheaper, not-that-complete NAS, with less number og 10GBe ports, lower-spec NVME PCIe slots , no more display and so forth. I gather they want to also address the middle-markets perhaps even the lower-end markets where prices means everything and specs are not that important to the potential customer. I personally am not too happy with some of the design-choices made for this model, pretty much what you already outlined. I'm also not sure about QuTS as it is quite complicated to set-up, a lot of choices to be made only for the storage alone. Maybe you can also make a video about that, the pro's and con's of QuTS and what pitfalls to watch out for. Me like my EXT Static volumes but QuTS is a whole different ball park all together. Do I go for what I know or do I step outside my comfort zone and deepdive into QuTS? So many choices! :)
My guess is that QNAP realizes, that only providing solutions with mdadm raid and slapping ext4 filesystem on top, won't cut it anymore. Other NAS vendors have gone over to BTRFS, which is similar to ZFS in many ways but QNAP does not believe in BTRFS (they officially stated this). Then they were locked down to ext4. Next-gen filesystems like BTRFS and ZFS adds WAY more data protection on the filesystem layer. Keeping only offering ext4 solutions would hurt them in the long run so I reckon this is where the change to ZFS is coming from - and it is a good change! These NAS'es here are targeted to SMB/mid market/enthusiasts, where things like 10GbE is unlikely to be required (thus optional via PCIE card). If you want a higher end ZFS desktop NAS, go with TVS-h1288X or TVS-h1688X
@@henrikhoppe8607 I agree EXT4 is dated, not that performant etc and in that respect ZFS is a blessing. And way more superior. If I were QNAP I would never have "denounced" BTRFS so harshly nor provided, sometimes a bit silly, reasoning and things you can argue about. I guess QNAP made a conscious choice not to go for BTFRS and is probably is about development & investments from QNAP's side. The sad news is that whilst the newer QNAP's offer the option for ZFS (or EXT4), the retrograde that QNAP announced some time ago for their older QNAP's is not going forth, it seems they pulled the plug on it, according to REDDIT response I saw recently. PS: I did indeed go for the TVS-h1688x, it is a beast. Just need to add M.2 for cache.
@@InspectorGadget2014 Yea I think it was silly for them to burn all bridges with regards to BTRFS. They probably felt they needed to denounce BTRFS in order to justify EXT4 on their units. But the reality is that BTRFS is very good and it has matured a lot. It is used in several very large corporations today and it is still actively developed. Personally, I am a believer in BTRFS because it is so damn flexible, I love that about it. I think QNAP shot themselves in the foot when they tried to battle BTRFS, honestly. They went overbaord glorifying EXT4 over BTRFS, which is nonsence. They also spewed out some utter BS, like for ex. claiming the way BTRFS does snapshots is inferor to their LVM+ext4 snapshotting method which is complete BS and to add to that, ZFS does snaphots the same way as BTRFS does but they don't mind using ZFS now... :) They made a poor move with that battle. In order to stay competitive they now had to move to ZFS, since BTRFS isn't an option due to them having burned their bridges. But ZFS is also amazing and it is fine that they are going that route for sure BUT it is more complex and thus they need to really think about how they guide the average user through the maze. Congrats on your TVS-h1688x! It is an absolute monster. Good choice! :)
@@henrikhoppe8607 I agree, QNAP should & could have handled it way better than what they displayed back then in that "battle". Playing it (BTFRS) down is one thing but like you have explained, EXT4 is definitely not the better one. QNAP really went overboard and that should have been avoided and is a grave mistake. Hopefully it a lesson-learned and QNAP instead embraces existing and future developments instead. Thank you so much ofr sharing & explaining, much obliged!
@@henrikhoppe8607 qnap were so harsh about btrfs due the way it was being implemented in the NASes - basically even though btrfs had it's own volume manger it was and has not been too secure/safe on the higher levels of raid (with raid5/6 problems well known still) where those raid levels use cases kind of imply the safety net requirement. Instead everyone just still uses mdadm or similar to pool the disks and applies the btrfs onto said virtual device akin to other older, eg. ext4, filesystems - thus losing many of the performance or sacurity features - the only clear benefit remains the snapshotting on filesystem level support that btrfs offers in current offerings from qnap competition. In the mean time, storage solutions in enterprise markets have moved away to ZFS and other performance or capacity or availability focused solutions that only now start to trickle down to the more pedestrian, in their view, units.
O man. Getting into Nas for a few weeks. First educated myself about Synology with my limited knowledge. Now learning about Qnap because it can handle streaming and video better. But now i see the word Das. Looked it up. But man. A Nas world is a hefty world on its own. A bit to much. Way to much. But i now see how important it is to have an usb c port on the Nas. Thank you.
you're getting limited selection of cards, i think you're kind of limited by power delivery with cards like quadro p400/p620/p1000 or 1030 up to 1650 or something like that (they are kind of limiting to lower powered older cards that can easily work in those older generation and restricted slots and nvidia only, but maybe they're going to better support AMD graphics or even intel ones), not sure if there is any pcie power plug from the psu, so presumably pcie slot only for power. Otherwise, as far as qnap official product showcase went, they stated you can pass the gpu to vms though they haven't said a word about containers, and the gpu can be used for qts software stack - but you can pass the gpu to single vm only, so no virtualisation/sriov multi-vm at a time usage, and you can't use the gpu elsewhere as long as it is passed to the vm. That's what qnap stated...
@@RolandsBriedis I'm not Qnap support so I cannot state this for sure, but given that Qnap only lists Nvidia packages we can safely assume that without extra software/lower-level manual intervention we're restricted to Nvidia's line-ups. Furthermore, since AFAIK it can only support up to 2-slot card, albeit full-form and low-profile alike, with the restriction that only socket-powered units may be used (I haven't heard of the PSU PCIe cables being offered or in the box/on the included PSU). Given that Qnap lists a GT1050Ti as supported and that thing draws enough current for a TDP=70W rating we can assume up to similar power/TDP units are supported (PSU is 240 or 280W if I recall). Taken all this into consideration the most powerful would be either Nvidia RTX A2000 (if you're into most powerful albeit pricey at the moment) or Nvidia GTX 1650 (the most powerful from the consumer line that's still socket powered only), or you can still go with a venerable, and yes, a less powerful but good enough for transcoding purposes Nvidia Quadro P400/P620 (which are TDP=30W 3 concurrent nvenc sessions limited units).
@@ronkali5365 I'm not a fan of them either, but i just figure you put your drives in and just leave it. Certainly not a reason to not buy the device. Especially since drive cages are pretty cheap to replace.
I love my 873 especially because it talks to me which I love. I bought a 4 bay which just beeps, not the same. Great NAS
I recently bought a TS-873A and have been using it for a couple of weeks. Very, very pleased with it so far. I have it fully populated with eight 20TB drives in a RAID6 on QuTS Hero. I am using my NAS as a storage server and that is pretty much it. I have installed 32GB of ECC memory and a pair of M.2 500GB NVMe sticks in a RAID1 for the system pool. I thought about upgrading to 10GBe but after a couple of weeks I don't really think I need it. I am using my NAS mostly for high resolution digital audio and 4K movies, and frankly 2.5GBe is providing plenty of bandwidth for Kodi and J-River Media Center running on my workstation.
I got my 673A last week and so far I am very happy with it. Price is much more reasonable than TVS-672XT. The only thing I miss is probably a Thunderbolt 3 port. I have added a MSI 1650 Nvidia to it for my Tensorflow docker project and it runs like a charm. I am running QTS rather than QuTS because I have only 2 disks in it at this moment, and ZFS cannot scale by adding more disks to it.
I'm thinking of the 673A, moving from 253Be when I realised you can't RAID 5 using TR002 expansion. Did you look at the TVS-675 as well? I think the biggest difference is the CPU, unsure if 675 necessarily perform better.
Any problems so far, I'm reading horror stories about qnas, I'm currently with synology and its flawless so I don't want problems.
A big thing for me is the ability to start out with something like 3 or 4 drives, and then every year add 1 new drive as we need more space. Since speed isn't usually the issue, data security is the #1 reason to use a RAID IMHO.
Would love you see you do a Intel 8 bay comparison. I know this unit doesn't have built in GPU and no HDMI port & no thunderbolt etc.... But this can still do some transcoding correct? Would love it if you could compare these units side by side. Thanks for the video... New at this so love it if you could do more set up(How to) videos as well. That would be a greate help for beginers. =D
2 clear drawbacks - qtier is not available on qtshero, it's only availble if you opt to go with basic qts but then you're losing benefits of snapshots... not to mention all the zfs features. The RAM is non-ECC, whether you go for the base 8gigs or buy their own extension to 32gigs in branded sodimms, even though they actually support ECC on the hardware side and qnap stated in the qtshero showcases that that OS variant has some extra functionality to better play with ECC memory - even Synology sells their V1500B units with ECC only options though they only allow btrfs. But qnap kind of nerfed it for market segmentation same as with h973ax, just to herald h686/h886 as the cheapest ECC ZFS appliances in their line-ups, at roughly twice the price...
Thank you for your feedback on this Marcin. It always helps to get a much fully range of opinions on this and although the utility of ECC is varied across different users (also, snapshots are available on standard QTS), everything else you state is a fair point and glad you commented. Cheers
@@nascompares Yeah I know they are, but we all know that they are often not enabled by default due to less effective implementation, whereas solutions based on ZFS/BTRFS usually come with snapshotting enabled/scheduled and more efficient in terms of speed/performance and storage space used for said snapshots...
I was looking at the more expensive 6 and 8 bay units, but prob opting for one of these and keeping the PowerEdge T340 to run ESXi on it. 4 x 4TB Red + 2 x Dell 12TB and 2 x Dell 1.6TB drives is the plan.
Hello. I own the QNAP TS-451 for a purely PC home and I'm introducing a Mac to the household soon. What obstacles and options are available for sharing files from multiple file systems?
TS-473A (used) vs TS-464 (new) for about the same price, which would you pick?
I'm planning to buy this NAS. Question for you: if the SSD isn't listed on qnap compatibility matrix, can I still use such unsupported SSD? I've noticed that in qnap compatibility matrix, company lists firmware revision of SSD/HDD; if I use supported SSD/HDD disk model, but with newer firmware (that isn't mentioned specifically by QNAP), will I be able to use that disk in NAS? Thanks in advance for answers. Great video.
Hi Greg. Thanks for being awesome and supporting us and our content! It's tough to say without knowing the SSD. Generally, if we are talking SATA, pretty much anything goes. QNAP mainly inc the firmware as a means of dating the compatibility testing and unless it's an SED, a drive that requires a mux/adapter or one that is PCIe based, the firmware has little impact. Hope this helps bud and thanks be again for being great!
@@nascompares Thanks for anwer. The SSDs I was thinking about are Crucial MX500 1TB. These are very popular, and I found them to be very reliable. I hope qnap supports them without issues.
Hi, very curious how this one compares to the TS-h973AX
I was going to buy the TS-473D plus 10GBE PCIE, but then the price will be similar to the TS-H973ax. So I bought the H973AX instead. I think the only significant difference between H973AX and 873A will be the expansion options, as H973AX got no PCIE slot for GPU, additional M.2 or additional 10GBE ports. If you are looking to use functions that requires GPU/Display output then x73A series is your only option between the two.
@@fire23wong What would be most powerfull GPU that could fit in this TS-873A?
@@RolandsBriedis Based of QNAP's website, 1050TI (PH-GTX1050TI-4G)is the most powerfull one certified to work on the 873A. Unless you want to try something crazy with a external PSU and PCIE extention cable, but there is no guarantee that their drivers will support other GPUs.
FYI, ASUS PH-GTX1050TI-4G, MSI Geforce GT1030 2G LP OC and GIGABYTEGV-N1030D5-2GL Low Profile are the recommended GPUs
It’s on sale for £810 Pound in Canada before tax. Do you think if this is still a good choice? Or I should get ts-664 for £630?
Great video! The x1 NVMe ports are a real letdown imho.
is this still good? QNAP TVS-873-64G-US 8-Bay NAS/iSCSI IP-SAN, AMD R Series Quad-core 2.1GHz, 64GB RAM, 10G-Ready
I'm contemplating this NAS, or the TS-h973AX or the 673D. 1 GB ethernet isn't enough, but I could use a PCIe device for that.
My main concern is that I would like all the NAS apps to run off SSDs. I used to have a Windows Server where this wasn't a problem, and now I have a Asustor (DON'T BUY!!) and the app performance is horrible for VMs and databases, etc.
If I get this NAS I'm wondering if it would be better to use 2x NVMs in RAID 1 and install the OS and Apps on it, or use the Qtier SSD caching.
Also not sure if I would go the ZFS option as you can't just add disks to the ZFS volume (or what it's called) like you can with normal RAID. I have 4x 10 TB drives in RAID 5 now that are pretty full, so I can't just buy one or two more disks and add them to a new ZFS volume/RAID then add two more disks later. I could buy 4 more disks now (expensive though) then if I need to expand I know I can replace the disks with larger ones, and put the older ones in a storage expansion such as the TR-004.
Any thoughts?
ZFS all day, if you care about your data, IMO :) Which NAS, really depends on what you are using your VMs for. TS-h973AX has more SSD bays out of the box, for those SSD volumes. It is the same CPU but it is not a powerful CPU, so running multiple simultaneous VMs on these NAS models will likely disappoint you with regards to performance.
If you are serious with your VMs, then go with TVS-h1288X or TVS-h1688X
First of, remember that you can't use qtier in qtshero. So it's either qtier with mdadm/lvm/ext4 qts solution or ZFS on hero with caching or straight storage.
Second, if you want to just put the raid5 disks on ext4 filesystem or other 3rd parties, they either might not be recognised in these devices or may force you to use qts and not qts hero for support, and that cuts access to ZFS. So the idea "i've already got 4 disks nearly full, i'll just transplant them and add another one to make a bigger ZFS pool out of them in this new qnap" won't be feasible.
Third, in ZFS new disks are added to storage pool as groups with defined parity or jbods without, the so called vdevs to the same pool, so if you create raidz1 (akin to raid5 in zfs terms) out of 4 disks to begin with, you need to add 3 disks at least for same vdev type out of your next disks to be able to extend the same storage pool as the first one. Otherwise or if you want to use different parity/"raid" levels you need to keep'em in different pools - so you can add new disk to a pool provided you select specific not so secure configuration to begin with.
Fourth, OS and apps are being installed by default on the first pool you create, so you'd have to create ssd pool first and only afterwards introduce the 3.5" devices... you can define some apps as in containers and vms and some other apps to run off of the ssd volumes/pools by reconfig later, as far as qnap stated in their showcase. You can get possibly just as good results in ZFS with a lot of RAM and ssds added as SLOG/L2ARC devices - i believe qnap has shown in their product showcase a feature to enforce caching priority for selected vms/containers etc.
Fifth, Asustor now also offers ssds to be used for raw storage on most of the devices so maybe one could make those go faster in terms of app performances. but again and comparably to qnap, you need to create the ssd storage pool as the first one for the apps to land/use it by default...
Sixh, regardless, these devices are coming with 4core low power chips of well more than yesteryear so don't expect brisk performance you'd get in a new gen NUC or a desktop or a server... they're good enough for their intended limited purposes but not performance per wat or performance crown holders. So the app performance may be crap, especially if you're coming from a Win Server 2019 capable heavy duty server world. Those are not 100W+ chips but rather close to 10W ;)
So for good performance the 9bay 973ax allows either 3 separate pools - hdd, ssd, u.2 or 2 pools with caching if you are to rip benefits of ZFS, so for max performance you'd have to go with nearly full bays usage from the get go - otherwise you're kind of losing something. This thing on the other hand allows you to add 4 devices in raidz1 and have the other 4 bays free for the next pool extension ;) or if you go for the 673a with 3 disk vdevs... in both cases the ssds would best work as caches for the pool. 973ax nets you faster network from the get go while these get you options... to choose the underlying tech and by extension OS variant, to get as many devices in what config you want as per ZFS rules or qtiering basics etc.
Hi, please just a question. I'm going to go for a TS-873A. For security reason I set my PC Windows so that it can't recognize other local eth connections without the exact IP in advance. For example, when I connect a MacMini to the Win PC via SMB, I have forcly to know the IP dynamic address of the MacMini first (looking for it in the Mac's preferences). But the NAS hasn't a screen monitor (like the Mac), so how can I know it's dynamic IP? Thanks in advance.
The LCD will give you further information, though I'm not 100% if it will Identity the static/dynamic identity with a label. Otherwise, you network switch should denote the port (or a local IP scanner app) and you can use Qfinder Pro to configure the NAS outside the GUI
@@nascompares Thanks for Your kind reply. Last question. Scenario: QNAP is cable-connected to the PC (so the QNAP has not access to internet), but the PC has a second eth port cable-connected to modem/internet. In this scenario, would the QNAP have access to internet? Thanks in advance.
Doest it makes sense to increase RAM memory ? I am using NAS to store MKV movie files and stream them to different TVs.
If I use a Qnap QM2-2P-344 to install 2x additional NVMEs in my TS-873a is it going to work? I have 8x Seagate Exos X20 18tb, 2x Firecuda 530s 1tb each for cache acceleration and a QXG-10G2TB for dual 10Gbe network support to do all my video editing from 2x systems simultaneously. So as I sais I was thinking to add to 2nd pci-ex gen x4 a QM2-2P-344 and buy another 2x NVMEs to set them as Raid0 for fast video editing when dealing with 4k, 6k raw video files. What do you think? Is it going to work? Last I'm a little aware that the expansion card with 2 nvmes will be so close to my QXG-10G2TB regarding heating and temperature! Forgot to mention that I use QuTS Hero and Raid10 for the 8x Exos drives.
PS: I'm quite surprised that for memory QNAP has not opted for ECC memory, almost a requirement for a ZFS system?
After looking further into this machine, it appears that QNAP wants to serve the "more-affordable"-market space.
I rather buy a NAS with too much that I may want to use later than a cleaned-up, cheaper version that I may need to replace if I want more..
ZFS does not suffer more or less than any other storage system, by using non-ECC memory. The reason ECC memory if often recommend for ZFS/BRTFS storage solutions, is because of "complete protection". Those filesystems have great protection on the FS layer, but ZFS can't control if the RAM is feeding garbage to the FS. ECC memory will just ensure more reliable memory that won't corrupt data. With the quality of RAM sticks today, it is unlikely that you will see a difference using ECC vs non-EEC. I would only deem ECC memory required on a business critical NAS and especially if workflow contains a lot of small writes, from things like database applications.
Not a requirement, just a nice to have... though as far as qnap stated in their showcases, ECC mem is supported, they're just not using it by default for, presumably, cost benefits. But probably it's more of a product placement/market segmentation of feature sets out of the box that are fully tested and approved and quaranteed/validated by qnap. Otherwise you could end up with appliances that are better than hX86 lines for less than a third or half the price of the units qnap would rather have you buy from them for the peace of mind...
How does it compare next to a much older TVS-1282T3 ?
It would be good if you could add real power consumption measurement to your NAS review videos. With and without HDD just to get some confirmation on the information from the specification.
I have tried to address power consumption before and its turned out to be alot more complex that I hoped. Getting a mains adapter that records use was easy - but keeping that information relative has been tougher. relative from one NAS to another and relative to any single HDD/SSD (ie so many potential configurations and each will provide a different result). I AM working on this though and will likely produce a series on this very soon, but as a separate series of videos rather than integrate them into the individual review vids - they are long enough already. I have to explain NAS in those as if the person watching has no idea about the concept as it's still quite niche - imagine explaining a new PC - but having to explain the concept of computers in a review too! I hope, somewhere in this long winding response, I replied to your question!
Thanks for your great answer! I see you are on top of this topic. For most of the privat user the NAS is in idle for about 80%. So i think especially the consumption in idle (hdd spin down) is the most important.
Exactly why I wanna it the subject. Just a shame it's quite a faff to setup
I am still thinking back and forth because of power consumption. Beside real consumption measurement (rather than only spec) it would be great to have also detailed video about all power saving options Qnap NAS is offering. Which are available? How to setup them? What's the saving?
Can you import an existing ZFS pool from a linux server into QUTS HERO without loosing the data?
I have to agree with the comment below on those plastic trays, even their higher-end like the TVS-h1688x & TS-h886 are using those cheap plastic trays.
Major letdown for quality's sake, I believe.
Back to the TS-873A, I'm getting the impression that QNAP more recently is starting to release cheaper, not-that-complete NAS, with less number og 10GBe ports, lower-spec NVME PCIe slots , no more display and so forth. I gather they want to also address the middle-markets perhaps even the lower-end markets where prices means everything and specs are not that important to the potential customer. I personally am not too happy with some of the design-choices made for this model, pretty much what you already outlined.
I'm also not sure about QuTS as it is quite complicated to set-up, a lot of choices to be made only for the storage alone.
Maybe you can also make a video about that, the pro's and con's of QuTS and what pitfalls to watch out for.
Me like my EXT Static volumes but QuTS is a whole different ball park all together.
Do I go for what I know or do I step outside my comfort zone and deepdive into QuTS?
So many choices! :)
My guess is that QNAP realizes, that only providing solutions with mdadm raid and slapping ext4 filesystem on top, won't cut it anymore. Other NAS vendors have gone over to BTRFS, which is similar to ZFS in many ways but QNAP does not believe in BTRFS (they officially stated this). Then they were locked down to ext4. Next-gen filesystems like BTRFS and ZFS adds WAY more data protection on the filesystem layer. Keeping only offering ext4 solutions would hurt them in the long run so I reckon this is where the change to ZFS is coming from - and it is a good change! These NAS'es here are targeted to SMB/mid market/enthusiasts, where things like 10GbE is unlikely to be required (thus optional via PCIE card).
If you want a higher end ZFS desktop NAS, go with TVS-h1288X or TVS-h1688X
@@henrikhoppe8607 I agree EXT4 is dated, not that performant etc and in that respect ZFS is a blessing. And way more superior.
If I were QNAP I would never have "denounced" BTRFS so harshly nor provided, sometimes a bit silly, reasoning and things you can argue about.
I guess QNAP made a conscious choice not to go for BTFRS and is probably is about development & investments from QNAP's side.
The sad news is that whilst the newer QNAP's offer the option for ZFS (or EXT4), the retrograde that QNAP announced some time ago for their older QNAP's is not going forth, it seems they pulled the plug on it, according to REDDIT response I saw recently.
PS: I did indeed go for the TVS-h1688x, it is a beast. Just need to add M.2 for cache.
@@InspectorGadget2014 Yea I think it was silly for them to burn all bridges with regards to BTRFS. They probably felt they needed to denounce BTRFS in order to justify EXT4 on their units. But the reality is that BTRFS is very good and it has matured a lot. It is used in several very large corporations today and it is still actively developed. Personally, I am a believer in BTRFS because it is so damn flexible, I love that about it. I think QNAP shot themselves in the foot when they tried to battle BTRFS, honestly. They went overbaord glorifying EXT4 over BTRFS, which is nonsence. They also spewed out some utter BS, like for ex. claiming the way BTRFS does snapshots is inferor to their LVM+ext4 snapshotting method which is complete BS and to add to that, ZFS does snaphots the same way as BTRFS does but they don't mind using ZFS now... :) They made a poor move with that battle.
In order to stay competitive they now had to move to ZFS, since BTRFS isn't an option due to them having burned their bridges. But ZFS is also amazing and it is fine that they are going that route for sure BUT it is more complex and thus they need to really think about how they guide the average user through the maze.
Congrats on your TVS-h1688x! It is an absolute monster. Good choice! :)
@@henrikhoppe8607 I agree, QNAP should & could have handled it way better than what they displayed back then in that "battle".
Playing it (BTFRS) down is one thing but like you have explained, EXT4 is definitely not the better one.
QNAP really went overboard and that should have been avoided and is a grave mistake.
Hopefully it a lesson-learned and QNAP instead embraces existing and future developments instead.
Thank you so much ofr sharing & explaining, much obliged!
@@henrikhoppe8607 qnap were so harsh about btrfs due the way it was being implemented in the NASes - basically even though btrfs had it's own volume manger it was and has not been too secure/safe on the higher levels of raid (with raid5/6 problems well known still) where those raid levels use cases kind of imply the safety net requirement. Instead everyone just still uses mdadm or similar to pool the disks and applies the btrfs onto said virtual device akin to other older, eg. ext4, filesystems - thus losing many of the performance or sacurity features - the only clear benefit remains the snapshotting on filesystem level support that btrfs offers in current offerings from qnap competition. In the mean time, storage solutions in enterprise markets have moved away to ZFS and other performance or capacity or availability focused solutions that only now start to trickle down to the more pedestrian, in their view, units.
Can you add a thunderbolt Pcie card to make it also work like a DAS?
O man.
Getting into Nas for a few weeks. First educated myself about Synology with my limited knowledge. Now learning about Qnap because it can handle streaming and video better. But now i see the word Das. Looked it up.
But man. A Nas world is a hefty world on its own. A bit to much. Way to much.
But i now see how important it is to have an usb c port on the Nas. Thank you.
is it possible to upgrade the processor in it?
Is it possible to run Plex with 4K hw decoding if a GPU is added in one of the PCIe slots?
you're getting limited selection of cards, i think you're kind of limited by power delivery with cards like quadro p400/p620/p1000 or 1030 up to 1650 or something like that (they are kind of limiting to lower powered older cards that can easily work in those older generation and restricted slots and nvidia only, but maybe they're going to better support AMD graphics or even intel ones), not sure if there is any pcie power plug from the psu, so presumably pcie slot only for power. Otherwise, as far as qnap official product showcase went, they stated you can pass the gpu to vms though they haven't said a word about containers, and the gpu can be used for qts software stack - but you can pass the gpu to single vm only, so no virtualisation/sriov multi-vm at a time usage, and you can't use the gpu elsewhere as long as it is passed to the vm. That's what qnap stated...
@@marcin_karwinski What would be most powerfull GPU that could fit in this TS-873?
@@RolandsBriedis I'm not Qnap support so I cannot state this for sure, but given that Qnap only lists Nvidia packages we can safely assume that without extra software/lower-level manual intervention we're restricted to Nvidia's line-ups. Furthermore, since AFAIK it can only support up to 2-slot card, albeit full-form and low-profile alike, with the restriction that only socket-powered units may be used (I haven't heard of the PSU PCIe cables being offered or in the box/on the included PSU). Given that Qnap lists a GT1050Ti as supported and that thing draws enough current for a TDP=70W rating we can assume up to similar power/TDP units are supported (PSU is 240 or 280W if I recall). Taken all this into consideration the most powerful would be either Nvidia RTX A2000 (if you're into most powerful albeit pricey at the moment) or Nvidia GTX 1650 (the most powerful from the consumer line that's still socket powered only), or you can still go with a venerable, and yes, a less powerful but good enough for transcoding purposes Nvidia Quadro P400/P620 (which are TDP=30W 3 concurrent nvenc sessions limited units).
我买了个ts 473a 。因为我不喜欢太大的.对我来说够用了.但是我安装了一个丽台t400却无法进行转码.好尴尬的事情.
can this nose be accessed from outside the network?
Definitely, via QNAP MyQNAPCloud, tailscale, TeamViewer, and a bunch of other handy services
@nascompares on windows system what app I can donwload to backup my files to save in the qnap?
我看到你官网说能换cpu 不知道换个cpu能用集成显卡转码吗？
I will NEVER buy another Qnap until they go back to the metal trays.
Those cheap plastics trays ain't worth shit
How often are you replacing drives that the plastic causes an issue?
@@GhostsGraphics If was hard plastic i wouldn't mind ,too thin and cheap
@@ronkali5365 I'm not a fan of them either, but i just figure you put your drives in and just leave it. Certainly not a reason to not buy the device. Especially since drive cages are pretty cheap to replace.
@@GhostsGraphics In my situation they come out every 3 months for cleaning dust build up