QNAP NAS Recommendations

[tin ear]

LINN Docs recommends the QNAP 409 Pro for a NAS, which is out of production. What is next? and why?

Alex

[bassato]

(2011-02-09 08:10)tin ear Wrote:  LINN Docs recommends the QNAP 409 Pro for a NAS, which is out of production. What is next? and why?

Alex

think that this will be mostly depending on your on needs and expectations. what is the same in all qnaps is the underlying linux and the implemented twonky. the main difference is in the number of hdds you can attach and the processor used - for streaming just audio the processor won't be a bottleneck. this means, that all qnap models are equally suitable for network audio-streaming.

so, what do you want from your nas? loads of storage, special raid level? additional movie streaming? then a four bay model (which lets you have raid 5 or 6) will be the one (412/419). starting basic a one (119) or even two bay model like 129 is an option.

i'd recommend going for raid 5 or better 6 and a four bay model - implementing bullet proof 24/7 1 tb hdd this leaves 2,7 tb in raid 5 - should be sufficient for most needs.

sorry i couldn't really help you with a special model to go for - it's your coice depending on your needs.

manfred

[Briain]

Hi

The TS-219P+ (with a 1600 MHz Marvell CPU) is an excellent and very fast NAS (so I'd expect the 419P+ to be just as good; that's the 4-bay version). The two bay version that I have (the 219P+) only consumes about 7W when using disk hibernation (spin the disks down over night to save power) and probably only about 20W with the disks spinning (with it in active use).

I also have a TS-659 (which has a 1600 MHz Intel Atom CPU) and it is excellent (it has 6 bays, but I'm currently using it with only 4 disks in it) but it's way more powerful than I truthfully really need. As Bassato states above, you don't need much horse power to stream music, so the only reason to go to an Intel based NAS would be if you intend streaming high definition video or have another specific reason to require very fast read/write speeds etc.

Bri

[sugarman88]

I am not sure is this true as many other CAS folks trends to use slower computer with fanless design, slower hdd or even ssd to eliminate the noises. If this is the case, should a QNAP TS-119 (a fanless NAS) be the best choice? Unfortunately, I am not able to find a SSD that confirm will work with TS-119. And I also found it works better to use a dedicated NAS purely for FLAC storage and nothing else. Any comment?

[bassato]

(2011-02-11 17:02)sugarman88 Wrote:  I am not sure is this true as many other CAS folks trends to use slower computer with fanless design, slower hdd or even ssd to eliminate the noises. If this is the case, should a QNAP TS-119 (a fanless NAS) be the best choice? Unfortunately, I am not able to find a SSD that confirm will work with TS-119. And I also found it works better to use a dedicated NAS purely for FLAC storage and nothing else. Any comment?

ssd can be some excellent medium for music storage, since they are tiering by writeing data - music is usually stored once and then just read. do not know about their life expectance in general. for me hdd would be safer ground due to the existing knowledge. furthermore it will be quite an expensive task to build a 2 tb nas in ssd

since the linn-concept gives you the freedom of storing your nas away from your music/living-room, i do not see any advantage in a fanless design. furthermore i did not find an argument for a dedicated flac-nas. as bri pointed out already, the music is such little load for current nas models, there should be other services possible without problem. if your five kids are each streaming their hd-video and you want to listen to music at the same time, then you should discover a dedicated music-nas

[Briain]

Hi

I have briefly worked on a TS-119 and it was absolutely fine. It had 16,000 FLAC files on it and Twonky was pretty quick to scan the db etc.

The standard 'fanless' TS-119 (as mentioned above) has a 1.2GHz Marvell CPU, and I got the faster 119P+ for my mum's system (1.6 GHz CPU) but that version does have a fan in it. I didn't get long enough to fully assess the standard 119 as I was fixing it for a shop's customer (who wanted it back) but I know the 119P+ and 219P+ very well and they are both extremely quick, so I'd guess the 119 will not be that far behind them (and certainly well powerful enough for an audio media server).

Incidentally, you can set the fan speed in Qnaps to manual and choose to switch them of when it gets really cool (say, when disks are hibernating).

I use the correct enterprise grade (server grade) drives in my main NAS (and I always will do that) but I ended up getting some cheap Seagate 2TB desktop grade (ST32000542AS) drives for my own TS-219P+ and her TS-119P+ and they are very quite (5900 RPM and the run relatively cool too). The only reason I did that was cost; they were about £70 whereas the faster desktop versions were double that and the enterprise ones were triple that cost; ouch!

To be honest, I'm okay with using cheap desktop disks in my TS-219P+ as it is only on once a week (to back up my main NAS) and with the two disks, RAID 1 helps protect against the chance of any non-recoverable disk errors causing data loss (1 in 10^14 for that cheapest of Seagate models; better ones are 1 in 10^15). Mum's NAS has only the one disk, but it frequently gets overwritten from my main server and thus data security is totally unimportant; I just wanted the cheapest 2T disk possible.

I'm used to Seagate 7200 RPM enterprise and desktop drives, as well as Samsung 7200 RPM enterprise grade and desktop grade drives, and I did actually notice how much quieter the 5900 RPM drives sounded (they sound like hell when they spin up, but once there they're pretty low vibration) so it's not a bad idea to avoid the vaster ones. The one caveat is to avoid the current range of WD desktop drives in a RAID NAS. Look at the Qnap forums and you'll find there were a few failures (they have been removed from the hardware compatibility list). The enterprise grade WD's are good in a RAID NAS though. I'm not sure how good the WD desktops would be in a single drive NAS, but I'd still avoid them, just to be on the safe side.

I'd vastly favour RAID 1 (or 6) for a main NAS (and off-site USB backups) and locate it in a large cupboard (so it doesn't overheat and also so any fan/disk noise is irrelevant) but if you really must have a super quiet NAS, I'd think the TS-119 would be an ideal cloice (again, ensure you have a good USB backup strategy as all drives eventually do fail; as the 119 only has one drive, it really is essential to have backups).

One of the folks on the Qnap forum has tried a SSD in a Qnap and it worked okay; if yo search the Qnap forum you will likely find the post on it.

Hope some of that helps

Bri

[Sauerball]

My American sensibilities required me to go big(!), so I have a TS-659, like Briain with only 4 bays filled at the moment. It has been great since Day 1, and I run RAID 6. I have it in my office, about 3m from my office listening position, and can't recall hearing the fan. The HDDs are another matter.

As I understand reliability issues with current vintage SSDs, the reliability issues are largely related to writing and rewriting data, with performance deteriorating as data are increasingly written and overwritten. Should not be much of an issue with an archive-like music collection.

That said, as bassato notes, one of the benefits of the DS is the ability to distance your renderer from your file server. To me the benefits of SSDs are lower noise and potentially faster read speeds, neither of which benefit my DS setups.

[Briain]

Hi

I used to leave my TS-659 enterprise disks spinning all the time as I tend to have PC's switched on throughout parts of the day, play music occasionally, etc. As soon as you switch a PC on, it wakes up the NAS drives (even without mappings). I left them on as they more or less ended up spun up for 1h, then down for 1h or 2h, then back up, etc, (until I crashed out for the night) and I didn't like the idea of stressing the power supply (starting them) nor the temperature cycling on the disks. That said, it seems a waste having them spin all night so I put a suggestion on the Qnap forum that it might be useful to re-map the copy button into a hibernation enable/disable function.

A forum member (Micke) chipped in and let me know that he'd written a QPKG to remap the copy button (pressing it runs any script in a pre-defined directory) and also suggested a cool wee script to do the job. After a few false starts (all documented) I got it to work and now use this every day.

So now, I get up and switch the PC on (or play music) and it wakes up the Qnap. I then press [what was the copy] button and it beeps once to signal that it has disabled hibernation. Once I've finished for the evening (PC's powered down and no more music required) I press the button again and it signals that the hibernation feature has been enabled again (long beep followed by short beep; the Morse code 'N') and it then hibernates about 35 minutes after that last button press; just the job.

I find that really useful, so I thought I'd let folks know about it in case anyone else was interested; post is here.

Of course, this concept will work on any Qnap (not just the TS-659) but the paths might be slightly different on some models.

Bri