QNAP/SYNOLOGY/HP - More Server and NAS questions (the next step)

[Brumby]

I know this isn't a computer forum - and I don't want to get buried with the masses of opinion I would get on one of those if I were to ask the question.  An opinion from an EE community suits me just fine.

I've been looking at getting a modest NAS setup for a while now - and the trigger is getting close to being pulled.  The thinking is at least 4 bays, 4TB drives and circa $1K.

At this point, I am looking at the QNAP TS-453A with 4x SEAGATE IRONWOLF 4TB drives.  Another box of interest is the SYNOLOGY DISKSTATION DS416PLAY.

Any thoughts - pros, cons, warnings ... or alternative suggestions would be welcome.

[kripton2035]

I sell and install both qnap and synology.
frankly, no big difference, if some feature appears on a model, it comes on the other some months later.
the stations are almost the same.
when you seek something special, like double power supply, in some rare format, 10 disks, rack, or so, then you often only have one model that suits your needs in one brand only, you don't have a choice.
but for a 4 bays disks, they are all the same.
just put some more $$$ into the 4tb disks, use certified server disks (24/24), all brands have these. they usualy have 5 years of warranty.
buy one more disk for a quick spare, and don't forget to buy a big (10TB ?) external disk to backup the NAS they are not 100% safe.
you can have a powersurge, a ransomware, well it could be bad to loose 12TB of datas for a disk loss.
I prefer HGST over Seagate for the failure rate of the disks.

[Jeroen3]

Qnap has virtualisation and HDMI. Synology has no hdmi, and only virtualization on the high end rack models iirc.

I own two Synologys, a DS410 and a DS214. Synology is a bit like the Apple of NAS world.
You have to abide with their laws, if you install your own package over ssh, custom openvpn, you can, but no guarantee it will still work after an reboot or update. They restore or overwrite many configurations.
If you want to diy with Own/Next-cloud or something else, don't get a nas with pre installed software.

If you want a simple file server with some mobile apps and optional cloud. Buy one now, put in some WD RED's, and go on with your life.

Synology is also experimenting with online backup of the entire nas, called Synology C2.

[DrGeoff]

I have a QNap TS412 (Atom based) with 4x4T RED drives as Raid5, mostly used for drive images and backups of many Win workstations.
Recently I built a mini-ITX box (quad core pentium N3700 processor) with 4x3T RED drives, also Raid5 using FreeNAS.
The FreeNAS box is much faster with network transfer speeds over the QNap box.

[rdl]

I built a FreeNAS machine recently. I used an HP Microserver N54L that I bought on sale years ago even though I had no use for it at the time.

I replaced the stock memory with 2x4GB of ECC RAM. I put a pair of WD Blue 2TB drives in it, mirrored. The OS runs off Two 16GB Sandisk UltraFit flash drives, also mirrored. A single 8GB flash drive was said to be enough at the time. There has been an update since then, but I haven't had time to look at it.

I have had no problems so far, but of course all the data on it is backed up on another machine, as I consider it somewhat of an experiment for now.

[Jeroen3]

The FreeNAS box is much faster with network transfer speeds over the QNap box.

Yes, obviously. A faster CPU.

However, I'd like to point out the drawbacks to DIY servers:
- They're time expensive. You have to do all the installation and maintenance.
- You can't get support. If it breaks, it's all up to you and team google.
- You can't migrate in a few clicks.
   eg: if I put my DS410 disks in my DS214, it will ask "old DSM found, do you want to migrate". The installed packages won't migrate,
   but the configurations and volumes do. Failed hardware is no risk.
- They're larger.

Keep that in mind. DIY might seem cheap and fast, but don't underestimate the effort and knowledge required to get the results you want.

But, they are faster, cheaper and more customizable.

[kripton2035]

one advantage of freenas is that the disk formats are known. if your nas is dead, you can construct another, put the disks inside and it will work. that's not the case for qnap or synology, their format is unknown, you have to backup your datas outside of the nas.

[Brumby]

Space, noise and power consumption are considerations.  The unit also must not be ugly as it will be placed in a visible location.

I'm not keen on proprietary file formats, but it's something I can learn to live with .... I think.

[H.O]

Can't speak for the QNAP but on the Synology, if the disk(s) are intact you can (apparently) access/recover your data using a normal PC with Ubuntu. Here are the instructions.

EDIT: Have a DS414 myself, had it for years, working great for my fairly modest needs. Never tried the above.

[kripton2035]

Can't speak for the QNAP but on the Synology, if the disk(s) are intact you can (apparently) access/recover your data using a normal PC with Ubuntu. Here are the instructions.

did not know that, don't know if it exists on qnap, but that's a big advantage for synology then.

[VK3DRB]

...I own two Synologys, a DS410 and a DS214. Synology is a bit like the Apple of NAS world.
You have to abide with their laws, if you install your own package over ssh, custom openvpn, you can, but no guarantee it will still work after an reboot or update. They restore or overwrite many configurations.

Thanks for the warning. I am after a NAS sever, and you have put me off Synology. It sounds like Apple iTunes - bloated crapware specially written for imbeciles. No thanks. QNAP wins by default.

[rob77]

HP microserver G7 with 4 x WD red, 8G RAM running debian exporting iscsi luns + samba and nfs volumes for my other machines, also running dlna server and hosts 2 VMs (one of them handling VPN) it looks good (definitely not ugly - i have it in my living room), requires knowledge to setup, definitely not for ordinary users. but if someone is a linux person, then it's definitely a preferred option over single purpose nas boxes. HDMI on a nas box is not a good idea IMHO.. it's better to have a dedicated multimedia player (i have a gigabyte Brix running ubuntu as media player/browsing PC).

[Brumby]

...I own two Synologys, a DS410 and a DS214. Synology is a bit like the Apple of NAS world.
You have to abide with their laws, if you install your own package over ssh, custom openvpn, you can, but no guarantee it will still work after an reboot or update. They restore or overwrite many configurations.

Thanks for the warning. I am after a NAS sever, and you have put me off Synology. It sounds like Apple iTunes - bloated crapware specially written for imbeciles. No thanks. QNAP wins by default.

That made me nervous as well.

[Jeroen3]

one advantage of freenas is that the disk formats are known. if your nas is dead, you can construct another, put the disks inside and it will work. that's not the case for qnap or synology, their format is unknown, you have to backup your datas outside of the nas.
Also, all raid in low end synology is software. No raid cards involved. Which is why they are cheap. You don't need hardware raid if you don't have a 10 Gbit nic with many users.

Only if you use SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid), they can do normal RAID just fine. And there is nothing proprietary or unknown about ext4.

...

Thanks for the warning. I am after a NAS sever, and you have put me off Synology. It sounds like Apple iTunes - bloated crapware specially written for imbeciles. No thanks. QNAP wins by default.

This could be the same for QNap. Please verify.

Example: I run Owncloud on my DS214. It was available trough the synocommunity. It works fine, but public links don't. I have to make some configuration changes to some php plugin in dsm 5 and 6 to make it work. This change is reset each minor update.
And now with dsm 7, with a completely revised webserver, it's "completely broken"*. ^{(read: I'm not experienced enough with linux to fix it)}
Synology does offer similar functionality in their Cloudstation. I'm just stubborn to not use it. Which is completely my fault.

If you care about all these details little, like filesystem and specific webserver settings, a plug&play nas it not for you.

[bitwelder]

one advantage of freenas is that the disk formats are known. if your nas is dead, you can construct another, put the disks inside and it will work. that's not the case for qnap or synology, their format is unknown, you have to backup your datas outside of the nas.
Also, all raid in low end synology is software. No raid cards involved. Which is why they are cheap. You don't need hardware raid if you don't have a 10 Gbit nic with many users.

Only if you use SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid), they can do normal RAID just fine. And there is nothing proprietary or unknown about ext4.

Even if SHR technology is proprietary by Synology, what's written on the disks is nothing that a standard Linux machine cannot access.
SHR is just a smart logic to assemble together physical disk partitions using soft-RAID and LVM (logical volumes).

[rdl]

There are a number of videos on Youtube about FreeNAS that are worth a look. Eli the Computer Guy has a couple and there was a weekly show called Tek Syndicate that frequently featured FreeNAS.

Apparently there was some drama and Tek Syndicate is now called Crit. Any of the episodes where Wendell does most of the show are worth watching. The other guy, not so much.

iXsystems sells pre-built machines based on FreeNAS. They are pricey, but possibly an option if you want to avoid DiY.

The Gen 7 HP Microservers are very nice little machines. It's almost worth buying one just to get a hands-on look. You'll probably find some use for it just because. The newer Gen 8 seem to me like an over-priced attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Gen 7 versions.

[rrinker]

The FreeNAS box is much faster with network transfer speeds over the QNap box.

Yes, obviously. A faster CPU.

However, I'd like to point out the drawbacks to DIY servers:
- They're time expensive. You have to do all the installation and maintenance.
- You can't get support. If it breaks, it's all up to you and team google.
- You can't migrate in a few clicks.
   eg: if I put my DS410 disks in my DS214, it will ask "old DSM found, do you want to migrate". The installed packages won't migrate,
   but the configurations and volumes do. Failed hardware is no risk.
- They're larger.

Keep that in mind. DIY might seem cheap and fast, but don't underestimate the effort and knowledge required to get the results you want.

But, they are faster, cheaper and more customizable.

 This is why I don;t liek any of these low end NAS devices. My DIY which is <gasp>Windows has been chugging along for 6 years now. Certainly no OS faults. It runs headless, I occasionally remote into it to make sure all is well, but most any faults would pop up in my desktop's notifications if there were any. It doesn't use any form of RAID - it uses disk pooling. I have drives of all sizes in it, from 1TB to 4TB, and every file is protected by being on at least 2 physical disks. With no special formatting. I can take any disk out of it and attach it to any computer that can recognize NTFS format and read my data. It's also all backed up to a cloud backup for offsite replication. Replacing a drive is simple as can be, might need to swap out the last 1TB drive soon as I am getting down to 2TB free. I just take the drive I want to repalce offline, the system rebalances the data on said drive to make sure the at least 2 copies on different physical drives is maintained, and then I can remove it (I just have a basic mid-tower case so the drives aren't hot pluggable) and add in a new one. I then tell it to add the new disk to the pool, and once again it rebalances to include the new disk and maintain the file duplication.
 The 4 bay storage units, with NO drives, some of them cost more than my rig with a couple of 3TB drives in it. And 4 disks often leads to RAID 5 which is just bad. No, the pool does not increase read throughput but it also does not decrease write throughput as the copy process happens int he background. That's probably the ONLY exposure on the whole thing - if i copy a new file to the server and the drive the file landed on dies RIGHT THEN, it likely did not have time to replicate to another drive and is lost. This is actually the third one I've built, the first one I tried to cheap out and used an AMD processor and a smaller case, ti was too slow plus I quickly ran out of space (when a 1TB drive was new and very expensive). Second time was this same MB and case, but with an older version of the software. Third time I took all the disks out, rebuilt it with 3 new larger drives, and then 1 by 1 copied the data off each of the old disks and put the largest of them back into the server, leaving out my smallest and oldest drives.
 It easily serves up multiple HD video streams. Most I've had going were movies streaming to two tvs, each with a Roku, plus playing another one on my desktop. The Rokus play via Plex, my desktop directly reads the files from a share, all 1080.
 Oh and it also automatically backups all my computers, using deduplication and incremental backup, but it hides most of the restore - I just pick which computer I want to restore, and then I get a list of all the backups available, and pick which date I want to restore from. I can either restore the whole machine, or open the backup as a drive and look through it and copy needed files. And that too gets backed up to the cloud for redundancy.
 When everyone was going nuts of Drobo, I took a look. It was several steps behind what my server already was doing. I passed. ANd continue to do so. At some point I'm sure I'll have a hardware failure - the thing IS on 24/7/365. Probably won't install or have drivers for the latest gen of processors, so I will be finally forced to change to something else.

[kaz911]

I like my QNAP's - they are not perfect but they have replaced my Winodws Home server with Drobo B800i. Drobo was just to darn slow.

I have a main 871 i7 for "office" use and light home use - then I have a remote 453 for offsite sync/backup. They are quiet - don't use much power for what you get - the SSD cache works "ok" (but not perfect) and VM's on them runs ok. On the 453 it struggles a bit (Atom Processor) but plenty fast on the i7 871. I find the 871 better designed than the latest x82 series - drive trays are better and less noisy.

I use Resilio Sync so far to keep them synced - but are considering VPN'ing them to use the built in rsync. As I have a lot of data (pictures) I don't think their "cloud" sync would be good. I only run HD Mirroring on purpose as I have seen to many failures with Raid 5/6 etc. that was disasters. Once in a while I plug in a big archive disk and do a complete backup and put in storage at a 3rd location offsite.

[John Coloccia]

...I own two Synologys, a DS410 and a DS214. Synology is a bit like the Apple of NAS world.
You have to abide with their laws, if you install your own package over ssh, custom openvpn, you can, but no guarantee it will still work after an reboot or update. They restore or overwrite many configurations.

Thanks for the warning. I am after a NAS sever, and you have put me off Synology. It sounds like Apple iTunes - bloated crapware specially written for imbeciles. No thanks. QNAP wins by default.

With due respect to both of you, I don't even know WTF this means. I've been running a Synology RAID 1 as part of my backup scheme and I don't know what it means to abide by their laws, open VPN or anything else. I setup the RAID, setup the folder shares I want, and it's worked flawlessly for years. It's been the most reliable part of my network so far, requiring exactly zero maintenance. Sometimes I occasionally log in to it just to check it's still doing it's thing, because it just sits there and quietly works and leaves me alone, and frankly I'm not used to modern devices just doing their job without constantly pestering me for stuff.

[Monkeh]

It doesn't use any form of RAID - it uses disk pooling. I have drives of all sizes in it, from 1TB to 4TB, and every file is protected by being on at least 2 physical disks. With no special formatting. I can take any disk out of it and attach it to any computer that can recognize NTFS format and read my data.

Congratulations, you're doing nothing which can't be done by anything else. There's good reasons nobody does that, though..

And 4 disks often leads to RAID 5 which is just bad.

No worse than your 'at least two copies' with a variety of fun exceptions.

No, the pool does not increase read throughput but it also does not decrease write throughput as the copy process happens int he background. That's probably the ONLY exposure on the whole thing - if i copy a new file to the server and the drive the file landed on dies RIGHT THEN, it likely did not have time to replicate to another drive and is lost.

RAID does not decrease write throughput notably - actually, a decent non-mirror array writes faster than a single member drive. So you're losing out on both + more fragility. And no, it's far from the only exposure - see below.

You're doing nothing in particular other systems can't do (okay, yours is a bit more integrated with Windows, unsurprisingly). I'm glad it works for you, but it's not better.

How does 'your' duplication scheme cope with read errors? Windows typically just panics uselessly. How about corrupted reads? Just go with whatever we read first and assume that single medium is perfect? Will it end up propagating corruption across the duplicates or do you just end up with a pile of inconsistent blocks? Does it ever check for consistency?

[3db]

The HP microservers running Freenas are a good cost effective solution.
The HP microservers are reliable and can be a real bargain if you manage to get them during the cash back promotions.
The latest version of Freenas is also much more user friendly.
IMHO if you really care about you data then nothing beats the ZFS filesystem.

3DB 

[Jeroen3]

...

...

With due respect to both of you, I don't even know WTF this means. I've been running a Synology RAID 1 as part of my backup scheme and I don't know what it means to abide by their laws, open VPN or anything else. I setup the RAID, setup the folder shares I want, and it's worked flawlessly for years. It's been the most reliable part of my network so far, requiring exactly zero maintenance. Sometimes I occasionally log in to it just to check it's still doing it's thing, because it just sits there and quietly works and leaves me alone, and frankly I'm not used to modern devices just doing their job without constantly pestering me for stuff.

You don't care about the details. A plug&play nas is the solution for you.

It doesn't use any form of RAID - it uses disk pooling. I have drives of all sizes in it, from 1TB to 4TB, and every file is protected by being on at least 2 physical disks. With no special formatting. I can take any disk out of it and attach it to any computer that can recognize NTFS format and read my data.

...
How does 'your' duplication scheme cope with read errors? Windows typically just panics uselessly. How about corrupted reads? Just go with whatever we read first and assume that single medium is perfect? Will it end up propagating corruption across the duplicates or do you just end up with a pile of inconsistent blocks? Does it ever check for consistency?

It probably hasn't happened yet. If you get bad bits on an NTFS file system, it breaks, and the data is lost. Or most of the times, it doesn't even notify you. You just notice your video stops playing, of your pdf won't open. Too late. This is why raid is below the filesystem.

[Brumby]

The HP microserver alternative.....

Hmmm......

Any thoughts there?

[rob77]

The HP microserver alternative.....

Hmmm......

Any thoughts there?

depends on what you need. if it's storage only , then install freenas. if you need much more, then just install your favorite linux distro and configure all the stuff you need manually - iscsi, samba, nfs, dlna, virtualization.
i'm running Debian 7 and using the 4 disks in my microserver in  2 RAID1  arrays, LVM on top of the arrays and creating logical volumes for particular services (exporting LVs as iSCSI luns, separate filesystems on on LVs for samba or NFS exports), LVs as disks for the KVM virtual machines.
also running dlna server on the microserver. the microserver is going strong for a long time, only issue i had was a failed disk which i replaced and re-synced the raid.

[Jeroen3]

Or you put Unraid on the thing to run multiple stuff you need. Might even be FreeNAS and a Windows.