Any suggestion for how to equip new TVS-675?

[magebarf]

Hi everyone!

Time for me to spin up my upgrade to the old and trusty TS-459 Pro in my signature (no worries, still alive and will likely be used for backup for a long time ahead).
Having a discontinued model, with regards to software updates, lead to looking for a suitable replacement over the last years, and finally found a deal I could not pass by.

I ended up with a TVS-675 (ooh, exotic CPU, interesting) and as part of a bundle also a bunch of drives (SSDs to be specific).
For my initial setup of this however I'm not really sure if I'll do best to use the drives I have or grab a bunch of spinners.

So, to sum up the options of the NAS;
6 x SATA 6Gbps drive trays, 2.5" or 3.5"
2 x M.2 slots PCIe gen 3 x1 / SATA
2 x PCIe gen 3 x4 slots
Supports QTS and QuTS Hero

As for the drives these are the ones I currently have at my disposal:
2 x Seagate IronWolf 125 Pro 960GB SSDs, 2.5" SATA 6Gbps
1 x Intel 660p 2TB SSD, M.2 PCIe gen 3 x4
2 x Optane M10 32GB, M.2 PCIe gen 3 x4

Add to this I realize I will need to add some HDDs as well, but timing wise (what the he-k has happened to disk prices while I was looking for the NAS?) I'm not very likely to buy a full set at large sizes immediately.

Based on this I see two main tracks, but hope for any and all of your feedback and suggestions on how you would do!

1. Traditional/straight forward:
Go with QTS, stick that Intel 660p and the IronWolves in and use Qtier.
To this setup I would likely get 2 HDDs initially as a RAID1, and then later expand to RAID5 when adding more disks.

2. ZFS ftw!?!
Go with QuTS hero, use the Intel 660p for L2ARC and one of the Optanes for SLOG/ZIL (even though it probably won't give that much of performance difference).
For this setup I kind of guess the 660p may also be a good candidate for storing the system on.
As my understanding is that ZFS won't really provide any benefits of adding SSDs to a zpool, unless you limit each vdev to same type of disks which limits the usable space quite a bit, I'll likely leave these out.
As for HDDs for this setup I'm probably going with 6x reasonably cheap (read relatively small) drives fit for the purpose (currently great deals on IronWolf 4TB CMR drives that is a candidate) with the option of replacing the bunch of them with larger drives in the future, and running in raidz1 or raidz2 mode (RAID5/RAID6 equivalent in Qnap terminology).

2b. ZFS may still win?
Same as above, but instead of the 660p use both Optane's as RAID1 for ZIL, and use one or two of the IronWolf 125 Pros for system+L2ARC.
This would reduce the number of HDDs I could squeeze in.

Anyone sees any flaws in the above logic/suggestions for the different options?
Is there a clearly preferable setup?
Which one would you go with?

As for the PCIe slots, I've got an Intel X550-T2 that will likely end up in one of them, while the other slot, depending on the setup chosen (QTS or QuTS Hero) may in the future have a QM2 card added for additional M.2 drives.

As said, all feedback welcome! Shoot my ideas down or pinpoint areas that can be improved!

[QNAPDanielFL]

"Go with QuTS hero, use the Intel 660p for L2ARC and one of the Optanes for SLOG/ZIL (even though it probably won't give that much of performance difference)."

If you were to run QuTS Hero, at least 2 SSDs should be for the system pool for the OS + apps.
This is usually more important to performance than SSD cache. If you don't have other SSDs where you have told it to put the ZIL, then the Synchronous IO goes to the system pool Meaning the System pool is used for the ZIL.

L2ARC can sometimes be helpful, not if you only have SSDs for the System pool or L2ARC, the system pool is almost always a better choice.

That said, in QuTS Hero you can't expand a RAID group, which can be a problem for your plan to start with just 2 HDDs at first. You might like normal QTS better in this case.

For normal QTS, you can use SSDs as cache because an SSD system pool is not needed on QTS.
If you use some of your SSDs for cache since you have 5 of them, QM2-2P-344 should help your M.2 NVMe SSDs perform better. But with how small your Optain drives are I am not sure if the QM2 is worth investing in unless you have larger SSDs.

[magebarf]

If you were to run QuTS Hero, at least 2 SSDs should be for the system pool for the OS + apps.
This is usually more important to performance than SSD cache. If you don't have other SSDs where you have told it to put the ZIL, then the Synchronous IO goes to the system pool Meaning the System pool is used for the ZIL.

L2ARC can sometimes be helpful, not if you only have SSDs for the System pool or L2ARC, the system pool is almost always a better choice.

Alright, so what I'm taking away here is that likely the best result is doubling down and getting another Intel 660p to have running for the system pool.
I'm assuming the reason for doubling down is to have them mirrored for redundancy?

I also believe the amount of synchronous writing will be at a minimum, as at least from the outset as I won't have spun up any virtual machines (which very well may come in the future).
The primary source of reading/writing will be Windows + Mac clients over regular file shares, and for that I'm assuming most of the writes will still be asynchronous, right (as long as sync=always is not set at least)?

That said, in QuTS Hero you can't expand a RAID group, which can be a problem for your plan to start with just 2 HDDs at first. You might like normal QTS better in this case.

Yep, fully understood and agreed.
That's why I for the QuTS Hero use case will populate all the drive slots with smaller drives (say 4TB where the pricing sweet spot seems to be today), and wait until prices for larger drives makes sense to upgrade them all at the same time.
For the QTS scenario I see the option of buying maybe 2 large drives, and then add more drives.

For normal QTS, you can use SSDs as cache because an SSD system pool is not needed on QTS.
If you use some of your SSDs for cache since you have 5 of them, QM2-2P-344 should help your M.2 NVMe SSDs perform better. But with how small your Optain drives are I am not sure if the QM2 is worth investing in unless you have larger SSDs.

Agreed on the Optane, the size limits the usability quite a bit.
The main use of them would be if I at some point in time would need to add a SLOG for the ZIL if going with QuTS, but for regular QTS I don't anticipate I would find any use for them at all.

So, refining my thoughts a bit on your input, I guess the QTS setup is roughly the same as envisioned; 660p + IronWolf 125 Pro SSDs for a bit of performance, and then 2 larger HDDs (to start with) for the larger volume.

For the QuTS Hero suggestion my revised idea is; 2 x 660p as System Pool (with QM2-2P-344 + 2 x Optane M10 32GB as a potential future upgrade if proper a ZIL SLOG is beneficial) and then fill the slots with 6xHDD of reasonable size?

[magebarf]

For the QuTS Hero suggestion my revised idea is; 2 x 660p as System Pool (with QM2-2P-344 + 2 x Optane M10 32GB as a potential future upgrade if proper a ZIL SLOG is beneficial) and then fill the slots with 6xHDD of reasonable size?

And to get even more performance out, the option could be to equip a QM2-2P-344 with the 2 Intel 660p as System Pool instead, and then leaving the regular M.2 slots as future expansion with the Optanes, if deemed necessary?

[QNAPDanielFL]

If you don't have a lot of synchronous I/O, it may not be worth making a separate slog device. You can just write Synchronous I/0 to the system pool. In most cases I would expect the build in M.2 slots to be fast enough for the system pool. But QM2-2P-344 can be added in the future if you want L2ARC cache.

Or you can use QTS. For QTS the QM2 card should make a faster cache if you want the best performance. But you may also like the performance enough without the cache.