perfect installation advice - TS-653D with SSDs

[nasinterested]

Hi,
i bought a TS-653D a while ago and had no issue installing it with the info i found on the QNAP applications and here.
However, i regularly have hard disk activity and i have the impression that part of the system and/or running apps from QNAP have installed on the hard disks.
I would favor using the 2x 512GB SSDs that i have installed using the QM2-2S10G1TA card to have a quiet system. I understand that PCIe lanes in the 453D/653D are a sparse ressource.

Can this be accomplished?

[dolbyman]

Part of the system is always on all NAS drives .. so the disk access will probably not stop

[pspilot]

Part of the system is always on all NAS drives .. so the disk access will probably not stop

Part of which system? QNAP in generall? Or a system with SSD cache?

I'm also very interested in the question of the TO, since I want my 653D and its drives also to 'sleep' as much as possible. I understand that installed apps and functions need to wake the drives they're installed on. There are several considerations:

1) Can I always decide, were app gets installed? Or are there apps that leave no choice? Same for internal, or kernel functions.
2) Can apps be installed on this PCIe-SSDs at all, or are they cache only?
3) Can one SSD, installed in a regular drive bay take that task? In other words: can a 5-drive RAID5 Volume sleep on, while the single SSD in the 6. slot wakes and does the jobs with the apps?

I use 5 (originally 6, but could leave out one for an SSD) IronWolf NAS 8TB drives which are a bit of 'monsters', considering noise and power consumption. So I'm VERY interested in having them sleeping as much as possible.

[dolbyman]

if you check

Code: Select all

cat /proc/mdstat

you see the spanning system RAID1's (often md9 and md13) the system logs are saved on these, so anytime something is logged to the system log, all disks wake up

[pspilot]

And why should the system not reside on an SSD in Slot 1, while the RAID(whatever) consists of 5 Disks in bay 2-6? The question is, whether the RAID has then also to wake up, just because the system needs to write something to its (system) SSD.
Which raises also the question, wether the system can be moved afterwards. So if you start with a RAID in 1-5 and add an SSD in 6 later.

[dolbyman]

as said before..this is how qnap sets up the system...you have no influence on that

if logs get written or read, ALL disks wake up

[pspilot]

if logs get written or read, ALL disks wake up

Ok, that's a clear statement, thanks.

So I have to get rid of that thing again. Well, I guess it was worth a try .

[nasinterested]

thank you for the clear statement, even though it's unfortunate. Is there any technical reasoning behind it that actually makes sense and which i still fail to see?

[pspilot]

thank you for the clear statement, even though it's unfortunate. Is there any technical reasoning behind it that actually makes sense and which i still fail to see?

It's very unfortunate! And there's of course no technical reason in general, other brands do it. From QNAPs standpoint and their hardware, there might be of course a reason.

I won't use the QNAP now longterm for what i've planned it. But I kept it for the moment to test a few things. Among others the 'sleep behaviour'. In my opinion (and I'm a hardware developer), even if the 653 is sleeping it's consuming too much power. My setup in the moment consists of 5x HDs (8TB Seagate IronWolf) and one SSD as cache. I've installed no extra apps and even deleted or stopped whatever possible. I was only interested in a 'pure data server'. As expected the thing goes to sleep alright, but consumes still 20 Watt in this state. I can't see for what! An IronWolf in stand-by/sleeping consumes 0,6W, give the SSD the same. So the devices need max. 4 W to 'exist'. For what the heck is QNAP wasting 16! W to just listen to the network?

I might keep the 653 as pure 'safe backup unit' which is not online all the time. After all I got it's really cheap for 6 bays. But I don't see it as a 24/7 data server in the moment (the poor mechanical build and the vibrations that come with it is another problem for me in this use case). Well, let's see how this is going to come out ...

[nasinterested]

thanks! i also consider using a larger model