Taming a wild Mustang-200

Discussion on setting up QNAP NAS products.
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shinelfmarch
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Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2021 9:41 pm

Taming a wild Mustang-200

Post by shinelfmarch »

Hey,

I have a TS-1685 and recently purchased a used Mustang-200 to run additional VMs and replace that massive power-** Dell VRTX that I really don't need. I'm having issues and hope someone in here can help guide me to inner peace and stable uptime.

1. Documentation. Where are all the manuals and docs for the Mustang-200? I have the i7 version and other than a few product brochures, I can't find much out there.
2. setup. I plugged it into the PCI slots, connected power, sealed up the thirteen thousand screws and fired up the QNAP. 15 minutes later after boot up was finished, I have two new network adapters (virtual) for mQTS with a pretty picture of the mustang card. What I don't have is the ability to see the mustang. I launch the Mustang Card Manager and all I ever get is "Unable to start mQTS and display data. There is no Mustang-200 card installed on the NAS."

so,
3. I don't see a reset button, is reset still pull out the NGFF ssds, find something else to stick them in, and format them manually? am I supposed to reimage them? if so, with what image?

Thanks,

Virtual adapter do appear: https://i.imgur.com/l8lfRNL.png
empty mustang card manager: https://i.imgur.com/dPuH95a.gif
sonapi76
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Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:00 pm

Re: Taming a wild Mustang-200

Post by sonapi76 »

join the club :) This is the worst investment I made in my homelab in a while now

You are in the same boat that I am. Got a used mustang-200. Really bad documentation, it doesn't get shut down when you shut-down the "host" qnap and networking is really unstable. Installing virtualization station on any of the mustang-200 node - for me at least - breaks the network and leaves me with an inaccessible card.

There is a user manual here: https://download.ieiworld.com/?model=Mustang-200

What I did to get it working:

- wipe the m.2 ssd's completely (delete partitions)
- setup a bridge between a qnap virtual switch and the two mustang adapters. Basically edit virtual switch settings and add the two interfaces. (I tried bridging the mustang to a separate network interface but didn't work for me - maybe needed more reboots ) This was really fiddly - once associated with a bridge you cannot remove them (it fails). Sometimes adding fails with an error message too - just reboot and they will be associated. Also if it doesn't error out it hapened that qfinder doesn't find them - reboot the host even if they appear to be added to the virtual switch ok.
- once bridged you need to run qfinder pro - the two mustang nodes appear (and behave) as regular qnap NASes. Set them up as such. I had better luck with static IPs.
- for me running virtualization station on the mustang nodes didn't work. It installs, creates the virtual switch just fine but a few reboots later something happens on the mustang side and I'm no longer able to connect from the qnap host or from another pc forcing me to wipe the ssd's and start over.

I'm really tempted to install linux on the mustang and call it a day but afaik I think it boots from some onboard flash where a minimal qts installation is - that then sets up the m2 drives. If you have any luck with running something like debian on it please let me know.

Please share back if you have better luck than me :)
sonapi76
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Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:00 pm

Re: Taming a wild Mustang-200

Post by sonapi76 »

Just a quick update:

I gave up, built myself usb cables and setup proxmox on my mustang-200 nodes. If anybody is interested in details I can add them.

PS. now that I saw the BIOS I can say for sure:

The mustang nodes are set to boot from the nvme disk by default with a emmc partition as secondary boot. This way if the SSDs are blank a minimal qts boots to allow Qfinder to work.

This also means that if you want a custom OS on the mustang nodes you can setup the ssds in another machine (no need for the custom usb cables). Just be sure to include the driver for the network chip: https://github.com/acooks/tn40xx-driver
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