Best SSD for Caching

Discussion on setting up QNAP NAS products.
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snapet
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Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2021 10:46 pm

Best SSD for Caching

Post by snapet »

Hi All,

I just bought a TVS-h1688X. This NAS has:
- 12 x 3.5" bays
- 4 x 2.5" bays
- 2 x M.2 slots

Now for caching I read that it is best to go for SLC Nand based ssd disks. Is that still the case? I read elsewhere that probably TLC or MLC disks have come a long way also. (are any SLC disks still available?)
What would be the best or a good option for 2.5" or M.2 options for my Qnap NAS?
Any people with experience that can tell me if I should use the 4 x 2.5" bays or if it is wiser to use the two M.2 slots for this?

Thank you for any feedback.
Kind regards
SR22pilot
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Re: Best SSD for Caching

Post by SR22pilot »

I would use the m.2 slots for caching. They are much faster than the SATA limited 2.5" bays. You are looking for NVME drives with a high cycle rating. There are ones specifically for heavy duty NAS use. However, they cost a lot more. Another approach is to buy cheaper but larger drives and over provisioning. It comes up when setting up the cache. Remember that, all else being equal, larger capacity drives last longer. The wear is spread out over a larger number of cells. I have the unit you have. I put 2TB NVME drives in for caching. I use 4X 2TB 2.5" SSD's in RAID 10 for the main pool that holds the OS, apps, and VMs. For the large data store I have 12X 16TB Seagate Exos drives in RAID 6.
QNAPDanielFL
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Joined: Fri Mar 31, 2017 7:09 am

Re: Best SSD for Caching

Post by QNAPDanielFL »

On QuTS hero I recommend L2ARC cache set to random only. MLC is the best. but there are some TLC like Samsung Plus that can still be quite fast. But MLC is still better if you have the money. If cache is set to random only, then you likely don't need a large amount. The throughput of 12 HDDs can already be quite High for sequential access so I don't think sequential cache is needed. For cache I recommend NVMe. The 2.5" SATA SSDs are fine for the system pool for the OS + apps.
snapet
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Re: Best SSD for Caching

Post by snapet »

Thanks for your feedback!
mhaluska
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Re: Best SSD for Caching

Post by mhaluska »

For QuTS write cache (SLOG) use only Intel Optane or SSD with PLP (power loss protection), otherwise don't use write cache, speed will be terrible. If your writes are only async, you don't need write cache.
nman4ever
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Re: Best SSD for Caching

Post by nman4ever »

can you guys suggest models that would work with 1688 explicitly and in good supply, not outdated models that are hard to get etc?
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