TS-473A recommended Set-Up

[Gaudi]

Hi everyone.
I am not new to the NAS world, albeit it has been some time since I upgraded, and finally I took the step.

I come from a trustworthy TS-469 Pro, and have bought a new TS-473A. As there have been some changes (appearance of new QuTS Hero firmware and presence of M.2 bays) is that I kindly ask for advice on how to set up my new NAS, specifically related to how to configure the M.2 NVME drives.

What I currently have:

• TS-473A NAS
• Additional 8gb RAM module (QNAP branded)
• 4x 6tb WD Red Plus drives (WD60EFZX) or alternatively 4x 6tb Seagate IronWolf HD (ST6000VN001).
• 2x WD Black 1tb SN750 NVME drives
• PNY Nvidia Quadro T600 GPU

Main use is to backup personal files and images, and store media content that is played on KODI clients. As the setup should be able to transcode, I may also give Plex or JellyFin a try. It is a home set up, so not many concurrent users.
I have several services and apps running as well: my old TS-469 Pro does cope with them properly so I do not seem the new unit should struggle. TS-469 Pro does not support VMs, so I may give them a try, but nothing too intensive.
I intend to use Qugenie for managing my pictures (taking advantage of the CUDA cores of my GPU), and QVR Pro for monitoring my cameras (2 at the time, probably 4 in total).

Now, I have read that NVME drives can be used for cache, or to set up a system volume, and this is what confuses me. I would like to have the best responsive equipment.

Can anyone advice what will be the best way to configure the NAS?
Are the drives I have selected speed/sizewise a good selection?

Your advice is very valuable!

Regards

[dolbyman]

Setup the two NVMe as system pool and the HDDs in just one RAID5..that should be your optimal config

[Gaudi]

Setup the two NVMe as system pool and the HDDs in just one RAID5..that should be your optimal config

Thank you @dolbyman for your quick reply. I am not familiar with System Pools, so I did some research on this.

So essentially I should first create the storage pool on the two M.2 SSD (RAID 1 preferred I guess), and it will be automatically assigned to System Pool.
And then set up the remaining 4x 6tb drives as Storage pool.

As for setting the SSD Pool, any suggestion on over provisioning % and other settings?
Will I still have cache? or to have both Cache and System Pool on SSD I need to have a unit with more bays (provided I plant to use all 3.5" bays for HDD).

Thanks again!

[dolbyman]

Don't forget to setup a volume on the first pool, that will be your system volume (default spot for all QTS apps)

You could do some comprehensive tests for over provisioning first, but I just went with the default. On my 1288x I currently do not use the NVMe pool for nothing other that the system volume, virtual machines and containers run on my SATA SSD pool and bulk storage is the HDD pool

[Gaudi]

Don't forget to setup a volume on the first pool, that will be your system volume (default spot for all QTS apps)

You could do some comprehensive tests for over provisioning first, but I just went with the default. On my 1288x I currently do not use the NVMe pool for nothing other that the system volume, virtual machines and containers run on my SATA SSD pool and bulk storage is the HDD pool

Will do, thank you for the advice!

Regards

[QNAPDanielFL]

TS-473A runs QTS by default but it can run QuTS Hero.
Are you going to run QuTS hero?

[Gaudi]

TS-473A runs QTS by default but it can run QuTS Hero.
Are you going to run QuTS hero?

Yes, I plan to take advantage of new ZFS so I will be using QuTS Hero.

[QNAPDanielFL]

For QuTS Hero, there are no volumes. But an SSD system pool can help a lot with performance.
SSD cache can also be added, but it is often not as important on Hero because QuTS Hero uses RAM ARC cache which usually helps more than SSD cache.

If you have multiple Share Folders I suggest thin provisioning.
And in most cases, I recommend the default values like compression on, Deduplication off, 10% over-provisioning for the pool.

[Gaudi]

For QuTS Hero, there are no volumes. But an SSD system pool can help a lot with performance.
SSD cache can also be added, but it is often not as important on Hero because QuTS Hero uses RAM ARC cache which usually helps more than SSD cache.

If you have multiple Share Folders I suggest thin provisioning.
And in most cases, I recommend the default values like compression on, Deduplication off, 10% over-provisioning for the pool.

Thank you for your suggestions.
Definitely I will set up the M.2 drives as System Pool. Probably for my use 1tb of WD Black is overkill, but I have already bought them.
Based on your comment, is it possible to use the M.2 SSDs as both System Pool and cache?
If it is not possible, probably cache will not make a lot of difference, since I do not work on documents stored on the NAS, but rather use it as backup.

My configuration is simple, have few shares, but with this new unit I will take the chance to better administer them, especially since ZFS allocates volumes differently.

I plan to use deduplication on some of the shares. I understand that this is memory intensive, so I may need to increase RAM from 16 to 32 or even 64gb.

What about over provisioning % on the whole SSD setting?

[dolbyman]

Based on your comment, is it possible to use the M.2 SSDs as both System Pool and cache?

You can't do both no

If it is not possible, probably cache will not make a lot of difference, since I do not work on documents stored on the NAS, but rather use it as backup.

Besides the ZIL there is also the ARC
https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/arti ... -quts-hero


For simple network storage on 1GbE (?) I think your are overthinking this.

[Gaudi]

Based on your comment, is it possible to use the M.2 SSDs as both System Pool and cache?

You can't do both no

If it is not possible, probably cache will not make a lot of difference, since I do not work on documents stored on the NAS, but rather use it as backup.

Besides the ZIL there is also the ARC
https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/arti ... -quts-hero


For simple network storage on 1GbE (?) I think your are overthinking this.

Thank you for the explanation.
I managed to get a second 8gb ECC memory module pulled from another x73a, hence the 16gb memory mentioned.
In my current location it is almost impossible to get 2x16gb ECC memory.
Would it be better to upgrade to 32gb RAM even if it is not ECC?

I have no managed to find conclusive information on this subject.

[dolbyman]

I stayed with ECC on my 1288x (16+16+8+8) just because I wanted to be safe ( ZFS seems to use much more RAM(ARC) on a regular base, than my QTS NAS, don't want things to go bad there)

[QNAPDanielFL]

What about over provisioning % on the whole SSD setting?

For SSDs, over-provisioning helps garbage collection to avoid write amplification.
For ZFS HDD pools, if they get too full they get more fragmented and performance goes down. This is partly because of the copy-on-write feature. So 10% over-provisioning is the default to stop the pool from getting more than 90% full.

[Gaudi]

I stayed with ECC on my 1288x (16+16+8+8) just because I wanted to be safe ( ZFS seems to use much more RAM(ARC) on a regular base, than my QTS NAS, don't want things to go bad there)

Thanks, it makes perfect sense, as memory is used for cache to organize data (Instead of writing directly to disk) ECC memory will ensure that data is not corrupted on memory [cache] before being written to disk.
Still, will 16gb of RAM be enough to have a good performance while having applications running?
Does it make sense to “sacrifice” 16gb of “potentially” more RAM towards data integrity?

What about over provisioning % on the whole SSD setting?

For SSDs, over-provisioning helps garbage collection to avoid write amplification.
For ZFS HDD pools, if they get too full they get more fragmented and performance goes down. This is partly because of the copy-on-write feature. So 10% over-provisioning is the default to stop the pool from getting more than 90% full.

Clear enough. Thank you for the clear and concise explanation, I am getting familiar with these new terminologies.