Tall order for a NAS to fill

Interested in our products? Post your questions here. Let us answer before you buy.
Post Reply
barroso
First post
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:42 am

Tall order for a NAS to fill

Post by barroso »

I am experienced in synology boxes I want to level-up on a QNAP. but I have a tall order to fill here.
I currently run an opnsense firewall (as an external box). A pi-hole (as a docker container on a synology). And now I want to go totally virtual with windows 10 running vnc or similar on the NAS.

I want to combine the opnsense as virtualized freebsd. And run pi-hole as a container. and go vm with windows 10. as well as the usual NAS functions. And I run quite a few other docker containers for other things.

This means I need multiple eth ports on the NAS. And is going to needs some pretty good specs.
I assume I am going to need a 4 core, with ability to go 16GB. But I am not sure if I need the embedded graphics processor for the windows 10 vm. I am only running business graphics such as stock charts in real-time.

I also though want to future-proof and have zds and qts hero. So there's a ton of models. I only need 4 bays max. I don't care about ecc, or nvm caching (at least I don't think I do) or transcoding.

So help me choose so I can put this order in!
P3R
Guru
Posts: 13190
Joined: Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:39 am
Location: Stockholm, Sweden (UTC+01:00)

Re: Tall order for a NAS to fill

Post by P3R »

The dream of a single machine doing everything is far better as a dream than in reality. To begin with it make you extremely vulnerable as when the NAS go down you instantly lose everything. I'm a long time Qnap, pfSense (so close to OPNsense) and Pi-hole user but I wouldn't rely on the main firewall running on the Qnap. Pi-hole is okay to run on the NAS as there are easy temporary workarounds for any downtime situations.

I maintain several sites and prefer having the firewall on stand-alone hardware to not have all eggs in one basket but on the main site where I have a VMware server anyway I run my pfSense firewall and Pi-hole on it and it's been wonderfully reliable. The uptime of VMware running, even on an entry level server, is superior to the Qnap and it's VMs.

Given your description that you need at most 4 drive bays and ZFS/QuTS Hero there are only three models.

TS-473A is half the price of the cheapest of the alternative models and still have a decently performing CPU so that in my opinion is the obvious choice for you. As I have pointed out I don't recommend running the A firewall software on it but if you need more network interfaces you can add the 4-port QXG-2G4T-I225 to get a total of 6*2.5 Gbit/s interfaces.

ECC is very good on all NASes but even more so on those running QuTS Hero and ZFS and TS-473A support ECC. It also have the two additional SSD slots that are needed for the QuTS Hero system volume. If at all possible place your virtual Windows VM disk file on it as well. It won't be as snappy as even a basic Windows PC but it's workable. RDP is better than VNC but should of course not be exposed on the internet and only be used locally.at most 4 drive bays and ZFS/QuTS Hero there are only three models
RAID have never ever been a replacement for backups. Without backups on a different system (preferably placed at another site), you will eventually lose data!

A non-RAID configuration (including RAID 0, which isn't really RAID) with a backup on a separate media protects your data far better than any RAID-volume without backup.

All data storage consists of both the primary storage and the backups. It's your money and your data, spend the storage budget wisely or pay with your data!
P3R
Guru
Posts: 13190
Joined: Sat Dec 29, 2007 1:39 am
Location: Stockholm, Sweden (UTC+01:00)

Re: Tall order for a NAS to fill

Post by P3R »

The dream of a single machine doing everything is far better as a dream than in reality. To begin with it would make you extremely vulnerable as when the NAS go down you instantly lose everything. I'm a long time Qnap, pfSense (so close to OPNsense) and Pi-hole user but I wouldn't rely on the main firewall running on the Qnap. Pi-hole is okay to run on the NAS as there are easy temporary workarounds for any downtime situations.

I maintain several sites and prefer having the firewall on stand-alone hardware to not have all eggs in one basket but on the main site where I have a VMware server anyway I run my pfSense firewall and Pi-hole on it and it's been wonderfully reliable. The uptime of VMware running, even on an entry level server, is superior to the Qnap and it's VMs.

Given your description that you need at most 4 drive bays and ZFS/QuTS Hero there are only three models. https://www.qnap.com/en/product/compare ... t_overview

TS-473A is half the price of the cheapest of the alternative models and still have a decently performing CPU so that in my opinion is the obvious choice for you. As I have pointed out I don't recommend running the internet firewall on it but if you need more network interfaces you can add the 4-port QXG-2G4T-I225 to get a total of 6*2.5 Gbit/s interfaces.

ECC is very good on all NASes but even more so on those running QuTS Hero and ZFS and TS-473A support ECC. It also have the two additional SSD slots that are needed for the QuTS Hero system volume. If at all possible place your virtual Windows VM disk file on it as well. It won't be as snappy as even a basic Windows PC but it's workable. RDP is better than VNC but should of course not be exposed on the internet and only be used locally.
RAID have never ever been a replacement for backups. Without backups on a different system (preferably placed at another site), you will eventually lose data!

A non-RAID configuration (including RAID 0, which isn't really RAID) with a backup on a separate media protects your data far better than any RAID-volume without backup.

All data storage consists of both the primary storage and the backups. It's your money and your data, spend the storage budget wisely or pay with your data!
Post Reply

Return to “Presales”