WHS 2011 Replacement

[Paul-B]

Hi Everyone,

I have an ageing homebuilt Windows Home Server and am considering if a NAS would meet my needs better and be more cost effective than updating the server hardware and software.

The server is currently used for media storage primarily music and video, with no transcoding. I would like to re-use most of the hard drives which are 2 x 1 TB Hitachi 7200 rpm, 2 x 2 TB WD Reds, 2 x 3 TB WD Greens, 2 x 5 TB WD Reds all in RAID 1 arrays.

Given the lack of transcoding would the new TS-831X with the 1.7 GHz processor and 8 GB RAM be suitable, and capable of supporting five 4k video streams concurrently (just thinking of the future here)?

Do the more powerful CPU's and greater memory improve data throughput, or are they for secondary purposes such as transcoding, running VMs, better OS performance, etc. ?

What would be the best configuration for the HDDs given the mixed nature of them, leave everything RAID 1 for now, and at some future time replace the 1 TB HDDs with a pair of 4 TB WD REDs and switch to RAID 5 or RAID 10?

Finally just out of curiosity why do people run VMs on their NAS?

I understand the use of VMs, just not why you would run one on say a TS-853A with 8 GB.

Thanks in advance.

Paul

[dolbyman]

in terms of disks...do yourself a favour and start with all the same size nas drives..no miz and match of weird mismatched sized non nas compatible sizes


in terms of 5x 4k streams ... just do the calculations..is the lan interface fast enough? 1GBit or 10GBit?

just read through the forum what people do with containers and vms...(vms wont work on an arm device though)

[Paul-B]

Thanks for the input, I suppose it's just me being a bit lazy, but I thought there'd be a bit more leeway on a pre-sales forum.

Like most I'm just an IT layperson muddling my way through.

However, I just had a play with 4k material, and the WHS server showed 10% utilisation in Task Manager on a 1 GBit connection, with up to 60% utilisation @ 16x fast forward.

So obviously 10 GBit is the way forward.

With regards to the use of VMs, I work with Hyper-V 2012 on dual CPU Xeon servers with plenty of memory so it seemed odd to run server VMs on a NAS with comparatively limited resources.

As per my original post, I was looking for advice on a choice of QNAP NAS which seems to have been missed, but I appreciate your comment with regards to the mongrel drives, of which 4 are NAS certified WD Reds, as ever domestic budget constraints are there, hence my wish to re-purpose my weird mismatched drives if possible.

I'll try a search on containers as suggested.

Thanks

Paul

[Spider99]

Have a look at Drivepool or Drivebender for pooling drives

[Paul-B]

Spider99,

Looking at your sig, why RAID5 rather than RAID10 (I understand the reduced storage volume), and given my experience with WHS V1.0 I'm slightly leary of Drivepool technology.

Any thoughts as towards which QNAP NAS would be right for me.

Thanks

Paul

[Spider99]

Raid 5 for 8 drives is not the recommended consensus - that would be raid6 - raid 10 loose too much space and loose the wrong two drives and you loose your data - also performance of raid10 is a myth been debunked lots of times.

As my 853A is not my primary storage i can live on the edge with raid5 and restore from my drivepool should the raid fail.

Drivepool and Drivebender are significantly better (not MS products) than what you had in v1.0 - they are free to try and drivepool works with WHS 2011

Running a nas is significantly different than a WHS - takes a bit of learning

If i was to replace my 853a today i would probably go for the 831x - but only because it has 10GB networking IIRC

to stream 5 consecutive 4k streams is a heavy load on the disk subsystem (assuming no transcoding) so good (new) disks would be necessary to sustain the load.

Actual choice of NAS depends on lots of things

Having had a WHS V1.0, WHS2011, 3x NAS and a 2012R2 (with drivepool) - i would upgrade your old 2011 and/or get a small nas to play with first to see if it does what you want - possibly second hand - remember most NAS have low power cpu's for a reason - and your old 2011 may well have a more powerful cpu than even most modern Nas's.

[part deux]

I just moved from WHS V1.0 to a TS-453A

NAS Server works differently, but I haven't looked back. I liked the 453 so much, I bought a TS-231 to use as a backup unit. For a couple of reasons, I'm actually regretting not purchasing a 2nd 453.

Like you, I had a collection of drives. Decided to put (3) 6T Red drives in the 453 using raid 5.

My only real complaint... transfer speed. For some reason, data transfer speed is slow. Not sure if it's a NAS setting that got screwed up, or there's a intranet bottle neck I haven't identified. Even NAS to NAS is way too slow.

Also, everytime NAS operating system is updated, it manages to wipe out Plex app. Most time stopping and restrating app works, but the last time I had to uninstall and reinstall to get it to function again.

[aarbee]

I try to give my 2 cents.
If your only goal is provide data, and a lot of users then would the 831X be a good option.
However I read something about streaming. Do you mean Plex? I think you should look for something better.
On one hand is the CPU not yet supported by Plex, on the otherhand is an ARM cpu.
Considering the number 31, it is even below my 6 year old 239.
Honestly, I do not think it will pull 2 streams, perhaps not even 1.
The 853 is using the Intel N3150 capable of 1688 Passmarks. You need 2000 passmarks for 1 HD stream.

Regarding the harddisks:
I have a different philosophy then the majority here.
I use what I have around. So in my case I did fill up my 673 with a bunch of different notebook disks.
They came out of 2 Qnaps, who have been running at least 3 years on a row.
I also have a few 1 TB red around, in order one older crashes.
I am not really conviced that special NAS disks are that much better then anything else. But maybe is my nas/server not being used that much.
All the disks the same model and mark? Even that is something I am not conviced of. I sometimes think you are better off, for example that you have 8 disks of the same model and brand, and there is factory issue with them, well they have trouble one after the other. Best practice would be to buy every 3-6 monthes a new disks, in order to spread the issue. Or buy different brands. The smallest of them is always in the lead.

Compared to me, a bunch of 400, 500 an 620 gb disks, you are having:
2 x 1 TB Hitachi 7200 rpm, 2 x 2 TB WD Reds, 2 x 3 TB WD Greens, 2 x 5 TB WD Reds all in RAID 1 arrays.
Which means that what ever raid you are going to use, means 8*1TB.
In case you use Raid 10 you have 4 TB left.
And in case of Raid 6 you have 6TB left.
If you need more diskspace then I would phase out the smallest ones. Or use more datapools.

Raid 10 is according to me only interesting if you need a lot of data to be written. And that on the fast.
Raid 6 is slower at writing, but faster at reading.
Security wise: At raid 6, any 2 disk can die, and you can still rebuild. At raid 10 any 2 disks of the same mirror die and you are in trouble.
On the otherhand I would never bet on Raid being a good backup.

I am not sure if a 10GBe network card is that much of a benefit that you choose your device based on the network card. Then even the SFP connector and not the regular RJ45.
Because even at 1GB at constant flow, brings over a lot of data. Concattinating a few networkports would be a nice option too.

Running VM's. I had decided to go the x73 series. Due to the fact that I needed a plex server and a few VMwares.
I know that you can run 2 maybe 3 VM's on the 853. But do not expect good performance.
Eventhough the 831 has more memory, I doubt it will support more VM's.

In short: Raw power is the 853A the better one. Feature wise, is the 831 the better one.

Also look at this: https://www.qnap.com/en/product/contras ... t_overview
The 853 has a better throughput on the network (1GB).

And one rule I learned through all the years of experience.
If you want something faster, it will cost you more energy.
And if something is using more energy it is probably faster.

[Trexx]

Just a chime in here:

If you are doing media streaming to multiple different devices, you potentially could get by with say a 4x1GbE setup using 802.3ad link aggregation (this is assuming your have/get a compatible switch and your connections are hardwired). If you are looking at using wireless for them, then it gets more complicated as most AC class routers do not support 802.3ad link aggregation. So bandwidth could become an issue.

In terms of VM's, the x73 & x82 families have enough CPU horsepower (depending on what you are doing) to run some OK workloads. Nothing graphics intensive, but they can perfom decently especially if you get some SSD storage involved.

While you can run VM's on the smaller boxes (I have an older x53Pro that I use for a test box), remember you are dealing in most cases with celeron class processors then so be realistic and you are fine.

It is a nice capability to have for when you can't quite find a native/community/docker app to fit your needs and have to go full blown VM.

[aarbee]

BTW Paul-B.
In case you go a few Raid-1 setups, think also about the fact that it is not so easy to make from 3x Raid 1, 1x Raid 6.
Even going from Raid 5 to Raid 6 is a nogo.

@ Trexx
The 831 is using a Anapurna Labs CPU. which is to my believe equal to an Arm CPU. Which is what I consider way below the Celerons. Contrast is that this ARM is running fast at the mHz.

[Paul-B]

I've decided to go for a TS-853A-4G, no 10 Gbit but hopefully this won't be a problem for the foreseeable future. My next question is what drives to buy, 4 x 4TB or 3 x 6 TB in RAID 5. Both give the same storage capacity, but I like the greater expansion potential of the 3 x 6 TB array, versus the speed advantage of the 4 x 4 TB. Does this seem a sensible plan, or is RAID 6 a better option, although it's benefits only seem to come into play at 6 disks.

With regards to the 4 Gb of RAM is this a serious bottleneck to data throughput or just limiting to OS/VM performance. If necessary I've budgeted to upgrade the RAM to 16 Gb (unsupported).

Thanks

Paul

[Spider99]

I would go with the 6TB disks and move to Raid6 when you can (4 disks or more)

Ram would only be necessary if you see the ram usage/swap file usage being high - i have 16gb in mine as was going to play with VM's but VS is POS and have not bothered after slow performance and flakiness - although that was awhile ago - early 4.2.x

For just a file server 4GB should be fine - although more is always good

I would also look at port trunking if you have a switch which is compatible and several client pc's/mac's etc

[Paul-B]

TS-853A-4G acquired along with 5 x 6TB WD Red configured in RAID6. I always believe in getting the foundations solid. Will review the options of cache SSD's or extra capacity going forward.

I've had a play with Virtualization Station 3 and is as expected and I believe previously experienced by Spider99 the VM's run in treacle, even old school stuff like Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Win10 is horrible.

But it does what I need well. Still need to configure Time Machine and PC backups. Overall very happy, and may look at upgrading the RAM TO 8 Gb.

Thanks for everyones help.