TVS-X73 Reliable? QNAP Business Ready?

[dfischer]

I'm looking for cheap and highly reliable NAS storage for PC backup for 17 sites. I somewhat value the flexibility of the QNAP hardware, and I'd keep a few of whatever around our datacenter just as a low end/hi capacity emergency data store too.

I'd planned on buying TVS-673 for most of our sites and 873's for large sites and our data centers.

Except I bought a 673 to pilot and my folks tell me it's error riddled. At first it wouldn't boot reliably. Post firmware update it worked for a few days and then stopped booting all together.

I sent it back.

If the general consensus is QNAP is business class stable I'll buy another one and consider it a fluke. This time I'll buy the TVS-873 unless this forum tells me it's not stable and I should look at a different family that offers 6 and 8 bay options.

Or am I expecting too much and I need to buckle down and buy Synology? (and sacrifice power and flexibility for reliability)

Thanks for your thoughts!

D

[aspomwell]

I absolutely love my TVS-673. I would never use it in a work environment.

I had a problem with CPU spiking whenever SAMBA was turned on. For the first 10 days I had it, the CPU fan ran at it's highest setting at least 50% of the time until I found a thread that suggested turning off SAMBA. Of course in my windows environment, that made it very difficult having to rely on NFS and FTP.

My ticket was open with them for over 3 weeks and their support was pretty much non-existant. I got much quicker responses from this forum but of course there comes a point where you have to open a ticket (which I'd already done). I ended up having to take time off from work twice before I finally found someone who suggested something that worked*. With the support options available, there is no way any QNAP product should be deployed in a production environment.

*my specific problem still isn't fixed, but we found a workaround that's working until they can fix it in firmware. Whenever I use the first network interface LAN1 the problem occurs. Currently have it plugged into LAN2 and it's not a problem.

[dfischer]

As I'd feared. Yet my information suggested QNAP is one of the top two NAS players. Basically market share appears to go in the order of:
Synology
QNAP
Drobo
Netgear

Are any of these business class reliable and properly supported?
(I don't care if I have to pay for support. In fact I prefer it.)

[dolbyman]

Real business class hardware(+ tech service etc.) needs business class money

QNAP does not have any service techs that come out to trouble shoot , so If you want that you need to look at other options

[aspomwell]

Maybe you can contact them but I'm not aware of any extra support tiers. It's also possible there are 3rd party support vendors that have QNAP experts or support connections that aren't available to the public, I'm sure the pre-sales guys can let you know if there are.

I view all of those items listed above as consumer level vendors. If you want business level support you'd need to select a business class product (netapp, dell/emc, HP) although the prices go up an order of magnitude to start (not to mention 20% annually for support!). Purestorage has an awesome all flash array!

[Trexx]

I absolutely love my TVS-673. I would never use it in a work environment.

I had a problem with CPU spiking whenever SAMBA was turned on. For the first 10 days I had it, the CPU fan ran at it's highest setting at least 50% of the time until I found a thread that suggested turning off SAMBA. Of course in my windows environment, that made it very difficult having to rely on NFS and FTP.

My ticket was open with them for over 3 weeks and their support was pretty much non-existant. I got much quicker responses from this forum but of course there comes a point where you have to open a ticket (which I'd already done). I ended up having to take time off from work twice before I finally found someone who suggested something that worked*. With the support options available, there is no way any QNAP product should be deployed in a production environment.

*my specific problem still isn't fixed, but we found a workaround that's working until they can fix it in firmware. Whenever I use the first network interface LAN1 the problem occurs. Currently have it plugged into LAN2 and it's not a problem.

Can you give me the helpdesk ticket # of this? I can get it to a contact at QNAP as I have NOT had this experience on my TVS-x73 and I run SAMBA/NFS/AFP all day long (along with QSirch even) with Port 1&2 Trunked no less.

[Trexx]

QNAP is definitely one of the main players in the "Home/SMB" market NAS providers which is the segment the TVS-x73 falls into. They also have an enterprise assortment of products.

Their upper end enterprise products are competing in the Enterprise NAS market which is dominated by vendors such as EMC/NetApp/Oracle/etc. and are based on completely different technology than the TVS would be.
You can find out more information about their enterprise products here: https://enterprise-nas.qnap.com/en/

As for whether you should use them in a business, I think it really depends on a couple things.

1) You knowledge/skill level. IF you aren't versed in NAS/Enterprise technologies, buy from a reseller who is who can support you. While I have had decent results with QNAP support overall, they are NOT a replacement for 24x7 support, but you also aren't paying for that either in the price of their products.

2) What are you going to be using it for? I know Bob Z. on the board deploys alot of QNAP in business settings in the video/photography related markets and it works well. They work very well for some things, but for example I wouldn't use one as a replacement for a VMware ESXi server. You could use various QNAP products as backend storage for an ESXi server though.

Be careful though of underspending now, which could cost you in the long run alot more. Make sure you know what you WILL use it for, and what you MIGHT use it for and be very clear on those items when deciding on which model, how many drives, etc. to purchase.

[aspomwell]

Can you give me the helpdesk ticket # of this? I can get it to a contact at QNAP as I have NOT had this experience on my TVS-x73 and I run SAMBA/NFS/AFP all day long (along with QSirch even) with Port 1&2 Trunked no less.

Sure thing. #KRC-130-73215

When we finally found the solution (the second time I called in) the technician actually went to talk to the engineers and had me on hold for about 20 minutes. He mentioned that they had had a couple instances of this specific problem and that's why he had me try switching the nics but it wasn't widespread. I have no idea how mine was different. I seem to be using basic components, nothing that's not on the compatibility list (although I have since added a UPS that's not on the list). As a matter of fact, my system almost matches the one in your sig.

[Trexx]

Can you give me the helpdesk ticket # of this? I can get it to a contact at QNAP as I have NOT had this experience on my TVS-x73 and I run SAMBA/NFS/AFP all day long (along with QSirch even) with Port 1&2 Trunked no less.

Sure thing. #KRC-130-73215

When we finally found the solution (the second time I called in) the technician actually went to talk to the engineers and had me on hold for about 20 minutes. He mentioned that they had had a couple instances of this specific problem and that's why he had me try switching the nics but it wasn't widespread. I have no idea how mine was different. I seem to be using basic components, nothing that's not on the compatibility list (although I have since added a UPS that's not on the list). As a matter of fact, my system almost matches the one in your sig.

I sent a note off to my QNAP contact on this and will let you know if I hear something back. I assume you are running the latest QTS 4.3.3 b238.

[aspomwell]

I sent a note off to my QNAP contact on this and will let you know if I hear something back. I assume you are running the latest QTS 4.3.3 b238.

Is the 'b' a typo or does that denote beta? I'm running the latest stable build, 4.3.3 0238. There were two firmware updates while my case was open and I was told it was fixed in the updates but it wasn't. At least it's not an issue since we found a work-around and I don't plan on teaming up my nics anytime soon.

[Trexx]

b stands for Build