TVS-682 & Thunderbolt 3 PCIe card

[vakavanha]

Is it possible to install Thunderbolt 3 PCI card for fast DAS use, a card like:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboard-Acc ... fications/

[Thunderbolter]

Unlikely. I don't speak for QNAP but ask yourself: would you as a vendor support the installation of hardware into your NAS that competes with an existing product you make? QNAP charges close to $500 for the upgrade (see Amazon prices for TVS-882 vs TVS-882T). I don't see official QNAP Thunderbolt retrofit kits being offered either.

So unless you can figure out how to fool an existing QNAP environment into thinking it can and should support Thunderbolt, I don't think it will work.

Plus, keep in mind that the Thunderbolt interface does not turn the QNAP NAS into a DAS. The NAS will show up as a server (thunderbolt IP) not as a thunderbolt hard drive in your browser.

Also, the QNAP implementation effectively requires you to dedicate a thunderbolt port to the device. Didn't work for me as I have a MacBook Air (only one thunderbolt port) and a thunderbolt monitor.

[wphalvorson81]

Connecting to Windows PC seems to be an issue, but should work as a DAS with Mac according to this:
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/model.php?II=232

It states: "
DAS file-based mode

You can directly access files on the TVS-882T on a file-based level. Simply attach your Mac computer to the TVS-882T with a Thunderbolt™ 2 cable, and you will find the TVS-882T in Finder with accessible shared folders available for you. It is plug-and-use, and completely simple.
"

[fabriziorizzo]

@wphalvorson81
The whole "DAS" bit on the QNAP site is all marketing optics, and VERY misleading technically... it's still a NAS pure and simple - just with multiple physical interconnect options. Still limited to AFP, CIFS, NFS, or iSCSI network protocols for volume mounts. It's doesn't represent as a block device like other TB arrays.

Even connected via thunderbolt, the storage array volumes show up as network file share volumes over IP, not DASD. It uses the thunderbolt networking capability (you have an IP address for the TBolt interfaces on the NAS), and does NOT provide the same block-level storage device connectivity as say a Promise Pegasus P2 array.
Your QNAP device will show up in a System Report as "nas" in the thunderbolt device tree list, but the volumes will NOT show up on the Storage list like a DASD array volume will, and will not have a /dev/disk# device assignment, rather the mounted volumes show up under the System Report Network > Volumes list as either afpfs (Apple File Protocol) or cifs (Windows File Sharing) volume types depending on which network service type you have enabled and used to mount the volume.

On that note, I've had problems accessing my _other_ DASD arrays when connected to the same TBolt device chain as the QNAP NAS when rebooting my Mac Pro. Something about how the QNAP software driver initializes the IP-over-TB networking on that interface for sensing the QNAP NAS via TBolt seems to conflict with the DASD block device initialization/negotiation that needs to occur with the other disk arrays. To resolve, I either have to unplug the QNAP NAS from TBolt before I reboot, or I have to unplug it afterwards (with my other DASD Array volumes MISSING/FAILING TO MOUNT), and waiting for the other arrays to sense the mac and reconnect the block storage. The second option ** as none of my volumes mount at boot and services that depend on them fail... so if I need to reboot my MacPro, I have to go over to the network closet, disconnect the QNAP NAS from the end of the TB chain, go back to my edit bay, reboot the mac, wait for everything to mount properly during boot, then go back to the closet and reconnect the QNAP NAS. Naturally, QNAP thinks this is everybody else's problem.

I have two DASD arrays on that chain (Mac > Promise Pegasus P2 > Drobo 5D > QNAP TVS-1282T)

One caveat/exception to this:
If you configure iSCSI volumes appropriately, and have the appropriate iSCSI drivers on your Mac, then - and only then - can you actually mount network-attached block storage devices from the QNAP NAS to your Mac and have them show up as be treated as actual disk volumes, all other choices you can make for configuration give you network attached storage volumes, not disk volumes

[wphalvorson81]

Thanks for the in depth response fabriziorizzo. It seems both my supplier and myself were fooled by their marketing.

[wishmopp]

Hi All

So it's now 5 Years later, there is an official QNAP Thunderbolt 3 Expansion card on the market. (PCIe Gen3 x 4)
I have this mentioned TVS-682 NAS as well and was thinking about buying this expansion card. In combination with a powerful Mac Mini it would make a cool combo.

Did the support for this card (for older Models) change somehow? Is it better? Did someone already tried it?

On the Expansion Card it's written: "Applied Models: TVS-h1288X, TVS-h1688X"
So it's not specifically supported, but those lists are quite often outdated and EOL devices are of course not listed. To be honest: I'm not very optimistic, as those 2 Models are QuTS Hero NAS. If it would've been the same OS, the chance of device-support would have been much higher.

Br

[Don]

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