Low Powered Qnap for virtualization

Printers, HDDs, USB/eSATA drives, 3rd-party programs
Post Reply
jang430
Starting out
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:39 am

Low Powered Qnap for virtualization

Post by jang430 »

Hi all. Long time user of Unraid NAS. I am wondering how low powered NAS can do virtualization, specially if they are ARM powered. In Unraid, if my processor is powerful enough, you can create a gaming VM, with GPU passthrough. For Qnap low powered NAS, are they talking about the same thing? Or is it that the Host is on a different NUC/ Lenovo Tiny device, and have the vdisk on Qnap?

Been reading a lot about Qnap lately, and the built-in software, QTS & QuTS Hero. I'm beginning to see value that it provides. Doing more research, hence the question.
User avatar
dolbyman
Guru
Posts: 35005
Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:11 am
Location: Vancouver BC , Canada

Re: Low Powered Qnap for virtualization

Post by dolbyman »

ARM NAS don't support VM's at all, only limited containers

The consumer Celeron NAS are very limited in terms of virtualization power (low power Celerons)

If you want most bang for the buck you would run virtualization on a standalone server (maybe even second hand Xeon) and not on a NAS
jang430
Starting out
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:39 am

Re: Low Powered Qnap for virtualization

Post by jang430 »

Yes, they don't support VMs running on the NAS. Is it possible to have your VMs on an Intel NUC, Lenovo Tiny, and have Vdisk(?) stored on the ARM NAS? Compute is being done by NUC or Tiny, while the Vdisk is on the ARM NAS via iSCSI?
User avatar
dolbyman
Guru
Posts: 35005
Joined: Sat Feb 12, 2011 2:11 am
Location: Vancouver BC , Canada

Re: Low Powered Qnap for virtualization

Post by dolbyman »

Sure ..both ARM and x86 NAS support ISCSI
User avatar
Moogle Stiltzkin
Guru
Posts: 11448
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2008 12:21 am
Location: Around the world....
Contact:

Re: Low Powered Qnap for virtualization

Post by Moogle Stiltzkin »

celerons are low power... but in terms of vm i'd suggest the amd ryzen cpus.

the x73a has low power cpu with many threads. but the nas not sure if it's in your budget.

keep in mind that the power usage isn't just your cpu, it's also the other components in the nas like HDDS etc, they all add up to total power usage.

check the part specs their watt usage, then use an electricity calculator to get a rough estimate for annual electricity bill costs.

For people measuring existing equip they already own, there are some power meters you can use that will monitor your actual power usage to get the values to then use to calculate your annual bill :'

ssds are low powered but in terms of price per gig they are more costlier than hdds.
NAS
[Main Server] QNAP TS-877 (QTS) w. 4tb [ 3x HGST Deskstar NAS & 1x WD RED NAS ] EXT4 Raid5 & 2 x m.2 SATA Samsung 850 Evo raid1 +16gb ddr4 Crucial+ QWA-AC2600 wireless+QXP PCIE
[Backup] QNAP TS-653A (Truenas Core) w. 4x 2TB Samsung F3 (HD203WI) RaidZ1 ZFS + 8gb ddr3 Crucial
[^] QNAP TL-D400S 2x 4TB WD Red Nas (WD40EFRX) 2x 4TB Seagate Ironwolf, Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-509 Pro w. 4x 1TB WD RE3 (WD1002FBYS) EXT4 Raid5
[^] QNAP TS-253D (Truenas Scale)
[Mobile NAS] TBS-453DX w. 2x Crucial MX500 500gb EXT4 raid1

Network
Qotom Pfsense|100mbps FTTH | Win11, Ryzen 5600X Desktop (1x2tb Crucial P50 Plus M.2 SSD, 1x 8tb seagate Ironwolf,1x 4tb HGST Ultrastar 7K4000)


Resources
[Review] Moogle's QNAP experience
[Review] Moogle's TS-877 review
https://www.patreon.com/mooglestiltzkin
jang430
Starting out
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2021 11:39 am

Re: Low Powered Qnap for virtualization

Post by jang430 »

I actually am an Unraid user. I dictate what CPU to use, as I built the box myself. I'm seeing myself liking the apps of Qnap, which I don't have in Unraid. My current NAS has quite a bit of processing power. But I don't need all that now. All I need is probably 2 VMs, 1 Linux, 1 Windows. Coming from a powerful NAS, going to Qnap, the processing power is quite a drop. If I'm buying Qnap, I'm sure the processing power won't come near to what I have before.

@dolbyman mentioned above that iSCSI is supported. Are there any other ways to have host on a different box, and disks on the Qnap apart from using iSCSI?

@Moogle Stiltzkin, I don't want to rely on the cpu power of the NAS itself, as I fear if I'm going to use a virtual desktop on the NAS, user experience may not be good.
Post Reply

Return to “Hardware & Software Compatibility”