QNAP NAS Community Forum

I've been researching this but can't get a simple answers.
If I install a QNAP 877/1277 in my office, can I used it with a monitor / keyboard and actually use it as my PC by setting up a VM for Linux Mint 19 and / or Windows 7/10?
The beast would have more horsepower for anything I do and I would assume it would be relatively quiet enough.
I would likely use the NAS mostly for keeping family archives of images and videos and create a portal to allow relatives to load it up.
I will likely use it as a PLEX server also for streaming videos throughout the household.
I just can't see the limitations and I would expect data throughput locally to be ultra-fast.
I would think that I would easily be able to operate in many environments such as using the built in QNAP software for simply moving files around from USB sticks/ SD cards, etc onto the drives and then in Mint operating as my primary PC environment. I mostly use the web for 99% of what I do.

Thoughts and comments are appreciated. If anyone is already doing this, I sure would like to hear about it.

Ok..I will answer you simply.

Yes - You can use your Q877 as a desktop replacement running a Win10/Linux VM BUT you will need to purchase a supported video card to do that as there is no embedded GPU in the Ryzen 1600/1700 processors. I would stay in the NVidia line of GPU's and right now many vendors have deals on the Nvidia cards such at 1050/60/etc. Just be careful in regards to the card dimensions.

You assign the GPU to your VM (can only be assigned to 1 at a time) and then hookup a keyboard / monitor and you are ready to go. I recommend Logitech keyboard & mouse combo's or trackpad as I have had good luck in general with them. I also would recommend installing a mirrored set of SSD's (m.2 or 2.5") for housing your VM if you want to maximize performance.

Keep in mind though that it won't be a "quiet" PC though either as you have 2-3 fans for the HDDs (depending on model) + CPU Fans. Also some HDD's are "noisier" than others so while make sure you use drives on the compatibility list, not all brands/models make the same amount of noise.

The NAS itself will handle your other storage needs fine.

Without knowing your streaming requirements with Plex such as # of concurrent streams, whether the plex clients support direct play vs. need transcoding, etc. it is a little harder to give an answer. It also depends on how heavy your VM usage would be at the same time. If you will have multiple concurrent streams and VM, you might want to make sure you have a switch that support LAG (Ling Aggregation) so you can make use of multiple 1Gb connections to support multiple clients.

File movement is not a big deal... QNAP has it's own built in file manager and supports the standard file protocols (SMB, NFS, AFP, etc.).

I am doing this with my 1277! It works great for the most part. I am running a nvidia 1050 video card. The NAS is my PC, storage, Security DVR, and Plex server as well has hosting some websites and various other apps.
hard drives make noise so I can say its quite but mine is in a separate room from my monitor so I don't really hear it. Performance wise it does great.

My biggest headaches with the setup are usb, audio and the monitor sleeping.
USB isn't that big of deal after you get it all setup but i had to attach the usb devices a lot during setup make sure you have another pc to login to the NAS management.
The audio for me comes though the hdmi it works great for about 15 min and then starts getting out of sync or acting funny.
The monitor when it goes asleep would comeback to a black screen but not come fully on. I set the computer power settings to never sleep and never turn the lcd off. I just turn it off when I am done.

cibrd0wn wrote:...mine is in a separate room from my monitor so I don't really hear it.
...//...
My biggest headaches with the setup are usb, audio and the monitor sleeping.

To me that read out exactly as: "Forget it, using the NAS as a desktop was a bad idea as you either have listen to the not insignificant noise or suffer from multiple usability issues".

I've been using my TS-877 as my primary gaming / photo editing workstation since I purchased it a few months ago. It works spectacularly well for both of those tasks, both of which are relatively demanding but not taxing (full specs in my sig).

Gaming: I've found that No Mans Sky, Stellaris, and Civ VI work great (note: NMS works at least as well as on other systems; it's notoriously buggy).

Photo / video editing: Lightroom and Photoshop work very well. Photoshop is extremely smooth. I haven't tried editing 4K video yet but it's on my to-do list.

VM image is *always* on the SSD. There's no critical data on the VM (it's all in the cloud for gaming or in an iSCSI share on the main array for photos/video). I backup the virtual image once every few weeks just to have a system restore point if I ever corrupted the config.

i also tested the VM on the ts-877 and can confirm that the shares made in QTS can be also linked to the VM created (in my case was windows 10)

so i could access these files from the VM.

what i didn't manage to test was whether a cloud backup service like backblaze private can backup your entire NAS via tricking it into thinking the contents of the VM linked network drives is not a NAS. i heard it MAY be possible, but i did not see any conclusive evidence pointing to success.

how to create vm with virtual station
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Also if you are using VM, it's recommended you setup the VIRTIO enhancement to improve hard drive performance. it won't be matching baremetal performance, but it will sufficiently good enough
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