New user considering TS-673 for TimeMachine backups and media storage

[engstrom]

Howdy,

I'm a new user on this forum, and a user that is new to NASes. I do have a lot of experience in technology in general - I'm a software "engineer" for a small company and have worked with *nix OSes and network gear for 30+ years. I have 2 MacBook Pros (1 for me and 1 for my wife) and an iMac at home. I'm about to pull the trigger on a TS-673, a 16GB memory upgrade (question about that in a minute), and 3 IronWolf 8TB drives. But before I pulled the trigger on it I thought I would ask for feedback from those of you who have been using NASes in general and QNAPs in particular for a while.

First, have you found that upgrading memory is worthwhile for mainly file server services? I expect I'll probably use the QNAP PlexServer a little bit, but my main usage is going to be Time Machine backups for the 3 Macs and reading/writing media files (pictures and video). And really, the memory is so cheap ($64) that even if there isn't much benefit it seems like a reasonable thing to add.

For anyone that's used their NAS as a Time Machine backup drive, what type of write speeds do you typically see? Is the bottle neck the network? I can achieve 70+ MB/s across 802.11ac for large file transfers (from wireless MBP to 1GB ethernet wired iMac). I assume a Time Machine backup is dealing with smaller writes so it's likely to be less efficient?

I intend to setup a sparse bundle on the NAS to mount from my iMac and use for Apple Photos and iMovie library files. Anyone run into any gotchas for that scenario?

Any other feedback you'd care to share?

Thanks,
J.P.E.

[Trexx]

Welcome Engstrom,

As for memory, I would say 16GB is a good upgrade. Some packages like QSirch (for indexing content) are memory hungry, so having some extra isn't a bad thing. Qnap's "OS" (QTS) can also use some of the memory for storage caching (always have a good UPS if you will use that).

In terms of using the NAS for Photo's, TimeMachine, etc., you are going to get the best performance by using hardwired 1GbE connection. While you can do it via wifi, you are going to notice the impact by going remote to the NAS (especially via WiFi).

Also you are going to see better performance the more drives you have if you are running multiple heavy I/O items at the same time (depending on how your NW is configured) as more spindles = more IOPS & higher Throughput.

If you are going to use with Plex (and will need video transcoding), get a supported NVidia GPU (see Qnap's compatibility page) and a Plex Pass subscription, and you can leverage HW transcoding which is much easier on the CPU than SW transcoding will be.

T.

[engstrom]

Thanks Trexx. Yeah, I understand the limitations (and relatively slower speeds) of using WiFi for backup, but the convenience outweighs the loss of speed for the laptops. The main iMac where almost all of the photos/videos are will be using 1GbE. And part of the reason I wanted a 6-bay was the ability to add more drives if I needed more performance and/or storage. I'll see how a 3 drives perform and if I'm getting insufficient
IOPS then add more drives.