TVS 672n compatibility / good choice?

[Neo11145]

Good evening,
i am looking to buy a new nas for our small medium company. Would be cool, if my choice makes sense.

1x QNAP TVS-672N-i3-4G
2x 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 (Raid 1)
2x 6000GB Seagate IronWolf Pro 7200(Raid 1)
2x 8GB Crucial CT8G4SFS8266 DDR4-2666 SO-DIMM CL19 Single (does it work) or just 1 module with 16gb?

Plan: Qnap software/system as well as our company Software should run on the Nvme. Later the virtualization as well.
The Ironwolf saves everything else

Thank you and have a nice evening.

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

x72N series is one of their latest models where they integrated m.2 NVME into the model itself. it also comes with 5Gbe

if you need 10Gbe or if you also want more NVME m.2 slots, you can get the QM2 addon card to install in it.


Here are some reviews for the X72N series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM-0QorA7M0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9dRxA7FcHQ

This is video editing performance test
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpIheY7JhGo


Keep in mind that this X72N uses a Intel Core i3-8100T 4-core 3.1 GHz Processor

For VM usage, you will be limited by how many threads that is available for creating the VMs, and leaving a minimum of 1 core or more for the NAS itself.

Personally i use a TS-877 series with AMD Ryzen cpu which has 6 cores 12 threads, vs the Intel's 4 cores 4 threads. So in regards to VM the AMD is the clear winner. because more threads means being able to run MORE vm instances, or MORE powerful vms with multiple threads assigned to it, with enough spare threads left for NAS itself.

If you are fine with the Intel in that aspect for your VM needs, then thats fine. If you need more, then i suggest the Ryzen model, or perhaps an Intel cpu with more threads as required for VM usage.
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/946/AM ... -8100.html

In summary, the TVS-672N is great if you think it will have sufficient threads for your VM usage. if not, i suggest you look at the other QNAP models with cpus with more threads e.g. Ryzen or perhaps the newer Intel cpu models


I would also suggest a model that supports qts hero. Which is qnap's upcoming new zfs LINUX file system. which offers many benefits
https://www.qnap.com/qts-hero/en/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQtqahHh4d4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRMuNb27WxM

However since it's new, it will be considered beta to some (beta + business, don't often mix well). But you can in future have the option to upgrade to QTS hero from ext4, when you see that it is reported as stable by other users. ZFS Linux has so much benefit, which is why i strongly recommend it. So i would suggest getting a model that is capable of running it.

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

2x 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 (Raid 1)
2x 6000GB Seagate IronWolf Pro 7200(Raid 1)
2x 8GB Crucial CT8G4SFS8266 DDR4-2666 SO-DIMM CL19 Single (does it work) or just 1 module with 16gb?

also why 500gb ? in raid 1, you essentially get only 500gb usable space. you'll be using the SSD for installing QTS, the qpkgs and your VMs on it. I don't think 500gb will be enough?

For business, maybe 2x2tb SSD is required? depends how much storage you require. but at 2tb ssd, does the price become premium pricing category so only buy if you need this much space.

May i suggest perhaps 2x1tb m.2 nvme SSDs at minimum? because the pricing for 1tb ssds has dropped to more reasonable levels. Also for company budget, this should be well within reach, even for regular home users.

For VMs, it is strongly recommended to install VM OS onto SSDs for the best performance. You can still make your HDD raid array accessible for the VMs in order to store regular digital data like videos, music, documents etc. You are only using the SSD for install your OS and applications because of the fast latency and speed.

If you want best transfer performance for 5gbe and 10gbe, for the hdd raid array to benefit from, you could setup a separate SSD cache acceleration (which would require more SSD purchases)
https://blog.qnap.com/10gbe-walkthrough-en/


if you require 16gb of ram, i suggest you get 2 sticks e.g. 2x8gb The reason being dual channel requires 2 sticks. Dual channel offers better performance over running a single ram stick.

What is Dual Channel Memory and Why Does it Matter? (w/ Benchmarks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0jb0hCMXfo


For ZFS, qnap suggested 8gb ram minimum. but if you are using vm, you need more ram since you will be allocating between vm, the QNAP, and the QTS Hero ZFS linux Deduplication feature. If you add all that up, then i suggest 32gb ram.

If you don't want to use dedup, then 16gb ram may be okay. Just keep in mind that 16gb will be split between your QNAP QTS, and your VMS. QNAP tends to run ok with 4-8gb ram, so if you allocate 8gb ram to the QNAP, you have 8gb ram left to allocate for VM usage. So buy ram based on what you will be using, this will be important to identify early on.


in regards to storage you best figure this out. calculate based on amount of users, how much space you intend to allocate between them, or how much storage capacity in total you have. Separated between SSD raid1 (OS, VMs, Apps usage) and HDD raid1 (for storing your digital files, because hdds are cheaper than SSDs and can store the most. when you expand to 4 hdds, you can then switch to raid5)


Make sure you also have a backup plan. To fit into your budget, if you don't already have a backup.
https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/ ... _a_backup/

[Neo11145]

Thank you

i will only use one VM with windows 10. So i think that the CPU will be powerful enough. I can also switch the cpu later on to a 8700T for example.

about QTS hero. Is there any list, where i can find the different supported models? The models which already have QTS are a little bit overpowered and not suitable for our needs. However, i guess that we could upgrade the 672n to QTS hero later on?!?

Okay. then i will get the 1GB nvme twice.
Later i will upgrade to 10gbe. I dont think we will need the ssd cache, because everything important is already an the nvme.

Anything else i need to think about?

[Neo11145]

Concerning RAM.

VM windows 10, QTS hero, backup with dedup -->16GB or 32GB?

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

Concerning RAM.

VM windows 10, QTS hero, backup with dedup -->16GB or 32GB?

for me, i'm not quite using vm much, so i'd need the ram for QTS and dedupe for a 4x4tb, so i'll be using 16gb, which is probably cutting it close. there are other opinions that 32gb recommended if you plan on using dedupe, if you check the forum for what other users are saying.

But if you add vm into the mix, 32gb may be the safer choice

[Dic3man]

One thing to add is that no GPU (currently) can passthrough to VM on 672N.
GPU is only avaialble to container station.

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

One thing to add is that no GPU (currently) can passthrough to VM on 672N.
GPU is only avaialble to container station.

thats weird is that a bug or by design?

Nvidia graphics card can be installed on this model can it?

[dolbyman]

I think models with intel IGPU always had trouble (driver issue?)

so only Intel Xeon and AMD models (with no IGPU) support VM pass though of GPU's

[Dic3man]

Yes it can be installed but currently no support for VM.
I recently bought one and learned this the hard way, I have put in a feature request for it though (dont know if those who answer the tickets are "techaware" but he said they would put it in as a request but ofcourse no timetable (but atleast it wasnt a certain NOT POSSIBLE).
My mistake was that I was planning on buying the 672XT (which also has the same CPU) and read all the specs for that model many times and since that one had support for VM (most GPUs) I deducted that the 672N also would have it since it was supposed to be a "scaled down" XT model without TB and 10GBe.

[Neo11145]

What does it mean concerning the VM and gpu?

[Dic3man]

What does it mean concerning the VM and gpu?

On most NAS devices that has the possibility you can install a PCIe GPU card and in many cases you can pass this GPU to the virtual machine (for some reason TVS-672N doesnt support this yet its only supported in container station).
However I have ran a VM in my TVS-672N with 16GB RAM and it works good even without this support, if you want to run any more "graphicintense" stuff then it wouldnt work as good.

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

i've tested using vm with nvidia graphics on a ts-877.

how this works is, you have an option to set the nvidia graphics as your output for the vm. which would then require toggling graphics to use Virtual station mode, apply then reboot your NAS.

then in virtualstation, when configuring your VM, for the graphics settings, select the nvidia graphics card.

You then have to connect your monitor to the QNAP via HDMI.

that is how it works.


But like Dic3man pointed out, even without a graphics card, you can still use the VM and have a video output. But this is through the network via either VNC or RDP. I strongly recommend using RDP because the smoothness of the video output was noticeably better than when using VNC.

I tested RDP using a desktop pc using windows 10. It's really simple, just click the win10 start icon, type "rdp", select remote desktop connection. Then enter your NAS credentials to login (obviously your vm has to be running).

So yes VM can still work.

However if you want the best fps and graphics, then i don't think RDP will beat hooking the video output direct using HDMI. Correct me if i am wrong on this.

anyway it's weird that this model can install a graphics card (based on comments above), but cannot utilize it for VM like a ts-877 can. Perhaps a future qts will fix this ? But right now if you need a working graphics card for VM, probably stick to the models where it does work e.g. ts-x77 series.

[Dic3man]

However if you want the best fps and graphics, then i don't think RDP will beat hooking the video output direct using HDMI. Correct me if i am wrong on this.

Yeah thats true I am guessing most people use VMs for things that dont require a GPU so its certainly good enough to use for other things (testing, serverapps etc).
I was planning on hooking up the GPU to a VM and then do some basic gaming just for the hell of it but not at this time.

And as you said moogle its weird that 672XT (same cpu and almost equal except TB and 10GBe has this possibility).
From what I have read 672N was supposed to be a scaled down model of the more expensive 672XT for customers that didnt need/want TB or 10GBe.
But it could just be such a simple thing that because the 672N is one of their latest model maybe they havent gotten around to "fixing" this yet.
GPU will work in container station though so if you want to run plex or handbrake or other stuff it can work there.
The annoying this is that you can even choose the virtualization station in the interface and then it says to reboot but it doesnt actually do anything.

[sunny1283]

An update for those that missed it, you can now do GPU passthrough on the 672N, the latest update of virtualization station enables it. I just tested it and it works!