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ckorhonen

New Around Here
So I've been thinking about a NAS for a while and need some advice on what best meets my needs.

I'm looking for something to use at home as a Plex server. Primarily I'll be streaming to Apple TV and other iOS devices. Also I've been looking at homebridge and airsonos - I'd like to be able to run those on the NAS.

In terms of storage, 2-bay would probably be fine unless there is a decent 4-bay option for the right price. Probably want to start out with at least 4-8Tb usable space. Don't particularly care about redundancy so RAID-0 would likely work. Looking at the QNAP models, I liked the ability to have files automatically backed up to S3/Glacier.

Security features such as full-disk encryption are nice, but wouldn't want to compromise performance too much. I haven't seen many options which offer this at a hardware level.

Support for VMs (preferably Docker, but the QNAP container stuff looks very similar) would be ideal, both for running the services I'm interested in and general "tinkering"!

As I've been looking I've focussed primarily on QNAP and Synology - they seem to have the best features and people generally say good things about them. The QNAP TS-X51+ looks quite attractive.

Budget is flexible, seems like ~$500-700 all-in seems a decent range for most home NAS solutions.

Thanks in advance.
 
QNAP and Synology are the bigger players, but also consider the ReadyNAS line, AsusSTOR, and Buffalo - they're similar.

For VM's - QNAP is a bit ahead here - as they support VM's on the machine itself via KVM/QEMU, and they also have Docker/LXC support (Syno has Docker support as well) - AsusSTOR, if I recall, does support VM's via VirtualBox, but they might have migrated at some point.

QNAP and Synology, FWIW - they both have excellent pre-sales staff - so look at your requirements, and they can guide you to an appropriate solution within their product lines.
 
So lets assume I want to go QNAP - they seem to have the best software and general all round support - which is my best option?

For Plex, I'd imagine I'll be doing a bit of transcoding, though most of my content is in h.264 format already. Mainly to AppleTV, probably no more than 1 person watching at once.

For Docker, I'm looking at hosting a GitLab instance and potentially some Postgres, Redis, Elasticsearch and app server instances (mainly Ruby based) - nothing public, mainly for small projects.

The TS-x51+ looks promising, more than comfortable upgrading the RAM myself, seems like it supports 16Gb, and the quad core processor sounds like it would be good for the Docker stuff.

The TS-x51A has my interest as it has hardware to help with encryption and transcoding (but does anything use it?). The dual-core processor deters me.

The TS-x53A seems like it combines the quad-core processor with the encryption/transcoding hardware albeit slightly more expensive.
 
IIRC, TS-x53a has a better CPU (Gen8LP) along with the AES-NI support.

Be careful with the Docker stuff - running apps in containers is probably ok, but ensure that anything persistent in not inside the container (this is docker, not QNAP specifically) - containers are good for stateless stuff, but anything that you want to keep around, put it on the NAS shared filesystem, and bind it back over - little bit of overhead (not a huge amount), performance over NFS between the containers is pretty good, since everything thing there is over the virtio and soft switch.

(the virtual soft switch, IMHO, is a gem that isn't documented in their presales info so much, but it's fairly complete (Layer 3 even), but it's a bit of a curve to learn, but all Layer 3/Layer 2 switches will have a bit of a curve to them)

QNAP charges a lot for pre-installed RAM, so consider buying a minimal, and then just add your own - Crucial's kit for MacMini 2012 (MacBook Pro 2012) is the same memory (DDR3L-1600) and it's good enough...

If you're going to be doing Docker and VM stuff, more RAM is really a good thing...
 
Thanks, this is really helpful.

I've been using Docker on my Mac for software development and it's a lot cleaner compared to configuring and running individual services. I'd much rather be deploying containers vs. manually installing things.

Was already planning on buying my own RAM - seems like it's the common way for companies to up-charge.

I think right now I'm leaning toward the TS-x53a - probably better to go with the better CPU since it can't be upgraded (or at least I have no desire to!). Now just need to decide between 2 and 4 bay!
 
I've been using Docker on my Mac for software development and it's a lot cleaner compared to configuring and running individual services. I'd much rather be deploying containers vs. manually installing things.

QNAP's Docker is a bit on the older side... 1.11 if I recall, and they haven't kept it up to date...

It's tightly bound to their Linux Station application - along with Container Station.

While's it's interesting for folks to dip their toes into the water - I'm actually running a side car box outside of the QNAP to stay current.

The other option would be to run the KVM/QEMU solution (e.g. Virtualization Station) and run Docker inside it, which works better for SW compat, but there is a performance hit as it's layers within layers...

I have the TS-453Pro - the TS-453A is similar there....
 
This is the summary of 4 bay QNAP vs Synology NAS hardware from my shopping experience in December (reposted from this thread). The comparison of 2 bay NAS is less equivalent, as some of Synology's 2 bay NAS have fewer USB-3 ports and just a single Ethernet port. I didn't consider HDMI ports. I also didn't consider virtual machines, as I am not convinced they make much sense on a device as low powered as a NAS.

Dual-Core 4-bay with AES-NI
TS-451A Powered by dual core Intel N3060. (~$450)
DS416Play Powered by dual core Intel N3060. (~$420)
https://www.qnap.com/en/product/model.php?II=240&event=2
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS416play#spec

Quad-Core 4-bay without AES-NI
TS-451+ Powered by quad core Intel J1900 (~$445 right now. It was under $400 a week ago.)

Quad-Core 4-bay with AES-NI
TS-453A is QNAP's lowest end 4-bay quad-core w/ AES-NI. It is powered by an Intel N3160. (~$580)
DS916+ is Synology's closest competitor to the TS-453A. It is their lowest end 4-bay quad-core w/ AES-NI*. It is powered by an Pentium N3710. (~$550)
https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/model.php?II=212&event=2
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/DS916+#spec

*All current Synology Intel powered NAS have AES-NI, which is why their CPU's look under-spec'd dollar for dollar compared to the older QNAP NAS that use the cheaper/older Intel CPUs that have a little more raw horsepower without AES-NI.

Intel CPU pricing
If you look on Intel's site, the "recommended customer price" of the Intel J1900 Quad Core in the TS-451+ is $82, while the dual core N3060 is $107.00. This at least says that intel thinks the N3060 is a significantly more valuable part and both Synology and QNAP are likely paying a premium to use it over the older J1900.

Comparing raw CPU power
Ignoring the GPU and AES-NI advantage of the N3060, this is what the raw CPU specs look like
  • J1900 is a 2.00 GHz base clock, 2.40 GHz boost clock, Bay Trail-D Quad-Core
  • N3060 is a 1.60 GHz base clock and 2.48 GHz boost clock, Braswell Dual-Core
  • Braswell is just about 5% faster clock for clock and core for core (though that probably varies by task). (easiest to look for general comparisons of the J1900's Bay Trail-D architecture to the N3060's Braswell architecture.)
Boost clocks suggest that the N3060 is definitely faster at single threaded tasks and might be faster at dual threaded tasks.
With tasks using 3 or more threads, the J1900 certainly has and advantage.

Other stuff
There are a few other factors besides raw CPU performance
  • When handling encryption, AES-NI, from what I can tell, gives the N3060 a pretty big advantage.
  • The GPU in the N3060 is much better at transcoding videos, if that is something you need to do.
  • The BTRFS file format Synology uses requires less work for the CPU to do integrity checks and stuff like that
 
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If you look on Intel's site, the "recommended customer price" of the Intel J1900 Quad Core in the TS-451+ is $82, while the dual core N3060 is $107.00. This at least says that intel thinks the N3060 is a significantly more valuable part and both Synology and QNAP are likely paying a premium to use it over the older J1900.

Reason for the pricing difference between J1900 and N3060 has to do with yields (14nm on Braswell, same as Broadwell/Skylake/KabyLake) and demand from the low end laptop crowd - N3060 is the darling of the Chromebook vendors at the moment.

J1900 is actually the better chip in a multi-threaded environment - and the better bargain outside of the Gen8 graphics/AES-NI dependencies...

J1900's better counterpart in the Braswell platform would be the Pentium N3700 quad core...
 
An update - decided to go for the Synology DS916+, my main reasoning:

* A 4-bay solution gives me additional options in future if I want to expand the storage, and the Synology Hybrid Raid gives me more flexibility if I want to mix and match disk sizes (e.g. if larger capacity drives come down in price).
* It's a good price - ~$100 cheaper than an equivalent Qnap and 8Gb RAM upgrade.

The slightly faster CPU is a nice bonus, though I'm generally happy to be getting one with AES-NI support.

In terms of software, I tried the online demos of for both Qnap and Synology - honestly I preferred Qnap, though disliked how both tried to mimic the look and feel of Windows - the faux desktop and weird window dragging behavior is strange! That said, I primarily plan to run things through Docker so not too concerned.

It arrives next week so I'll post another update once I'm all setup.

Thanks for all the advice!
 

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