Qnap TS-673A-8G NAS Storage System

Working in the tech industry for over 20 years I always had a few NASs sitting on my network for backup and general storage. These were large, noisy rack-mounted servers that only did one thing, store data on an array of a dozen or so hard drives. Those NASs sat on the network accessible only by users behind the firewall with no access the the Internet whatsoever. Managing this little NAS has been a piece of cake. I have approximately 40TB of storage between 4 Barracuda HDs in a RAID 5 configuration. I don't ever intend for this little NAS to touch the Internet. I don't believe they should, but connecting a NAS to the Internet has become very popular these days. If I choose, I can aggregate two 2.5GB ports for 5GB of connectivity or add a 10GB network expansion card. Right now my Wi-Fi is 1GB, so until I do some upgrades my infrastructure is rather limited. So far my NAS has been up for 70 days and I have approximately 10 TB of data stored on the NAS. I do a lot of photo and video work so that is the majority of the data on the NAS. The QNAP is loaded with a lot of security features including 2 Factor Authentication which nags you if you do not turn that feature on. Once I am comfortable with QNAP security I may consider remote backup to a third party online repository for offsite backup. Overall it does what I expect of it.

Recientemente compre este servidor NAS para reemplazar a mi antiguo TS-451+ (también 4 cores) que ya se habia quedado algo corto. Cuando lo compre, tenia serias dudas, pues aunque este equipo tiene 8 hilos, sigue siendo quadcore y al no ser Intel, ya no podia contar con las caracteristicas de aceleracion por Hardware. Pero queda sobradamente compensando ya que dispone de la friolera de 8 bahias para discos convencionales, 2 puertos para instalar discos SSD a 1GB/s (el doble que un SSD normal) y mas de 4 veces las velocidad de un disco convencional (yo empleo Exos x16, x18 o Toshiba MG series que ofrecen mas de 200MB/s) y ademas, la posibilidad de instalar otras 2 tarjetas de expansion, para montar una tarjeta de video (ya tendré aceleracion por hardware) u otro disco SSD, esta vez a 4GB/s ! En cuanto a la velocidad de ejecucion de las tareas, se nota una ligera mejoria, pero no excesiva. El uso de CPU ha pasado de algo menos del 50% a aproximadamente el 35%. Posiblemente por el hecho que tuve que ampliar la memoria RAM original desde los 8GB a 64GB (sumando 130€ mas al coste del equipo). Cosas a mejorar: - deberia contar con al menos 32GB de RAM: el fabricante ya avisa que esa es la memoria minima para usar las funciones que incorpora. Los 8 originales solo sirven para encenderlo y poco mas - las bahias de discos convencionales son muy complicadas de manejar. He tenido que conectar y desconectar hasta 8 veces un disco duro para que lo reconozca, posiblemente porque el conector al final se hunde/gira y no hace buen contacto. - los ventiladores hacen un ruido muy molesto cuando estas a menos de 2 metros. Si sales de la habitacion ya no se oye, pero es muy molesto. - el procedimiento de migracion del S.O. falla bastante. Tras seguir todos los pasos descritos por el fabricante, solo reconocio uno de los 3 raid (un RAID1 simple). Tuve que proceder hasta por 4 veces a entrar en el sistema de gestion de discos y reiniciar el NAS otras tantas para que al final lo tuviese instalado. - el procedimiento de migracion de licencias instaladas tambien es mejorable: muchas de las licencias se vinculan al binomio placa base + discos. Cambiar algo signidica perder la licencia, como descubrí por las malas cuando tuve que comprar, otra vez, las licencias del antivirus (otros 25€), y del sistema de vigilancia (otros 70) que aunque se podia transferir, era mentira. Conclusion: - si es tu primer NAS, es una verdadera bestia - si quieres actualizar tu antiguo NAS, piensatelo. Tal vez no valga la pena tener que pagar tanto dinero extra y puedas seguir aprovechando tu antiguo servidor o comprar el hermano pequeño (TS-673A) que cuesta unos 400 € menos, identico en todo, excepto en el numero de bahias de disco (6 en lugar de 8)

There seems to be a fan noise that comes on and offs.

More details and some critical comments follow, but per the title, maybe some background is worthwhile: I've been running a QNAP TVS-871 with i7 processor since 2016. That quietly came to an end, apparently at the same time I went to update firmware from 5.0.1.2277 to some newer version. I told it to update and walked away. I forgot about it totally, then realized the next day I couldn't reach my files, and the VMs I had spun up in Virtualization Station were down. I had a pretty complex setup on my TVS-871: One 10G SFP+ card onboard. One QM2 card with a 512G pair of NVMe disks for my VMs. And in the 8 bays, I was running five 6TB disks for bulk storage, one 3TB disk for CCTV storage, and two 512GB SSDs for SSD caching, and for the record, I believe was active when the 871 crashed. That had me concerned because QNAP instructs you to turn off caching before moving your disks to a compatible NAS. Nothing I tried to recover the TVS-871, including booting without disks, power cycling, firmware restore, etc. produced any workable results - I hooked it up to a monitor at boot, and it would reach varying stages of booting, then hang up totally. Very weird. Results were random: Sometimes it would die at the 'loading kernel' stage. Other times it would get to 'loading drivers'. Once it made it to 'starting services' and Qfinder would see it. There was no logical rhyme or reason to the response. The power supply seemed to be outputting on the 12v/5v/3v rails without falter, so I'm assuming the motherboard finally gave up the ghost? Out of desperation, I checked QNAP's "Compatibility for NAS Migration" page to see what systems supported disk-to-disk transfer with my 871. I found the TS-873A was in the list of compatible migrations for the TVS-871, it had 10 bays, 2 PCI-E expansion ports, supported more RAM, was quad core, and even allowed me to add in a couple of extra M.2 disks. And it just so happens Amazon had it available for next-day shipping within 10% of the cheapest price I could find. So I ordered it, knowing I had 32GB in two sticks of PC4 RAM ready to drop into it on arrival. Needless to say, it came in today. I installed the RAM upgrade, then used Qfinder to locate and update the NAS to the same firmware as my old, dead QNAP, per QNAP's recommendation in the migration compatibility instructions. I numbered my disks to make sure they were installed in the same order with the new NAS, then moved them over one-by-one, then installed the 10G and QM2 cards with with both NVMe, and fired it up with my fingers crossed. IT WORKED. Flawlessly, actually. As QNAP stated, the system fired up, with all settings intact. The only thing I needed to do was update IP info in the Network & Virtualization area, and go into the settings tab on each of my VMs to change the processor type from "i7" to "Opteron" so my VMs would launch. Right now, the RAID is rebuilding on my bulk storage array, with 7 hours left to go before completion. To say I'm overjoyed with this result would be an understatement. I'm sad it cost me over a grand to get here, and I'm sad my 871 failed because I loved it, even though it's outdated tech. However, I do have some other critical feedback to share which others may find helpful! The tool-less disk caddies are interesting to say the least. I don't like that they're plastic. I prefer having metal-based disk caddies like the Enterprise-level NAS devices I work with in my work environments. The added heat dissipation metal trays is useful. It's also a bummer you need to remove one of the tool-less side strips on the caddy to use 2.5 disks. For 3.5 disks, I did use the tool-less side strips, but also applied a couple screws in the tray for safety. These plastic caddies, however, are easier to click into place than the metal ones on my 871. Just doesn't feel as robust, and plastic doesn't dissipate heat very well. I love this thing accepts up to 64GB of RAM! I'm at 32GB after upgrade, and I can't imagine wanting or needing to spend the money for a 2x32 kit, but ... it's nice, if you need that much. It was nice to throw double the RAM at my VMs though, since my 871 was capped at 16GB total. I love the storage expandability options, it's great this thing natively supports two extra M.2 disks directly on-board, and access to where they're housed is convenient! I'll need to dig into the pros and cons of migrating my VMs to the native M.2 ports versus using the QM2. I'm interested to do some benchmarking once my RAID rebuild finishes to see which one offers more performance. I'll really miss having a status display on the front of the case - that was one of the really nice things bout my TVS-871 which is clearly missing on the TS-873A. I wish QNAP sold an aftermarket kit which let you upgrade this, for those who'd want it. I'm stoked the QM2-2P-344 expansion card for M.2 disks I had inside my 871 and my 10G SFP+ expansion card transferred with no issues! But for anyone else in this same boat, hop...

Awesome functionality and features