Getting started with my new NAS box - QNAP TS-419P
It seems that any modern home should have a network-attached storage server (NAS) with multimedia capabilities, so I have decided to move from my old setup based on servers, file shares and application services over the network to a new setup based a NAS box offering a server providing file shares and application services over the network. Why ? Mostly because of smaller size; lower power consumption; lower noise - and I needed som extra disk space anyway.
Technically the move is from Linux servers to a Linux based NAS box, so in reality it can be tweaked to do most of the tasks the full blown server did, but not quite, a less capable CPU does set limitations.
Why did I choose QNAP TS-419P ?
There are literally dozens of well performing NAS solutions on the market, so why did I settle on QNAP TS-419P ?
Requirements
First of all my requirements are dead simple:
- Low noise.
- Less power consumption than my current server.
- A few TB of storage.
- I am tired of crashing disks, testing my backup scheme. RAID is a must.
- Windows and Unix shares.
- Simple administration. Must include both web and command line interfaces.
- Price. It must be affordable as I am paying out of my own pocket.
Pretty basic needs. A lot of wants and desires including UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), preferably supporting the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard - although I did expected it to be a very hard task to beat MythTV. And of cause, a sensible design and some level of support would not hurt.
As RAID is a must, and RAID 1 seems a bit expensive (50 % reduction in capacity), I decided on RAID 5 requiring 3 or more disks. So I needed at least 3 disk slots. More would be nice. This narrowed the field a bit.
The price per byte is currently lowest on 1.5 TB disks on the Danish Market. In a RAID 5 configuration, three disks would result in (3-1)*1.5 TB = 3 TB and one third of the capacity used for parity information. Four disks would result in (4-1)*1.5 TB = 4.5 TB and one quarter of the capacity used for parity information. Five or more disks would result in a higher proportion of the purchased capacity being available for my data, but also in more space than I currently need. So I opt for a 4 disk configuration.
I did a very basic research on The Net, and asked around for other peoples experiences. In the end the personal recommendations and low power consumption and noise made the difference, combined with easily available documentation and specifications (a very convincing array of supported features did not hurt).
I chose this one, and not its cheaper sibling QNAP TS-410, as I was told the extra CPU power was very necessary.
What did I get ?
So how did the purchased product match my requirements ? Pretty well I think.
Low noise should be a prime concern in any home environment. This box is not making itself heard when situated in my office. I would not place it in a living room or even worse contemplate sleeping close by it. Mind You, I am touchy on this one. I have not measured the sound level, but subjectively the noise is masked by the surroundings as soon as any daily activity is ongoing. Especially when the fans stops (temperature controlled). I would say that You do have the major control of the noise level of the combined system since You choose which disks to mount in it. I moved it from under my desk to a remote part of the house (close to the fastest switch in the house) - mostly because my foot under the desk had a, rather disturbing, tendency to gently touch the power button on the NAS.
Power consumption. The box is specified to use 26 W when operating. You need to add the power consumption of the actual disks to this number, I expect. Anyway this is far below 10 percent of the power consumption of the server it is replacing.
Capacity. I ended up having 4.5 TB at my disposal. It is "A few TB of storage". Not out of disk space yet, but I am working on it. Luckily the unit has a nice upgrade path to larger disks. In place upgrade that is.
Administration and price are very much a matter of personal preferences. I like what I got, especially the ability to ssh into the box and do the configuration and administration using scripts.
RAID and shares requirements are met - SMB and NFS shares.
And then there is a bit more, most notably:
- Rsync - very handy for moving larger data sets. A real plus !
- iSCSI Target - nice for my virtual machines
- Media Server - TwonkyMedia Server is not bad. I just prefer MythTV.
- Web Server - useful for some, I use an other solution
- FTP Server - useful for some, I use an other solution
- MySql Server - useful for some, I use an other solution
- Print Server - for usb based printers. Nice. I have not tried it. My printer has its own network interface.
- iTunes Server - Nice. The younger ones have not discovered it Yet. They will.
Oh, and by the way, once you do fire up ssh, You will find a rather decent Linux distribution at the other end. Extendable of cause.
If You don't, the web based administration interface seems to mostly work - I have a feeling that the JavaScript used is very touchy (if this hunch is true, it is poor coding in my opinion). It mostly works in Opera. In Firefox it does not. Not at all.
Upgrade to the latest (at the time of writing) firmware version 3.2.3 Build0212 is strongly recommended.
The official forums reflects some of the problems encountered by the users. Check them out and judge by yourself. The wiki is another source of user created information.
I do not want to experiment with new and exiting stuff on the appliance which holds the only copy of some of our pictures. So I formatted the disks using the old ext3 file system not the new and improved ext4 file system, in my humble opinion it has not been around long enough for this kind of data. I have not tried it, but it is claimed that this box can backup to Amazon S3.
On the whole I seem to have a new tool working - at least all the functions I need. Not perfect, but quite OK - all important features seems reliable. I haven't been able to find the bug tracker yet ...