Instead of running applications on NAS units through a direct install or virtualization, I've seen people using Docker containers. It seems like a great way for a software vendor to get an application set up exactly how it should be running, and then anyone who supports Docker can benefit.
This is one of the most intriguing design features of Rockstor (a DIY NAS OS similar to FreeNAS but built of Linux/BtrFS instead of BSD/ZFS). More of these should adobpt containers for sure though.
FreeNAS is "built on" BSD, much in the same way many routers are "built on" Linux. You don't need to know anything about BSD to use FreeNAS.
Basing a decision on one NAS over another, based purely on familiarity with the underlying OS, is selling the other options short. Look at *all* of their value propositions.
Great that is what I'm most looking forward too. My next NAS purchase will definitely center around how the NAS vendors are making virtualization an option. The pricing around this will also be critical as I don't want to have to pay for much beyond the NAS itself.
I've been running it for about 6 months now without any issues. I have Plex and a couple of other things running as "rockons" (docker images), and the only complaint I've had is that you have to manually stop and then start the container to install updates (at least for Plex, which seems to have updates every couple of weeks). I'm sure this could be automated, But I haven't put the time in yet.
Depending on what you use, ALL of these might be open for you. E.g.: unRAID has docker support, direct plug-ins and also a KVM hypervisor built-in.
It is also a NAS OS that is decidedly NOT covered in this article, because unlike those covered, it is an OS only and not a whole OS + custom HW package that these are. The title is really misleading...
I hope you'll have a section about Security and Updates on these devices too. That's one HUGE reason why I stick with Synology and their DSM... they seem to be one of the few NAS makers that REALLY care about patching security holes, fixing bugs, etc.
Thanks for the feedback. In the first piece, I had a table with the last stable firmware release date - that should give an idea of how prompt the NAS vendor is in fixing security holes. The eventual plan is to condense all three articles (that will include the Part II of this piece) into one article that will be kept up to date.
There are only 3 things that I don't like about Synology, I own the NVR 16 w/ 9 licenses. One is that the mobile view is so incredibly slow when accessing over the WAN. Its a great when on the local network, but when not local the streams for the cameras are still displayed in full resolution and at their recorded FPS. You can specify the substream, but even then it doesn't adapt well. The second gripe about the NVR216 is that it requires a 1080p monitor. The instructions don't say that it has to be this... Third, they are slow to support manufacturer new models of cameras - i'm still waiting for support on Hikvision 4mp IP Camera support - I use native ONVIF which works just fine. Other than that, they system is good all in one solution. One cool feature is the audible alarm when there is an serious issue detected with the device itself. I had a hard drive fail and got a call from the store saying the device was making noise - it was an audible slow beeping alarm.
But for more features in an NVR solution I went to Blue Iris.
I am irritated by the Plex transcoding support for Netgear. I love Synology and their DSM, I think it's a well-featured NAS and recommend it to others. If Plex can enable hardware transcoding on a Netgear NAS, there's no reason they can't on the Synology models with an Annapurna ARM CPU, at least.
The fact that the Netgear NAS (and Nvidia Shield TV) can support hardware transcoding in Plex Media Server was a shock in general. On the Plex forums, hardware transcoding is easily the most requested feature and has been for years, and we've been told that the Plex team can't really add hardware transcoding because they've heavily customized an older ffmpeg build and can't easily upgrade to a newer version that supports it.
There's open-source support for hardware transcoding on a few different architectures in ffmpeg, so if they can add it now, there's no reason they can't add it more widely. As a Plex Pass subscriber I'm annoyed that my needs aren't really being met, because of some marketing partnership they have with Netgear and Nvidia.
QNAP solved this issue by creating their own "Plex". In their 4.3 version (still in beta, all 64bit) the included VideoStation is no longer a "YouTube" kind of service as shown in this article. Now it's almost like Plex (or Emby for that matter), and it'll support live transcoding. QNAP will have a killer OS once 4.3 is out and all 3rd party programs are updated accordingly.
Ganesh - I've been enjoying your NAS coverage for a long time. Watching these COTS products improve and evolve is great to see.
I would love to see you/AT do a feature on a 4-8 bay micro-tower (e.g. link below, though I wouldn't recommend HP for their abysmal service and policies) running FreeNAS. Aside from pretty good NAS performance, the plugins available for FreeNAS pretty handily compete with features from COTS alternatives, and in many cases far exceed them IMHO. Just a suggestion from one piddly reader. Cheers!
Thanks for the feedback. The plan is to eventually expand coverage to more than the six vendors we have in the current set of articles. I will probably evaluate FreeNAS / NAS4Free in a custom build like this one : http://www.anandtech.com/show/9508/asrock-rack-c27... ; However, this is a plan for the long term. Short term is to get the second part of the value additions out as soon as possible.
Ganesh, thank you very much for your effort in creating this article on NAS. I think NAS devices are increasingly becoming popular among general computer users as an alternative to, (or complementary to) paid cloud services. Benefits are immediately obvious like like the elimination of forever recurring, monthly fee-based, cloud space rentals, an owner can control his / her own data, no theoretical space limits, etc. After all, physical possession is 9/10ths the law as the old say goes. And one's precious data is not entrusted to and at the mercy of a 3rd party vendor that you hopefully can trust, will not go out of business, etc.
I am still a relative newcomer to NAS devices. I learn a lot such by being able to read NAS-related articles such as this one you created for the layperson. It offers insight into NAS basics for someone like me with a need to know.
I've been using Synology's DS1515+. It has served me well. I recently also purchased a QNAP TVS-682T (foolishly I think as way overpriced) and am thinking to switch to it in lieu of, or use concurrently with the Synology. What do you think? Should I use both concurrently? Overkill? Use the new QNAP as the main and relegate the Synology to a backup role? Sell off the Synology? I am tending towards keeping the QNAP and let the Synology go all together. After all, isn't it the purpose of NAS to have not only central storage for all one's data as well as provide backup as well? As such, that would make my Synology redundant, no? Furthermore, since the QNAP is ported with Thunderbolt (albeit 2.0) the NAS can also be used as high speed DAS in addition to NAS, iSCSI. QNAP also has this Virtualization Station thing (nice!) which seems quite attractive. does that mean I can run a complete VM of Windows 10 from my QNAP without having to purchase a dedicated windows machine? Performance should be about the same? I do have a VM of Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro but I am thinking consolidation of that to the QNAP might be even better. The QNAP has the specs and I/O capability through thunderbolt, so I am thinking why not just consolidate every thing via QNAP NAS.
Sorry for the long-winded message. I know you are busy, but, if you do have any thoughts to contribute, even short bullet-type answers will be appreciated. Thanks.
With a single unit, you can have either a unified data store or a backup because the latter is a second independent copy. A second nas is the deep pocket/paranoid way to have both. Cheaper ways include backing up your nas to external drives periodically (doing this to have offline backups is a good idea even if you have another backup option), backing up to the cloud, or having your nas serve as the backup for a media store on a 2nd machine and then share backup out.
The desktop i3 in the model you have is fast enough that it should be comparable to what's in your MPB; depending on what you're doing you might need to upgrade its ram though. However this isn't the case for their more mainstream models which only have atom based CPUs, and can only be upgraded from 2/4 to 8GB of ram; they're only really intended for running a lightweight (ideally GUIless) *nix VM.
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, a second NAS might be the 'deep pocket' approach to having a backup, but I already have both. Considering Ganesh' suggestion (below) however, I may now just keep both. It surely is a lot less headache to have a complete second NAS unit rsync'd from a primary unit and using the second NAS as (1) backup and (2) immediately serviceable rather then having to try and do restores from a set of backups on external drives. I am still thinking about it but that seems to make the greater sense to me.
Backup up to clouds is something I am giving almost no consideration to. Firstly, the forever, ongoing recurring monthly fees and secondly, I prefer to have control over my own data. The primary function for cloud services are for file transfers and file synchronizations.
The QNAP TVS-682T is already 8GB and I think it could be upgraded to 16GB if I want. My heaviest use scenario might be video NLE production. I am not a player of 3D games (or games at all) and things of that sort. QNAP's TVS-series is their upper echelon series also having Core i5 and i7 models.
I have used both Synology and QNAP units as 'daily-drivers'. For personal use / AnandTech review data work, I use the QNAP TS-853 Pro because I can run VMs on it (my home automation controller is a headless Ubuntu machine running as a VM in it). For recording from IP cameras, I use a Synology NAS - I tend to find that Synology is dedicating more DSM resources towards business users and not the mid-level professional users, while QNAP tends to have something for everyone.
Since you have both the DS1515+ and TVS-682T, I suggest using QNAP as the main and use the Synology with a rsync job to keep regular / live backups. As for VM on the QNAP, I would think it is a good idea, but I can't tell for sure unless I know what workload you plan to run on it. Note that even if you don't need to purchase a dedicated Windows machine, you might need to spend money on the license, unless you have some spare from elsewhere.
One thing I have learned in my time with NAS units is that it is never a bad idea to keep a live backup NAS - I have had to switch-over (not seamlessly, I am afraid, but still a good deal better than retrieving data from backups and loading on to a new NAS) a couple of times in the last 7 years.
Excellent information Ganesh. Thank you for the time and effort on the feedback.
I will take your suggestion to heart and use the QNAP as the main and keep the Synology as a backup unit. Currently I've been maintaining my Synology backup via a sort of hodge-podge solution. Synology has 5 bays. 4bays (6TB x4) is the main system providing 18TB of usable space. Bay 5 has 10TB as part of my backup. Externally I have Seagate 8TB (Archive) drive as the second part of the full backup. But I can see your point to conduct backups to the Synology and be able to implement that on demand as a fallback secondary system rather then doing restores from backups afterwards.
Windows VM on the QNAP... about the heaviest workload I would do might be video NLE basic end user productions (not a movie producer :-) ) using something like Blackmagic's DaVince Resolve or the open source Shotcut NLE editor. Other then that it wold be all run-of-the-mill that any body would typical do... office apps, photo edits, communications, etc.
Nice article but I really wish you would cover drive failures, data corruption etc in your NAS reviews/articles. A lot of people are relying on these devices to backup their important data. It would be good to see how these units deal with worst case scenarios. What good is a NAS if corruption of one drive takes out the whole data set or if drives fail.
Lets talk speed! Wire I/O is usually the weakest link in a NAS, and this affects the rest of the NAS design. Vendors often report the performance of multiple “teamed” 1gbe ports (AKA link aggregation), 10gbe is much less common. I think Multichannel SMB is still in development for SAMBA, meaning your linux-based NAS likely doesn’t support sending SMB traffic over “teamed” ports, so you effectively get single 1gbe performance per user. A *huge* feature is support for Offloaded Data Transfers (ODX), so your local PC doesn't have to download a file just to move it around on the NAS.
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jamyryals - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Instead of running applications on NAS units through a direct install or virtualization, I've seen people using Docker containers. It seems like a great way for a software vendor to get an application set up exactly how it should be running, and then anyone who supports Docker can benefit.jb510 - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
This is one of the most intriguing design features of Rockstor (a DIY NAS OS similar to FreeNAS but built of Linux/BtrFS instead of BSD/ZFS). More of these should adobpt containers for sure though.jamyryals - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
I had not heard of Rockstor, thanks for mentioning it. I'm much more comfortable with Linux than BSD, I'll definitely check it out.usernametaken76 - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
FreeNAS is "built on" BSD, much in the same way many routers are "built on" Linux. You don't need to know anything about BSD to use FreeNAS.Basing a decision on one NAS over another, based purely on familiarity with the underlying OS, is selling the other options short. Look at *all* of their value propositions.
ganeshts - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
They already do! Synology has Docker [ https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/h... ], and QNAP has Container Station [ https://www.qnap.com/solution/container_station/en... ] (as well as Virtualization Station for full-blown guest OS support). Asustor also supports VirtualBox. These are aspects I will be covering in the next piece.jamyryals - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
That's great news Ganesh, I look forward to it.creed3020 - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link
Great that is what I'm most looking forward too. My next NAS purchase will definitely center around how the NAS vendors are making virtualization an option. The pricing around this will also be critical as I don't want to have to pay for much beyond the NAS itself.nfriedly - Saturday, December 24, 2016 - link
+1 for Rockstor!I've been running it for about 6 months now without any issues. I have Plex and a couple of other things running as "rockons" (docker images), and the only complaint I've had is that you have to manually stop and then start the container to install updates (at least for Plex, which seems to have updates every couple of weeks). I'm sure this could be automated, But I haven't put the time in yet.
Overall, though, I've been very happy with it.
nagi603 - Monday, December 26, 2016 - link
Depending on what you use, ALL of these might be open for you. E.g.: unRAID has docker support, direct plug-ins and also a KVM hypervisor built-in.It is also a NAS OS that is decidedly NOT covered in this article, because unlike those covered, it is an OS only and not a whole OS + custom HW package that these are. The title is really misleading...
colinstu - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
I hope you'll have a section about Security and Updates on these devices too.That's one HUGE reason why I stick with Synology and their DSM... they seem to be one of the few NAS makers that REALLY care about patching security holes, fixing bugs, etc.
jb510 - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Syno does now seem on top of things, but it's worth remembering SynoLocker and how slow their response to that security disaster was.ganeshts - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Thanks for the feedback. In the first piece, I had a table with the last stable firmware release date - that should give an idea of how prompt the NAS vendor is in fixing security holes. The eventual plan is to condense all three articles (that will include the Part II of this piece) into one article that will be kept up to date.Impulses - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link
SweetThe_Moves - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
There are only 3 things that I don't like about Synology, I own the NVR 16 w/ 9 licenses. One is that the mobile view is so incredibly slow when accessing over the WAN. Its a great when on the local network, but when not local the streams for the cameras are still displayed in full resolution and at their recorded FPS. You can specify the substream, but even then it doesn't adapt well. The second gripe about the NVR216 is that it requires a 1080p monitor. The instructions don't say that it has to be this... Third, they are slow to support manufacturer new models of cameras - i'm still waiting for support on Hikvision 4mp IP Camera support - I use native ONVIF which works just fine. Other than that, they system is good all in one solution. One cool feature is the audible alarm when there is an serious issue detected with the device itself. I had a hard drive fail and got a call from the store saying the device was making noise - it was an audible slow beeping alarm.But for more features in an NVR solution I went to Blue Iris.
The_Moves - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
dang, first post and there are typos with no way to edit them :-(shelbystripes - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
I am irritated by the Plex transcoding support for Netgear. I love Synology and their DSM, I think it's a well-featured NAS and recommend it to others. If Plex can enable hardware transcoding on a Netgear NAS, there's no reason they can't on the Synology models with an Annapurna ARM CPU, at least.The fact that the Netgear NAS (and Nvidia Shield TV) can support hardware transcoding in Plex Media Server was a shock in general. On the Plex forums, hardware transcoding is easily the most requested feature and has been for years, and we've been told that the Plex team can't really add hardware transcoding because they've heavily customized an older ffmpeg build and can't easily upgrade to a newer version that supports it.
There's open-source support for hardware transcoding on a few different architectures in ffmpeg, so if they can add it now, there's no reason they can't add it more widely. As a Plex Pass subscriber I'm annoyed that my needs aren't really being met, because of some marketing partnership they have with Netgear and Nvidia.
heffeque - Friday, December 23, 2016 - link
QNAP solved this issue by creating their own "Plex".In their 4.3 version (still in beta, all 64bit) the included VideoStation is no longer a "YouTube" kind of service as shown in this article. Now it's almost like Plex (or Emby for that matter), and it'll support live transcoding.
QNAP will have a killer OS once 4.3 is out and all 3rd party programs are updated accordingly.
jsntech - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Ganesh - I've been enjoying your NAS coverage for a long time. Watching these COTS products improve and evolve is great to see.I would love to see you/AT do a feature on a 4-8 bay micro-tower (e.g. link below, though I wouldn't recommend HP for their abysmal service and policies) running FreeNAS. Aside from pretty good NAS performance, the plugins available for FreeNAS pretty handily compete with features from COTS alternatives, and in many cases far exceed them IMHO. Just a suggestion from one piddly reader. Cheers!
https://www.hpe.com/us/en/product-catalog/servers/...
ganeshts - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Thanks for the feedback. The plan is to eventually expand coverage to more than the six vendors we have in the current set of articles. I will probably evaluate FreeNAS / NAS4Free in a custom build like this one : http://www.anandtech.com/show/9508/asrock-rack-c27... ; However, this is a plan for the long term. Short term is to get the second part of the value additions out as soon as possible.LordanSS - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Thank you, Ganesh. Your efforts are truly appreciated.jsntech - Friday, December 23, 2016 - link
That would be fantastic. Can't wait!perseid - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Synology's DSM still does not support full drive encryption. I wonder why such a critical need has not been addressed yet.tokyojerry - Saturday, December 24, 2016 - link
Ganesh, thank you very much for your effort in creating this article on NAS. I think NAS devices are increasingly becoming popular among general computer users as an alternative to, (or complementary to) paid cloud services. Benefits are immediately obvious like like the elimination of forever recurring, monthly fee-based, cloud space rentals, an owner can control his / her own data, no theoretical space limits, etc. After all, physical possession is 9/10ths the law as the old say goes. And one's precious data is not entrusted to and at the mercy of a 3rd party vendor that you hopefully can trust, will not go out of business, etc.I am still a relative newcomer to NAS devices. I learn a lot such by being able to read NAS-related articles such as this one you created for the layperson. It offers insight into NAS basics for someone like me with a need to know.
I've been using Synology's DS1515+. It has served me well. I recently also purchased a QNAP TVS-682T (foolishly I think as way overpriced) and am thinking to switch to it in lieu of, or use concurrently with the Synology. What do you think? Should I use both concurrently? Overkill? Use the new QNAP as the main and relegate the Synology to a backup role? Sell off the Synology? I am tending towards keeping the QNAP and let the Synology go all together. After all, isn't it the purpose of NAS to have not only central storage for all one's data as well as provide backup as well? As such, that would make my Synology redundant, no? Furthermore, since the QNAP is ported with Thunderbolt (albeit 2.0) the NAS can also be used as high speed DAS in addition to NAS, iSCSI. QNAP also has this Virtualization Station thing (nice!) which seems quite attractive. does that mean I can run a complete VM of Windows 10 from my QNAP without having to purchase a dedicated windows machine? Performance should be about the same? I do have a VM of Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro but I am thinking consolidation of that to the QNAP might be even better. The QNAP has the specs and I/O capability through thunderbolt, so I am thinking why not just consolidate every thing via QNAP NAS.
Sorry for the long-winded message. I know you are busy, but, if you do have any thoughts to contribute, even short bullet-type answers will be appreciated. Thanks.
DanNeely - Monday, December 26, 2016 - link
With a single unit, you can have either a unified data store or a backup because the latter is a second independent copy. A second nas is the deep pocket/paranoid way to have both. Cheaper ways include backing up your nas to external drives periodically (doing this to have offline backups is a good idea even if you have another backup option), backing up to the cloud, or having your nas serve as the backup for a media store on a 2nd machine and then share backup out.The desktop i3 in the model you have is fast enough that it should be comparable to what's in your MPB; depending on what you're doing you might need to upgrade its ram though. However this isn't the case for their more mainstream models which only have atom based CPUs, and can only be upgraded from 2/4 to 8GB of ram; they're only really intended for running a lightweight (ideally GUIless) *nix VM.
tokyojerry - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, a second NAS might be the 'deep pocket' approach to having a backup, but I already have both. Considering Ganesh' suggestion (below) however, I may now just keep both. It surely is a lot less headache to have a complete second NAS unit rsync'd from a primary unit and using the second NAS as (1) backup and (2) immediately serviceable rather then having to try and do restores from a set of backups on external drives. I am still thinking about it but that seems to make the greater sense to me.Backup up to clouds is something I am giving almost no consideration to. Firstly, the forever, ongoing recurring monthly fees and secondly, I prefer to have control over my own data. The primary function for cloud services are for file transfers and file synchronizations.
The QNAP TVS-682T is already 8GB and I think it could be upgraded to 16GB if I want. My heaviest use scenario might be video NLE production. I am not a player of 3D games (or games at all) and things of that sort. QNAP's TVS-series is their upper echelon series also having Core i5 and i7 models.
ganeshts - Tuesday, December 27, 2016 - link
I have used both Synology and QNAP units as 'daily-drivers'. For personal use / AnandTech review data work, I use the QNAP TS-853 Pro because I can run VMs on it (my home automation controller is a headless Ubuntu machine running as a VM in it). For recording from IP cameras, I use a Synology NAS - I tend to find that Synology is dedicating more DSM resources towards business users and not the mid-level professional users, while QNAP tends to have something for everyone.Since you have both the DS1515+ and TVS-682T, I suggest using QNAP as the main and use the Synology with a rsync job to keep regular / live backups. As for VM on the QNAP, I would think it is a good idea, but I can't tell for sure unless I know what workload you plan to run on it. Note that even if you don't need to purchase a dedicated Windows machine, you might need to spend money on the license, unless you have some spare from elsewhere.
One thing I have learned in my time with NAS units is that it is never a bad idea to keep a live backup NAS - I have had to switch-over (not seamlessly, I am afraid, but still a good deal better than retrieving data from backups and loading on to a new NAS) a couple of times in the last 7 years.
tokyojerry - Tuesday, December 27, 2016 - link
Excellent information Ganesh. Thank you for the time and effort on the feedback.I will take your suggestion to heart and use the QNAP as the main and keep the Synology as a backup unit. Currently I've been maintaining my Synology backup via a sort of hodge-podge solution. Synology has 5 bays. 4bays (6TB x4) is the main system providing 18TB of usable space. Bay 5 has 10TB as part of my backup. Externally I have Seagate 8TB (Archive) drive as the second part of the full backup. But I can see your point to conduct backups to the Synology and be able to implement that on demand as a fallback secondary system rather then doing restores from backups afterwards.
Windows VM on the QNAP... about the heaviest workload I would do might be video NLE basic end user productions (not a movie producer :-) ) using something like Blackmagic's DaVince Resolve or the open source Shotcut NLE editor. Other then that it wold be all run-of-the-mill that any body would typical do... office apps, photo edits, communications, etc.
Planet07 - Tuesday, December 27, 2016 - link
Nice article but I really wish you would cover drive failures, data corruption etc in your NAS reviews/articles. A lot of people are relying on these devices to backup their important data. It would be good to see how these units deal with worst case scenarios. What good is a NAS if corruption of one drive takes out the whole data set or if drives fail.bill3000 - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link
Lets talk speed! Wire I/O is usually the weakest link in a NAS, and this affects the rest of the NAS design. Vendors often report the performance of multiple “teamed” 1gbe ports (AKA link aggregation), 10gbe is much less common. I think Multichannel SMB is still in development for SAMBA, meaning your linux-based NAS likely doesn’t support sending SMB traffic over “teamed” ports, so you effectively get single 1gbe performance per user. A *huge* feature is support for Offloaded Data Transfers (ODX), so your local PC doesn't have to download a file just to move it around on the NAS.darwinosx - Monday, April 3, 2017 - link
What happened to the follow up article?