Definitely seem like gross overkill to me. I'm assuming they must be aimed at a niche that I don't fit into. One of those things where if you have to ask what its for then you probably don't need it.
OK, now that I re-read it, it is capable of being a VMWare host so i could see them for that purpose. Thing is I built my own for that purpose for a pile less money. this was a few years ago and I used an 8320 FX on a 990FX motherboard which has plenty of PCIe connectivity. Put an LSI X8 RAID card in there and Intel dual port gigabit card and it cost a whole lot less than $1700. If I was doing it today, I'd probably use an R51600 on a X370 board but the whole thing could be built for under $1K.
Agreed - my NAS that I have is a 4u rack with some IcyDock bays, and it's on a basic LGA1150 board running a G3240. It also has another pass-through 4 port PCIe->SATA adapter for more drive capability and it runs solid as a rock (basic CentOS system). I'm not sure from a hardware point of view (not counting a custom hot-swap mini-chassis) that these are worth the money, but from a custom software point of view and a 'plug and play' simplicity, I guess that's where most of the value is.
However, for those not worried about getting into the CLI for a Linux distro, this would be not a smart use of the money. I think I could build an equivalent system, WITH DRIVES for significantly less cash.
My guess would be that these have M2 ports & PCIE (for 10 GbE) from the CPU. Plus drivers for non-Win OS. If there is a x370 board with the above specs PLEASE name it. If it's available in India I'll buy it. Oh, the last I checked btrfs does not have an official N-parity raid.
Seems a little bit strange to me - but I have never stumbled upon such setup. From my experience, it's either IP camera, that sends already encoded (in hardware) stream to the NAS as data stream to sparse file, or analog/digital 'classic' camera with all the RS485 bells and whistles, but those require either dedicated PCI/PCIe card with multiple video inputs that handles encoding in ASIC onboard, or it's whole standalone box, that still sends already encoded stream as file segments.
Right! through VT-d, you mean? Max one or two GPUs, and low-powered ones. I'm not convinced it's worth the effort, save maybe internal pcie adapter card with external PCI-Express backplane, that has separate power supply. While I run such setup myself (in a form of tower PC), I can see the appeal of having such system in a neat little box.
We have a graphics department which we can assign VM's that are allowed to utilize the GPU. Instead of building a physical graphics workstation for each user that may or may not depending on their role need all that power.
These are historically terrible for such applications. The problem being obvious is that they require special builds only offered by QNAP or others. THey don't use regular OS, most NAS you buy from retail stores have custom "APP stores" that require updates to them.
People have reported flat out broke media apps for months before a fix is issued.
Land assessment, astrophotography, engineering workstation, DCS or GIS multi user environments would benefit greatly from systems like these. Intel simply can't compete.
Reality is that AMD has finally delivered a product that Intel should fear, as they aren't in the same league.
Those who fuse a lot of space for images or large datasets and some A/I environments will find this offering compelling. A single hour session for my needs means 20-200GB of data.
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B166ER - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
In the game of NAS boxes, aren't these a bit overkill?Ratman6161 - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Definitely seem like gross overkill to me. I'm assuming they must be aimed at a niche that I don't fit into. One of those things where if you have to ask what its for then you probably don't need it.Ratman6161 - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
OK, now that I re-read it, it is capable of being a VMWare host so i could see them for that purpose. Thing is I built my own for that purpose for a pile less money. this was a few years ago and I used an 8320 FX on a 990FX motherboard which has plenty of PCIe connectivity. Put an LSI X8 RAID card in there and Intel dual port gigabit card and it cost a whole lot less than $1700. If I was doing it today, I'd probably use an R51600 on a X370 board but the whole thing could be built for under $1K.bill.rookard - Saturday, November 4, 2017 - link
Agreed - my NAS that I have is a 4u rack with some IcyDock bays, and it's on a basic LGA1150 board running a G3240. It also has another pass-through 4 port PCIe->SATA adapter for more drive capability and it runs solid as a rock (basic CentOS system). I'm not sure from a hardware point of view (not counting a custom hot-swap mini-chassis) that these are worth the money, but from a custom software point of view and a 'plug and play' simplicity, I guess that's where most of the value is.However, for those not worried about getting into the CLI for a Linux distro, this would be not a smart use of the money. I think I could build an equivalent system, WITH DRIVES for significantly less cash.
drajitshnew - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
My guess would be that these have M2 ports & PCIE (for 10 GbE) from the CPU. Plus drivers for non-Win OS. If there is a x370 board with the above specs PLEASE name it. If it's available in India I'll buy it.Oh, the last I checked btrfs does not have an official N-parity raid.
tipoo - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
If the NAS can run Plex directly, that would be one possible use of a lot of CPU performance.Vatharian - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Who the hell needs GPU in a NAS? I don't think deduplication can be accelerated by any GPU... so why?Also Ts-1277 has already 6x ethernet, I guess at elast two of them are 10G. Those two extra PCIe ports for NVMe can get super handy.
Kevin G - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
People who want to do video recording from camera systems. In some setups, the NAS tackles the encoding process.Vatharian - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Seems a little bit strange to me - but I have never stumbled upon such setup. From my experience, it's either IP camera, that sends already encoded (in hardware) stream to the NAS as data stream to sparse file, or analog/digital 'classic' camera with all the RS485 bells and whistles, but those require either dedicated PCI/PCIe card with multiple video inputs that handles encoding in ASIC onboard, or it's whole standalone box, that still sends already encoded stream as file segments.drajitshnew - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
The specs do NOT list a pcie x16 slots. You might NOT be able to add a gpu.Manch - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
Because if the GPU is supported you can assign its use to various VM's in the same way you can assign X number of cores/ram/hdd, etc.UltraWide - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Pass-through GPU acceleration for VMs.Vatharian - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Right! through VT-d, you mean? Max one or two GPUs, and low-powered ones. I'm not convinced it's worth the effort, save maybe internal pcie adapter card with external PCI-Express backplane, that has separate power supply. While I run such setup myself (in a form of tower PC), I can see the appeal of having such system in a neat little box.Manch - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
We have a graphics department which we can assign VM's that are allowed to utilize the GPU. Instead of building a physical graphics workstation for each user that may or may not depending on their role need all that power.Reflex - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Plex offers GPU acceleration for those of us using these as a media server (among other things).imaheadcase - Saturday, November 4, 2017 - link
These are historically terrible for such applications. The problem being obvious is that they require special builds only offered by QNAP or others. THey don't use regular OS, most NAS you buy from retail stores have custom "APP stores" that require updates to them.People have reported flat out broke media apps for months before a fix is issued.
tipoo - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
It does? I thought it was pretty CPU bound, but did write GPU acceleration only for specific clients (Nvidia Shield TV so far)LouPetridish - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Here is their video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTGtjF7Xe3ASkip to 47 seconds if you want to know what the GPUs are for.
UralBas - Saturday, November 4, 2017 - link
Land assessment, astrophotography, engineering workstation, DCS or GIS multi user environments would benefit greatly from systems like these. Intel simply can't compete.Reality is that AMD has finally delivered a product that Intel should fear, as they aren't in the same league.
Those who fuse a lot of space for images or large datasets and some A/I environments will find this offering compelling. A single hour session for my needs means 20-200GB of data.
Gadgety - Sunday, November 5, 2017 - link
Interesting post. This type of info should have gone in the original piece.drajitshnew - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
Ummm where the GPU mentioned?LordanSS - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
I think when the APUs come out, a 45W 4C/8T with ECC support will be really awesome for NAS/Media Server duties.Gadgety - Sunday, November 5, 2017 - link
I was just thinking the same.