basic home NAS, Asustor or?

[stevech]

Software-wise, Asustor definitely has a long way to go to reach feature parity, and seeing how aggressive QNAPs are in adding new features, it might be hard for them to catch up and keep the pace with them. They might be able however to still remain relevant by focusing on the more commonly used features.

This is the recurring problem I see on on this forum... too many people focus on speed and not features. Or noob's don't know what features to expect. And reviewers are guilty of cursory reports, often just looking at speed.

To the above quote, we should add Synology. They and QNAP are evermore in very close competition.

 

[AdvHomeServer]

The TS*51's are J1800 dual cores, and they max out at 8GB

The TS*53Pro's - J1900, and again 8GB, but I've heard rumors that some have bumped up to 16GB...

I've got the 453Pro, and yes, I do leverage into the VM functionality for a Linux VM that I have a LAMP server along with some other things...

My mistake. Thanks for the correction. The TS-451 runs circles around my couple of year old TS-120 and the TS-453 even more. I'm happy with the apps available on the two year old tech I own, but, had these models been available when I purchased, I would have at least strongly considered the advantages they offer, and perhaps purchased one in the family they belong to.

The big advantage to having a VM on a network drive is it's 'always on'. You don't need wake on lan, which sometimes won't work no matter how hard one tries. A custom media server comes to mind, although a web server is not bad. I want to figure out how to create a virtual desktop server on a linux VM, but I still have a lot of foundational stuff to figure out before I put one together. Maybe by this time next year if it's even possible. I'm probably going to use the excess capacity in the box hosting my pfSense router ... there's a way to run it in esxi - which is on the list to learn. To the bad, putting a router in a VM is not really smart since it ultimately becomes dependent on other software tech to simply run ... but hey, it's only a hobby.

As some comments noted, it's not for beginners, but the original question was from someone with skills who was asking for a range of options, including opinions on the TS-451. 8GB of ram costs about $50 if you shop well. Anyone with simple skills can figure out just about anything they set their mind to, except possibly brain surgery and the like. You need to go to school for that. Most other things just require interest, persistence, and available reference material that doesn't suck. My motivation for writing my web site was to offer the world another outlet for reference material that doesn't suck since so much of it is really bad and was a major source of frustration for me.

 

[iunlock]

I'd opt for QNAP for all the reasons mentioned so far.

Asustor is a direct knock off of QNAP, especially the software GUI. My goodness, talk about copy cat. They do have some former QNAP employees, but that really means nothing. They could become a great competitor, but it's too early to tell.

The recommended choices are QNAP or Synology. Even then, I've found Synology to offer less power for the buck with weaker CPU'S. Yes even for basic usage.

The QNAP ts-x53 Pro line is an excellent choice for your needs.

 

[RMerlin]

This is the recurring problem I see on on this forum... too many people focus on speed and not features. Or noob's don't know what features to expect. And reviewers are guilty of cursory reports, often just looking at speed.

To the above quote, we should add Synology. They and QNAP are evermore in very close competition.

I have nothing against Synology. I just don't mention them very much because I have no personal experience with their products. But in general, Synology and QNAP are pretty much the same thing, it boils down to the details as to which of the two one would choose.

 

[iunlock]

This is the recurring problem I see on on this forum... too many people focus on speed and not features. Or noob's don't know what features to expect. And reviewers are guilty of cursory reports, often just looking at speed.

To the above quote, we should add Synology. They and QNAP are evermore in very close competition.

Suggesting QNAP over Synology has nothing to do with just focusing on speed, although QNAP is more powerful in general. Based on the OP's usage habits he could go for either one, but it'd be a wiser choice to go with QNAP, as he'd be getting more for his money with a brand that's amongst the top of the food chain,...ie. ..can't go wrong.

I have nothing against Synology. I just don't mention them very much because I have no personal experience with their products. But in general, Synology and QNAP are pretty much the same thing, it boils down to the details as to which of the two one would choose.

I own both and can say for sure that both do a great job, however, there's no way I'd buy another synology as QNAP is leading the way by a large margin with their line up and we'll equipped machines.

In my opinion, Synology is over priced and it doesn't make sense how they charge so much for weak CPU's. It's an oxymoron to call a petty Atom processor powerful...it's pretty comedic.

 

[stevech]

last time I price-compared Synology and QNAP 2Bay, the prices were very close- such that the difference was moot.

I've not needed to shop 4-bay.

 

[iunlock]

last time I price-compared Synology and QNAP 2Bay, the prices were very close- such that the difference was moot.

I've not needed to shop 4-bay.

Perhaps on the lower end models. However, the point here is that QNAP offers more for the money and has a marginal edge over Synology in many aspects. So if the budget is ~$200, I would buy QNAP over Synology.

 

[sfx2000]

Software-wise, Asustor definitely has a long way to go to reach feature parity, and seeing how aggressive QNAPs are in adding new features, it might be hard for them to catch up and keep the pace with them. They might be able however to still remain relevant by focusing on the more commonly used features.

So right now, I wouldn't have a problem recommending Asustor for home users, unless someone actually had the budget for QNAP. That might change if you ask me again a year from now, a lot of things take time to fully evaluate. I"ve had this Asustor for only a bit over a month now. But for business use, the 100-200$ price difference is easy to justify when you have to serve a LAN of 5-25 users.

Well, I think for home users - Asustor could be a good option depending on needs/requirements.

For me, jumping into the NAS market after running OS X server on a MacMini for many years, QNAP met all those needs, and provided one add-on that was interesting - VM on the device - might not be a check-box feature for many, but it's one that QNAP is pushing..

Synology, and most recently, Netgear, they have adopted a slightly different approach with Apps thru Docker support, which is limited right now with QTS 4.1, but supposedly QTS 4.2, if it's ever released, will also support (Docker along with LXC) - most of this though is not of consequence to most folks that would be in the NAS market - pretty narrow niche, deep as it might be...

QNAP and Synology have a dominant position, but it's good to see an upstart like Asustor come into the picture... if anything, it keeps the big players honest..

 

[iunlock]

Well, I think for home users - Asustor could be a good option depending on needs/requirements.

For me, jumping into the NAS market after running OS X server on a MacMini for many years, QNAP met all those needs, and provided one add-on that was interesting - VM on the device - might not be a check-box feature for many, but it's one that QNAP is pushing..

Synology, and most recently, Netgear, they have adopted a slightly different approach with Apps thru Docker support, which is limited right now with QTS 4.1, but supposedly QTS 4.2, if it's ever released, will also support (Docker along with LXC) - most of this though is not of consequence to most folks that would be in the NAS market - pretty narrow niche, deep as it might be...

QNAP and Synology have a dominant position, but it's good to see an upstart like Asustor come into the picture... if anything, it keeps the big players honest..

Absolutely and I agree. Competition is always a good thing for the end user. Asustor came to bat pretty well with the Intel Dual COre i3, 2GB of RAM and with a 3 year warranty. I mention 2GB of RAM being good in this case to keep the cost down, because for any serious NAS user they will want to upgrade anyway. Even for the light to medium user they can get by...

It'd be nice to configure the NAS ourselves....I'd get one with 0 RAM to shave the unnecessary cost so that I can Max it out myself without paying some silly premium.

QTS 4.2 ...LOL...you're right....when when when?

 

[sfx2000]

QTS 4.2 ...LOL...you're right....when when when?

4.2 seems like a very big step, should perhaps be QTS 5 - they've expanded their 4.2 public beta (had a popup to join on the last QTS 4.1.4 release), but I'm not very anxious to be a beta tester with my NAS box...

Synology has Docker/LXC now, and Netgear just announced - not sure if they're actually shipping...

 

[RMerlin]

For me, jumping into the NAS market after running OS X server on a MacMini for many years, QNAP met all those needs, and provided one add-on that was interesting - VM on the device - might not be a check-box feature for many, but it's one that QNAP is pushing..

Synology, and most recently, Netgear, they have adopted a slightly different approach with Apps thru Docker support, which is limited right now with QTS 4.1, but supposedly QTS 4.2, if it's ever released, will also support (Docker along with LXC) - most of this though is not of consequence to most folks that would be in the NAS market - pretty narrow niche, deep as it might be...

Asustor went the easy way, going with Virtualbox as their VM solution. I haven't tested it yet (since my main VM usage at home requires much more CPU power than the NAS could provide - I use it for FW development...)

Hopefully that'd be just a temporary stop-gap solution to provide that feature, because either KVM or even Docker would be a better solution IMHO.

 

[iunlock]

4.2 seems like a very big step, should perhaps be QTS 5 - they've expanded their 4.2 public beta (had a popup to join on the last QTS 4.1.4 release), but I'm not very anxious to be a beta tester with my NAS box...

Synology has Docker/LXC now, and Netgear just announced - not sure if they're actually shipping...

I remember seeing that and passed on being a Guinna pig as well. We'll just have to wait and see when it happens. Should be a great jump though.

 

[iunlock]

Asustor went the easy way, going with Virtualbox as their VM solution. I haven't tested it yet (since my main VM usage at home requires much more CPU power than the NAS could provide - I use it for FW development...)

Hopefully that'd be just a temporary stop-gap solution to provide that feature, because either KVM or even Docker would be a better solution IMHO.

The lack of CPU power does hold true for most NAS devices, however, I've been running VM's with a breeze on both of my QNAP TVS-671 and 871 models with the i7 + 16GB of RAM. What type of NAS do you have and what engine do you have powering it?

 

[RMerlin]

The lack of CPU power does hold true for most NAS devices, however, I've been running VM's with a breeze on both of my QNAP TVS-671 and 871 models with the i7 + 16GB of RAM. What type of NAS do you have and what engine do you have powering it?

NAS has a Celeron J1800. However I do firmware compiles on my VM, so there's no way any affordable NAS could ever match my desktop's i7 4770, where a firmware build is already taking a bit over 20 mins.

 

[sfx2000]

Asustor went the easy way, going with Virtualbox as their VM solution. I haven't tested it yet (since my main VM usage at home requires much more CPU power than the NAS could provide - I use it for FW development...)

Hopefully that'd be just a temporary stop-gap solution to provide that feature, because either KVM or even Docker would be a better solution IMHO.

Wow, I'm not sure that VBox is an "easier" solution, lol - but it is one where everything is tightly coupled together (which helps sometimes for the release process)

KVM/QEMU is pretty much supported in the kernel these days, and that's what QNAP's solution uses with a nice Web based GUI wrapped around it... but using VBox does allow them feature parity, and in some cases, easier to use than KVM/QEMU...

I'm running VMWare Workstation on my desktop i7 - and it's not too bad, some tasks are faster than bare metal, and some aren't... with doing builds, disk i/o is a big deal when linking, and running the VM disk on a small/cheap SSD (Samsung 850evo 128GB) really helped there compared to the 1TB rust disk at 7200RPM...

 

[RMerlin]

Wow, I'm not sure that VBox is an "easier" solution, lol - but it is one where everything is tightly coupled together (which helps sometimes for the release process)

They are compiling and providing VirtualBox as a standard package rather than part of the OS itself. I suspect it required far less in-house engineering than implementing KVM at the OS level.

I'm running VMWare Workstation on my desktop i7 - and it's not too bad, some tasks are faster than bare metal, and some aren't... with doing builds, disk i/o is a big deal when linking, and running the VM disk on a small/cheap SSD (Samsung 850evo 128GB) really helped there compared to the 1TB rust disk at 7200RPM...

I switched from Virtualbox to VMPlayer after that non-sense "kernel hardening" that makes any Virtualbox setup a virtual timebomb under Windows (you never know when an OS or an AV update might make it stop working, and they take forever to release updates! And Oracle's only solution is to whitelist problem cases as they happen, refusing to revert back that dubious design change), and after I realized it was responsible for trashing my virtual network adapters (PPTP suddenly stopped working, with a bunch of exclamation marks in Windows' Device Manager for PPTP, IPSEC, IKE and so on). VMPlayer gave me a very slight performance boost in firmware building time, but my Win7 VM saw a decrease in video performance.

But I think we're getting quite far from the original topic here

 

[sfx2000]

I think we're both aligned on the VM aspects (Desktop and NAS)... until you mentioned it, I wasn't aware that Asustor had ported VBox onto their intel based gear..

Getting back on track with the thread - NAS boxes have become so much more than just basic servers considering where things were perhaps 5 years ago - QNAP, Synology have really taken on the task of making these more useful as time has progressed, and judging from RMerlin's comments, Asustor has moved quickly towards feature parity.

(I should include Thecus and ReadyNAS in that club, btw...)

For a home user, sounds like one could do well with any one of them...

Going into the small business/medium enterprise markets - support is the real differentiator over the life of the device, as down time can serious impact the business - and that's where the established players shine (and a couple of them could improve...).

 

[stevech]

NAS has a Celeron J1800. However I do firmware compiles on my VM, so there's no way any affordable NAS could ever match my desktop's i7 4770, where a firmware build is already taking a bit over 20 mins.

Building with source, includes, and objects on an SSD on the PC is what I do. Too much overhead for this kind of file I/O to do it across gigE and SMB and all that.
Every couple of hours the backup software diff-copies to the NAS. (backup does versioning.)

Sounds like a job for Super-SSD!
My lesser I5 4-core, SSD, 29 large .c and .cpp files, probably 50+ .h, then link. ARM M4 target MCU.
clean, then build takes 8 seconds.

 

[sfx2000]

Building with source, includes, and objects on an SSD on the PC is what I do. Too much overhead for this kind of file I/O to do it across gigE and SMB and all that.
Every couple of hours the backup software diff-copies to the NAS. (backup does versioning.)

Same here - pulling code across the LAN vs. local - depends on the build environment and your source code control - can always to a branch to build against local - and there SSD's do work very well...

 

[iunlock]

NAS has a Celeron J1800. However I do firmware compiles on my VM, so there's no way any affordable NAS could ever match my desktop's i7 4770, where a firmware build is already taking a bit over 20 mins.

True. An affordable NAS would choke. On the other hand, I wonder how the i7-4790S would do with firmware compiles? It handles VM very well.