Just pulled the trigger on NAS and Net Upgrade, QNAP TS-410 + 8TB Storage, and Gig-Ethernet :)

Community Archives WD TV Live Networking
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Similar to what Mkelley did a few days back, I thought I’d start this thread.

I just purchased a QNAP TS-410 NAS appliance, and will be adding 4 2TB WD20EADS drives to it, configured in Raid 5, for a total usable capacity of just under 6 Terrabytes.

Since it has Gig Ethernet ports, and several of my desktops now do, and my Living Room WDTV Live has an N-Wireless (in G Mode) adapter, I decided it was time to upgrade the LAN to Gig and the WiFi to N, so I purchased two Linksys E3000 Wireless Routers to hook it all up.  (Yes, two, because I plan on having a private WiFi segment in addition to the main one.   I’m a network engineer by trade, so this makes plenty of sense to me… :wink:   )

My current “Media Server” share box has two TB of storage in it, but I no longer have an agreeable way to back it up, as the external drive fills up with every snapshot, and leaves little space for incrementals.

I’ve decided to make the NAS the Media Storage box, and also the backup destination.   I won’t have a separate backup of the Media, as the NAS will be RAID 5, thus will have failure tolerance if a single drive fails.

I was trying out Carbonite for remote backup, but it takes just TOO freaking long (they seem to limit me to about 2-3 Gigabytes per day of transfer bandwidth.   At that rate, it’ll take a year to get a full backup!  (And I have 35 Megabit UPLOAD bandwidth, so it’s not my issue, it’s theirs.)

So the new strategy is, in case of fire, grab the NAS and run.  :)

I’ll keep ya’ll updated with my findings.

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Read about:  Raid  is NOT the same as backup. What if the fire happens when you are not home? If you have files in the NAS that you truly care about and are not replaceable, you might try placing a backup in a different location …  Al

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Just remember the WDTV only has a 10/100 ethernet connection…

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I think you’ll enjoy your NAS, Tony.  I sure do like mine.

I have much less space than yours (only 3TB) but because I encode all my blu-rays this isn’t any issue at all (at the rate I’m going I’ll have enough space for the next two years, at least.  After that I’m sure I’ll be using bubble memory ).  Also I’m backing up to external USB drives (I like the fact they are totally offline when I’m not backing up – not connecting in any way to my network because here in the nation’s capital of lighning strikes I can’t afford to have something fry my entire database, as can easily happen if your house it hit and electrictiy surges through all the lines and the – cough, cough, surge protectors).

You’ll have to let us know how it goes when you get all squared away.

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Aww man, I’m getting full-on NAS envy.  :D

Please keep us updated once you get that bad boy loaded up with disks.

Was there anything specific that swung you towards QNAP rather than Synology (or WD) ?

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For starters:

Price for Performance.   The TS-410 is going around 449 USD right now.

Fry’s (between work and home) has 2TB WD 32M Cache Drives on sale for $128 this week.

The TS-410 supports JBOD, Raid 0, Raid 1, Raid 5, Raid 6, and 5+Spare.

It can act as a network Print Server for up to three printers  (might need to do this, because I’m considering letting my home PC go to sleep now instead of being on 24x7)

It has DUAL Gig-E interfaces, 4 USBs, and 2 eSATA ports.  

iTunes server.

DLNA server (doubt I’ll use this!)

It has reasonably complete set of Access Controls (I’m trying to figure out how I can keep the kids out of the PG-13/R section).  

Lots of posts on other places of good success specifically with the WDTV Live and the QNAP.

It’s pricier than Syno, but not as pricey as Drobo.

This won’t be JUST a media NAS, it’ll be used for other goodies, too.

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Ahhh…  It arrived yesterday, but haven’t had a chance to play with it.   I promise I’ll have something to say this weekend!

At the moment, I’m highly motivated, because right now, my WDTVs fail to see that my Windows 7 box has shares on it any more…  Ugh, that’s enough to make me want to pull my hair out…

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Nicely packed bit of kit.  

One unit, one big brick of a power supply, two Cat5e network cables, two drive-bay keys, 4 trays (already installed), two bags of screws (12 for 2.5" drives and 16 for 3.5" drives.)  

Took about 10 minutes to install 4 Two-Terrabyte drives in this beast; faster than it took to find the screwdriver.

Right now it’s spinning up the drives (I like that it does it sequentially; less power hungry that way).  MAN this thing is quiet when loaded full of WD20EADS drives.  I can’t hear it over the ceiling fan.

I found it on the network by looking at my Verizon Router which reported a new host with the name of NASC3E8A2.  Webbed to that address, and it was waiting for me.

Took about 3 minutes for the Iniitialization.

The quick start asked for me to download the current firmware.   Doing that now.  The upload took a scant 5s for a 100Meg file; now it’s probably flashing, which is taking considerably longer.

Time to crack open a nice cold Bud Light and wait it out.

Done after about 5 minutes.   Now it’s taking me through a 6-step Quick Config…

  1. Enter a Server Name.  NASC3E8A2 isn’t going to cut it.  BIGNAS1 will.  :)
  2. Admin Password
  3. Date, Time, Timezone, NTP Configuration stuff.
  4. TCP Configuration.  Don’t want to use DHCP… Let’s set it statically.  Time to pull out the NetMap with all the addresses recorded…  10.0.0.10 it is.
  5. Select which SERVERs to run.  I can choose Microsoft, Apple, NFS, Web File Manager, FTP, Torrent, Multimedia Server, Multimedia Station (don’t know what the difference is. ), iTunes service, Web Server, MySQL.   I think for now all I need is Microsoft Network.
  6. Select Disk Configuration.  Raid 5 it is.  Hmmm.  EXT3 or EXT4?   Time to go to the web; no info in the manual.  Ah.  EXT4 is faster, less fragmentation when using large files (probably good for a media server with 10-20GB files.   Here’s my capacity for different configs:

  JBOD- 7446 GB

  RAID0- 7446 GB

  RAID5- 5584 GB

  RAID6- 3723 GB

Hitting START INSTALL…  And off it goes.  Hmmm.  Progress bar isn’t moving, but the drives are flashing like mad…   Time for another frosty one.

Wow, this is really taking some time!  30 minutes so far…

Getting Bored…  45 minutes…

Needless to say, do this step when you’ve got something else to do.  Like sleep.  –2 hours…

99%…   DONE!

I guess it’s rebooting now, it’s gone unresponsive.  Ahhh, there it is!  

Back into the Web…  Wow.  What a beautiful UI.  Nicely done.

Well, I guess that’s enough for now.  I’ll let the RAID array fully sync before doing any performance testing…

G’night!

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Alrighty.   Here’s the final write-up…

After that last post from Saturday Morning, this unit sat for about 36 hours doing the RAID 5 Disk Sync.  Took a lot longer than I anticipated, but I have no prior experience with this sort of system, so not sure how that compares with other units.  During that 36 hours, performance was only slightly impacted; read and write performance was fairly close to what I’m about to report.

I am thrilled with the functionality and flexibility of this unit, and it’s making it quite easy to configure the network shares so that each of my streaming devices see ONLY what I want them to see.  This thing has access controls which are quite powerful, but probably similar in functionality to most SOHO-level devices.

I created Four Shares:

  Movies 1 (Movies for all ages)

  Movies 2 (Movies for the teenagers)

  Moves 3 (R Rated)

  TV Shows (Episodic DVDs, TiVo transfers, etc)

I created Two user Accounts, KIDS and ADULTS 

The QNAP lets me set which accounts can have access to which shares.

When I log in the KIDS account to the WDTV in the main family room, they can ONLY see the shares they have access to: Movies 1, Movies 2, TV Shows.

When I log in the PARENTS account on the Master WDTV, it can see ALL shares.

Works perfectly, not like when I’m using the Win7 as the server, as all units can see ALL shares, whether they’re media or not.

So, let’s get down to the performance characteristics:

Here’s what QNAP publishes for the TS-410:

READ: 62.4 Megabyts / second

WRITE: 22.7 Megabyts / second

I tested performance (after the RAID Sync was done) by copying my BD Rip of Avatar back and forth.

The MKV file is 12,911,614,512 bytes.

I observed READ bursts of 51 Mbytes per second, and a transfer time of 284 seconds, giving an average of 45.5 Mbytes / second.

I observed WRITE bursts of 25.78 Mbytes per second, and a transfer time of 601 seconds, giving an average of 21.5 Megabytes / second.

I think the READ speed was CPU bound; WIndows uses an aweful lot of CPU to do windows file moving.

68iADF46BB90ADF9252
68iADF46BB90ADF9252703×461 132 KB

Note the CPU on Core 1 is about 70% or higher during the read; the Core i3 is fast, but I think the NAS is faster.  (File moves aren’t multithreaded, hence only a single core is high.)

Here’s what it looked like during WRITEs.

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69i41AE296C67D9BDB9708×460 85.3 KB

Hopefully, this information will be of help to ya’ll !

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hey tony, excellent experienced details of qnap ts-410, even i recently ordered for Qnap TS-410 at present my wd tv live is hooked upto a USB 2tb external drive and is working great. In future as i will hook up the NAS to the wd tv live with LAN cable will it give the same performance as the USB drive gives in buffering without any halt, pause etc the media content such as video files (heavy mkv files), audio and pics.

(I have a 100mbps router and CAT 5 cabling done from the router to the viewing area)    

Will really appreciate for prompt reply.

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I doubt you’ll have a single issue with it;  I haven’t!

Reading at 45 MegaBYTES per second, you ought to be able to send Un-recompressed Blu-Rays to 7 or 8 WDTVs simultaneously…  Theoretically…  :)

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thanks for the previous reply…and how much does the wd take time to discover the qnap nas??? how do we access in different folder  with passwords assigned with for users…  

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Mine is discovered within about 10 seconds after the network negotation is finished (within about 30 seconds after the menu comes up the first time.

I set my QNAP to be the Master Browser, which helps stability and discovery speed tremendously.

First, you set up your Share Folders, then you set up user accounts.

With each Share Folder (under Access Rights Management / Share Folders) you click ACCESS CONTROL, which brings up the user list and their permissions.   All you need to do is put a checkmark next to each user that you wish to give access to, and under the permission you wish to use.

Finally, there’s a dropdown at the bottom of that popup that has “Guest Access Rights.”   A user logging in “Anonymously,” will be allowed the access rights determined there.

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What is 'Master Browser"?My main intention of the qnap nas will be stroring the media content, i will be installing 2 hdd of 2tb i.e. = 4tb of hdd, in what mode should i keep it i.e. RAID 0,1,2,3,5 or JBOD ( i just want to store the content without backup, if i want a replica backup with incremental backup which option should i use. In future i will be installing more hdd if the 4tb gets full which option shall i opt for?

At present my LAN infrastructure is 100Mbps (Pronet Router) wired connection of cat 6, i will be laying a 100 meter cable to my viewing room. Is this infrastructure enough for streaming media content from qnap nas connected to the Pronet router with a (cat 6) cabling done of 100 meters hooked upto wd live, i will be playing heavy files as in 2gb to 8gb of mkv files through the network. Is this infrastructure applicable in this case.

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Choosing your RAID configuration is entirely up to you.   I can’t make that decision for you.  Just remember that RAID is NOT a backup mechanism.

A 100 Meg wired connection will be sufficient for anything the WD can play…

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which hdd shall i install in my qnap which will be on 24 x 7…should not crash the data and buffer rate should be good??? do u use the iphone app of qnap

TonyPh12345 wrote:

Choosing your RAID configuration is entirely up to you.   I can’t make that decision for you.  Just remember that RAID is NOT a backup mechanism.

 

A 100 Meg wired connection will be sufficient for anything the WD can play…

 

 

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I used the WD20EARS 2TB drives.

Yes, I use the QMobile app every now and then…  

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hello tony, i got my qnap ts-410…is it ok if i keep my hdd config as JBOD

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hey tony, just want to thank you for the information you provided about qnap nas ts-410 on this thread…i really appreciate you by providing detailed information and answering to all my question. cos even i got qnap ts-410 nas and installed

2tb x 2 i.e 4tb of storage in that nas.and giving tremendous results.thanks tony once again