Article: Review | Running a Large Roon Library on a QNAP TVS-872XT

[EvilTed]

I have used a QNAP NAS at home for 15+ years.

I have also worked as an Architect for all the major Enterprise Storage Companies, including NetApp, EMC and Dell, so storage is what I do.

 

Rebooting a NAS daily is ridiculous.

That is not how a NAS is designed to operate.

It sounds like you have configuration problems somewhere but you will definitely shorten the life of components by powering them on and off daily.

You also are not using Enterprise grade drives in your NAS.

Enterprise grade drives have a much higher MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) rating than consumer grade drives and will happily stay spinning for years.

I have some in my secondary NAS that have been spinning almost continuously for 15+ years with no failures.

Not even as much as a bad sector.

 

Running a NAS in RAID 0 is not a good idea.

It not a question of "debate".

You need the redundancy because otherwise a drive failure will take out the array. Period.

If you have never been through this issue, you can be excused for not understanding it, but if you have to restore 10 TB of music from an archive because of this problem, you will get it.

You do have your 10 TB backed up somewhere else?

NAS is not backup, so might I suggest you use the old "3 copies with 1 off site" rule that professional backup administrators have used forever.

 

There's an old saying in the industry.

Q: What's the best way to backup a NAS?

A: With another NAS

 

To that end, I have my old NAS still functioning as a backup device for the main NAS.

 

MY configuration.

 

QNAP TVS-873

24 GB RAM

8x HGST Helium Enterprise Drives in RAID 10.

2x Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD 500 GB drives in RAID 0.

 

RAID 5 is never recommended since it only supports one drive failure. It is also slow.

RAID 6 is better for redundancy, but as drives over 6TB are used, the time to rebuild a large array can take days, leaving you exposed to a secondary failure and loss of the array. It is also slow.

RAID 10 is the fastest configuration (close to RAID 0 speeds) that gives redundancy, performance and minimizes array rebuild time.

Yes, you are throwing away 50% of your drive capacity on mirroring, but that is a worthwhile thing to do.

You shouldn't cheap out on storage.

 

Using RAID 0 on the SSDs gives two benefits.

1. You will get a performance boost.

2. You double the size of the array.

3. The QNAP OS can run on this volume (recommended) since it can be snapped and backed up to the main NAS for easy restore.

4. All performant applications can also be run on the SSD volume, snapped and backed up to the main NAS (Roon Core etc).

 

Now you need backup.

As mentioned, I keep the old NAS around for this purpose.

I also use Backblaze B2. https://www.backblaze.com

This gives you s3 compatible storage for a fraction (1/4) of the cost of AWS/Azure and it worked seamlessly from QNAP.

 

There ARE performance issues running Roon on QNAP.

They are sporadic in nature and can sometimes leave everything unresponsive.

You don't need to power cycle the NAS to fix them.

I suspect the Roon application is buggy.

 

I have fixed things by restarting the service for Roon in NAS and once a month running a database rebuild.

That seems to keep things working nicely and my NAS still spinning.

 

Hope this helps 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[EvilTed]

@The Computer Audiophile

 

Disagree all you want about RAID 5.

As drive sizes increase the array rebuild time increases.

If you haven't got a spare drives lying around (and I'll wager someone cheap enough to use RAID 5 probably doesn't), then you open yourself to risk of complete array failure.

This is not opinion, it is fact.

It has absolutely nothing to do with running the NAS at home vs. Enterprise.

At the end of the day, it's your data.

I don't take unnecessary chances with mine.

 

Here is an old article that explains the problem.

10 hours to rebuild an array with 4TB drives.

Most drives used today are 8TB and larger, so you are looking at a 24 hour window when the extra stress of the rebuild could cause a second drive to fail and then you are done.

 

http://www.enterprisestorageguide.com/raid-disk-rebuild-times

 

Also, If you don't care about performance, then why are you even using M.2 SSDs?

 

Anyway, Backblaze B2 supports USB drive snapshots of up to 4TB.

You can create snapshots in the B2 Browser interface of any size.

How did you seed B2 with 10 TB and how long did it take to get seeded?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[EvilTed]

You pays your money, you takes your chance.

 

I have a lot more data than music files and being in the Data Protection industry, I really don't ever want to have to perform a full restore.

 

You should use 2x SSDs in RAID 0 for the QNAP OS and Roon.

Double the performance and easily snapped to those spinning disks for immediate restore, in the event of failure.

 

3x 4TB USB drives shipped vs. restoring 10 TB over the wire?

Please convince me of the logic here?

 

1. You will be capped by your ISP and have to pay extra

2. You will be waiting around for a while.

 

 

[EvilTed]

I wouldn't use the SSDs for cache acceleration.

 

Create a thick volume using both SSDs and put them in RAID 0.

You use this volume for the QNAP OS and all applications, including Roon and it's database.

 

Then you can snapshot this volume and either export the snapshot to an external drive over USB or to another volume on the NAS.

Note that it has to have as much free space as the volume.

 

HTH

[EvilTed]

Yeah, but like I said, I run the OS and all the Apps on the Thick Volume and so I want to use SnapShots.

You cannot use QNAP SnapShots on Static Volumes, but you can easily convert between volume types and figure out if the performance is degraded.

I run 2x EVO 500 GB SSDs in RAID 0 in a thick volume and it has absolutely no performance issues.

[EvilTed]

All the configuration

 

Yes, the apps are easily reinstalled but settings and configuration are not.

Jobs for anti-virus runs, HBS3 syncs of the NAS with Backblaze B2 etc.

It's a PITA to set this stuff up again from scratch and much easier to just snap it and be done.

 

This is also good practice in case you get robbed.

If you take a snapshot and keep it offsite, all you need to do is purchase another QNAP, set it up and then restore the snapshot and you have everything operational again.

 

[EvilTed]

Create 2 storage pools, for example:

 

1. System

2. Data

 

In System, create a thick volume and in this put the M.2 drives in RAID 0.

This will double the performance of using the SSD stand alone.

You can now install QNAP OS and all your applications on the System Volume, including ROON.

 

In Data, setup the RAID pattern of your choice.

I prefer RAID 10 because it is faster than RAID 5 or 6 and it has a lower rebuild times (minuscule compared to 5 or 6).

 

With a Thick Volume you can use SnapShots.

As I've already mentioned, SnapShots are your friend.

TimeMachine on the Mac uses SnapShots.

You can restore anything backwards in time so long as you have a SnapShot taken on that day.

I take a daily SnapShot and save it for a 2 weeks.

 

If you are using HBS 3+ to sync your music files or other NAS data to the Cloud, you have probably setup encrypted jobs from your NAS.

This takes time to setup and is a PITA to do over from scratch.

If you SnapShot the volume and store it on an external USB then this is easy to restore.

You can also replicate a copy offsite, if you wish.

 

HTH

 

 

 

 

[EvilTed]

No, you can move it to the M2 drives in a new volume without deleting anything.

 

Create the new volume, make it thick if you want to use SnapShots (recommended).

Add the M2 SSDs to it.

Make it RAID 0.

Backup the settings externally using Backup & Restore.

Power down.

Remove the spinning disks.

 

Power up and the system will automatically be installed on the new Volume.

Restore settings to new volume.

Power down.

Plug back in the spinning drives.

Power up.

 

Verify that the System files are running on the SSDs (System).

Done.

 

[EvilTed]

Yes, it is actually very easy but not documented.

Some say it isn't even possible, but don't believe what you read

 

1. Select your volume in Storage & SnapShots and from the Snapshot menu select 'Snapshot Manager'.

 

 

 

2. In Snapshot Manager select the Snapshot you want to export. The default is the latest (Now).

Click Export Snapshot.

 

 

3. Select your External USB Drive from External Storage.

Note that the USB drive must be at least as big as the volume size. 

 

 

Note that this a manual process and not as good as using Snapshot Replica, which can be scheduled.

But, it is a safe way to keep a copy of all your configuration in case something bad happens.

A single drive failure in RAID 0 will destroy the array and you will lose all the data in System, including Roon.

By using Snapshots, it's very easy to get everything back again.

 

BTW, I use Snapshot Replica because I have an old QNAP NAS that I keep around for this purpose.

 

Edit: Yes, using Snapshots may degrade volume performance on a large array, but I doubt it will have much effect on a RAID 0 SSD array, which is giving you double performance compared to a single drive.

You might also note that my volume size is 750 GB and not 2x 500 GB as may be expected.

This is because I leave 1/4 space as Snapshot reserve, which is the space required for Snapshot overhead in the file system.

 

HTH

 

 

 

[EvilTed]

You are welcome.

Let me know if you need anymore help with the setup.

[EvilTed]

@Audio_ELF

RAID 6 is not a good strategy either.

Modern disks are > 10TB, which causes longer and longer array rebuild times, sometimes into a week or more.

This statistically puts one at the same type of risk as using RAID 5 with smaller disk sizes as you mention.

 

Most people use RAID 10, which gives way better performance since it doesn't need to build parity disks / slices.

Yes, you give up half the disk space, but hey, nothing in life is free.

[EvilTed]

QNAP now supports ZFS on newer devices.

 

The backplane of my TVS-873 started giving problems after 4 years of continuous use and it would cost $600 to repair, so I opted to replace with the new TS-873a. This supports ZFS. Got a couple of the original (fast) Samsung EVO 970 512 GB M2 NVMe SSDs for $150 on sale on Amazon and put 64GB of ECC server memory in it.

The TS-873a also has extended warranty to 5 years for $200, which one can add up to 9 months after purchase. 

 

I have everything restored on ZFS with triple disk redundancy.

ZFS gives faster and more efficient snapshots and array rebuild times in minutes instead of hours.

The TS-873A also has USB 3.2 gen 2 ports, so hooking up a drive to an external docking station that supports this faster protocol gives an easy way to back up and remove the disc and hide somewhere.