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

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 minutes ago, LarryMagoo said:

I haver never understood people with ridiculous sized libraries.  I have a measly .5 TB and I have stuff I don't remember buying.  How in the hell do you listen to 10-21 TB????     You could not possibly listen to that much music in any ONE lifetime!

Very valid question.

 

Which megabytes of your 500 are you willing to part with? You can't possibly listen to every song on every album. This is rhetorical of course. The issue isn't listening to all of my 10 TB of music, it's not knowing which music one wants to listen to now or ever. For example, I purchased the Three Blind Mice Supreme Collection of 40 albums. I know I love most of them, but some others I'm unfamiliar with.  If I deleted them, I'll never know. If I delete them, I may find out later there's a great track or two on them. I often learn about great albums from the Album of the Evening thread here on AS. It turns out I have some of these albums. 

 

I absolutely love music and always have. I wish my library was smaller, but I'd hate to throw away something that could bring me so much joy in the future. 

[Kal Rubinson]

13 minutes ago, LarryMagoo said:

I haver never understood people with ridiculous sized libraries.  I have a measly .5 TB and I have stuff I don't remember buying.  How in the hell do you listen to 10-21 TB????     You could not possibly listen to that much music in any ONE lifetime!

And how big are your files?  Much of my collection is high-resolution, multichannel and uncompressed.  Some of the individual tracks exceed 10G!

[ted_b]

+1 Chris!  As a poor analogy I sure hope my public library doesn’t throw out books that have been rarely borrowed. The good news is our libraries are housed not in brick and mortar but incredibly cheap storage. The need to throw out anything is seldom invoked. 
 

Kal, yes And as I joked earlier wait til we turn Chris into a multichannel guy. His 10TBs goes 25 in a hurry. 😀

[afrancois]

5 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

And how big are your files?  Much of my collection is high-resolution, multichannel and uncompressed.  Some of the individual tracks exceed 10G!

10G really hurts

[Kal Rubinson]

1 hour ago, ted_b said:

Kal, yes And as I joked earlier wait til we turn Chris into a multichannel guy. His 10TBs goes 25 in a hurry. 😀

Yes.  It is simple math.

[kennyb123]

2 hours ago, LarryMagoo said:

I haver never understood people with ridiculous sized libraries.  I have a measly .5 TB and I have stuff I don't remember buying.  How in the hell do you listen to 10-21 TB????     You could not possibly listen to that much music in any ONE lifetime!

 

"My" library is far larger than that - well over 60 million songs.  That I couldn't listen to it in one lifetime isn't the right way to look at it.  

 

I jest of course as I was stretching the meaning of "my" library to include all of the music on Tidal and Qobuz, which is accurate in a virtual sense.  

 

I've been listening to Roon all afternoon as it has been taking me on a journey through "my" library. I've heard a mix of songs from Tidal, Qobuz and own physical library.  The beauty of Roon Radio is it can take you on a journey through all this to unearth treasures you didn't even realize you owned and many more that you never even thought of owning.  So it's not about getting through all the music in a lifetime.  It's about spending your lifetime with nearly-unlimited access to music you're likely to enjoy.

[captfidel]

I have a similar experience. However, I am Synology-based.

 

My Synology DS-3617xs:

• Intel Xeon D-1527
• 4 core
• 2.2.Ghz
• 32GB RAM
• 10Gb Ethernet

 

I also have a large local library with lots of HiRez files:

• 11K Albums
• 165K Tracks
• ~3K Tidal albums

 

When freshly booted, my NAS is snappy and performs well running Roon. Overtime, performance degrades - playback is fine but searching, pulling up info, etc... all things UI-related. I suspect a memory leak. Regular reboots isn’t a good solution as my NAS does other things as well which don’t like to be interrupted. I believe that Roon on a NAS is an infrequent deployment mode for Roon, and perhaps it doesn’t get as much engineering attention as other deployment modes. I love Roon, and am hopeful that one day a fix will appear.

 

[Crom]

Just in case this is useful for others with larger libraries...I've been using Roon for 4+ years now (my Roon DB was 60GB at last look and I've got over 240k tracks). Every few months it would crash the database and I'd have to restore some backup or other...a pain. I finally got around to raising a question on the board and a recommendation to run Roon Server on Windows came back. Since then I havent' looked back. The problem apparently revolves around Mono libraries that take care of .net duties on linux. Their just not as 'good' as the original libraries in Windows.

[The Computer Audiophile]

29 minutes ago, Crom said:

Just in case this is useful for others with larger libraries...I've been using Roon for 4+ years now (my Roon DB was 60GB at last look and I've got over 240k tracks). Every few months it would crash the database and I'd have to restore some backup or other...a pain. I finally got around to raising a question on the board and a recommendation to run Roon Server on Windows came back. Since then I havent' looked back. The problem apparently revolves around Mono libraries that take care of .net duties on linux. Their just not as 'good' as the original libraries in Windows.

Hi Crom, yeah Roon’s db works best on Windows but I always have an issue when storing my music on a NAS. Because of the limitations of CIFS / network shares, Roon can’t update the database when new music is added without a scan. 
 

I could schedule a scan but that doesn’t help when I download album and want it right now. 
 

I will be trying Roon core on Windows again soon. 

[AudioDoctor]

41 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Crom, yeah Roon’s db works best on Windows but I always have an issue when storing my music on a NAS. Because of the limitations of CIFS / network shares, Roon can’t update the database when new music is added without a scan. 
 

I could schedule a scan but that doesn’t help when I download album and want it right now. 
 

I will be trying Roon core on Windows again soon. 

 

Chris, is that a problem on the Small Green Computer devices as well?

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

Chris, is that a problem on the Small Green Computer devices as well?

Anytime the storage isn’t on the local machine Roon won’t update the database immediately. 

[AudioDoctor]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Anytime the storage isn’t on the local machine Roon won’t update the database immediately. 

 

Thats a +1 in the buy a new Mini as a Core column.

[The Computer Audiophile]

6 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

Thats a +1 in the buy a new Mini as a Core column.

Where is your music storage?

[AudioDoctor]

3 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Where is your music storage?

connected to my current mini via thunderbolt in an OWC Thunder Bay RAID 4

[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 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 minutes ago, EvilTed said:

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.

Very cool. I used to manage an EMC Symmetrix, with asynchronous mirroring around the world, among many other tasks. 

 

8 minutes ago, EvilTed said:

Rebooting a NAS daily is ridiculous.

That is not how a NAS is designed to operate.

I agree 100%. It's a solution that I can control while Roon and QNAP figure out what's going on. 

 

 

9 minutes ago, EvilTed said:

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.

 

Enterprise drives certainly have a longer warranty period. I remember reading that many of the drives in the consumer space, marketed as Enterprise, were nearly identical to the consumer grade drives. I have some consumer drives running in an old Synology for about 10 years. 

 

 

12 minutes ago, EvilTed said:

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

 I'm glad you agree with what I said in the article. 

 

 

12 minutes ago, EvilTed said:

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

I disagree. If we were running a global enterprise that lost money during down time, I'd be onboard with you. However, we are running a static volume storing music. Speed isn't an issue either. 

 

15 minutes ago, EvilTed said:

I also use Backblaze B2

What is the restore like for Backblaze B2? Is it limited to 500 GB zip files at a time and hard drive shipping to the end user? What does it cost?

 

 

[Foggie]

17 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Crom, yeah Roon’s db works best on Windows but I always have an issue when storing my music on a NAS. Because of the limitations of CIFS / network shares, Roon can’t update the database when new music is added without a scan. 

I apologize if I'm missing something here.  I have been on lifetime roon for several yrs and have had my music stored on a Qnap NAS since day one. I run a headless win10 wkst running roon server/core and have never ever had to scan.  Anytime I modify music (add new, delete, modify metadata) on the music share (NAS), roon immediately recognizes the changes and updates accordingly? 

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 minutes ago, Foggie said:

I apologize if I'm missing something here.  I have been on lifetime roon for several yrs and have had my music stored on a Qnap NAS since day one. I run a headless win10 wkst running roon server/core and have never ever had to scan.  Anytime I modify music (add new, delete, modify metadata) on the music share (NAS), roon immediately recognizes the changes and updates accordingly? 

Hi Foggie, great to hear it's working for you. 

 

I've used a Windows 10 + Synology system and a Roon ROCK + QNAP system and neither one would recognize new music quickly. I wish I could remember if the Synology was using SMBv3 and if that mattered with respect to newly added music discovery. 

[austinpop]

21 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I've used a Windows 10 + Synology system and a Roon ROCK + QNAP system and neither one would recognize new music quickly. I wish I could remember if the Synology was using SMBv3 and if that mattered with respect to newly added music discovery. 

 

Chris, I run Roon on a Linux server, and mount music from a Synology NAS. I've never had Roon automatically detect new additions to the storage, but it's not a big deal for me. I just go to Settings > Storage and Force Rescan on the NAS folder. It's second nature, and completes in seconds. Granted, my library is "only" 25k tracks.

 

Trying to understand if you're just describing a first world problem, or if this is a serious issue for you. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, austinpop said:

Trying to understand if you're just describing a first world problem, or if this is a serious issue for you. 

Most definitely a first world problem, but one that can be avoided. The user just has to weight the pros and cons of going with a specific OS and storage model.

[austinpop]

1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Most definitely a first world problem, but one that can be avoided. The user just has to weight the pros and cons of going with a specific OS and storage model.

 

Ah OK — got it.

[Foggie]

38 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Hi Foggie, great to hear it's working for you. 

 

I've used a Windows 10 + Synology system and a Roon ROCK + QNAP system and neither one would recognize new music quickly. I wish I could remember if the Synology was using SMBv3 and if that mattered with respect to newly added music discovery. 

That makes zero sense.  I can't recall of hearing this before, weird.  I mean there isn't even a lag, its pretty instant.  My server does have a mapped drive to music share on NAS - not that that is related to the roon setting, but just mentioning it.

 

Not to state the obvious, but the share ACL's obviously need to be set properly R,W etc...  Maybe its your DB size, dunno.  Wish I had an answer as having to force a scan as well as the reboots you eluded to really go against the design intent of such a platform.

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

23 minutes ago, Foggie said:

That makes zero sense.  I can't recall of hearing this before, weird.  I mean there isn't even a lag, its pretty instant.  My server does have a mapped drive to music share on NAS - not that that is related to the roon setting, but just mentioning it.

 

Not to state the obvious, but the share ACL's obviously need to be set properly R,W etc...  Maybe its your DB size, dunno.  Wish I had an answer as having to force a scan as well as the reboots you eluded to really go against the design intent of such a platform.

 

 

Here is a little bit from Roon about this:

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/new-music-added-to-library-takes-roon-about-a-day-to-find-it/68101/6?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Most definitely a first world problem, but one that can be avoided. The user just has to weight the pros and cons of going with a specific OS and storage model.

???  I am running win10 on two different systems and both have QNAP NAS drives in them.  Roon always adds new content automatically.

[The Computer Audiophile]

13 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

???  I am running win10 on two different systems and both have QNAP NAS drives in them.  Roon always adds new content automatically.

 

I'm not making it up. I've talked to the Roon guys about it as well. 

 

14 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Here is a little bit from Roon about this:

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/new-music-added-to-library-takes-roon-about-a-day-to-find-it/68101/6?