Qnap h674 setup

[Enquiries]

Hi guys. Long time follower. Excellent info, thank you for all you do. My question pertains to my new QNAP h674 I just received. My main areas of use are PLEX, multimedia, File sharing with family, friends, as well as I maintain my consulting customers backup data on the same NAS. Old nas is TVS 671 I am decommissioning.

Hardware on hand: h674 i5 32GB, 2 x Samsung nvme 1tb, 4 x WD Red Pro 20TB

Im not sure best use for nvme drives. First thought was should I set them up as first pool (system pool) or set the system pool as the 4 Western Digs raid 5 and then add the nvmes as caching later? QNAP setup video starts with nvmes as system but i see your video says use 1st pool with SATA disks. I do have many 4k movies I will be playing.

Can you please advise and explain benefits of each way for my understanding?

THANK YOU!

Lou

[ed]

Yes, this is a popular question. Use nVMe for caching or storage. My choice would be to use NVMe SSD for operating system and apps.
Caching by definition supposed to boost HDD bottlenecks. In a business environment where projects and average daily data use is above the SSD size (or affordability) then SSD cache helps to increase HDD performance. But otherwise, it is always better to go for a proper NVME storage pool if possible. HDD can be used for storing movies or archive files.


I hope this helps.

[cliffkujala]

Yes, this is a popular question. Use nVMe for caching or storage. My choice would be to use NVMe SSD for operating system and apps.
Caching by definition supposed to boost HDD bottlenecks. In a business environment where projects and average daily data use is above the SSD size (or affordability) then SSD cache helps to increase HDD performance. But otherwise, it is always better to go for a proper NVME storage pool if possible. HDD can be used for storing movies or archive files.


I hope this helps.

Hello.  I also have basically the same setup.  This will be my first NAS install.

QNAP TVS-h674 i5 32gb
(2) 2tb Samsung NVME PCI Gen 4 
(4) 18tb Ironwolf Drives

My question is what to do with slot 5 and 6 on the NAS.  Should I just put in another 2 spinning drives to give more redundancy and more RAID level options across those drives, or should I setup a 2nd pool of SSDs for use as a cache or fast operating pool?

Or not even worry about those slots at all for the moment? I could run the NAS system on the 4tb of NVME, as that is more than enough storage for me to run all my daily applications, VMs, docker continers, and other frequently accessed work files.  And the (4) 18tb worth of drives gives me more than enough storage to easily backup that pool plus store all my movies, etc.

Thanks for any advise.

[ed]

Yes, I would keep those bays empty. In the future, you can add more drives if you need more storage space.
Since you will run OS and apps on NVMe, having SATA SSD cache would make no sense (2000MB/s versus 500GB/s).
You could set up separate RAID on those bays for backups. Or maybe a hot spare.

I hope this helps.

[cliffkujala]

Yes, I would keep those bays empty. In the future, you can add more drives if you need more storage space.
Since you will run OS and apps on NVMe, having SATA SSD cache would make no sense (2000MB/s versus 500GB/s).
You could set up separate RAID on those bays for backups. Or maybe a hot spare.

I hope this helps.

Thanks again for the advise.

RAID 0 on the (2) 2TB NVMe drives for maximum speed and capacity?

Which RAID level for the (4) 18TB spinning drives? 5 or 6?