Suggestions for a 16 bay rackmount NAS?

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Randy –
I am very confused by your post.
In your Subject line – you state “Suggestions for a 16 bay Rackmount NAS?”

but in the body of your post, you ask about the QNAP TVS-EC1580MU

The TVS-EC1580MU is not a current product for QNAP, but I see it on the mail order listings.
This is a 9 bay system with 6 slots for 2 1/2″ SSD’s.
For a video editing application, you will find that QNAP Qtier or Disk Caching does absolutely nothing, if you are using applications like Resolve, Premiere, Media Composer or FCP X.

For a modern 16 bay QNAP solution, I strongly recommend the new QNAP TS-1683XU-RP which is Intel Xeon based, or the less expensive QNAP TS-1677XU-RP, which is AMD Ryzen based. These units are the modern 16 bay QNAP systems, that fully support 10GbE, and are fully expandable, with an additional eight 16 bay RAID chassis.

But you only have 4 edit workstations. You can get away with a much less expensive system that can handle 4K for all edit workstations.
The QNAP TS-1685 is a 12 bay (it too has four 2 1/2″ SSD slots that you do not need to use) – and this is half the price of the 16 bay rack mount models. YES, it comes for free with dual 10GbE 10Gig ports. And yes – this is expandable with four REXP-1000 Pro 10 bay expander chassis.

And for even less money, you can get the QNAP TVS-872XT, which is an 8 bay that can be expanded with
up to 6 8 bay TX-800P thunderbolt expander chassis. This model is VERY inexpensive, and comes with a single 10GbE port.

Any of these products (including the Synology) would connect to a small 10G Netgear or QNAP switch, to all for all of your edit workstations to have 10G connectivity to your QNAP (or Synology). Of course, your computers need 10G Nic ports – either thunderbolt to 10G, or a PCIe card that would go into an old Mac Pro, or a Windows 10 PC.

Then all four of your workstations could easily do 4K editing with this system.

The QNAP systems are very inexpensive, and will give you the same performance as these other systems.
And you are correct – you can purchase TWO of these systems – one for your main edit system, and one for near line storage backup, over the 10G network, and this would STILL cost less than one of the other systems mentioned.

The QNAP backup software comes for free with the QNAP – it is called Hybrid Backup Sync.

The Ursa Mini Pro G2 is great – just remember that currently only Resolve is supporting Blackmagic RAW – but it shoots in ProRes 4K as well (Ultra HD) and it looks great. And of course, your lenses will cost more than the camera.

I have personally never installed the Synology RS4017xs+. Synology doesn’t seem to focus on the video industry, and never shows up to video trade shows. But their equipment is excellent. Most of my experience comes with the QNAP product line currently.

I can assist you with either.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Randy Burleson]

Thank you Bob!
I appreciate your input and trust your judgement completely.
I’m going to look into the TS-1683XU-RP … I think I want the storage space of a 16 bay.

What would be the best RAID set up ? RAID 5 or 6 or 50 or 60?
What do your recommend?

I will probably add a MAM software of some sort… maybe AXLE?

[Steve Grappone]

Hi Randy,

This solution appears that it could work. Unfortunately for me I’ve never worked with this product. But if it has 16 drives and each drive has a max speed of 232MB/sec then you should have a total drive through-put of 3,712MB/sec however there are some bottlenecks so expecting that speed is beyond optimistic. After raid calc, seek time, various settings on FS, and a slower proc (from the internet spec sheet) I would hope this system gets to 2,000MB/sec

Working with 4K ProRes and having 4 artist with a bit rate of apx 225MB/sec X 4 900MB/sec, I want to say this system is fine.

I might make one modification. Rather than a switch I’d add another 10GbE card and make home runs. Get your internet via wi-fi or another cat 6 run.

Hope this helps
Steve

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Randy –
I setup these systems as RAID 6. Drives in 2019 are very very reliable, and it is rare to see a failed drive these days. With modern products (like QNAP) there are multiple indications if a drive has failed, and you can do the rebuild HOT while your 4 editors continue to work. You simply pop out the bad drive put in the replacement, and the auto rebuild starts.

The TS-1683XU-RP is a great product. You can add a 12G mini SAS card into one of the four PCIe slots (under $400) and then add EIGHT additional 16 bay RAID chassis to this system. That’s over a pedabyte of storage. With 12 TB drives in the main system, you will get 192 TB raw, and 168 TB after RAID 6.

Axle is a great small MAM product to run with the QNAP, and will run on any of your Mac’s.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Randy Burleson]

Hey Bob,
It looks like for about $1,200 more, I could upgrade to the QNAP TVSEC1680USASRP16GC2 with 16 x SAS 12gb EXOS drives. and Xeon E3-1246 v2.3 3.5 GHz

Is that worth the extra money or is that just overkill at this point?

[Bob Zelin]

the TVS-EC1680U-SAS-RP-R2 is an end of life product. This was the top product 2 months ago.

It has been replaced by the TS-1683XU-RP (Intel Xeon) and the TS-1677XU-RP (AMD Ryzen).

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Rich Rubasch]

Wow, Bob, Axle is a great little tool. That was the best part of this thread. I always wished CAT DV would create something simple like this. This fits the bill big time!

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Bob Zelin]

as long as you are happy Rich – that is all that matters !
Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Randy Burleson]

Bob,
How many simultaneous streams of ProRes 4K video is the QNAP TS-1683XU-RP capable of handling ?

[Randy Burleson]

So theoretically how many 4K proRes streams will it handle simultaneously? Would adding the QM2-4P-384 to add 4 M.2 NVMe Cache help?