QNAP TVS-871T NAS with Thunderbolt for FCPX editing?

[Ifti]

Anyone here with the QNAP TVS-871T NAS?
It has Thunderbolt and I'm wondering how it plays with FCPX editing directly from the drive??
I have a unit on the way at the moment, so can report back with my findings, but just wondered if anyone had one already and could share any tips/experiences??

 

[Ifti]

Well the unit arrived and initial impressions are good!
Build quality seems very high, although my drives have still not arrived and should be with me in the next day or two, so cant actually test yet.
Its a bit of a beast! Looking forward to getting started with it!
I'm starting with 3x6TB drives in a RAID5 array, and will add more drives at a later date.....

 

[Gav2k]

Well the unit arrived and initial impressions are good!
Build quality seems very high, although my drives have still not arrived and should be with me in the next day or two, so cant actually test yet.
Its a bit of a beast! Looking forward to getting started with it!
I'm starting with 3x6TB drives in a RAID5 array, and will add more drives at a later date.....

Very nice. I'd recommend slapping at least 2 ssd's in there

 

[phrehdd]

I own QNAP products and they fit the bill for my needs. In your case, I couldn't imagine spending that kind of money when there are DAS products that are far cheaper and have a long reputation of outstanding performance. If you don't mind minimal support, the Areca line is a good fit (as example). It is about 1000 dollars cheaper.

The QNAP however given its i5 CPU could be used for other things as well as DAS for editing. Is the 1000 dollars worth the price of admission for a first time out the door Thunderbolt product?

 

[Ifti]

I own QNAP products and they fit the bill for my needs. In your case, I couldn't imagine spending that kind of money when there are DAS products that are far cheaper and have a long reputation of outstanding performance. If you don't mind minimal support, the Areca line is a good fit (as example). It is about 1000 dollars cheaper.

The QNAP however given its i5 CPU could be used for other things as well as DAS for editing. Is the 1000 dollars worth the price of admission for a first time out the door Thunderbolt product?

I do have a Lacie TB2 drive which I use as a DAS most of the time, but decided to go for a NAS to use as a backup and main storage device. I also have other plans for the drive, including setting up security cameras, PLEX media centre, as well as running virtual machines of different server based OS's (for work) to name just a few examples, and this NAS seems to do everything, plus a lot more, with plenty of space to grow.

The drive is the Quad Core i7 version, with 16GB of RAM - I always like to max spec in order to future proof as much as I can, so it should handle everything I can throw at it.

Also decided to go for the ThunderBolt version so that I can use it as a DAS if I need to with FCPX. Although I have a DAS at the moment, the 871T should provide some impressive speeds and smooth editing, so I may just use the one NAS for everything! It also means as I edit directly attached via TB, others can us the NAS via the network simultaneously - it will make several other devices redundant with the one unit....

Just waiting for my drives to arrive any day now so I can begin the setup - will report back with how things progress in case any others are interested

 

[campyguy]

Just waiting for my drives to arrive any day now so I can begin the setup - will report back with how things progress in case any others are interested

:Munching popcorn!:

 

[phrehdd]

I am glad you have a logical rational for the purchase and truly hope it serves you well. As for me, I prefer more dedicated functionality of a NAS or rather less "beating up" of the NAS as even QNAPs can have trouble with swapping out a drive and doing a RAID restoration.

BTW, how are you going to set up the NAS with respect to RAID scheme? You have lots of options.

 

[Ifti]

I am glad you have a logical rational for the purchase and truly hope it serves you well. As for me, I prefer more dedicated functionality of a NAS or rather less "beating up" of the NAS as even QNAPs can have trouble with swapping out a drive and doing a RAID restoration.

BTW, how are you going to set up the NAS with respect to RAID scheme? You have lots of options.

Hope I don't need to complete any restorations just yet! Although I do have a backup regime to follow shortly via an expansion unit that I can move on/off site as required - just need to fine tune the details!

At the moment I've just set the unit up with 3x6TB drives, in order to get started. These are in a RAID 5 configuration, although Im considering an extra disk and moving to RAID6 for the 2 disk redundancy - the more I read up on it, the more its recommended to go with RAID6, even though it could take a stab at overall performance and means less overall capacity, but I guess the data itself is more important (unless that backup regime I am planning works well.....)

My planned workflow is to....

- Connect my camera directly to the front USB3 port of the TVS-871T. This can be set to auto transfer all content onto the NAS unit directly.
- Connect the computer/laptop via ThunderBolt directly to the TB ports on the rear of the machine
- Edit away just like any other external drive - all while others on the network are still accessing the data on the NAS as normal (which is generally the family with their movie watching etc!!

Heres an overview video of my first thoughts upon opening the package up if you are interested:

Next step is to create a volume - just getting my head around static, thin, and thick volumes so I choose the correct one, unless you have any advice??
I'm not entirely sure on the differences and which I should choose?

I plan to start with 3x6TB drives, and add future 6TB drives over time, so I think a single static volume should be OK for my needs?

 

[hvfsl]

I would personally do a RAID10 for video as it will be faster (if you even get an even number of disks), just make sure you set up the email alerts so you know when I drive fails. Also be careful not to max out the space on the drives as they have a tendency to stop working when you do that (which means you can't easily remove any data to free up space). As for the volume, to simplify things, I would just chose thick.

 

[phrehdd]

I tend to agree with hvfsl, RAID 10 has some distinct advantages.

Here is something else you may want to investigate - Have two RAID systems in your NAS. The first one would be for your movie work and might be two disks as RAID 0. The remaining disks would make up your RAID 5 or 6. The catch is that the RAID 0 would need to be backed up (copy or move) to the RAID 5/6. When choosing the two drives for RAID 0, you might find either SSD or something akin to the Velociraptors(sp) by Western Digital to be a good choice. The goal is to within the NAS dedicate by function. Working with RAID 0 or 10 is more often than not a superior (by way of speed) means to an end over RAID 5/6.

If you do a RAID 0, SSD could give you just under 2 tb to work with while the Velociraptors offer far more and run at 10,000 rpm. This of course is just some food for thought to give you something to investigate.

 

[Ifti]

Finally got round to setting this thing up!
Went for a Static Volume - stating with a RAID5 array, although Ive just ordered another disk and will be shooting for RAID6 while I continue to expand. This drive will be used for Multimedia and general backups/sharing of data as I've just picked up a separate editing drive.

I will be testing the ThunderBolt editing side of stuff soon, although if you have any other suggestions or would like to to test anything give me a shout!

 

[Shibbir]

Hi there
Looking into buying the unit but just want to see if anyone has been running the QNAP TVS 871T on Macs still running Yosemite? Any issues/problems with that set up?
Thanks

 

[joema2]

Hi there
Looking into buying the unit but just want to see if anyone has been running the QNAP TVS 871T on Macs still running Yosemite? Any issues/problems with that set up?
Thanks

I haven't used these since I have all direct attached Thunderbolt2 storage using various RAID boxes, about 64 terabytes total. However I have often wondered about the performance and ease of use of QNAP vs Lumaforge's ShareStation video-optimized NAS boxes. Unfortunately I don't see any head-to-head comparisons examining ease of use and performance:

QNAP: https://www.qnap.com/static/landing/useng/videoproduction/
Lumaforge ShareStation: http://lumaforge.com/