Commercial NAS Operating Systems - Exploring Value-Additions - Part I
by Ganesh T S on December 22, 2016 8:00 AM ESTTo Be Continued...
A few of the value-additions offered by NAS vendors in their OS have been explored in detail in the preceding pages. In the multimedia segment, QNAP and Synology are way ahead of the rest of the vendors. Asustor is close behind in terms of support for native media features, but, the overall execution leaves lot of scope for improvement. An important component of the multimedia support package is the mobile apps suite, which we haven't covered in this piece. Media servers are an important value-add in the NAS feature set. Every vendor other than ZyXEL has Plex support. Most also support Twonky media server. Netgear seems to have worked closely with Plex to support hardware transcoding on certain ARM models. On the topic of transcoding, for x86-based NAS units - we see QuickSync support for real-time / offline transcoding / downscaling. However, licensing requirements keep altering the feature set of supported audio and video codecs - particularly for QNAP.
On the surveillance front, there is no question that Synology's Surveillance Station 7.2 is hands-down the best native VMS created by a NAS vendor as yet. QNAP's implementation is good, while Asustor's main selling point is the four default licenses with each NAS unit, rather than the user experience. That said, Western Digital supports the Milestone Arcus VMS, which is one of the most user-friendly and intuitive IP camera recording / management applications we have evaluated. In this area, it is necessary to move from proprietary Windows-only programs and plugins to native HTML5 video for IP camera feed tracking and management. Synology has already made the first steps towards this. It is for QNAP and Asustor to follow. Netgear's solution feels ancient (the UI is reminiscent of the early days of ReadyNAS OS). We recommend Netgear or ZyXEL NAS units for surveillance recording only if there is another VMS that just requires a share on a network drive to record to.
On the remote access front, everyone except Asustor seems to support a relay server to enable outside access without port forwarding. Pretty much, everyone has a decent solution here. Supported cloud services for backup and sync are also similar across the board. In terms of features that owe their origins to the cloud services, we see all vendors attempt something, but, with varying success in terms of user experience. QNAP and Synology again hold the edge here, with Western Digital and Netgear providing passable experience. ZyXEL seems to be more focused on the mobile side with their myZyXELcloud relay service.
What lies next? Modern-day computing platforms (even consumer-level PCs) have become very powerful and now allow multiple operating systems to operate in parallel (or, jobs to run in an isolated environment) using the concept of virtualization. While this might appear to be of interest only to professional users, we will see later that even the average consumer ends up using such features without knowing the inner technical details. Traditionally, NAS vendors have equated virtualization support to just providing good iSCSI support - a 'disk' that a virtual machine running on another server can use for OS installation and data storage. More recently, we have seen NAS units themselves run isolated jobs using containers. Some NAS vendors also allow their OS to act as a host OS and support running different operating systems as guests. Virtualization support has also turned out to be a very important value addition in certain market segments.
All NAS units are, at their core, simple computers that have been tuned for a particular purpose. We have also seen that most of the NAS operating systems are usually built upon a standard Linux kernel (some adopt other operating systems such as BSD or Windows also). Therefore, it is only fair for tech-savvy users to expect the ability to run some Linux applications that are not provided as part of the core OS. Unfortunately, in order to provide an acceptable user experience for all, most NAS vendors prefer to keep the OS installation locked down to some extent. The allied features are introduced into the system using third-party applications (that are created using a SDK supplied by the NAS vendor, and guaranteed to work with the particular NAS OS). Therefore, the third-party applications ecosystem is an important factor for many consumers who wish to treat their NAS as a multi-purpose machine. Note that a NAS can have absolutely no third-party apps support, but, can still fulfill all the core requirements for usage as a NAS. In fact, it is likely that most business users tend to use NAS units for a single use-case and rarely use third-party applications.
Some vendors have started integrating business software suites in their NAS OS. For example, Synology offers Office and MailPlus Server (along with a MailPlus client). While the latter set is essentially a privately hosted Gmail alternative (or a replacement for Microsoft Exchange), the former can be treated as an alternative to cloud-based suites like Office365 and Google Docs. A complement to Office is the Note Station app. QNAP has the Notes Station app with similar features. It is worthwhile investigating the extent of such productivity features in the various NAS operating systems.
NAS vendors offer mobile apps to help users interact with their NAS units. Both core and value-add features can be utilized better by consumers with these mobile apps. A detailed review of the various mobile apps will help consumers get an idea of the user experience as well as available features. We will address the above aspects and more in our concluding piece of this series next month.
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jsntech - Friday, December 23, 2016 - link
That would be fantastic. Can't wait!perseid - Thursday, December 22, 2016 - link
Synology's DSM still does not support full drive encryption. I wonder why such a critical need has not been addressed yet.tokyojerry - Saturday, December 24, 2016 - link
Ganesh, thank you very much for your effort in creating this article on NAS. I think NAS devices are increasingly becoming popular among general computer users as an alternative to, (or complementary to) paid cloud services. Benefits are immediately obvious like like the elimination of forever recurring, monthly fee-based, cloud space rentals, an owner can control his / her own data, no theoretical space limits, etc. After all, physical possession is 9/10ths the law as the old say goes. And one's precious data is not entrusted to and at the mercy of a 3rd party vendor that you hopefully can trust, will not go out of business, etc.I am still a relative newcomer to NAS devices. I learn a lot such by being able to read NAS-related articles such as this one you created for the layperson. It offers insight into NAS basics for someone like me with a need to know.
I've been using Synology's DS1515+. It has served me well. I recently also purchased a QNAP TVS-682T (foolishly I think as way overpriced) and am thinking to switch to it in lieu of, or use concurrently with the Synology. What do you think? Should I use both concurrently? Overkill? Use the new QNAP as the main and relegate the Synology to a backup role? Sell off the Synology? I am tending towards keeping the QNAP and let the Synology go all together. After all, isn't it the purpose of NAS to have not only central storage for all one's data as well as provide backup as well? As such, that would make my Synology redundant, no? Furthermore, since the QNAP is ported with Thunderbolt (albeit 2.0) the NAS can also be used as high speed DAS in addition to NAS, iSCSI. QNAP also has this Virtualization Station thing (nice!) which seems quite attractive. does that mean I can run a complete VM of Windows 10 from my QNAP without having to purchase a dedicated windows machine? Performance should be about the same? I do have a VM of Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro but I am thinking consolidation of that to the QNAP might be even better. The QNAP has the specs and I/O capability through thunderbolt, so I am thinking why not just consolidate every thing via QNAP NAS.
Sorry for the long-winded message. I know you are busy, but, if you do have any thoughts to contribute, even short bullet-type answers will be appreciated. Thanks.
DanNeely - Monday, December 26, 2016 - link
With a single unit, you can have either a unified data store or a backup because the latter is a second independent copy. A second nas is the deep pocket/paranoid way to have both. Cheaper ways include backing up your nas to external drives periodically (doing this to have offline backups is a good idea even if you have another backup option), backing up to the cloud, or having your nas serve as the backup for a media store on a 2nd machine and then share backup out.The desktop i3 in the model you have is fast enough that it should be comparable to what's in your MPB; depending on what you're doing you might need to upgrade its ram though. However this isn't the case for their more mainstream models which only have atom based CPUs, and can only be upgraded from 2/4 to 8GB of ram; they're only really intended for running a lightweight (ideally GUIless) *nix VM.
tokyojerry - Thursday, December 29, 2016 - link
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, a second NAS might be the 'deep pocket' approach to having a backup, but I already have both. Considering Ganesh' suggestion (below) however, I may now just keep both. It surely is a lot less headache to have a complete second NAS unit rsync'd from a primary unit and using the second NAS as (1) backup and (2) immediately serviceable rather then having to try and do restores from a set of backups on external drives. I am still thinking about it but that seems to make the greater sense to me.Backup up to clouds is something I am giving almost no consideration to. Firstly, the forever, ongoing recurring monthly fees and secondly, I prefer to have control over my own data. The primary function for cloud services are for file transfers and file synchronizations.
The QNAP TVS-682T is already 8GB and I think it could be upgraded to 16GB if I want. My heaviest use scenario might be video NLE production. I am not a player of 3D games (or games at all) and things of that sort. QNAP's TVS-series is their upper echelon series also having Core i5 and i7 models.
ganeshts - Tuesday, December 27, 2016 - link
I have used both Synology and QNAP units as 'daily-drivers'. For personal use / AnandTech review data work, I use the QNAP TS-853 Pro because I can run VMs on it (my home automation controller is a headless Ubuntu machine running as a VM in it). For recording from IP cameras, I use a Synology NAS - I tend to find that Synology is dedicating more DSM resources towards business users and not the mid-level professional users, while QNAP tends to have something for everyone.Since you have both the DS1515+ and TVS-682T, I suggest using QNAP as the main and use the Synology with a rsync job to keep regular / live backups. As for VM on the QNAP, I would think it is a good idea, but I can't tell for sure unless I know what workload you plan to run on it. Note that even if you don't need to purchase a dedicated Windows machine, you might need to spend money on the license, unless you have some spare from elsewhere.
One thing I have learned in my time with NAS units is that it is never a bad idea to keep a live backup NAS - I have had to switch-over (not seamlessly, I am afraid, but still a good deal better than retrieving data from backups and loading on to a new NAS) a couple of times in the last 7 years.
tokyojerry - Tuesday, December 27, 2016 - link
Excellent information Ganesh. Thank you for the time and effort on the feedback.I will take your suggestion to heart and use the QNAP as the main and keep the Synology as a backup unit. Currently I've been maintaining my Synology backup via a sort of hodge-podge solution. Synology has 5 bays. 4bays (6TB x4) is the main system providing 18TB of usable space. Bay 5 has 10TB as part of my backup. Externally I have Seagate 8TB (Archive) drive as the second part of the full backup. But I can see your point to conduct backups to the Synology and be able to implement that on demand as a fallback secondary system rather then doing restores from backups afterwards.
Windows VM on the QNAP... about the heaviest workload I would do might be video NLE basic end user productions (not a movie producer :-) ) using something like Blackmagic's DaVince Resolve or the open source Shotcut NLE editor. Other then that it wold be all run-of-the-mill that any body would typical do... office apps, photo edits, communications, etc.
Planet07 - Tuesday, December 27, 2016 - link
Nice article but I really wish you would cover drive failures, data corruption etc in your NAS reviews/articles. A lot of people are relying on these devices to backup their important data. It would be good to see how these units deal with worst case scenarios. What good is a NAS if corruption of one drive takes out the whole data set or if drives fail.bill3000 - Friday, December 30, 2016 - link
Lets talk speed! Wire I/O is usually the weakest link in a NAS, and this affects the rest of the NAS design. Vendors often report the performance of multiple “teamed” 1gbe ports (AKA link aggregation), 10gbe is much less common. I think Multichannel SMB is still in development for SAMBA, meaning your linux-based NAS likely doesn’t support sending SMB traffic over “teamed” ports, so you effectively get single 1gbe performance per user. A *huge* feature is support for Offloaded Data Transfers (ODX), so your local PC doesn't have to download a file just to move it around on the NAS.darwinosx - Monday, April 3, 2017 - link
What happened to the follow up article?