NAS Units as VM Hosts: QNAP's Virtualization Station Explored
by Ganesh T S on August 18, 2014 10:15 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Storage
- Virtualization
- QNAP
Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks
Important NAS aspects such as RAID rebuild durations and power consumption have already been recorded in our performance review. The power consumption numbers for typical NAS usage with Virtualization Station active are provided below. Note that the four drives being used are the Western Digital WD40EFRX 4 TB Red drives.
| QNAP TS-451 Power Consumption (Virtualization Station Active) | |
| Activity | Avg. Power (W) |
| VM Workload (Heavy Internet Browsing) | 29.84 W |
| VM Workload (Heavy Internet Browsing) + robocopy Write to RAID-5 Volume | 33.14 W |
| VM Powered On (Idle) / Disks Active | 28.19 W |
| VM Powered Off / Disks Idle (not spun down) | 25.23 W |
The combination of low power Red drives as well as the power efficiency of the 22nm Bay Trail-D Celeron J1800 results in an energy-efficient NAS and hypervisor platform. One would be hard-pressed to create a fully-populated NAS with four bays along with the ability to run VMs within such a power profile.
Coming to the business end of the review, we believe that Virtualization Station is undoubtedly one of the most interesting features to emerge in the COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) NAS operating systems space. The benefits to SMBs / SMEs are without question. From a home consumer perspective, it might even be the start of virtualization going mainstream. Let us be honest here - the average user (not the typical AnandTech reader) cares little about virtualization as a feature. However, with the TS-x51 series, it might turn out to be something worth it for such users to explore. The ability to run Android VMs in Virtualization Station is coming soon. Combined with the applications that we outlined earlier in this piece, it is definitely going to be interesting to see how the market reception for QNAP's TS-x51 units.
The Virtualization Station package in QTS is definitely usable, but it is a bit light on features compared to offerings such as Hyper-V. We would like to see high speed data transfer between the host and the guest implemented at the earliest. In addition, QNAP could also prepare applications for P2V (physical-to-virtual) translation - enabling its customers to retire old PCs with the data backed up. Usage of a WLAN adapter as the dedicated network adapter for the VMs could enable users to retain performance while also taking advantage of the unique feature. All in all, despite the missing features, QNAP's Virtualization Station is a well-rounded compelling offering that helps them stand out in the COTS NAS market for SMB, SOHO and home consumers.
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kmob - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link
Ganesh, thanks is as always for a very thorough yet readable feature.To consolidate some of my machines, I was weighing purchasing a 'dumb' NAS (like the QNAP or Synology) and a small i7 or Xeon box running ESXi. Digging into your research on this QNAP, I stumbled on articles about people upgrading the QNAP x70 series boxes with i7 or Xeon 1265 processors and RAM for some beastly VM performance on the NAS. This seems like an outstanding application of this QNAP Virtualization Station on more robust hardware at a reasonable price (for one box).
Thanks for getting my gears turning! I just ordered a QNAP 670 and a Xeon 1265L v2.
coburn_c - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link
This article is confusing and poorly written. You start off with paragraphs of patronizing explanation on virtual machines but never discuss this NAS box you are testing. The first hardware specs I see are of a test machine? I had to go to the manufacturer website to see what abysmal specs the NAS box actually had.As for the substance.. I've run ESXi on a nettop before.. it's great. I wouldn't run it on a nettop that's also running my net shares, especially not a SOHO one. More importantly, I wouldn't run some off-brand crap, I'd install ESXi.
ganeshts - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link
Thanks for the note. Majority of the other comments on this review don't echo your sentiments (probably because they have already been through the first part of the TS-451 review where I had indicated that the review would be in three parts - and specifically mentioned that discussion of the virtualization aspects would be the second piece).I do agree that new readers might find it a bit confusing as to what the exact specs and performance of the TS-451 are. I have added this statement in the initial section for this purpose: We have already looked at the performance aspects of the TS-451 in an earlier review [ http://anandtech.com/show/8298/qnap-ts451-bay-trai... ].
wintermute000 - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link
Its neat but I think its aiming for a pretty niche market.- want virt
- dont want 'real' virt host
- only want 1 low spec VM
DanNeely - Wednesday, August 20, 2014 - link
With the single VM limit, IMO it's more about being able to run unofficial packages without risking your warranty by SSHing past the vendors front end interface and safeguards. Other than potentially trying to stop users from shooting themselves in the foot, the hard single VM limit doesn't make a lot of sense. While there's not enough hardware to run multiple heavy client OSes; you could run a several small headless *nix images to isolate applications before maxing the system out.Wisefoxx - Wednesday, August 20, 2014 - link
Virtualisation station from Qnap is my first foray into VM's, I found it to be a fantastic addition to QTS. What's more with the 470 pro (4,6 or 8 bay) you can upgrade the processor to give you that little extra. I have a 45w i7 pro + 16gb ram installed and run multiple VM's. Such an upgrade path works well and gives you more confidence in the V-station platform.Insomniac - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link
Some people are reporting that they are able to run 16 GB of RAM (8 GB x 2) in the x51 series. Can you confirm that is true?