First NAS advice (QNAP TS-873A 8G)

[silk186]

I've been looking for a NAS to store my media as streaming services are limited in China. As the price increase isn't significant I decided starting with an 8 bat NAS would be better than running out of space on a 4 bay. I came across the QNAP TS-873A 8G which is reasonably price here and it has 2.5 GbE. I'm planning to run ZFS and heard that I will need to upgrade the memory. IS 16GB enough? Is it worth adding a 500GB NVMe as well?

 

My use case will be storage of family media, PLEX server storing TV series and 4K movies, backup of local devices (phones and laptops) and finally, back up of media for my wife's social media content (B-roll and completed projects). In Addition, the work related content needs to be accessible from offsite by employees and separate from the other content.

 

Fist question, is the QNAP TS-873A 8G a suitable and sufficient device?

Second, I'm looking at 18TB drives but buying 8 at once is a large expense. Can I start with 4 drives and RAID5, moving up to 8 drives in RAID6 (I was recommended RAID6 with 8 drives.

any suggestions or advice is appreciated.

[jaslion]

4 minutes ago, silk186 said:

QNAP TS-873A 8G

It will not do the job with just that cpu and only 8gb of ram.

 

Its a nas meant to only be a nas and can POSSIBLY support LIGHT plex encoding when you put a gpu in there which is also very limited and thus also need to pay for plex pro.

 

Also if you do zfs you wont be running raid. Zfs does the whole 1,2,... drive failiure catches. Keep in mind this is NOT A BACKUP!!!!!!

 

Id not get this nas especially since its very very pricey. For that money you can do the whole fractal 7 xl + decent computer + raid card from ebay kinda deal easily

[silk186]

3 hours ago, jaslion said:

It will not do the job with just that cpu and only 8gb of ram.

 

Its a nas meant to only be a nas and can POSSIBLY support LIGHT plex encoding when you put a gpu in there which is also very limited and thus also need to pay for plex pro.

 

Also if you do zfs you wont be running raid. Zfs does the whole 1,2,... drive failiure catches. Keep in mind this is NOT A BACKUP!!!!!!

 

Id not get this nas especially since its very very pricey. For that money you can do the whole fractal 7 xl + decent computer + raid card from ebay kinda deal easily

I already have PLEX pro and will be streaming to apple tv and ipad.

 

I can build it myself but I want something that won't need a lot of militance and tinkering with. I'm in China so I'm not buying used parts from ebay.