Ryzen-powered QNAP NAS devices are available worldwide

[Morgan MLGman]

As mentioned in this post from late May:

There was a Ryzen-based QNAP device spotted at Computex 2017, since they're available now I decided to provide a bit more info about those.

Source: https://www.qnap.com/en/news/2017/world-s-first-ryzen-nas-qnap-ships-ts-x77-business-nas-powered-by-8-core-3-7-ghz-amd-ryzen-7-1700-processor-for-boosted-virtual-machine-performance?sf136897574=1

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“We are very excited about our partnership with AMD to launch the world's first ‘Ryzen NAS’. Harnessing the tremendous multi-core and multi-threading performance of Ryzen processors underscores QNAP's dedication for evolving the NAS industry and allows the TS-x77 series to fuel processor-demanding business applications,” said Y.T. Lee, Vice President of QNAP, adding “The TS-x77 also provides high flexibility in expansion for network bandwidth, GPU-accelerated features and storage capacity, making it an excellent fit for businesses and professionals.”

A word from AMD:

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"We are pleased to continue our relationship with QNAP in providing high-performance NAS solutions for rigid business IT environments," said Dan Bounds, Senior Director of Enterprise Products at AMD. "With its exceptional speed, performance, and low power consumption, the AMD Ryzen processors featuring ‘Zen’ core architecture presents the most-advanced AMD embedded processors to date and has the potential to be a game-changer in the high-performance SMB NAS market segment."

It seems like a good base for running VMs, although QNAP's implementation of KVM (called Virtualization Station) isn't that great - take it from a frequent user. Lots of bugs etc, VMs shutting down randomly from time to time, issues with the VM backup center are only some which I encountered so far.

More about those products:

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The TS-x77 series multi-threading advantages are especially suited for virtualization - in a LoginVSI test environment the TS-1277 is capable of running up to 16 virtual machines simultaneously. The TS-x77 is virtualization-ready for VMware®, Citrix®, Microsoft® Hyper-V® and Windows Server® 2012 R2 environments with the support of iSER (iSCSI Over RDMA). It can host virtual machines and containers as an efficient all-in-one server, and supports snapshots and virtual machine backups for all-in-one virtualization management. The TS-x77 will also support the upcoming Virtual QTS that enables users to run multiple virtual QTS systems on a single NAS, to provide resources segregation (CPU, memory, networking) benefits, flexible application deployment, and savings on energy, cost and space.

 

TS-x77 series supports RAID 50/60 to provide greater data protection and random write performance, striking a balance between capacity, protection and performance. The latest Qtier™ 2.0 adds IO Aware capabilities for SSD tiered storage to keep a cache-like reserved space to handle burst I/O in real time, maximizing the cost-to-performance value.

There are three models with different hardware configurations, I only wonder whether QNAP finally added a dedicated, hardware RAID controller to those devices or do they still only have LVM/VJBOD management because a hardware solution is MUCH better than their current offerings. There is no dedicated RAID controller even in more enterprise-focused QNAP 24-bay, 3U solutions like the TDS-16489U...



Specifications:

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• TS-1277-1700-64G: 12-bay, AMD Ryzen™ 7 1700 8 cores 16 threads 3.0 GHz processor (Turbo Core 3.7 GHz), 64 GB RAM, 550W power supply
• TS-1277-1700-16G: 12-bay, AMD Ryzen™ 7 1700 8 cores 16 threads 3.0 GHz processor (Turbo Core 3.7 GHz), 16 GB RAM, 550W power supply
• TS-1277-1600-8G: 12-bay, AMD Ryzen™ 5 1600 6 cores 12 threads 3.2 GHz processor (Turbo Core 3.6 GHz), 8 GB RAM, 550W power supply
• TS-877-1700-16G: 8-bay, AMD Ryzen™ 7 1700 8 cores 16 threads 3.0 GHz processor (Turbo Core 3.7 GHz), 16 GB RAM, 450W power supply
• TS-877-1600-8G: 8-bay, AMD Ryzen™ 5 1600 6 cores 12 threads 3.2 GHz processor (Turbo Core 3.6 GHz), 8 GB RAM, 450W power supply
• TS-677-1600-8G: 6-bay, AMD Ryzen™ 5 1600 6 cores 12 threads 3.2 GHz processor (Turbo Core 3.6 GHz), 8 GB RAM, 250W power supply

Tower NAS; up to 64 GB DDR4 RAM (4x 16 GB DDR4 UDIMM RAM); hot-swappable 2.5"/3.5" SATA 6Gbps hard drives or SSDs; 2x M.2 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA 6 Gb/s SSD slots; 3x PCle slots (1x PCIe 3.0 x8, 1x PCIe 3.0 x4, 1x PCIe 2.0 x4); 4x Gigabit LAN ports; 2x USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gbps ports (1x Type-A, 1x Type-C), 5x USB 3.0 ports; 2x 3.5 mm dynamic microphone jacks; 1x 3.5mm line-out jack, 2x built-in speakers

Thoughts? IMO, since QNAP devices usually had better hardware for the price than their Synology counterparts, I believe this might help the company gain more marketshare in the NAS market.

[pebble guy]

Looks very exciting.
And if Virtualization Station got better it could do a lot of more powerful tasks...
And the hardware raid card is also awesome IMO

[Misanthrope]

This is the kind of thing AMD needs to get popular with imo so this is extremely nice to see.

[GOTSpectrum]

Interesting, but why exactly does a nas need a 8c/16t CPU, some form of transcoding.

[Lurick]

Just now, Ben Quigley said:

Interesting, but why exactly does a nas need a 8c/16t CPU, some form of transcoding.

Plex server

Virtual machines

[knightslugger]

Just now, Ben Quigley said:

Interesting, but why exactly does a nas need a 8c/16t CPU, some form of transcoding.

virtualization and sure, transcoding. this would make a great high quality plex device.

[GOTSpectrum]

3 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Plex server

Virtual machines

Ahh, makes sense!

 

3 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

virtualization and sure, transcoding. this would make a great high quality plex device.

Thanks guys for the quick responses.

[The Benjamins]

6 minutes ago, Ben Quigley said:

Interesting, but why exactly does a nas need a 8c/16t CPU, some form of transcoding.

Well at this point it is less of a NAS then a File Server. a lot of NAS boxes now have apps then can run like Plex, Plex will use the CPU for transcoding. basically they become home servers then just the older dumb NAS boxes of the past.

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, Tedny said:

Price?! 

There was another article about it, I'll try to find it but they range from about $1100 up to $3000 or so

[Doobeedoo]

Oh good, al the VMs.