In its product list, Qnap has a lot of enterprise-grade NAS that offer redundant power supply, 10Gb/s network adapters, tiering (Qtier), caching and 2x NVMe location (M.2 2280). These NAS can support enough drives to fit your need. To write this topic, I used a TS-873U. With the rails and an additional 4Gb memory, I paid this NAS 1650€. If you require more drives, you can choose the TS-1673U-RP with 64GB of memory for 3500€. For a company, I think they are cheap.

I built the following configuration (not full optimized because I didn’t want to buy new SSD / NVMe / HDD):

• Cache acceleration (Read / Write): 2x Crucial MX500 500GB => RAID 1
• Storage Pool (Qtier):
  • High Speed tier: 2x SSD Intel S3610 500GB => RAID 1
  • Capacity tier: 4x HDD Western Digital 2TB Red PRO => RAID 6

Let’s see how to configure step-by-step this Qnap to get good performance.

NAS initialization

First of all, download QFinder Pro from this URL. In order that QFinder Pro discover your NAS, make sure you are in the same network subnet. From my side, I connected directly my laptop to a 1Gb/s port. Then run QFinder Pro. The tool should discover your NAS, on the first window, just click on Next.

Then a web browser is open to start the configuration. Just click on Start Smart Installation Guide.

In the next window, provide a NAS name and the admin password.

Then specify the NTP server. Currently it won’t work because the NAS is not connected to the production network.

Then fill the network settings.

Next choose which file transfer service you want to enable. I choose only the Windows services.

Because I need to configure Qtier, cache acceleration and so on, I choose to Configure disks later.

I choose to not enable the multimedia functions.

Finally click on Apply to start the configuration of the NAS.

Update the firmware

When the NAS is ready, check the firmware version and update the NAS. Navigate to Control Panel | System | Firmware Update. Because the NAS has currently no Internet connection, I downloaded the firmware from QNAP website and I used it to update the NAS.

Click on OK to update the firmware.

Network configuration

N.B: In this example, I didn’t implement the most optimize network solution. Because I have 2x 10Gb/s ports, I should implement one IP per adapter and use iSCSI / MPIO. But I use also my NAS to store data such as movies, ISO, VHDX, VMDK etc. and fetch them with SMB. This is why I chose to implement a NIC teaming. But if the only NAS purpose is backup, I recommend you to not implement NIC teaming.

Open the Network & Virtual Switch panel and navigate to Interfaces. Click on Port Trunking.

Then click on Add.

Select the 10Gb/s adapters. In this example they are called Adapter 5 and Adapter 6.

Next choose General Switch (most common).

Next choose Balance-alb. I selected this mode because according to the QNAP documentation, it provides the best performance.

Now your trunk is created, and you can click on Close.

In Network & Virtual Switch, in the trunk click on configure.

Fill the network settings and specify a Jumbo Frame of 9000. To leverage Jumbo Frame, this configuration must be applied on the switches and on the backup server(s).

Then I set the VLAN number.

Now you can plug the NAS to your production network with the 10Gb/s network adapter.

Create the storage pool

Open Storage & Snapshots and create a Storage Pool. Click on Enable Qtier.

In SSD tab, select the SSD and in SATA tab choose the HDD.

Then click on Create.

Once the storage pool is created the wizard asks you if you want to create a new volume. If you chose to leverage iSCSI / MPIO, click on close and create a iSCSI volume in Storage & Snapshot. From my side, I clicked on New Volume.

Then select the storage pool and click on Next.

Specify the volume alias, the capacity and bytes per inode. I chose 4K. Then you can create a shared folder and an alert threshold.

Click on finish to create the volume.

Configure the cache acceleration

To configure cache acceleration, open Storage & Snapshots. Navigate to Cache Acceleration. Click on Create.

Choose the NVMe drives and Read-Write cache type. Click on Next.

I chose to accelerate sequential I/O because backup works on large file.

Then choose the volume that will be accelerated.

Once the cache acceleration is created, the hit rate should increase.

Veeam result

Then I configured Veeam to try the solution. Veeam backup VMs located in my 2-Node S2D cluster based on S3610 200GB SSD. Because These SSD are only 200GB, the performances are poor. When I ran benchmark, I was not able to exceed 450-500MB/s (130K IOPS 4K Read 70% – Write 30%). The following capture shows a processing rate of 373MB/s with a Bottleneck located at the source. 373MB/s is fast compared to some customer productions. But I’m sure I can go beyond this value with a faster S2D cluster.

Conclusion

Today, it’s a non-sense to implement a full flash array for backup repository because it is too expansive. What we need in a storage repository is capacity. But some time, because of the large amount of data to backup, we need also to implement some high-speed drives such as SSD to reduce the backup window. With a small amount of SSD and tiering/caching, we are able to significantly increase performance.

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Architecture overview

The storage architecture is really simple. I have created a network called Storage (10.10.1.0/24) and it is not routable. I have isolated the network with VLAN tagging.

The NAS is a QNAP TS-853Pro:

• CPU quad core
• 2GB of RAM
• 4x NIC 1GB
• QTS 4.1.3
• 8x Hard Drive enclosure

Three NICs are dedicated to the storage on the NAS and on each Hyper-V. The iSCSI target service is bound only to these three NICs. The last NICs is dedicated to the other service (SMB, Video Station, Download Station and so on).

I have eight Hard Drives in the NAS installed this way:

• Bay 1 & 2: Western Digital RED 2TB for entertainment (RAID 1);
• Bay 3 & 4: SSD Crucial BX100 256GB for cache acceleration;
• Bay 5 to 8: Seagate Constellation ES3 1TB (RAID 10).

Storage Pool and Cache acceleration

QNAP provides a feature called Storage Pool that enables to aggregates physical hard drives into a storage space by leveraging RAID protection. To create a storage pool on the QNAP, connect to QTS and open the Storage Manager. Navigate to Storage Pool tab and select New Storage Pool.

Then select the Hard Drives that will be members of the Storage Pool and choose a RAID Type. On my side, I have chosen RAID 10 for best performance in read and write operation.

When you have clicked on Create, the Storage Pool is created and it should be in a Synchronizing state for a while.

Because four hard disks are not sufficient to have good performance, I use Cache Acceleration technology. This feature is usually called SSD cache. The operation is pretty simple: when a data is neither found in CPU or in RAM, the information is got from hard drives and copy to the SSD Cache. The next time this information will be asked, it will be got from the SSD cache. When the data is found in the SSD cache, it is called a Hit. So, more the hit rate is high, more the system will be fast.

In QNAP implementation, there are two cache algorithms:

• LRU (Least Recently Used): Higher HIT rate but requires more CPU resources;
• FIFO (First In First Out): Requires less CPU resources but lower HIT rate.

To implement the Cache Acceleration, open the Storage Manager and select Cache Acceleration. Then click on Create.

Next I select my two SSD and I select LRU cache algorithm.

When you have clicked on create, the SSD cache is ready to serveJ.

Network Card configuration

NAS Side

Below you can find my network configuration on the QNAP NAS:

I have enabled Jumbo Frame on each storage interface and the VLAN number is 20. To finish, only the iSCSI Service is bound to storage interface:

Hyper-V host side

On Hyper-V host side, I have dedicated three NICs on the storage network. The Jumbo Frame is also enabled and I have set the VLAN number to 20.

Only these items are enabled on Storage network interface. I have also disabled Netbios and DNS registration.

Implement SMI-S provider

Now it is time to implement SMI-S Provider. I have installed this provider on my both VMM servers. You can download the installer here. Before running the installation, I create a local account that I have called Storage and I have added it to local Administrators group.

Then I run the installation.

I have enabled the authentication by specifying the same account that I have created previously.

Once the installation is finished, you can open QNAP SMI-S Provider Manager. Then specify the IP address of your NAS, the port and click on Add.

Next specify admin credentials.

At the end you should have your NAS listed with OK status.

Because I have installed the SMI-S Provider on my both VMM servers, I have created a Round Robin DNS entry called SMIS-QNAP.home.net.

Add storage provider in Virtual Machine Manager

Now we can play with Virtual Machine Manager. Open a VMM console and navigate to the Fabric and right click on Provider. Then click on Add Storage Devices. Next select SAN and NAS devices discovered and managed by a SMI-S Provider.

Specify the SMI-S provider FQDN and select a RunAs account. The RunAs account must be the same as specified during SMI-S provider installation.

If you have selected SSL, you have to import the certificate as below.

Then select the storage device as below.

Next I specify a Classification and the Host Group.

Add iSCSI array to Hyper-V hosts

N.B: Before adding the iSCSI array, be sure that the iSCSI initiator is started and MPIO is installed and configured on your Hyper-V hosts.

Now I have to add the iSCSI Array to the Hyper-V hosts. For that, open the Hyper-V host properties and select Storage tab. Click on Add and select Add iSCSI Array.

Select the Array and click on Create.

To create additional session, you can click on Create session. Before creating session, be sure that MPIO is installed and configured.

Add storage to Hyper-V Cluster

Now we can create LUNs and convert them to CSV for the Hyper-V Cluster. So open the properties of the Cluster and navigate to Available Storage. Then click on Add.

Next click on Create Logical Unit. Specify a name and a size. I choose to create a fixed size storage LUN.

Once the LUN is created, I select the LUN, I give it a volume label and I click on OK.

Meanwhile, I connect to the QNAP console to edit the just created LUN. Next I select SSD Cache option.

Then you can open the iSCSI storage tab to see that two targets have been created with the LUN associated.

Next I come back to VMM and I re-open the cluster properties. Select the Available Storage tab and click on Convert to CSV.

And tadaa, the LUN is added to Cluster Storage J.

Performance

To test the performance, I have copied a big VHDX from the Hyper-V host to the LUN. And the result is amazing: I have 18,000 IOPS on average!

Below you can see that I copy files almost at 530 MB/s.

And the Cache Acceleration is well running J

Conclusion

Before buying a QNAP, I had a Synology DS412+. I have bought a QNAP because it can be connected to Virtual Machine Manager by SMI-S. Moreover QNAP supports Storage Pool that enables to create multiple LUNs on the same group of disk. When you have not enough bay in your NAS, just add some SSD to increase overall performance of the storage solution. So QNAP NAS is great to implement Cluster Share Volumes for Hyper-V Cluster storage.

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