This guide is about the best QNAP for virtualization projects in a small business…
So if you’re building or supporting a virtual infrastructure for a small business then you know storage is something you can’t get enough of – you need lots of storage…
For years businesses have been trying to leverage their existing storage platforms as storage pools for VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Xen.
This works really well, up until the point where it doesn’t work anymore and then everything running on the SAN or NAS comes to a screaming halt.
I’ve been participating in the virtualization trends for a while and it seems like every year there’s a new storage vendor that jumps up and says “we have figured it out!” only to be quickly replaced the next year by someone else.
Best QNAP for Virtualization
- Intel Xeon D-1622 Quad-core processor, burst up to 3.2 GHz
- 32GB UDIMM DDR4 ECC RAM and upgradable to 128G
- 12 x 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s Drives in the Front and 6 x 2.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s Drives in the Rear
- Dual 10GbE SFP+ SmartNIC port and quad 2.5GbE RJ45 high-speed connectivity accelerates virtualization, intensive file access, and large backup/restoration tasks
- PCIe Gen 3 slots allow for installing additional Network adapters, QM2 cards, or Fibre Channel cards to increase application performance.
- AnnapurnaLabs Alpine AL324 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57 quad-core 1.7GHz processor
- 4GB UDIMM DDR4 RAM (MAX 16GB)
- 8 x 3.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s (Diskless)
- 2 X 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet Ports
- 2 X 10 Gigabit Ethernet SFP+ Ports
- Storage Expansion for your QNAP NAS, computers (supports Windows and Mac), and servers
- Rackmount USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C High-Capacity JBOD Storage Enclosure with Redundant Power
- 12 x 3.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s
- 250W Redundant Power Supply Unit
- 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2(10Gbps) Type-C
- Storage Expansion for your QNAP NAS, Windows, and Ubuntu computers and servers
- High-Performance 2U Rackmount SATA 6GB/s JBOD storage enclosure
- 12 x 3.5-inch SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s (Diskless)
- 1 x QXP-1600eS PCIe SATA card
- 3 x SFF-8088
- AMD Ryzen Embedded V1500B 4-core/8-thread 2.2 GHz processor and 4GB DDR4 RAM (up to 64GB)
- Dual 2.5GbE (2.5G/1G/100M) ports accelerates file sharing across teams and devices or streamline large file transfers
- PCIe Gen 3x8 Slots for optional QM2 card, USB Card or Network card
- Multiple USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (type-A) with up to 10Gb/s transfer speeds, allowing compatibility with newer, faster USB drives/expansion enclosures for transferring large media files
- Backup Google Workspace & Microsoft 365 accounts and files to NAS with Boxafe
- AMD Ryzen Embedded V1500B quad-core 2.2 GHz processor
- 8GB UDIMM DDR4 (Max 32GB)
- 12 x 3.5-inch drive bays (Diskless)
- 2 x 2.5GbE ports
- 2 x PCIe Gen3 x4 slots
- Quad-core Intel Celeron N5105/N5095 GHz processor burst up to 2.9 GHz with 8GB DDR4 RAM (Max 16GB)
- Dual 2.5GbE (2.5G/1G/100M) ports accelerates file sharing across teams and devices or streamline large file transfers
- PCIe Gen 3x2 Slots for optional QM2 card, USB Card or Network card
- Multiple USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (type-A) with up to 10Gb/s transfer speeds, allowing compatibility with newer, faster USB drives/expansion enclosures for transferring large media files
- Backup Google Workspace & Microsoft 365 accounts and files to NAS with Boxafe
- ARM Cortex-A15 Quad Core 1.7GHz, 8GB DDR3 RAM (max 8GB)
- SATA 6Gb/s,1 x 10GbE(SFP+), 2 x 1GbE, Hardware encryption, Container Station
- Surveillance Station, max 1 UX-800U-RP/UX-1200U-RP Expansion Unit
- The short depth design is suitable for installing in smaller racks or space-constrained locations
- 10GbE readiness, SSD caching, and encryption acceleration engine
- Quad-core Intel Celeron N5105/N5095 burst up to 2.9 GHz processor and 8GB RAM On-Board (Non-Expandable)
- Dual 2.5GbE (2.5G/1G/100M) ports accelerates file sharing across teams and devices or streamline large file transfers
- PCIe Gen 3x2 Slots for optional QM2 card, USB Card or Network card
- Multiple USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (type-A) with up to 10Gb/s transfer speeds, allowing compatibility with newer, faster USB drives/expansion enclosures for transferring large media files
- Backup Google Workspace & Microsoft 365 accounts and files to NAS with Boxafe
- Intel Xeon E-2334 4C/8T 3.4GHz processor, burst up to 4.8GHz or Intel Xeon E-2336 6C/12T 2.9GHz processor, burst up to 4.8GHz
- 16GB or 32GB Long-DIMM DDR4 ECC RAM and upgradable to 128GB
- 12 x 3.5 Inch SATA 6Gb/s, 3Gb/s drives in the Front and 6 x 2. Inch SATA drives
- Dual 10GBASE-T port and Dual 2.5GbE RJ45 high-speed connectivity accelerates virtualization, intensive file access, and large backup/restoration tasks
- PCIe Gen 4 slots allow for installing additional Network adapters, QM2 cards, or Fibre Channel cards to increase application performance
Here’s The Truth
All virtual infrastructures need these 4 items:
- A good network via iSCSI, NFC, or FC (1G, 10G, 4G, or 8G). It doesn’t matter as long as it’s dedicated as a storage network.
- A solid and consistent configuration from server NIC/HBA to the HBA/NIC on the NAS or SAN. This means there is no mismatching with MTU or other inconsistent network configs.
- RAW storage is presented in bulk via LUNs to the host that is dedicated to virtualization on the back-end.
- Approximately 30 – 50 IOPS per virtual server with enough performance overhead to allow for jobs to run without creating more than 15ms of storage IO latency.
In the perfect world, this would be all you require to keep your virtual server running at optimum performance, as long as they were not constrained by CPU or memory issues. But that’s another issue altogether…
At WhiteboxStorage.com we have a solution that fits the category of the “Best Storage for Virtualization”.
And, it’s low cost and highly customizable, which is why we classify it as ‘white box’.
Let’s take a look at what QNAP offers and then let me know what you think?
Best QNAP Storage for Virtualization
The Turbo vNAS supports iSCSI & NFS protocols and is virtualization-ready with compatibility for VMware®, Citrix®, and Microsoft® Hyper-V to provide businesses with powerful & flexible storage solutions for virtualization applications.
Virtualization Ready
The Turbo vNAS supports iSCSI & NFS protocols and is virtualization-ready with compatibility for VMware®, Citrix®, and Microsoft® Hyper-V to provide businesses with powerful & flexible storage solutions for virtualization applications.
vSphere Plug-in Support
The vSphere plug-in allows users to manage the QNAP Turbo vNAS directly on the vSphere client, making datastore management more effective.
VAAI/Hyper-V Plug-in Support
Use the free QNAP vSphere Client plug-in and QNAP SMI-S provider for SCVMM and managing the Turbo vNAS from the virtualization management client console is easy.
Secure and flexible storage utilization
The Turbo vNAS offers flexible management through creating and allocating iSCSI LUN (Logical Unit Numbers), mapping and unmapping LUNs to and from iSCSI targets, and thin provisioning. CHAP authentication and LUN masking support reinforce secured deployment in virtualization applications.
VAAI for iSCSI, VAAI for NAS
The Turbo vNAS supports VMware VAAI for iSCSI and VAAI for NAS. Businesses can select either iSCSI or NFS as a centralized storage to boost performance. VAAI for iSCSI supports Full Copy (hardware-assisted copy), Block Zeroing (hardware-assisted zeroing), Hardware-assisted Locking, and Thin Provisioning with space reclaim. VAAI for NAS supports Full File Clone, Extended Statistics, and Reserve Space. The QNAP Turbo vNAS supports VAAI iSCSI and VAAI NAS to enhance storage performance in a virtualized environment.
Storage for Microsoft Hyper-V
With ODX support, the QNAP Turbo vNAS becomes a high-performance iSCSI solution under Windows Server 2012, including Hyper-V virtualized environments. QNAP storage enables full copies of virtual machines within the NAS without requiring the Windows hosts to read and write the data to highly reduce the load on Windows hosts and improving the performance of copy & move operations on Windows 2012 hosts. When providing QNAP storage to a Windows 2012 file server, the end-user using a Windows 8 client workstation will also benefit from the Offloaded copy process for large file transfers.
NAS management via SCVMM
QNAP SMI-S enables management of the QNAP Turbo vNAS directly through Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (SCVMM).
NAS/IP SAN Unified Storage
QTS supports NFS and iSCSI/IP-SAN storage solutions that can be utilized as network-shared storage of virtualized environments, helping to achieve an efficient cost-saving, energy-saving optimized storage capacity.
What do you think?
QNAP supports major hypervisors from VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft. And if you dig in deeper, there are also ways to use it as Object-Oriented Storage for OpenStack.
So you’re probably wondering where the gotcha is right? No problem, I would be concerned about it also. For me, there are only 2 that really need to be worked around.
- First off, there’s no redundancy if a unit fails. (This can be a workaround by having good backups.)
- And there’s no block-level snapshots/replication. (This can also be worked around depending on the use case.)
For non-production or lab environments this is a no-brainer. Even running with all SSD storage, you’re still going to be <50% lower cost than a BIG brand – figure .50 -.70 per GB versus $2 – 3.
QNAP is definitely worth a POC to prove it is the BEST storage option for virtualization that won’t break the bank or your budget…
You can find more information about the best QNAP for virtualization by reading this Ref: QNAP PDF document.
*Best Sellers last updated on 2024-04-19 at 04:55.
