Fujitsu Q556/2 Mini PC - will XPEnology install work? Suitable for me needs?

[ThePhantom79]

Hi, 

I am not sure, if I should buy a HW-Synology (DS220+/DS720+/DS723+), or its better to use xpenology for my needs.

I dont have experience with synology, but I installed XPEnology as a test on a VM on my ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 with Xeon CPU. I like the software.

What I expect to to do:

 

- Use it as a backup target for my PCs and VMs on my Microserver

- Use Active Backup for Business

- No transcoding needed (as Emby will stay on Microserver)

- Maybe one or two small VMs 

- Use Survailance Station for my Cameras

 

Under the VM actually the backup performance is not so good - sometimes I get 100MB/s - then 3 minutes nothing happens. XPEnology resides on SSD, Source is also on SSD and can copy normal files wo other VMs with full 1 GBit-Speed (around 110MB/s).

 

No I found mentioned Mini PC for only 85€. Its specs:

 

CPU: Intel Pentium 7th Gen G4560T - 2 Cores / 4 Threads 
GPU: Intel HD 610 

RAM: 4GB DDR4 (2 Slots , up to 32GB  - SODIMM / Notebook-RAM)
StorageSlots: 1x M2.2280 NVMe PCIe 2.0; 2x SATA, 1x Mini PCI Express M2.2230
USB-Ports: 4x USB 3.1, 2x USB 2.0

LAN: 10/100/1000 MBit/s Intel® I219LM

 

Can I install xpenology bare matel to this machine? Can I expect good backup performance?

This box should costs 85€ refurbished - an synology station would cost >400€!

 

Also power consumption seems to be good, as there is an attached data sheet for this topic:

 

Idle: 3W
max: 29W

 

Thanks for your answer!

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by ThePhantom79

[IG-88]

18 minutes ago, ThePhantom79 said:

- Use Survailance Station for my Cameras

low default count on cam's and you cant buy a license for use with xpenology

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/13597-tutorial-4-camera-on-surveillance-station-legally/

or use a DVA1622/3221 unit they come with 8 cam license by default but need newer cpu's (having MOVBE feature like intel 4th gen cpu's)

 

33 minutes ago, ThePhantom79 said:

No I found mentioned Mini PC for only 85€. Its specs:

 

CPU: Intel Pentium 7th Gen G4560T - 2 Cores / 4 Threads 
GPU: Intel HD 610 

RAM: 4GB DDR4 (2 Slots , up to 32GB  - SODIMM / Notebook-RAM)
StorageSlots: 1x M2.2280 NVMe PCIe 2.0; 2x SATA, 1x Mini PCI Express M2.2230
USB-Ports: 4x USB 3.1, 2x USB 2.0

LAN: 10/100/1000 MBit/s Intel® I219LM

 

Can I install xpenology bare matel to this machine? Can I expect good backup performance?

 

install yes and as its 7th gen cpu the mentioned limit above about movbe should be no issue, dva1622 would be the way to go with that hardware, in case of backup i can't answer as im not using syno's active backup, but as it is the same as on original units you can read about that anywhere not just here in the forum

in general the speed will be limited do what 1G nic can do and with hat kind of pcie less hardware there will be no option to 2.5G/5G or 10G nic or more disks (more disks usually more speed - at least to a certain degree, i have 4 x 16TB and can use ~450MB/s and before 12 x 4TB only had slightly more)

 

33 minutes ago, ThePhantom79 said:

Also power consumption seems to be good, as there is an attached data sheet for this topic:

Idle: 3W
max: 29W

afair dsm as xpenology tends to run the cpu usually at more then the idle on other systems imply, you might read futher about that if its important

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/19846-cpu-frequency-scaling-for-ds918/

 

[dj_nsk]

4 часа назад, ThePhantom79 сказал:

No I found mentioned Mini PC

Which disks and how are you going to install into Fujitsu Q556/2 Mini PC? There is no space for HDD...

[ThePhantom79]

5 hours ago, IG-88 said:

low default count on cam's and you cant buy a license for use with xpenology

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/13597-tutorial-4-camera-on-surveillance-station-legally/

or use a DVA1622/3221 unit they come with 8 cam license by default but need newer cpu's (having MOVBE feature like intel 4th gen cpu's)

Yes, I saw this , on my VM xpenology. But DVA3221/1622 is not recommended (See it it another thread ...) - not sure, if this is a good choice

CPU: I dont get, what you mean: I've choosen Intel 7th generation, but this is not enough for the DVA1622 (which need at least 4th generation?)

 

5 hours ago, IG-88 said:

in general the speed will be limited do what 1G nic can do and with hat kind of pcie less hardware there will be no option to 2.5G/5G or 10G nic or more disks

Yeah, but as my switch is also only 1GB, and I have only few devices - thats ok.

 

 

1 hour ago, dj_nsk said:

Which disks and how are you going to install into Fujitsu Q556/2 Mini PC? There is no space for HDD...

I want to use 2 2,5" SATA Disks (not decidede which one) and one NVME ...

 

 

 

[IG-88]

19 hours ago, ThePhantom79 said:

I want to use 2 2,5" SATA Disks (not decidede which one) and one NVME ...

if the nvme is cache then its just read cache, no use in case of backup

afair all 2.5" hdd's 3TB and above are shingled recording, not much use in you want to write bigger amounts of data with 1G speed (cmr buffer area will be full at some point and disk will fall back to native smr speed aka ~25-30MB/s)

 

20 hours ago, ThePhantom79 said:

CPU: I dont get, what you mean: I've choosen Intel 7th generation, but this is not enough for the DVA1622 (which need at least 4th generation?)

just wanting to make you aware of that limit, if you did not read about that and switch to another hardware last minute (often the old hardware is used for backup and new hardware as main and your old microserver can only have 2nd/3rd gen cpu's) you might run into trouble, also the 4th gen is about bare functioning like booting into OS, face recognition in photo station or AI stuff might need a newer gen, cant remember but i think it was 6th gen as minimum for that

 

[ThePhantom79]

8 hours ago, IG-88 said:

 

afair all 2.5" hdd's 3TB and above are shingled recording, not much use in you want to write bigger amounts of data with 1G speed (cmr buffer area will be full at some point and disk will fall back to native smr speed aka ~25-30MB/s)

 

My plan is it, to use 3,5" Harddisks - and connect it via USB3. This should be enough for the 1GB/s LAN connection. One disk I will buy (maybe 12TB - Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC520 is cheap and is flagged also for NAS use) Other disk I have (one 2,3" internal disk for videos survailance - speed should be enough for that), and one more 3,5" disk for other purposes (I will 3d-print a 2-bay-case for these 2 external disks).

 

8 hours ago, IG-88 said:

if the nvme is cache then its just read cache, no use in case of backup

I want to use it as a normal disk, it it not possible? I have one not user 1TB NVME here, I dont have to buy.

 

8 hours ago, IG-88 said:

just wanting to make you aware of that limit

ok, thanks

 

One more question. Maybe its better, to install ESXi free first on the new hardware, and then us xpenology as VM - that will reduce performance around few percent, but maybe easier to install (exspecially the DVA boxes ... ?)

8 hours ago, IG-88 said:

and new hardware as main and your old microserver can only have 2nd/3rd gen cpu's

Yes, but this time, Microserver has a good xeon CPU, that I swapped - and performance is really good (except sometimes file transfer , mentioned before - but no CPU/ RAM / disk problem - I have to investigate here ....)

 

BTW: I found a better offer for the Q556/2 Mini PC - now only 50€ with 8GB RAM, so I orderd it. I will ltry - if  performance is to slow, I can change CPU or still buy some other box. 

Edited April 23, 2023 by ThePhantom79

[IG-88]

2 hours ago, ThePhantom79 said:

I want to use it as a normal disk, it it not possible? I have one not user 1TB NVME here, I dont have to buy.

no and lately more inclined to yes

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/67961-use-nvmem2-hard-drives-as-storage-pools-in-synology/

its a feature thats about to come out (not sure why sonology is not making it available as general feature for all models)

but under normal conditions an dsm 7.1 its usually a no, dsm's only use would be as cache drive

 

2 hours ago, ThePhantom79 said:

and connect it via USB3.

thats not supported under normal conditions as normal volume, it will appear as external usb single disk, no  integration into a raid set in a normal volume (for good reasons)

 

2 hours ago, ThePhantom79 said:

One more question. Maybe its better, to install ESXi free first on the new hardware, and then us xpenology as VM - that will reduce performance around few percent, but maybe easier to install (exspecially the DVA boxes ... ?)

that scenario is usually used when you want to user VM's in general a lot, kvm inside dsm (VMM pacckage) is not that good or you would use it when you have way more cpu cores/threads then the baremetal dsm could handle or you wand to use m.2 nvme without the dsm typical constrains (m.2 nvme as virtual ssd in vm, that way dsm will use the nvme as data volume without any tweaking), or you want to use a hardware raid that is not usable in dsm (you can have a single virtual disk in dsm that in the hypervisor is on a raid set)

 

easier install in a vm with dva's? not sure why, i use my dva1622 baremetal

 

[ThePhantom79]

9 hours ago, IG-88 said:

thats not supported under normal conditions as normal volume, it will appear as external usb single disk, no  integration into a raid set in a normal volume (for good reasons)

 

Yes, I read that. But no RAID needed. And I saw, that there is a trick to show it as an internal volume ...

 

I will also check performance degradation  with underlying ESXi, and decide then about baremetal or VM.

 

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanations!

Edited April 24, 2023 by ThePhantom79

[IG-88]

12 hours ago, ThePhantom79 said:

es, I read that. But no RAID needed. And I saw, that there is a trick to show it as an internal volume ...

that was for "old" style disk handling (sataportmap/diskidxmap, like 918+ or 3622), might be not tested yet to do that with device tree based disk handling

 

[ThePhantom79]

1 hour ago, IG-88 said:

that was for "old" style disk handling (sataportmap/diskidxmap, like 918+ or 3622), might be not tested yet to do that with device tree based disk handling

 In this table it is mentioned, that  DVA3122 has this "old" style  disk handling ...

 

 

 

[IG-88]

On 4/24/2023 at 10:08 PM, ThePhantom79 said:

In this table it is mentioned, that  DVA3122 has this "old" style  disk handling ...

dva1622 is device tree, i guess that goes within a platform and dva1622 is geminilake like 920+ and has more in common with 920+ then with dva3122 (denverton)

denverton platform dates back to 2018 and device tree came up around 2020 and is used in newer platforms like v1000

older ones like broadwell/broadwellnk (ds3617 or ds3622) are still old style