Crazy 48TB SSD NAS and Cheap 6TB Version Asustor Flashstor FS67

[@chumbawumba1959]

We need Asustor and Synology to have a baby! Need the tech innovation of the Asustor and the DSM UI and package features of the Synology with all of apps. Memo to Synology: Pay attention and catch up :)

[@balla2172]

And the hardware of qnap

[@u4ia420]

I don't want to step away from Synology due to their fantastic software, but Asustor, they are making me think hard about my next NAS.

[@vilikarac6776]

Is that a ps4?

[@vilikarac6776]

Is that a ps4?

[@seansingh4421]

They’re called Ubrel and Unraid

[@pincombe]

Not sure if you’ve spoken to asustor but a rep told me that low noise was one of their top goals. Their intention for the product is to be used for media consumption and expect it to sit connected to a tv in someone’s media center which is why it has the angled sides. It’s a weird one because although it’s quacks like a NAS it’s really aimed at the android media box market.

[@dexopaw]

Do the angled sides make it quieter?

[@pincombe]

@@dexopaw no they are purely for looks since they expect this product to be sitting alongside your tv

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@dexopaw They clearly copied old playstation look

[@concinnus]

In this case, one angled side has a practical effect: it ensures that the exhaust is not blocked by someone shoving it up against a panel.

[@leonwang4207]

@@pincombe I think it's worked to avoid covering the cooling vents when you pout it in a tiny space , but yes, also make it more gaming stylish

[@chuck1011212]

I got the 12 drive version of this and like it. (loaded with 4x 4TB drives was not cheap though) I wanted something that was more portable and was light and fit well into a suitcase. This fits the bill perfectly. I am a travelling nomad and want to bring my media collection with me.

[@junkmail6992]

I got the 12 drive one. It became clear very quickly it was nowhere near as legit as my QNAP but it grew on me pretty quickly once I begun to appreciate what it was and stopped trying to compare it to other things. I have since decided to use it as the low power central hub for my media center data, apps, and related docker containers. For that specific purpose It's pretty damn slick and multiple Plex 4K playback is smooth even with the CPU pegged; doesn't matter, it stays responsive. Its whisper quit and small, so it disappears in my entertainment rack. The UI and the apps are not as diverse as QNAPs or as apple-y as Synology but it's experience overall is very serviceable. For a power user needing to host VMs and manage a diverse set of workloads this won't work; it can't even support multiple VLANs on the same NIC. VirtualBox feels like its trapped in the 90s. But for basic use or even modernly advanced needs, I would recommend this.

[@n25992]

Hello do you mean it is compatible with plex server. That would be my main use

[@alanpaone]

I love the idea of these, I've been using a DS620slim for awhile because my office is also my bedroom, so having no hard drives clicking away all night is really nice, having 2 gigabit connections is totally fine for home use, even if I'd love a little more. There's plenty of gigantic 12 core, 24-bay NVME dual 100gig all flash NAS options, but surprisingly few small and silent all-flash products. the 12 bay option would give me the option of using whatever cheap 1-2TB NVME drives i can get my hands on, without needing to hunt down good deals on cutting edge high-capacity drives (seriously, 4tb 2.5" drives are a nightmare right now), or losing a bunch of space for redundancy. these are a softball right over the plate for me.

[@cmoullasnet]

I just switched my home TrueNAS from spinning rust to 7.68TB U.2 Kioxia CD6 drives off Ebay using a PCIe x16 bifurcation card. Was just tired of slow spinning rust drives. I only have 10GbE as well and the drives are super limited by both ZFS and 10GbE networking but honestly SSDs have nearly reached the point where you can buy them and throw away the performance as bulk storage. It's just a nice big quality of life improvement - less noise, less power and consistent performance for all your file shares. So I definitely get the concept from this perspective.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Very much this. We are getting more 30.72TB SSDs in the lab and that is making all-flash high capacity storage tempting.

[@jonathanbuzzard1376]

I wish that was true. However, if you are buying serious quantities of storage then the difference is a seven figure sum. I have recently had a quote from the Pure sales rep at work who insisted that they where cost-competitive with spinning disks LOL. Admittedly you are spinning hundreds of drives at that point and all your metadata and small files are on SSD so meh.

[@MichaelBoratko]

Does ZFS actually limit the performance of fast M2 SSDs? What should one use instead?

[@antonzadorozhniy6605]

I wish for something like this (maybe even smaller, like 3-4 m.2 connectors), but with bios and ability to install OS of choice, with ZFS. Would be a great low power and quiet NAS for those who don’t need a lot of storage.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

These should be already like that. They have a HDMI port and a BIOS, and an Intel processor. Unless they have been locked down, but ASUS didn't do much to lock you out on other NAS with similar hardware

[@antonzadorozhniy6605]

Wow, thanks, I’ll look into it. Would be great to have ECC RAM as well, but Intel spec says it doesn’t support it.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@antonzadorozhniy6605 Pretty much no consumer NAS supports ECC RAM and this is no different

[@n.shiina8798]

@@antonzadorozhniy6605 no ECC support is common for consumer grade NAS. Synology have Ryzen based consumer NAS that supports ECC but i have no idea if they're locked to their OS or not

[@scsirob]

QNAP has the TBS464, with 4x M.2 and 2x 2.5GbE. I have not tried hacking my way into it, but I have with other QNAP devices. I had a TS873 that I replaced the USB DOM from and ran TrueNAS on it. Ran like a charm.

[@StephanWahlen]

I did the spiritual predecessor to this id like to think: A Synology DS620*slim* loaded with 6x 8TB Samsung 2.5" SATA SSDs. It's similar by volume to the Asustor Units and has a similar-ish processor (J425) and 8GB RAM (i upgraded it). The result is a silent, small NAS with decent enough performance for all kind of home-uses that can be tucked away anywhere and will never cause issues with anything mechanical. I just wish there was an option for 10gbe on my synology, but it's just too old for that (2019). You can add a 2.5gbe via USB3 though and it works well.

[@dobermanownerforlife3902]

I wish the 2.5" nas had taken off. I should have bought the Slim. With them no longer being produced, I opted to not buy one.

[@geoffsmith82]

Looking forward to when I can get a device that has 20Tb of NVME storage, 10gb ethernet, fanless and able to run a few basic VM's all for $500 in a decent case. Probably a few years away yet, but these devices show we are getting closer!

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

I LOVE the angled look of the Asustor Flashstor, in a room full of cases and boxes and equipment - they stand out from all the plain black or grey rectangles ! :-)

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

It looks cool, but it also looks funny when stacked.

[@Evan-lg1xp]

This is an excellent time to release this. The price of NANA flash is so crazy right now. The price of SSD's has gone down so much in the last month and now the M.2 drives are dirt cheap. We're finally at a point where something like this makes sense to buy.

[@rdiznfriends]

do you have any more in depth knowledge of the market to share? is this drop in nand prices cyclical or more permanent? is it a result of oversupply from the past year or so or was there a change in the cost of manufacturing causing prices to drop?

[@starwarrior125]

I'm actually considering this for my mobile office/camper build. With its low power draw a single solar panel with a small battery could run it indefinitely. I could also see this being used to run my steam library off of with the 10Gbe being enough for this.

[@AxelZara]

This is overkill for a Steam library and in the end you'll lose performance. If you only need your steam library, you are better off getting 1 or 2 8TB SSDs and running off of those.

[@LordTimelord]

They NEED to create a version of this that supports the twelve nVME Drives combined with a AMD Zen3+/RDNA3 APU that'll support 32GB of FAST DDR5. It would make for one heck of a PLEX Server that can both handle the storage and encode/decode on the fly (for multiple output streams)! PLEASE make it happen Asustor! 🤞

[@RetroPlayer4000]

Wishes not miracles kid

[@prashanthb6521]

Add a few sata ports to connect HDDs and then with ZFS and caching this will be a fast NFS server.

[@BlownMacTruck]

Why wouldn’t you just get a server at that point? You can get a 40 core 12 drive bay Plex monster with 128gb of ram for barely $400. And what would the point of having any APU be? Get a silent / tiny nvidia shield for your Plex client.

[@desertlightning7335]

I mean, you could have a separate disk array.

[@desertlightning7335]

@@BlownMacTruck Yeah, I bought my R720 for under $300 used. Yes it's power hungry, but it idles at less than 100 watts on average, has a shit ton of PCIe lanes and slots. a lot of SATA HDD slots etc. It runs TrueNAS Scale well and I haven't had really any major gripes. It's actually really quiet for a rack server. NVMe drives work fine with an adapter and so does a USB 3.0 card

[@craigyounkins7013]

Strange conclusion "So overall, do I think these things are great? Absolutely... not" but overall you seemed happy with it and the complaint that immediately followed was about the form factor and seemed pretty minor.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

There is a difference between greatness and something that is just generally good. Steph Curry is great, even if he cannot play center in the NBA. Every NBA player is generally good.

[@Enonymouse_]

The real challenge of an M.2 NAS in 2024: The limited amount of lanes to divide up between them, the limiting factor of throughput for the interfaces and the MTBF of them (particularly in RAID). Pricing is not as bad as its made out to be unless you needed 30+ terrabytes. Most of us can get away with 6-12 TB easily.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I wish! Monday’s video is well over 1TB of assets alone

[@CareyHolzman]

Thank you! I had no idea these existed. Very thorough review! Thank you!

[@abelgerli]

Actually usb c power supply would be perfect for travel. I got a two 100w GaN usbc psu so travelling with a big nas would be perfect. And no one need that bend walls on a nas. Make it fancy and stylish for a nas that just has to vanish. Server rack bracket mounts would be nice though 😊.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

That is my biggest complaint about the side angle style. Totally agree

[@steverogers8163]

Funny I was just thinking about a SSD NAS yesterday. From pricing it looks like going with regular ol' SATA SSD are cheaper on the per Terabyte compared to their M.2 equivalent size, though not by a gigantic amount. Obviously that means they are bigger and slower but realistically that doesn't matter for what I would use it for. Or really what the vast bulk of home users what use it for. Though since the market is clearly all in on M.2 I expect by the time we see more of these M.2 NAS units from the likes of Synology the pricing on them will probably be better than the old SATA style.

[@Mkungaa]

Cheap SATA SSDs have abysmal speeds during consecutive writes. SATA SSD with proper cache and speeds are quite expensive tho, and there is no much of a choice outside of Samsung and Corsair MX.

[@scsirob]

SATA or MVMe won't matter much in performance. In the end it needs to hit the network. A single SATA-600 drive has enough throughput to completely fill two 2.5GbE network connections. These 6 or 12 M.2 NVMe SSDs are twiddling their thumbs for their entire lifespan.

[@Mkungaa]

@@scsirob y'all live all in a fantasy world, where SSDs keep writing at 500MB/s after filling out cache capacity? 1TB Samsung 870 EVO's actual sustained write speed is 80 MB/s, 2 TB version has only 160 MB/s. And on top of it 1TB SATA 870 EVO costs more than m.2 970 EVO Plus, which has sustained writing speed around 800-900 MB/s. M.2 in these all-flash NASes makes sense, SATA SSDs are obsolete - they do not get produced and sold enough to benefit from economies of scale.

[@mnomadvfx]

You can get a 4 TB M2 NVMe PCIe4 SSD for £200 these days - to me that's pretty close to SATA SSD's for pricing. The problem is when you want higher quality 4 TB, or anything at 8 TB. How on Earth we had a 1 TB microSD years ago, but still can't get more than 8 TB per M2 SSD is beyond me. It should be possible, it's just that noone is actually doing it.

[@bpj443]

I see these as perfect solutions for Van Life and Sailing / Cruising lifers. Those very much offgrid applications where minimal space and power consumption are key. The performance is more than sufficient for their vlogging and video editing, plus storing media libraries / entertainment, and maybe even storing video from IP cameras for security. The 12V side of these vehicles' power systems is clean enough these days that you could probably just power directly off that bus.

[@feejus]

Thanx Patric! Truly amazing devices. I hope we see more manufacture come out with these. I got an old Thecus NAS I want to migrate across to new NAS.

[@DoctorShaunB]

N305 version of this would be great! Although would still only have 9 PCIE lanes. Throw in a suite of synology type features and you got a winner!

[@blender_wiki]

In our studio we have 2 of the 10GbE model and after few months of usage they are just Great. One whe use for fast backup on set and the other one for the VR in house set as storage for the dedicated Unreal WS. Both situation require light/small, high capacity, non moving part storage. However we upgarded the RAM and we instaled TrueNAS scale instead than the original OS. ZFS z2 setup(28TB practical capacity), easy cloud sync, openvpn, auto shut down on power failure,small custom docker to manage some in house utility, etc.) Like you said this is mainly a storage solutions you don't get crazy speed out of it but is very light, low consomption, very costumizable. Low consomption is great on set where often we work on powerbank.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I am now using one in the studio and one at home just for the quiet operation as well.

[@pixelwash9707]

I love it, a sort of reasonably priced solid state NAS for camping. Never thought I'd see such a thing discussed by an corporate enterprise IT Pro, lol, but intriguing possibilities definitely come to mind for personal media libraries.

[@MiaogisTeas]

And I get funny looks for having a canvas tent with a stove for camping. I can't imagine why anyone would need a NAS when camping in the middle of a forest beside a quiet lake 🤣🤣

[@ericneo2]

Thank you so much for covering the 10GbE!

[@justjoeblow420]

Honestly if it wasn't for the costs it would be perfect for my needs in a NAS, quite plenty of space and fast enough networking. I'd mostly want one for stuffing in a corner of my studio to sit there for sample and project storage so I can keep my massive library of samples and not have noise issues.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

It is much quieter than HDD based NAS units.

[@MainelyElectrons]

Neat units. I could see this being a good solution for a person whos’ primary concern was size of the unit AND they don’t plan on using VMs or compute heavy dockers, plus they have no need for the storage volume of spinning drives

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Also noise. Large helium disks make a decent amount of noise when working. Think about if you had a small studio and wanted a NAS to store footage

[@MainelyElectrons]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo solid point, I’m one of those weirdos who likes to hear the drives clicking away so I hadn’t even considered that.

[@stepannovotny4291]

Brilliant review, thank you! Yeah the USB fan connector makes me very nervous. I listened to this at 1.5 x playback speed and that was about right.

[@boxcar1818]

I was able to bump the RAM to 32Gb with 2 16GB Corsair Vengeance Performance 3200MHZ DDR4. Been running NAS continuously for over 3 months now without a single hiccup whatsoever👍

[@namelessdata4608]

If they made the 6 slot version with a 10 gig nic for the current price, I think I'd buy it!

[@fteoOpty64]

Patrick is way more enthusiastic in this video!. Better and better stuff to review and test. This NAS is great for an RV on the road, editing outdoor videos at night!.

[@michaelfragrances]

For Europe, such storage facilities will be relevant, especially for those who live on autonomous power from solar panels😎😎😎

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

European power is very expensive (relative to much of the US)

[@Sir_Bini]

I'm not surprised it kept crashing with higher capacity RAM because the Intel Celeron N5105 supports a maximum of 16GB of DDR4 at 2933MHz. I imagine as soon as the system deposits data onto memory outside of the 16-gig-pool the CPU recognizes, it freaks out and goes "Derp, poof!"

[@accesser]

Interesting, might be okay for a low power home lab storage , connect some NUC's (or similar) running ESXI/Proxmox to this as a storage mount

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

The 6x M.2 version is going to do exactly that in the TinyMiniMicro/ STH Mini PC lab

[@emilypeters8888]

like the idea but would like to see at least a 20 pcie 4.0 lane capable chip option, that said chip makers need to make cheap/lower end chips with higher native lane counts for these style applications to offer high speed style nas

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I totally agree with you. One of the big challenges is that amount of PCIe Gen4 lanes / controllers makes a chip higher power these days :-(

[@denvera1g1]

I'd love something like this with an i3-1315u With a motherboard that supports 1x bifurcation. Imagine 16 drives, each with one PCIe 4.0 lane, and then the last 4 lanes going to 40G or 100G QSFP+ Would be a great portable all-in-one NAS, the only thing that would make it better, would be to take the 1360P, and instead of 4P+8E cores, trade the P cores for E cores. A micro NAS with 24 E cores, keeping the pretty decent 96EU XE graphics. I have older graphics and they still work pretty well with AI image recongnition. With that core count, support for 128GB of RAM, and 16 NVMe, a decent GPU, and high speed networking, this would actually be a pretty powerful server, but absolutely tiny. FYI, while i have no way to actually test this because Intel doesnt make a 14 P core dekstop processor, i can extrapolate that 24E cores offer the same performance as 12-16P cores, while using around 80w, instead of ~270w

[@antonnym214]

I just found you, and sir, you are awesome! I subscribed immediately. All good wishes and thanks for such hyperinteresting content!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Thank you!

[@FlaxTheSeedOne]

I would love to see this with u.2/3 bays. Such that you can use them with used/old enterprise ssds this would make a greate alround storage then.

[@tonykaye2]

It would be nice if they had a configuration for rack mount with built in power supply and everything ( status lights, power button usb connection, etc) up front.

[@kungfujesus06]

The HDMI port on the thing is a strange addition. Did they intend it to be connected to a display? I mean I guess it might help troubleshooting but that's not a typical appliance.

[@playswithblades]

Product naming so hostile to hosts speaking with a lisp. Looks amazing, I got an itch now, thank you very much.

[@djole02]

@4:02 looks like the animation is showing the kensington lock port instead of the TOSLINK ports.

[@fangzhou3235]

More 8TB / 16TB or higher 2.5" SATA drive should be made. Then they can be easily used for 2.5" NAS or simply put into a USB HDD case. Single SATA drive will saturate 2 x 2.5GbE, 2 drive will saturate 10GbE, so it is fast enough for NAS. Now TLC/QLC flash is cheap enough that consumer can afford such 8TB+ drive

[@adamosity7127]

the reason there is four screws on the bottom is so the door doesn't rattle when fan is out of balance from dust.

[@ksampler6183]

I’m sure you already know, you guys circled the Kensington lock when you said “Optical Audio” 😉 Would you still trust Asustor after the whole ransomware thing? Great video like always!

[@leonwang4207]

This ransomware happened on Synology & QNap too.

[@redtails]

with how loud helium drives are when accessing data, I can see why you'd want to go flash. Can't wait for a few more years of downwards- spiraling flash prices. It really shouldn't be that expensive to make flash storage when done as efficiently as possible without emphasizing speed.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Yes. We had a QNAP NAS that we will be reviewing on the main site in the next week or two next to these. The noise difference is very noticeable.

[@Endelin]

I hope these do well enough to prove the market viability, and then better versions are made.

[@alonzosmith6189]

The flashstor on my wish list. Hopefully my sons surprise me. Currently looking at the AS6708T NAS

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I have a feeling you are going to be sending them this video

[@CloudybayTee]

as per intel spec N5105 only allows 16GB ram seriously, they should go for N100 or N305 already and get 1 extra pcie lanes to play with.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I agree. We have a N305 review recorded and just waiting on editing. That is a really interesting chip.

[@RajveerSingh-vf7pr]

There are people, who just need large storages for storing movies or recorded videos, once data is stored there won't be a lot of editing in them, Hard drives are not a good solution due to moving, fragile and bulky parts... Ssd will shine in such cases... A solution must exist with 1. Lower transfer speeds. 2. Lower TBW 3. Lower write speeds, (and a fast cache drive) 4. Sata as it would be cheaper than m.2

[@MarkEichin]

(I've since seen this box reviewed a bunch of places, but you were the first, from my perspective at least...) I just replaced a pair of HP Proliant boxes with a lot of 3.5" spinning rust, with the little version of this and raid-6 over 6x2T. *vast* upgrade, quieter, cooler, faster in every way. Shoved ubuntu 23.04 on it (8G onboard is way too small, but it's enough to get going with setup until I carved off a mirror of some extra space on two of the slightly larger SSDs for the root disk - turns out 50G is decent for an OS install, and *round off error* for 2T SSD sizes :-) Also maxed out the RAM. (For all the complaints about it being underpowered - for me, it was a cheap upgrade for a cheap homelab setup, if anything it was overpowered.)

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Glad you have had a good experience thus far! We have been using both of these daily

[@diazrocks]

A know a few small post houses and editors who woukd love to have these as their working / on progress NAS. They would love to have these. also, DIT / data wranglers on a film/video shoot would love these instead of relying on stacks of portable SSDs.

[@VillSid]

I built an SSD media machine for my parents because of low noise... problem was limited storage and large size... I would love to stick in behind the TV but it would be even better if it was fanless.

[@ryanmalone2681]

Seems like a decent solution for having on the network and passing through as SMB storage to Proxmox containers/VMs.

[@velociraptor5962]

There should be a usb c connection on the 12 version to connect directly to a computer, as well as that 10gbe. Pretty good, and tempting, to be able to store, but also do cheap vms.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Super idea. I think the N5105 is limited in terms of high-speed IO lanes. This is already pushing the platform pretty far. Hopefully on a refresh that would be possible.

[@jahon2013]

ASUSTOR is Tech Creator

[@Simon_Hawkshaw]

Thank you for this introduction to this equipment. Interesting products.

[@TerenceKearns]

Great job. Even 1 year on, the info is still useful. 😊

[@doodoogtube]

The first thing I absolutely thought of when I saw these were storage and not anything robust like 4k video editing. I’m looking to get into something like this because I do not want to buy spinning hard drives in 2024.

[@capybarahat]

I have a home nas that I’m slowly converting to SSDs for the lower noise and power draw. I saw the m.2 price drops and figured that if I had a system with more M.2 / pcie slots it would be compelling. That said, would love to see this in a rack mount form factor instead of this weird parallelogram. The price also seems a bit high before I’d bite. Also, I worry about using consumer ssds with onboard ram and without power loss protection Edit: it’s N5105?! This is so pointless when you have all the drives squeezing through so few pcie lanes

[@konzo5942]

a small ups would mitigate most of the power loss concerns, as long as it could communicate with the device to tell it to flush all caches. wouldn't need a very big one in this instance. i wonder if linux could be told to acknowledge sync writes as complete when they hit ram if there is a ups connected. I'm more annoyed at putting all this high speed nvme behind 2.5 or 10g networking, such a waste

[@nexus1972]

@@konzo5942 But its aimed at the home user, and most home users dont have 10G even. When you start going to enterprise you start need more resilience so you end up with multiple independent nodes with a separate back end networking for inter node communication and each node having multiple 10Gbit interfaces.

[@konzo5942]

@@nexus1972 kinda missed my point. multiple 10g is still slow. the servers i deploy have a minimum of 2*40g, usually 2*100g. a single nvme has 32gbps bandwidth, and theres like 6 of them here, so you are losing so so much putting it behind these slow interfaces. id rather just buy a pair of older ex server 8tb ssds on the cheap and attach them to some mini pc.

[@nexus1972]

@@konzo5942 no you've missed the point. This is a home.appliance not an enterprise piece of equipment. 10g isn't common in homes your anecdote about 2x40gb and 2x100gbit is not the asustor market you're in datacenter territory there and you're going to be going down the tantric or powerstore or some other enterprise piece of equipment not a micky mouse home sector nas. Heck my home.lab is only 10gbit based and most home users don't have or need 10gbit. Even 2.5 is low % in home market atm.

[@konzo5942]

@@nexus1972 home appliance with 6 nvmes... my point is that this is such a waste. 10g is cheap, NICs for 50$ online, this device with drives is already $800 so 10g isn't much more. With your argument you should just put some usb HDDs on a raspberry pi, because who would need more right?? Anyway the people with home nases are the same people who would have a faster home network. I don't know any soccer mom with a homelab.

[@JohnDlugosz]

10:30 Set up for RAID-5? I thought that was deprecated for such large drives and you should be using RAID-6.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Not for SSDs. Lower UBER and fast rebuilds.

[@deineroehre]

Still missing the SFP+ Ports for affordable and energy saving 10G Network. 10GbE is way to expensive and needs more energy, There is only one Mikrotik Switch with legacy 10GbE over Copper, but alost all of the Mikrotiks have at least one if not two or four 10G SFP+ Ports.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

We use SFP+ to 10Gbase-T adapters with these

[@ky5666]

Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. Most of the workstation level motherboards come with 10GbE RJ45 or even Dual 10GbE RJ45 and it sucks because I'm paying for a really expensive feature that I won't even use, is higher latency and uses more power. I'd rather have the extra PCIe lanes. My rule is RJ45 up to 2.5GbE, 5GbE doesn't exist and 10G and above is SFP. Not that you have a choice with "above". If you computer has PCIe/USB4, the 10G SFP+ will find a way. Like cutting out the back of a 1x PCIe slot way. If it only has USB3, the bandwidth limitations don't make sense to go above 2.5GbE anyway. I plan on breaking out 10G links into 2.5GbE with the Aliexpress switch round up that ServeTheHome recently covered. The SFP+ to 10Gbase-T kind of sucks from a price, power and therefore active cooling perspective. Like when used on a fanless Mikrotik switch. It should really just be reserved as a stop gap measure and should be avoided where possible. My favourite thing about SFP above all is electrical isolation (plastic and glass). When you're going the enthusiast home server route the last thing you want is a lightning strike, wiring fault, unusual psu failure, etc to take out your entire slowly acquired hoard. Especially on the modem side if your internet connection is copper like ADSL or Cable.

[@deineroehre]

@@ky5666 I am still hoping for some sort of Mikrotik CRS340-8P-4XP-4XG-8G-16S+-RM, so you have all the options - POE for Access Points, IPCams and the VDSL-Modem from Allnet (can be the Allnet Gbic-Version as well), 4x 10GbE ports for cheap NAS or the normal PCs with 2,5GbE-Port (seems to get a thing recently, the Gigabyte BriX GB-BRR3H-4300 has them at least), some Gbit-Ports and plenty of SFP+ for NAS, Uplinks and so on. Would be a nice Switch for most small and medium businesses, CRS-354-48G/P-RM as edgeswitch would be perfect in this setting. Mikrotik is concentrating on their 100Gbit product Line at the moment (nothing wrong with that), but at the moment most of my customers just hopped on the SFP+-Train and don't really need 25Gbit or even 100Gbit. Of course, nice to have, but e.g. the backup times are absolutely gone down due to change to 10Gbit SFP+ and SSDs in the servers. If a switch fails, it will probably be the 100Gbit version in the Serverrack instead of the 16 Port SFP+, but this is something in a few years to think about. If someone is editing videos the whole day, the mileage may vary... The SFP+ to 10GbE Adapters are neither price-efficient nor good to cool down. And the reliability is sometimes really bad. I can understand if a VDSL-Modem like the Allnet one is getting hot since there is a whole Chipset cramped into the SFP-Port, but a stupid converter to Ethernet? They shouldn't need more power than an complete optic Module. For the hot SFP-VDSL-Modules there is a special switch (Rubytech VS-820S ) which has better cooling than normal SFP-Ports - sadly the ports on this switch are not 10G, so this is no option either. 10GbE really needs to disappear, 2,5 GbE sufficient for most Endpoints, the Rest can be done in Fiber or DAC.

[@NicholasT-f9n]

1995 - 1TB near time Backup Silo with 3490 tapes $1 MIL USD. Including Robotic Arm assembly and interface controller.

[@seethruhead7119]

What would be a good DIY solution to the 12 nic version of this. Seems like you would need a lot of pcie lanes and bifurcated nvme cards. Any actual hardware recommendations? Ideally similar price or cheaper.

[@CharlesLScofieldJr]

On the 12 NVMe model is 4TB the largest drive that can be used? Sabrent has a 8TB drive and if it could be used that would push the total capacity to 96TB but at $999.99 apeice it would be a pretty expensive NAS if you fully populated it with 8TB drives.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

It will take 8TB, but you are better off at that point just getting something with higher capacity U.2 support

[@ShowXTech]

Minisforum UM790 Pro Ryzen 9 7940HS: Zen 4 with RDNA3 and DDR5/LPDDR5 This is going to be wild, would love to see a Video on it.

[@matthope_qc]

The same form factor with a Ryzen V3C18 would be amazing. Enough CPU power to run some VMs / Dockers plus insane I/O capability (20L pcie4 + dual 10gbe) for a blazing fast NAS.

[@Rockwolf50]

A Proxmox dream machine.

[@MichaelBoratko]

But then you lose the hardware transcode, no?

[@matthope_qc]

@@MichaelBoratko Yes. Since this cpu, doesn't include an encoder like QSV nor a iGPU. You could still transcode using the much more powerful CPU core.

[@matthope_qc]

@@MichaelBoratko Ultimately, it will depend on how such motherboard is constructed. If they want a NAS only, it is likely that an ASPEED AST2600 BMC chip would be used or something of the sort. They might decide to add a small GPU if they want to hit the HTPC/ PLEX market. But it is likely that they would instead use something like a 7840U, if they want media capability.

[@hausm3ister]

I kind of get it, but since they don't need pcie drives for performance, you could also build something like it with Sata SSDs which could make it cheaper as there are less pcie lane issues. At least for DIY you could get the same results with sata for cheaper, but probably not easily in that small space.

[@gowinfanless]

Professional video with such a cool NAS,NICE!!

[@chromerims]

10:51 -- SMB-MC with an unmanaged switch . . . was wondering, so thank you 👍

[@Cristian-yj4gk]

I would love for asustor to do a rackmount version of those

[@Kyusoath]

4 screws deters people opening it up and pocketing some ssds. I know YOU want quick easy access but in some applications you want to encumber access and make it harder to get into. At least 4 screws means you need a screwdriver and a bit of time to open it.

[@braixenflame4263]

Hey ServeTheHome, Thanks for yet again a great video, I could not help but notice that unlike other videos you did not cover the capabilities of the 10g port version. Normally you will say whether the 10g port does or does not support different lower speeds like 5, 2.5 or 1g. I was Not able to find this info on your site’s (STH) news article. I think this is key to know as you can only get 6 drives for the 2.5 ver but 12 for the 10g ver. For myself for example i have a 2.5g network at home only and would only buy the 12 bay ver for future proofing. - - - Could someone please comment if it supports the lower speeds and if so which ones? - - - Side question: does anyone know how well this would perform as a PLEX server? I assume transcoding would not work so only devices that direct play ect.

[@TheChadXperience909]

I'm glad you finally explained just how anemic these devices are. I fear the way they're marketed might be misleading for some consumers. However, knowing that they barely have enough PCIe lanes to service a single NVMe drive, the NIC does make more sense. Although, 10GbE has been around for over a decade, and we're only just now barely seeing it begin to appear in some really compromised devices? Come on, what's the hold-up? And why does it need to reach out to 100 meters for? Why can't we have a new standard for short-distance communication over distances up to only 100 feet? We could do it with the same devices we already have. Just tweak the firmware, and use a different encoding scheme. I feel like the 100 meter standard is simply more than most environments call for.

[@redtails]

the biggest pill to swallow is how anemic networking is, even local. My hdd NAS does 1gbyte/sec sequential reads, an nvme NAS will easily do 10gbyte/sec sequential reads. 100gbit networking to accomodate your ssd NAS won't be hobbyist-tier for a long time to come, while it's fairly mundane speeds by 'local' storage.

[@mikeiver]

Because the physical interfaces are based on standards and are designed to perform and apply to the widest array of uses in the commercial environments. The consumer enjoys the trickel down of these improvements in products. They take advantage of these by way of commodity chip sets developed to meet these standards via a slew of small, and not so small, players in the tight margins of the consumer markets. Also, a run over 30 meters happens easily in allot of homes and fails to account for the end connection terminations and pair of patches. Having the margins extended is a good thing where consumers are poorly installing and terminating twisted pair cabling. Seldom do consumers follow best practices nor do allot of people calling themselves "professionals" for that matter!

[@TheChadXperience909]

@@mikeiver I'm aware of all that. I was thinking something along the lines of USB type-c or HDMI. Those have to be prefabricated, and it would offer the badwidth needed. It would be extremely short range, but that's plenty for most SOHO environments. We do not live or work in huge datacenters, factories, or institutions. Why should end users get stuck with the same crumby speeds as large organizations? Why can't we have a separate standard for consumers and end users? Consumer hardware is garbage, and it doesn't need to be that way. Also, some devices are adaptable, and can change between 1, 5, or 10GbE. But, why are we limited to only these? Why can't we also have the option to choose higher speeds, but shorter ranges? The user should be able to adapt the device to the environment.

[@SCOTT123411]

J

[@SCOTT123411]

6th ly

[@bagamax]

Great NAS! I wish there will be a rack mount version of this with inegrated PSU, or an optional casemod.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

I wish. Rack mount is a bit hard for the serviceability of the units with double sided components

[@bagamax]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo it's easy to construct a 1u case where the board will mount to the walls in mid height so both top and bottom lids will be openable. Such volume management is just historically unpopular, 1 lid cases few cents cheaper in production.

[@someoneoutthere1866]

been waitng for wsomething like this

[@MikeHarris1984]

That thing is pretty cool..... I dont know if I would use M.2 for NAS as there is a finite read/write they can do. I stick to spinning rust for my NAS. I use enterprise grade SAS drives in my disk shelf JBOD setup.

[@malicious217]

Why does your ps4 look weird? Seriously though these are neat. Seems like a good small form factor NAS

[@kjstech1982]

But compared to the Synology DS620slim… 6 bay 2.5”. Maybe the 2.5” SSD’s are a hair cheaper, but it only has gig. This Asustor has 2.5gb on its 6 bay version. This also has up to 16GB ram when Synology has 2 to start and upgradable to 6. So which one will be a better plex server and mapped drive / network storage for an average home user with macs and pc’s? I’m kinda leaning towards the Asustor. As long as you know it’s limitations, what it is and what it isn’t… I think this is a really neat little box. Would love to see plex benchmarks. Wish it had just a slightly better CPU, however I do appreciate the low power consumption in an era where power bills are going up and up.

[@Elkarlo77]

Considering the price they are a steal. I just rebuilded my Homeserver and to lower the Powerconsumption i got myself a PCIE 16 to 4nvme Card. The Board doesn't support Bidurication so the PCIE Switching Card costs around 200 Bucks alone. I have some old HDD as cheap Data dumps too. My Problem would that i have some VM's running with RDP on my Homeserver. (Gaming-Server, Virus Sandbox etc) so the performance wouldn't be enough. It would make a great Network Device. I think a nice 6/12 CPU from Intel/AMD, like an 12400/13400 or 5600G/7600. The possibility to upgrade with 64GB ECC as top of the line modell of the Asustor Series would be great. It would require more Cooling, but make a 1HE oder 2HE capable Housing and you got a great Microserver, especially the 12 NVME Slot Version. The 750$ Version is a little underpowered with the CPU, 150-200$ more a bigger CPU and more Ram and it would be a real great product.

[@SeaJay_Oceans]

10:26 OK > 800MB / Sec Write speed copy on the Flashtor 12 Pro, and > 500 MB / Sec Write speed copy on the SMB enabled Flashstor 6. GREAT ! :-)

[@lordbacon4972]

Great content! I really appreciate your review approach and format, I learned a lot! Subscribed!

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Thanks! Still working on it

[@robertt9342]

I like the low latency that this would provide

[@marc3793]

I've found SMB Multichannel a pain in the ass to get consistently working on Windows 10. What OS was running on the clients for these tests? Also, do the NICs have DMA support?

[@bbrixon]

If more companies go this route, we'll see NAS/router combos for normie consumers.

[@Dushyantgiri]

Next unicorn idea.. 😂 Billion dollar business

[@thenistthedev]

actually a company called "iptime" in korea actually does this... and ita cheap too

[@Divemaster32]

Apple had one, not sure if they still make them

[@KiraSlith]

You could probably get away with the same total price to just ding together an old T7520 with a pair of Hyper M.2 carriers in the 2 bifurcation slots, and get a dramatically faster, more adaptable NAS.

[@GremlineQPl]

crazy idea, probably, but there are m.2 nvme to sata adapters and there can be 5 sata ports, I've seen even 6 ports, so in theory even the one with 6 ports could have 6×6 36 drives, and the one with 12 12×6 72 sata drives, in theory. Probably sounds like a crazy idea

[@dmitrykazakov2829]

The key test of SMB server is browsing large directories, which is the problem for any NAS. Create a directory with 30K files and then open it from a client. See the green band of death in Windows Explorer? That is it, you see how actually good or bad the NAS is. Copying large files is irrelevant for NAS. Cheap 1Gbaud is more than enough for streaming purposes. Streaming is normally a client-side problem if the client lacks hardware codecs. If you do not care about power consumption, a normal desktop PC with Linux Ubuntu and zfs built out of old turning rust drives is more than enough.

[@seanpalmer8472]

If I were choosing between the two models, I think I would choose the two 2.5GbE one over the single 10GbE simply because it has 2 physical ports. I really like having a separate management network. I've also been thinking about setting up a Ceph cluster and that second port is useful for segregating the OSD's backend traffic from client access traffic.

[@charlesturner897]

Why not just use VLANs? I'm sure it supports VLANs.

[@seanpalmer8472]

@@charlesturner897 because I already have a physically separate, private network already set up. In fact, every cat6 drop already has 2 cables running back to the central switches/router.

[@coolm98]

@@seanpalmer8472 but why not just add up an usb-nic for management then?

[@seanpalmer8472]

@@coolm98 It's probably just me, but I have terrible luck with USB-anything that stays plugged in 24/7 (apart from mice and keyboards). They seem to die on me prematurely and/or aren't consistently reliable. Now, I avoid those kinds of devices as a general rule.

[@charlesturner897]

@@seanpalmer8472 that seems incredibly wasteful, 2.5Gb just for management?

[@RapManCZ]

I hope Synology will release a similar model with the DSM...

[@erickallage]

can you install any other OS on them ? if i cant install another os on it its going to be a hard no for me.

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

We did not on this unit, but some have on others.

[@nicekeyboardalan6972]

It's just a PC you can make it do anything

[@rcproam2000]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo Nice overview! Would be a great follow-up video to cover installing Linux on one of these boxes.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

It's an Intel Celeron and there is a HDMI port and it has a normal BIOS. Most likely it's just a mini-PC you can install whatever you want on, like other higher end NAS devices

[@borisroshkov5874]

@@rcproam2000 or True NAS or similar ...

[@DrMJJr]

I’m sticking with the 32TB OWC ThunderBlade ✌🏽✌🏽✌🏽

[@ChucksBasix]

Shame that their link for the FS6712X takes you to an Amazon product page with the FS6706T, and at that, a 4 to 6 week wait time...

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

We might have sold out Amazon. They were available next day when we published this

[@bakakafka4428]

What are those black gloves in the shots where the NVME drives are installed? They don't really look like nitril?

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Bryan #2 uses Nitrile gloves when doing photos/ B-roll so that he does not leave smudges.

[@bakakafka4428]

@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thanks for explaining. He must use them several sizes too large then, as they look like some kind of loose fitting leather 😀

[@jjjacer]

Interesting NAS. but i could not stand that angled sides, makes it look weird next to other things on a shelf or rack.

[@BryanTorok]

I was somehow under the impression that SSDs were not good for use in a NAS as there would be frequent read/write cycles and that would quickly max out the number of cycles on an SSD. Or do I have that wrong? I do know that argument had been made as applies to DVRs and Storage for video security systems because they are constantly reading and writing.

[@Fyr042]

I dont understand why you use P3 *plus* which is a PCIe Gen4 while the Celeron N5105 CPU only support PCIe Gen 3. In this case P3 (without plus) is ok ? I have an other question : How many PCI lane per SSD drive ? Thanks for your video.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

How much more would this cost with something like a Ryzen 7600? Way more PCIe lanes and still fairly low power consumption. I guess at that point you're fairly close to a mITX system with an expansion card, but the compact form factor is still desirable.

[@salnegromusic]

Can I use the Asustor Flashstor FS6706T 2.5GbE NAS to connect to my Mac Studio for storage?

[@brianng2335]

Make it to become a quiet music and movie server?

[@ServeTheHomeVideo]

Yes. It is quiet enough to sit in our studio on the shelves in the background and not be picked up by the mic. No moving hard drives to make noise!

[@Razor2048]

They should make a version that comes preconfigured to just work with 6-8 m.2 SSDs along with a connection for easy expansion using a DAS enclosure for bulk storage.