Flashstor Gen 2 NAS - SHOULD YOU BUY? (Short Review)

[@thomaswilliams]

I’m a simple man. I see a new Nas Compares video, I neglect my responsibilities

[@windfire5380]

I have the 6 bay Gen1. Overall, very happy. but there is one key issue that will likely prevent me from ever buying Asustor again: Randomly, if I copy large quantity of data to the NAS (I use 2.5Gbit), it will drop ethernet, causing all connectivity to fail. Simply un-plugging the network cable and re-attaching fixes it. I've found many others are experiencing this same issue, and on a variety of Asustor NAS's. Solutions involve updating the cache size for writes on the device. Why Asustor has not fixed this is stunning. I've worked with support, and they at first deny there is an issue, when I give them links to threads in their own support, they then tell me to ask others in the community. No thanks. My Synology (HDDs) has never had issues like this. I wish Synology had 2.5Gbit and and NVMe option like this. I have 6x 4TB Crucial P3 (Gen3) drives. I've updated to 16GB RAM. I did update my config setting on cache size based on 16GB. I've had one instance in last month of still losing network for a short period, but it auto-corrected. I had to re-run backup.

[@ThePaulpope]

From all reports your experience with Asustor support isn't unusual in fact it appears to be the norm .... Asustor are charging premium prices for Aliexpress levels of support

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

I'd love to hear more, do you have a ticket number so I can go investigate for you?

[@guilhermezalan6129]

Hey, I seen this one before: SSD without internal DRAM. They are cheaper and will be fast for normal use - small files. But when it is writing huge files, it will eventually slow down after some time. Check if your (4TB Crucial P3 (Gen3)) has internal DRAM memory. I got the samsung ssd 980 PRO (PRO means they have internal DRAM) and do not suffer when copying huge files. I could be wrong, but I've seen this before. NAScompares has a video about this: DRAMless SSDs vs Regular SSDs - The Pros and Cons

[@windfire5380]

@@guilhermezalan6129 I understand your point. But that is NO excuse for the NAS to completely fail and crash the network. That is what a) memory cache is about, or b) throttling. The need to throttle has been with us for ever. When I send files to Synology with 10TB RED Hard Drives, they are far slower, but it doesn't crash and reset the network.

[@annebokma4637]

​@@guilhermezalan6129these drives are not operated at a speed that lack of dram should be an issue

[@rickseigh460]

I purchased and installed the 12 bay pro gen 2, upgraded ram to 64gb ecc and installed 6 - 4tb and 6 - 2tb drives. Using it mainly for storage as I want to turn off my 2 QNAP NAS devices with spinning drives. Haven't decided on a backup system for this yet so still working on it. I upgraded the ram as I used to run websites and databases from my Synology NAS years ago, didn't bother to setup in the QNAPs but may be tinkering with some of the server features inside of this box. Very happy at this point and if the 6 bay gen 1 gets cheaper I may consider it for a backup end point and off load to individual spinning drives. I probably own 30 or more spinners.....

Sorry if this is already talk about it, need some advice, for plex , Gen 1 or Gen 2 (4K video, local) . Thank you.

[@guilhermezalan6129]

I bought the 6 bays -Gen 2. I filled it with 2TB SSDs (RAID-5) (all bought for cheap during black Friday), and it took only 2 hours to synchronize everything. Oh the speeds... feels good man. No, it feels great. Now I have a SAMSUNG T7 Shield 4TB Portable SSD connected to the USB 4 port, and I'm getting 250 MB/s, which is good, but not the full speed I know I can get. It's something I'm doing wrong, I'm sure. Maybe the magnetic dongle between the cable and the SSD. I know the cable is good (thick Type-A to Type-A). But again, I'm complaining of super speeds of 250 MB/s... And yes, I have ordered real ECC memories, so think about the extra costs... Now I see I should have gone for the 12 bay, since the extra cost I'm having now. I really like the software, no complaints. Now I see why NASCompares is always obsessed about speeds. It makes a lot of difference, have you ever waited for 1-2 days for synchronizing RAID disks? Or to BKP everything? Those days are over with this system...

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

The SSD might not be negotiating properly with the USB4 ports as it's a USB 3.2 device. Have you tried plugging it into the USB 3.2 ports?

[@Joshua.Jackson]

Can you stand it on a side (vertical)? One application that I would see using it in requires less desktop space to be used.

[@MasterMind187b]

i don't really understand the lane concept. the maximum speed for one client is 20gbit. 4x2 for every ssd should be enough. did usb 4 network really worked? on the website, asustor says, that it only works with another asustor devices, due some driver limitations from amd. but with 2 usb 4 ports, it would be a good nas for streamer/videocreator etc.

[@Tarbard]

I'm confused about the USB 4 situation too, on asustors video they posted "USB4 networking from PC to NAS is not currently a supported feature. We are working with AMD to try to push them to develop a better Linux driver. We do not have a timeframe and that is why we did not advertise it on the website. We have now added disclaimers in hopes to increase clarity. We are working hard to make this a feature."

[@gaboguerra950]

Thanks for sharing. Correct me if I’m wrong but a flaw would be no RAID among the SSD ? And about the RAM, is it updatable to 64GB ECC using the same DSL brand ?

[@huggekarlsson]

Worthy to note is that although it is possible to install a third party OS it is not usable on this gen 2. This is due to two main problems where one have been hackily solved. 1. The NIC does NOT work out of the box with Debian/Truenas. 2. The hack in which people got the fans working on gen1 on other OS with a chip that is not present on the gen2 no word from Asustor on how we are going to solve the fans! If not it will overheat! More information you can find if you find the blog posts and Reddit posts. I bet the kernel patches will get in to late to arrive for next Truenas release, so maybe we are looking at a 2 year time before it is usable out of the box. Would be great if these was solved so the only thing you need to do is to install the m.2 adapter to a graphics card to install other OS’s.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

It's not that there's no word, it's that you gotta give me time to work on this.

[@mgc8888]

In the meantime, the fan situation has cleared up, it's actually much better than on the Gen 1 since it uses a Nuvoton chip, which is supported by the standard kernel with module nct7802 -- which means no compilation necessary, and no issues with overheating. The only remaining non- functional aspect is the LEDs (and some might argue the buzzer), but that's mostly a cosmetic issue at this point.

[@toddpeterson5904]

I'd love to get one, but I don't 1000 bucks sitting around. I'll have to stick with my QNAP HDD NAS for a while longer until the price of this NAS comes down to something reasonable. Also, when will the AMD drivers get fixed so that you can use it as a USB4 direct connected device?

[@Wannes_]

Little point in having Gen4 (let alone in RAID, unless for data-duplication) if the output is limited to normally 10 Gbps - a single Gen3 SSD will saturate that on its own You'd need like 30 Gbps networking to match the speed of a PCIe 3x4 drive Combining 2 x 10Gbps outputs, you're still short of a single 3.0 x4 SSD

[@racerex340]

That math would change a bit once you start dealing with RAID or erasure coding. RAID is there for data protection, not performance, and there is no such thing as a free lunch with storage, RAID includes a tax of both storage capacity and performance. For example, you choose RAID 1 or RAID 10, every write operation is going to be mirrored across two or four SSD's, so a client writing at 10 Gbps is going to end up generating 2X that (20 Gbps) storage throughput on the back-end SSD's. RAID 5, RAID 6 (or RAID Z and RAID Z2) also include additional overhead measured in extra IOPs and device throughput that isn't 1 for 1 with the client throughput. These Flashstor appliances also don't use all four lanes on all NVMe slots, only one Gen4 NVMe is x4, and just one Gen3 NVMe is x4, then there are three Gen4 x2 slots, four Gen4 x1 slots, one Gen3 x2 slot and two Gen3 x1 slots, a big mess with a total of 14 Gen4 lanes and 8 Gen3 lanes... I think they would had done better to just turn the 8 Gen3 lanes into 4 more Gen4 lanes giving 18 x Gen4, where they could have enabled two slots as a full Gen4 x4, and then the remaining 10 lanes could each be a Gen4 x1 slot, this way you'd get a pair of NVMe that you could mirror getting over 6GB/s of mirrored writes and up-to 14GB/s of sequential reads. They could have also just put 6 slots at Gen4 x2 and and the other six at Gen4 x1, would have been considerably more functional pool options. They are also marketing this with the intent of allowing those USB4 ports to function as direct-attach networking ports, even though I don't believe it's actually working yet, but each of the two USB4 ports list at "up-to 40 Gbps", and these USB4 ports are primarily meant to connect to other Asustor storage units, like HDD expansion units for additional capacity and/or backup & archiving to lower cost storage. Lastly, remember that is a NAS appliance first, not a direct-attach USB or thunderbolt storage unit, meaning it's meant to support multiple simultaneous users and also support technologies like SMB multichannel. 10GbE is also Bidirectional, so you get 10 Gbps of throughput in each direction for a total of up-to 20 Gbps per port (read + write), or 40 Gbps total bidirectional for two 10GbE ports. Using SMB Multichannel could allow a client with a 40GbE NIC to see a max theoretical 2.4GB/s of read throughput across the two 10GbE ports. Anyway, this thing has a lot going for it, but the M.2/NVMe layout is moronic and severely limiting, and the fact that they literally doubled the price from the Gen1 Flashstor to the Gen 2 models is absurd, the six drive model went from $450 to $999 from Gen1 to Gen2, and the 12 drive model went from $799 for Gen1 (sometimes $730) to $1400 for this Gen2, they are smoking a lot of crack.

[@williamblair3603]

ECC Sodimm recommendations.. im baffled but what if any other brands can be used for the ECC Gen 2 6 bay.. is it limited to asustor branded RAM only, or can anyone recommend tried, tested and true 3rd party ECC ram?

[@mgc8888]

It's not limited in any way, you can even use non-ECC ram (but then lose on that unique benefit). I'm using a Micron kit with code MTC20C2085S1TC48BA1 , they support ECC and work great as 2 x 32 GiB = 64 GiB in the Flashstor Gen 2.

[@m4tik]

Thank you for the great review :) What 32/64Gb memory kit would be recommended ? Is it better to get two modules or one ?

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

Anything on our compatibility list is recommended!

[@m4tik]

@@ASUSTOR_YT i am confused, there is nothing in this list yet (compatibility/memory/FS68) or am i having a bug with the website ? :)

[@mgc8888]

I was able to find locally a Micron kit with code MTC20C2085S1TC48BA1 , they support ECC and work great as 2 x 32 GiB = 64 GiB in the Gen 2.

[@swashyhimself]

Does the integrated graphics affect video editors

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

No. It only affects streaming to other devices.

[@Digital-Dan]

Raid is at least the next best thing to a backup, barring fire or theft.

[@simonspoke]

I've never used NAS but I have media on multiple stand alone drives already. What would be the best way to move to a raid system if you already have full drives?

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

It usually is to find a place to offload the data, then install the drives and put the data back on it. We need to erase the drives when initialising the NAS.

[@simonspoke]

@@ASUSTOR_YT Well then you might as well buy new drives instead and start from scratch right? And if you create a raid with say 3 drives and you fill them up, can you add another drive later on and still have it part of the raid? Or would you have to start from scratch again with clean drives? And thanks for the info.

[@alonghorns]

Darn, 1.3k price. it sounds great but the price. time to stay with my self-made NAS. i so wanted to go full Nvem. at least i will have the gen 3 ready to swap over.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

We did our best, but we wanted to unleash the full potential of an NVMe NAS. We're still looking at budget conscious implementations too. Your support and comments are appreciated!

[@pressssss]

Yeah the lack of hardware transcoding kills it for me right there, shame really ;/

[@AnthonyThomas-o4l]

Why? Most clients support direct play. Drives are cheaper, even if HEVC is a smaller file size, everything runs on H.264.

[@privatebenfallsprivat8428]

Hey guys what would you recommend as diy alternative in itx format with 10gbe and at least 4x nvme ssds?

[@noth606]

You can just buy a Hyper M.2 card and slap it into anything with a 16x slot pretty much. Just pay attention to the PCIe versions of host system, Hyper M.2 and SSD's if you want to squeeze the max out of it. I have one of those cards sitting in box next to me as I type this, but I have no use for it right now, nor drives I can't stuff into either motherboard or single M.2 carrier. I don't need to use it right now since I haven't run out of slots. It's going into one of my servers to replace a single carrier when I need more drives in it. I would say I don't see the point of making an ITX system when you can do so much more with a tower - I have a ML350G10 which is the size of a normal tower PC roughly and can do so much stuff this sort of things or homebuilt systems can't do as easily or elegantly.

[@MasterMind187b]

there are not many itx boards with 4 m2 slots.

[@imopn]

I love the idea of a solid state storage NAS but man it's crazy how expensive and small SSDs still are. Crazy that we have 1TB little SD cards but the biggest SSD is about 8TB. And then it's priced so high. Need at least 3 8TB ssd to match the capacity of one large HDD. And then I've said this before but the CPU used here is just not awesome for media streaming. Need a embedded Ryzen chip with good GPU for AV1 encode/decode and NPU for image apps that might be able to use it for facial/object recognition.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

We agree and we are hoping that the next version of this CPU comes with an iGPU too. We have made our opinions clear with AMD.

[@haukikannel]

@@ASUSTOR_YTyeah! AMD has very good APUs that could be used Nina device like this!

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@@haukikannel We can't use them. They're not embedded silicon. We have to use embedded CPUs.

[@mgc8888]

@@ASUSTOR_YT It's strange that AMD doesn't put more effort into supporting their embedded CPUs, they have plenty of laptop models, including excellent APUs, that would work great as embedded too...

[@ralphhuppin8348]

why do you want so many NVME drives when you only have 10GBE?

[@mgc8888]

So you can replace spinning rust disks. Right now, 4 TB is the sweet spot for NVMe's, you can get them under €200 sometimes, which allows up to 48 TB (= 40 TiB realistically) in this device, replacing a 2x24 TB NAS for example. Hopefully, in the next 2-3 years 8 TB ones will come down in price to sane levels, which would allow doubling that capacity while keeping the enclosure.

[@LethalBB]

Did your audio setup change? It sounds like you're bandwidth starved in a few recent videos.

[@dicalpplacid137]

I heard it cannot support 8tb nvme yet?

[@mgc8888]

That is incorrect. 8TB NVMe's work nicely!

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

Should you ask me questions or reply to me? Absolutely! That's what I'm here for!

[@DanSnipe-k8o]

What happens if one or more drives die within the device? Does it inform you that there is an issue, and allow you to replace them and recover ) given your RAID scheme works with enough redundancy? With your insider knowledge, when do you think NVME prices will be 50% of current prices?

[@john_hind]

I'll take you up on that! I want to add a spinning disk for backup duties (so must be hot-swap removable). I guess a USB4 external disk would be one way to go, but could one of the M.2 slots be fitted with a SATA adapter and if so would the OS detect the spinning disk(s) automatically? Would a backup app be able to work locally on the unit to back up the SSDs to spinning disk 'in the background'. What I really want is for ASUSTOR to make an 'SSD biassed hybrid RAID' with one or two spinning disk candies, six or more M.2 slots and the external bandwidth to take advantage of SSD speeds.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@DanSnipe-k8o When a drive dies, the NAS will beep periodically as well as the software bringing up a popup when logging in. Drives definitely can be replaced easily and it will automatically rebuild the RAID. I have no insider knowledge of NVMe prices. If you know anything, let me know. I'd like to upgrade a few of my PCs too.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@@john_hind You wouldn't even need to use USB4 for that, hard drives cannot even take full advantage of USB 3.0. An external drive or external HDD dock would be more sufficient. I wouldn't recommend attempting to adapt a SATA controller onto the M.2 slots as the OS will not recognise the drives, and it will be a far more difficult and expensive way to do it while resulting in a far worse experience, especially as the NAS is designed to run with the cover on it for optimal airflow. We have the Lockerstor for internal HDDs along with four M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs if needed but external drives work well enough for backups.

[@SuperGraphers]

@ASUSTOR_YT how to use the thunderbolt 4 connection? Please give an update how to connect it to thunderbolt

[@svensyoutube1]

Ist das ms-01 nicht besser ?

[@mgc8888]

Nein. Der MS-01 hat nur 3x (mit etwas Aufwand 4x) NVMe-Schächte, die vielleicht mit einer PCIe-Karte um weitere 2x erweitert werden könnten (aber nicht alle Karten funktionieren richtig, und er unterstützt keine Bifurkation). Das ist zu einem ähnlichen Preis wie der 6-Schacht-Asustor, aber mit einer viel stromhungrigeren CPU, die anfällig für Überhitzung und Stabilitätsprobleme ist. Die zusätzlichen Netzwerkanschlüsse sind nett, aber abgesehen davon spricht nicht viel dafür, ihn gegenüber dem kompakteren Flashstor Gen 2 zu empfehlen - und der 12-Schacht ist kein Vergleich! (Ja, ich weiß, dass es einen Prototyp-expansion-board gibt, der die 3x-Schächte in 6x-Schächte für den MS-01 verwandelt, aber dann verliert man die Kühlung, kann keine Heatsinks haben und die Geschwindigkeiten sind auf PCIe 3x1 beschränkt, was auf Flashstor Gen 1 zurückgeht; außerdem ist es meines Wissens noch nicht verfügbar).

[@svensyoutube1]

@ Mir gefällt die Vielfalt der Anschlüsse, aber um einiges besser, und die Leistung ohne Ende, um zu transcodieren. Wer braucht den 12 M2 Anschlüsse?

[@mgc8888]

@@svensyoutube1 Für alle, die sowohl Kapazität als auch Leistung benötigen: NVMe sind mit 8 TB immer noch wahnsinnig teuer und größere gibt es nicht. Bei maximal 4 TB haben wir also insgesamt 48 TB (40 TiB nutzbar), was von der Größe her kaum mit einem 2-Bay-NAS mit HDDs vergleichbar ist.

[@johnbeer4963]

Whilst I do like NASCompares I can answer the question in this title quite quickly , thus: "Not just no, but HELL NO". Have You seen the price? Asus have gone absolutely batcrap mental. I laughed out loud. Never mind the fact that Asus' customer service and warranty situation sucks. Terrible company, massively overpriced product. You can build a legit server with enterprise hardware for less than that.

[@lemon9.9]

The pro version has 12 nvme slot😂 wtf

[@AnthonyThomas-o4l]

Mini PC and off lease tiny/mini/micro pc are cheap.

[@stucorbishley]

Such a bummer, no transcoding is a deal breaker for me.

[@honumoorea873]

900$...lol, i give you 300, not more.

[@mydogsbutler]

I've been thinking about buying the 12 bay flashstor and installing Truenas since it came out. Originally the slow processor was the issue.. They've upgraded the processor but price is now the issue. The lack of integrated graphics is annoying but not the dealbreaker since there is workaround to installing OS.. The two 3x1 pci slots caps out at a measly 1 gigabyte per second. If using zfs, it's not worth using those 2 slow slots on same array with the rest. So what I'd be really buying is 10 slots for a raidz2. The problem is for around the same money, you can buy brand new 1U rackmout gigabyte hotswap 10 bay u.2 server with 128GB ECC RAM, 32 Cores of Gold Skylake CPUs, and 3x2 PCI Nvme speeds. It even has some spare PCI slots where for a bit extra you could add a decent half hight 1 slot GPU or even 100Gb/s nic. U.2 drives are also more reliable and better sustained speeds. The extra RAM will cache zfs far better. I like the low power and small size of the flashstor but for a little more money I could buy a system that will smoke this and also more versatile.

[@iblackfeathers]

pci lanes are a mess. it’s a skip for me.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

Hey there, I am curious, would it have been preferable to leave them all at x1? This was the debate we had in the office. I suggested to just give the full amount of power possible.

[@huggekarlsson]

Have you check the prizes/ lack of support and not to talk about cost of pcie Bifucation cards which could offer this, the combination is good.

[@mgc8888]

All PCIe 4 lanes would have been better IMO. You are currently using 14x lanes out of the 20x available from the processor (4/2/2/2/1/1/1/1), which would have been more than enough to cover all 12 slots with 4x1, even leaving 2x extra which could have been added to the first two slots to make those 4x2 for even higher speed. As it is, the 3x1s are sadly unusable, so it's more like a 10-bay NAS if you care about speed (and why else would one get a NVMe box?)...

[@huggekarlsson]

@@mgc8888 the option to buy future proof Nvme drives, I think it is weird that people do not take into account that when you buy a nvme drive vs a sata ssd or HDD, you can use it in a laptop!! Or a mini pc, like the longevity of a nvme drive is so much better to repurpose it when you want to switch out the drive in the future.

[@id104335409]

I think this is a step sideways instead of a step up for Asustor. Very disapointing for the price.

[@Nasguy-b7q]

No a good cpu for my needs. No transcoding. Ryzens don't perform better for throuput, and with zfs don't need ecc.

[@meccu19]

Without watching - no, you shouldn't

[@janrozema7650]

Super product! Many wow! /Me see's price And move on

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

Well, we think of it as before we used a 3050, but now we're using a 4070 and taking advantage of all of its features.

[@ThePaulpope]

This is NOT thunderbolt 4 ....it's two HALF USB4's ..... unless you use anything other then Windows ...then it's nothing because it doesn't work on MAC in fact .... the whole device doesn't work on MAC according to support threads

[@noth606]

it's not a USB drive... You should be looking at something that isn't a NAS but a SSD enclosure based on what you're saying.

[@JokerTheVlad]

Lacking HDMI port or I would have bought it.