memory upgrades on qnap / synology devices?

who?

I'm looking into cctv and possibly using a qnap or synology box rather than a dedicated nvr.   

Doing some reading I find comments that some of the synology and qnap boxes can benefit hugely from memory upgrades.

What I cant find is any list of which models can be upgraded.    I find lots of comments that many synology boxes are actually upgradeable even though not officially upgradeable.   But I cant find any lists or descriptions of which models.

Anyone know?   Is it as simple as something like since 2015, or more than 2 bays?

maf1970

Don't know if there is a list but I do know that if you are looking at an individual model then look at the Specs/Specifications section and that will tell you if the memory is upgradeable. The other way is when you do a compare of a selection models that tells you which ones are upgradeable as well.

mickevh

It would be worth justifying what "hugely beneficial" means - no point spending money if you don't need to. Memory upgrades are only worthwhile if you currently do not have enough for the application mix you are running. It's not automatically the case that "stuff in more memory makes it better." In extremis, it could even make things worse!

By way of analogy, if your 1.6L Voxhaul Crappee is doing an adequate job of getting you to the shops down the 30mph local roads, swapping out the engine for a 4L V8 TurboMonster is not going to be any benefit - it could be detrimental (more fuel, more dead weight, more expensive servicing, bigger battery, etc.)

If you need more memory, great - go for it. If you can discern some benefit that more memory will avail, then again great - go for it.

But if you have some spare money and are casting around for "something" tech. to spend it on, there might be better VFM elsewhere. More Wi-Fi AP's or a new media streamer to randomly pick two examples.

My microserver shipped with 2GB RAM and running a full fat Linux OS "just" serving files, it bearly uses 1GB. Upgrading it to 16GB made no difference at all. However, if I spin up a few virtual machines - they chomp through it real quick!

Sloppy Bob

I have 2 identical 8-bay Synology NAS.

Identical other than one has 2GB Ram and the other has 6GB Ram.

I don't notice one iota of difference between them with regards to normal operations, transfer speed etc.
The only time I notice a difference is when I replace a disk and need to rebuild the array, in this instance the NAS with 6GB does it much quicker, however they both operate normally while rebuilding with no detriment to normal operation. It just works away in the background longer on one than the other.

who?

OK, let re reframe the question - I want to have maybe 4 4k poe cameras.   I would like H.265, my understanding was that this would work better with higher spec cpu and memory.

What boxes should I look at if I want to do this at as low a cost as possible  (quite happy to buy used kit)?   I'm finding the range of devices from qnap and synology a bit overwhelming.  I am doing some reading but at teh moment I'm not really clear about the differences.   I thought the TVS range becauseof support for h265, but then many of the ts range also seem to offer very similar capabilities.

mickevh

I doubt it will make much difference - all your NAS is doing is writing data to the discs and for this use case cited, things like the hard disc drive (which are mechanical devices,) disc controllers and the bus system have a greater effect on performance than the amount of RAM or the CPU speed.

Writing data to discs is a relatively trivial task for CPU and as long as you have enough RAM to buffer the data blocks, (which is pretty much anything these days,) massive RAM isn't required either. An exception would be if you send short, big "bursts" of data which can be cached in RAM whilst the data is backed off to disc, but for ongoing sustained data streams such as your use case, it's unlikely to work that way. CCTV is just going to be ticking away hour after hour sending a more or less constant throughput of data.

One would want to assess the volume (we call it the bandwidth) of sustained data transfer involved against the performance of the NAS and it's disc subsystem and check it can cope. (Not to mention the network infrastructure between the cameras and the NAS.) For example, if they were writing 100mbps data streams, that's pretty small beer for discs these days - but you'd want to ensure your LAN was gigabit (1000mbps) capable - especially the link between the NAS your router/swiches. Of course, lower bandwidth (say 50mbps, 20, 10 whatever) is even less demanding.

If you are planning for your NAS to run some kind of back end app to support your cameras, (for example some kind of transcoder,) such an app may have it's own requirements which you should check out, (transcoding will take as much CPU as you can give it,) but for basic data storage for such a small number of end stations, you shouldn't really need anything special. The jumping off point is to investigate the bandwidth of the data streams your cameras produce.