Hello,
I plan to move ROON from PC to NAS. I have just bought a M2. SSD 1TB drive to do so and my question is what is the optimal configuration ?
Music is stored in HDDs in RAID5 for a total of 16TB. I have upgraded to 8Gb of RAM, NAS is TS253D.
I see 3 solutions :
using the SSD as a drive in same pool with HDDs and installing ROON on it
setting up the SSD as cache but i think it will be a lost of space and it seems that i cannot cut the drive in 2, let’s say 512Gb for Cache and 512Gb as drive to install ROON Server
setting up the SSD in QTier (less optimal if I understand for that kind of use)
Thank you for your insight on the subject
How many tracks are you going to store there? If you are going to fill that (unless maybe if you store huge files as DSD512 or something), 8 GB RAM are probably by far not enough. Nor is the Celeron that’s in the TS253D.
The Roon database must be on an SSD or you will not be happy.
I have my qnap with an installed m2 PCI card which has two SSD’s installed on which is small has Roon on it the other is 1TB and has my music files.
This works really well and I don’t have any lag or issues.
My music library is present on standard HDD on raid5 which replicates to the SSD daily so there are always two copies on the same device, this is then backed up again and again.
I am unsure how you have Raid5 as it looks like that 253 only has two drives, but you can buy / install cards which are actually a lot faster than placing a standards 2.5” SSD into a drive bay.
Tthanks for your replies.
My mistake it’s raid1 ie mirrored HDDs.
I have bought the expansion card (PCIe) for M2 SSD since it’s a 2-bays NAS.
Current library is around 14 TB and you’re right on PC, RAM usage is around 7.9 GB. I’ll check if I can increase to 16 GB but it’s not mentionned on qnap website that it’s possible. I remember on a previous NAS having gone above constructor’s recommendations and it was fine.
So I should install ROON on SSD as well as database and not using Cache ?
How many tracks, approximately? That’s more important for Roon performance than sheer size (which might come from having huge files, which is not such a burden on Roon as many files)
Yes. The database disk needs to be fast. If you are using the SSD as cache, the QNAP OS will decide what it caches, which may not be what’s most useful to Roon
I’ll try like that and will be back to confirm if a modest Celeron CPU and 8Gb RAM is enough or not for such library. I also use Qobuz but dont think that will be an issue.
Thank you
Ok, thanks guys for these clarifactions.
I’ll test and think about alternative solutions (reducing library size for ROON to stay in ‘typical size’ library and managing then 2 different libraries, bad solution, maybe transforming an old pc which will be dedicated to ROON Core and database, …)
I ran a library with comparabe size (appr. 440.000 tracks) for many years on my QNAP TVS671 with i5 and 16 GByte - performance was okay but not really “snappy”; after moving the core to a NUC10th gen with i7 and 32 GByte running Rock I never looked back … much more snappy performance … once installed run and forget (automativ update) … costwise moving to a NAS which suites the CPU and RAM demands of Roon is much more expensive than leaving the library on you 251 (I use a 251 as backup device) and adding a NUC (for some months now Roon supports also UEFI boot => go for a NUC12WSHi7 with 16 GByte of RAM, refer to https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/roon-optimized-core-kit#ROCK_For_Small_to_Medium-Sized_Libraries) - nevertheless: just my 2 cents …
I have about 143000 tracks in my QNAP NAS
my NAS has 8GB of memory
I have a nucleus+ with upgraded memory.
Roon cannot handle it. Navigating within the controllers is played with delays. When tracks selected it can take 2 or 3 minutes to begin playing.
I’m working through it with Roon support.
They advised creating a smaller Library to test.
When I created an 11000 track library everything works perfectly.
So the size of the database has something to do with it.
I’m also concerned only 8gb of memory in my NAS maybe contributing.
Currently, on the advice of another user, breaking up my library into 10 or so folders and directing Room to those 10 folders
Hope is having multiple smaller folders will solve my performance issues
I also tried to connect an 18 TB HD to my Nucleus+ with hopes it would correct my performance issues but I kept getting “track loading problems” which I guess meant the drive couldn’t keep up.
Initially I intended to create a sub network dedicated to hifi to clean a little bit the ethernet signal…too many endpoints on main network.
PC is not up all the time and when i get home after a long day, i don’t like having to turn it on and wait that ROON launches to be able to listen to music. It’s also demanding for PC and i prefer to make it more quiet.
Thanks to all comments, I have dismissed NAS as the best option and I’m now waiting for a mini pc with i7 and 32Gb RAM.
It will also be easier to put the mini pc in electrical bay that is in the basement.
It’s extremely unlikely that the root cause of your performance issues is the speed (latency and throughout) of your music storage. Modern rotational hard disk drives can easily sustain 100 MB/s. That’s two orders of magnitude (almost 100 times) better than what’s required for 24-bit, 192 kHz stereo playback.
Filesystem corruption could be a cause. You should have O/S tools to check for and repair that if so.
The cause is more often problems on the home network. When Core and Outputs are directly weird to a quality unmanaged 1 Gb/s Ethernet switch, symptoms like the ones you describe are incredibly uncommon.
You are now on the right track. An Intel NUC only draws 10 watts or so when running Roon OS unless doing background audio analysis or heavy DSP. That’s insignificant compared to most home appliances.
