Roon, QNAP & Synology

I think it's time to upgrade my NAS

Very tempting indeed. However, aside from the $499 lifetime membership, it will require a newer NAS, which comes to roughly $3000 CND or so for their suggested optimal NAS setup. 

I hope this is not against forum rules and copied and pasted some info from their their KB on this subject.

"Most QNAP and Synology devices with a 64-bit Intel CPU and at least 2GB RAM are supported. "We strongly recommend 4GB of RAM and an SSD for the Roon databases". Your music files can be on spinning disks, but ideally the Roon database should be on an SSD. This one optimization can provide the single biggest improvement to Roon’s performance and user experience."

Note: If your NAS does not have a free slot for an SSD, you can use a SSD via an external enclosure connected via eSATA or USB 3.0. Anything 64GB or larger should be fine -- extra space will not help you any.

What is the ideal NAS configuration for Roon?

The NAS family we recommend as of mid-2016 is the QNAP TVS-471 with an Intel Core i3 or i5 and 4GB of RAM.

An optimal NAS configuration:

• 1 bay with a small SSD (120GB, about $40 right now) for the Roon Server install and the Roon database
• 2 bays with 6TB drives, RAID1 (mirrored)
• 1 bay with 6TB drive for weekly backup off the mirrored set

Why this works so well:

• The SSD gives you fast performance for Roon. We advise against running Roon's database on a spinning disk.
• The dual 6TB mirrored drives give you fault tolerant storage for music, which allow for about 15,000 CD quality albums.
• The third 6TB drive gives you a periodic local backup of your music. Remember, RAID is fault tolerance, and not backup.

The whole thing is under $2k and pretty awesome to stuff in a closet or rack away from your listening room.

FWIW I'm using a QNAP TS-453 Pro with 4x4TB WD Reds as my main music server, and rather than go down the internal/external SSD route for the Roon implementation, I did a bit of 'what if...?' thinking. So I bought a 128GB USB stick (at £20 much cheaper than an SSD), plugged it into one of the sockets on the back of the NAS, and ran Roon on that.

Works perfectly, and could have got away with a 64GB, which would have been even cheaper – the Roon implementation currently takes up less than 10GB on the stick. In fact, I only bought a 128GB for a few quid more as it would have been more useful for other purposes if the cunning plan hadn't panned out!

Add in a Raspberry Pi/HiFiBerry Digi+ to act as the Roon access point (about £100 inc case) for the NDS or DAC, controlled remotely via laptop or a cheap Android tablet running the remote app, and job is, as they say, a good 'un.

Not All Synology's Are Equal

As pointed out by JOE9407 on another thread if you want to use Roon on the Synology you use / are proposing to use. Roon spec an Intel 64 bit chip with a minimum of 2GB ram.

In my case I run a Syn 1812+ which uses an Intel Atom D2700 x86 chip. Apparently this can run 64 bit instructions but I suspect is not going to be compatable for RoonServer.

M