AS6804T NVME: Do I Need It?

[kmmcd]

I am considering acquiring an AS6804T to replace my aging no-longer-suported Netgear RN424 4-bay NAS. The AS6804T includes the option for installation of 4 NVME SSD's in addition to the rotating media. I can't determine whether or not I need the NVME option, or even benefit from it. I have been using the RN424 satisfactorily for >8 years with no such option. I use the system mostly for file serving and storage and from which I stream HD audio and HD video (ripped standard blu-rays) from the NAS using applications that reside on distributed PC's on my existing 1GbE network. At the same time, I want the system to adapt to my growing requirements, which I cannot foresee at this time.

1) Can the AS6804T operate without NVME?

2) Should I install 1, 2 or 4 NVME devices?

Any advice is appreciated.

[snapshot]

The AS6804T will work very well without NVMe but, depending on your usage, it could perform better with it. You can use individual NVMe drives as either storage or cache but not both. Which you choose depends on your usage but four drive slots give plenty of flexibility. I use all four NVMe drives as my boot volume and active storage. This gets mirrored to the HDDs every night. Backups go straight to HDD. For my use, using the NVMe as cache will probably not gain much.

I suggest adding two relatively small NVMe drives in RAID1 as your boot volume but be aware that some folders like user Homes cannot be moved so choose your capacity accordingly. Leave the other two free for the moment then you can add further fast storage or cache when you feel you need it. The compatibility list becomes more relevant for NVMe drives as there are more constraints like whether a heatsink is needed or not - there's virtually no space for heatsinks in the 54xx, 67xx and 68xx ranges as they all use the same cramped daughterboard. I stick to WD SN700 NVMe drives and buy them direct from Sandisk as there's usually 15% off two identical drives.

[EvilHomerClone]

I recently picked up the AS6810T, and here’s how I approached the NVMe side of things. I installed 2×256GB NVMe drives in RAID 1 and made that my Volume 1 (boot volume). All apps install there, which gives me the freedom to swap or reorganize the 3.5" bays later without losing my apps. I learned that the hard way during my initial setup — I’m new to the Asustor/ADM ecosystem too.

One thing I’m not a fan of is that ADM forces certain default folders to live on Volume 1. In my case I don’t use any of them, so I just disable them in the Access Control pane. You can move the Public folder, but again, I don’t use it so it’s disabled.

As for NVMe: if you’re not sure you need it, you probably don’t — at least not right away. Just keep in mind that the NVMe carrier board runs on a PCIe Gen3 x4 link, which tops out around 3.5 GB/s total. Most modern NVMe drives are on Gen4 x4 and capable of ~8 GB/s, so the NAS will bottleneck them. It’s still useful, but you can’t go wild expecting full NVMe performance.

That said, the AS68XXT family is still a beast of a NAS. I’m really happy I managed to grab the 10‑bay model at a great price, and I even found another 16GB ECC stick without having to sell a vital organ. I’ll be running some VMs on mine since I’m not a fan of Docker.

[VJS67]

It really depends on your network and more so on how many users you have connected to the NAS.
The AS68xxT Gen 3 is not an enterprise level NAS,

If you have one set up at home or small office the NVME will not make any difference.
I have a system with 4 HDD + a spare when I added four 4TB NVMEs, it did not make a bit of difference.
I am currently limited by the WIFI connection to my router.
My router supports WIFI7 and I have an Intel BE200 wifi card in my notebook. So can't really improve that.

I get about 180MB/sec transfer, with or without the NVME cache.

--Victor

[VJS67]

[SNIP]
One thing I’m not a fan of is that ADM forces certain default folders to live on Volume 1. In my case I don’t use any of them, so I just disable them in the Access Control pane. You can move the Public folder, but again, I don’t use it so it’s disabled.

[SNIP]

Good advice, I'm still in the process of playing with my AS6806T (now I regret not getting a 08, or 10), but I will definitely remove the drives and redo everything like you said.
I found the user home to be unusable as "user homes". I could never map any shares on those drives unless I logged in as admin, or gave the users admin privilege.