DSM on QNAP TS-453mini
330 words, 2 minutes
Because I was unpleased with power management using QTS 4.3beta, I decided to see what Synology DSM would do on the QNAP TS-453mini. I installed DSM 5 using XPEnology. It’s not clear if that’s legal or not. But as it is just there to decide if I keep the QNAP or buy a real Syno… :)
I won’t detail how to install DSM on it. The XPEnology website is quite clear on how to proceed. My test was done using XPEnoboot_DS3615xs_5.2-5644.5, installed on the local 512MB internal Flash Disk, and DSM_5.2-5644 Update-5.pat. I could have tried DSM v6 but it seems to be very-Beta.
The result is surprisingly positive. I thought it would be as painful as running ESXi on some white boxes. But it was not. Everything was recognized automagically and seems to run as if I was using a real Syno.
Model name and CPU references are wrong. I guess this comes
from /etc/synoinfo.conf and is required to have to software working well. But
dmesg gives more accurate informations:
qnap> dmesg | egrep -i "synology|celeron|aptio"
[ 0.000000] DMI: To be filled by O.E.M. To be filled by O.E.M./Aptio CRB, BIOS SAB8AR11 05/05/2015
[ 0.000000] Synology Hardware Version: DS3615xs-j
[ 0.039166] smpboot: CPU0: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU J1900 @ 1.99GHz (fam: 06, model: 37, stepping: 08)
[ 4.715117] bromolow_synobios: module license 'Synology Inc.' taints kernel.
[ 4.715873] Brand: Synology
[ 35.025092] Brand: Synology
[ 41.983180] Hardware name: To be filled by O.E.M. To be filled by O.E.M./Aptio CRB, BIOS SAB8AR11 05/05/2015
Disks all work nice. And SSD Cache is also configured and working correctly.
I use to have a DS409slim and this reminded me of that good ol’ time. I really like DSM better that QTS. But what this test did is show me my issues where not really due to QTS. The disks keep regularly spinning even in stand-by mode ; and that’s annoying. I’ll check if WD has firmware update for those. And will restore QTS quite soon.