Ugreen NASync - support?

[I like to move IT]

Hi all,

tl;dr: I describe the current information that is known about the Ugreen NASync systems and which operating systems can be operated with them. Based on the known assumptions, I would like to know whether TrueNAS is supported without any problems.

Feel free to add more information or correct me.

Long:

In the last few days there has been a lot of excitement about the new Ugreen NASync systems. So I'm all the more surprised that no topic seems to have been opened here in the forum yet.

I am talking about this products:
Here is the official product site from Ugreen: https://nas.ugreen.com/
Here ist the kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...nc-next-level-storage-limitless-possibilities

I became aware of the product through the campaign and have been following the topic ever since and have also pre-ordered the 8-bay device.

In the meantime, Ugreen has confirmed that the device will be delivered with an open bios and the option to install any operating system. Ugreen will not provide support for third-party operating systems, but they have promised that the installation of third-party operating systems will not void the hardware warranty.

Some reviews of the pre-series models with up to 4bays are now available. Previews of the 6bay and 8bay models are not avaiable as far as I know.

Please note that everything about the chipset selection is pure speculation on my part. There is no confirmed information as to what will be included in the final product now.

Here is a overview of the components of the 4-bay version DXP4800:

Source

Provided Ugreen does not make any further changes in models with up to 4 bays, the devices will be delivered with the following chipsets. The following chipsets are the most interesting:

ASM1164* as SATA controller
Intel i226-V** as 2.5G network (highly likely
Marvell AQC 117*** as 10G network controller (device ID 04c0)

* AMS1164 can be seen in some reviews of the 4 bay device. If they also use this chipset in the 8-bay devices, its highly likely that they place a cheap PCIe-switch in front of two ASM1164 chips in the 8-bay device. Because I am not interested in the smaller devices, I have absolutely no clue how its done in the smaller 1- or 2-bay devices. Maybe one can find informations about it in some reviews. But a lot of devices on the market also use this exact same 4-port chip even if they only provide one or two bays, so its likely that they also use this one in the one or two bay device. For the 6-bay devices, its possible that they use a ASM1166.

** In some reviews, this chip is build in when a 2.5G port is available. So I think they will use this chip in every version with a 2.5 G.

*** In some reviews, this chip is build in when a 10G port is available.

Its absolutely unclear which NIC is build in the 6- or 8-bay devices. Looks like there are no reviews avaiable of these devices so far. But the 6- and 8-bay devicse are equiped with two 10G ports, so its possible that they dont use two single 10G chips, but one dual port 10G-chip. I doubt that Ugreen will use a professional 10G-chip like X710-DA2 or something like that, because they are to expensive for such a product, but probably a X550-T2 or something like that.

OK, speculation what will be in the final product ends here, now we can have a closer look on the chipsets (assuming that these chipsets are used).


Regarding the ASM116x SATA-chipsets: Typically, this kind of storage chipsets are transparent, which means, that every operating system should be compatible. This is because these chipsets present the attached drives in a mode, which every OS can deal with. Typically AHCI.

Regarding the NICs, its a whole different story. To get a network card up and running, drivers must be available for the operating system used. And this is something, which might be a problem.

In most cases, Intel based NICs are supported in most operating systems. So for the 2.5G-interfaces, I do not expect any major problems that cant be solved. I dont know every OS and every flavour, but I guess that Intel drivers for the i226-V are avaiable for Windows, most Linux distributions, FreeBSD and Illumos based operating systems. Even ESXi supports the most Intel NICs. If there is no official support for ESXi, you might find some unofficial driver solutions (Flinge driver package).

Marvell network cards have relatively poor driver support. The AQC 117 is a relative new chip and I think its only covered by Windows and Linux, but there are definetly no drivers available for exotic operating systems like FreeBSD, Illumos and ESXi for this chipset. This means: No TrueNAS core, no ESXi virtualization, no Napp-IT or other exotic solutions on this cool piece of hardware. This might change in the future, but thats something I would not rely on.

I am an ESXi friend, and since I have a VMUG membership, I will continue to use it until this is a dead end. Because of the lack of devicedrivers for ESXi, this is no option. Most of us know the shitshow that Broadcom put on. Please avoid the VMware-rant anyway - thanks.

I think that TrueNAS is the most likely option for Ugreen NAS systems in my case. So I will install TrueNAS directly on the hardware and not run it as a VM as usual.

There are also a few other components that are integrated into the processor, such as the TB4/USB4 controller, the iGPU or the sound card. Here too, I assume that the more exotic operating systems have no support for this hardware, or at best only generic support.

Based on the above assumptions, I would like to know if TrueNAS scale supports this hardware out of the box?


Edit: typos and clarification

 

[danb35]

ASM1164* as SATA controller

Don't know about this, but skeptical--well-supported SATA controllers are whatever's in Intel chipsets and LSI/Avago/Broadcom SAS HBAs, and that's pretty much it.

Intel i226-V** as 2.5G network (highly likely

The least-crappy option available for 2.5G

Marvell AQC 117*** as 10G network controller (device ID 04c0)

Don't believe this is supported at all in CORE, might be in SCALE--but even if it is, don't expect it to be any good.

The i5 CPU would be adequate, the 8 GB of RAM minimal, but they say that's expandable. Probably no ECC support.

There's a lot of stuff that would be useless for a NAS--audio, 8k HDMI, Thunderbolt, SD card reader, for example. It does have a PCIe slot, so you could put a decent 10G NIC into it if you wanted.

I would like to know if TrueNAS scale supports this hardware out of the box?

Probably. If I were to buy one, I'd plan on a RAM upgrade and whacking in a decent SFP+ 10G NIC like a Chelsio or Intel, and if possible not pay extra for onboard 10G. But I've gotten addicted to remote management (iLO, iDRAC, IPMI) on my servers, and this doesn't have it. The other wildcard is how they'll do at drive cooling, which has been an Achilles' heel for lots of small-form-factor NAS systems.

 

[LarsR]

I've already seen german youtubers run truenas and unraid on those things... seems like the bios is pretty open and you can do almost anything in it. Apperently you have to remove the build in boot nvme so you can install other os's and enter the bios, but the boot medium is "protected" by a warranty sticker and if you damage/destroy that sticker you loose all warranty.

 

[Davvo]

but the boot medium is "protected" by a warranty sticker and if you damage/destroy that sticker you loose all warranty.

Which should hold very little validity if contested in court.

Warranty Void Stickers: Are they legal outside the US?

Most of the time, you shouldn’t be scared of self-repair, no matter what a sticker says.

www.ifixit.com

 

[I like to move IT]

@danb35

I also prefer my ASRock Rack build with OOB remote management options + all the other pro features and a high quality HBA. But for like 899USD this was a nobrainer to give it a try. I think I will use it as a cheap backup solution.

The CPUs indeed dont have ECC support, but thats not a showstopper for data integrity if ZFS comes into play. And I think it would be a waste if the iGPU, iAudio and iTB4/iUSB4 would not be available because its included in the CPU anyway.

Edit: DDR5 supports ODECC. This is not the same like ECC implemented in the CPU, but its better than nothing.

TB4/USB4 in particular could be very usefull if you want to add some additional drive enclosures. Because TB4 can deliver native PCIe signals. Thats not compareable with USB3-connections. I think TB4 enclosures are available on the market or will be soon. And if you want to use this device not only for storage topics but more like a HCI node, its even possible to add a external GPU over TB4 for some extra "AI"-acceleration. I fully support TB4.


@LarsR

Do you have a video regarding TrueNAS installations?

I know that a lot of pre production reviews covered the warranty label topic. But this is something which should officialy not be a problem with the final product, because Ugreen confirmed that they will allow third party operating systems without any hardwarey warranty limitations. So, I think it should be possible to install you own OS on the internal SSD or to replace it with your own without any warranty issues.

@Davvo

Thanks for adding this information. Thats new for me. Really interesting.

 

[danb35]

The CPUs indeed dont have ECC support, but thats not a showstopper for data integrity if ZFS comes into play.

Whether it's a showstopper is a matter of opinion, but whether it has any bearing on the question is a matter of fact--and it does. Yes, once good data and checksum are written to disk, ZFS will guarantee data integrity. But while the data is in RAM, and before it's written to disk, bad RAM can corrupt the data, and ZFS does nothing to protect against this. Whether this risk is acceptable is, again, up to you, but ZFS doesn't make it magically go away.

All in all, at the Kickstarter price, these seem pretty attractive, if they manage temperatures adequately. I'd have made a few different hardware choices, but I don't mind these too much.

 

[DigitalMinimalist]

Very difficult to NOT stumble about a YT Review these days from many Content Creators

The kickstarter price offers a lot of hardware for its price. TrueNAS seems to run…

Good NAS without ECC support - would prefer it over Synology or QNAP

 

[Davvo]

The building quality appears to be nice indeed.

 

[nabsltd]

There's a lot of stuff that would be useless for a NAS--audio, 8k HDMI, Thunderbolt, SD card reader, for example.

Thunderbolt is a way to attach external storage, so that's right in the NAS ballpark. It can also be used to add external PCIe slots, which could be useful.

 

[nabsltd]

Edit: DDR5 supports ODECC. This is not the same like ECC implemented in the CPU, but its better than nothing.

Not really. The primary reason that all DDR5 has to have on-chip ECC is to allow it to be produced much more cheaply. Without the ECC, most wafers to be used for DDR5 RAM would fail to pass quality control. The tolerances required are too high to allow for most chips to pass.

Adding a bit more circuitry to the chip to provide ECC is much cheaper than reducing yields. So, the on-die ECC is essentially required for normal operation, while true ECC RAM sees an error detection/correction once every few weeks (if that).

For me, though, the complete showstopper is no support for SAS drives. When buying used, SAS are often the cheaper choice, so I wouldn't want to lock out that option.

 

[I like to move IT]

Regarding the ECC topic: I know that OnDieECC ist only a tool to optimize the DDR5 yield in first place. But if we compare error correction with a stair, then "no ECC" would be ground level, OnDieECC maybe the first stair step, followed by different levels of ECC, followed by Advanced ECC/Chipkill/Enhanced ECC. That being said, I think ODECC is still better then no ECC. Dont know the context of the following diagram exactly, but here is a graph from a Samsung presentation. As far as I know, ODECC not only covers the error correction on the Die itself. As far as I know It also covers the communication between the Ram and the memory controller of the CPU (but I might be wrong in this point).

Regarding the drive compatibility topic: Yes, its sad that the backplane is just packed with ASmedia SATA controllers. SAS or NVME capability would make the product more expensive.

Lets think about a solution:
Theoretically, it would be possible to replace the backplane of the original NASync with a SAS or NVME enabled one. Thats because the Backplane is a simple PCB with a standard PCIe 4.0 x4 connector and the ASmedia SATA-controller on it. If I am right, the drive housings already have a connector which is SAS ready, so there should not be a mechanical or pinout problem.

I was looking for such tweaks for another project a while ago and found this website: https://c-payne.com/

I guess the guy behind this project is open for the idea to produce a custom backplane via crowdfunding. In this case, the SAS controller in the four bay devices would only be connected via four lanes, but this would be a total bandwith of 7,8GBs payload, which would be enough for HDDs and SSDs. Its unknown if the 6bay and 8bay models backplanes also have just a x4 connector. Maybe its x8 or x18.

Another Idea would be to completely remove the backplane, add a HBA with internal SFF-connectors and use a wireing harnes to directly connect SAS to this additional HBA. Thats possible, because the 6bay and 8bay device have an PCIe expansion slot. I already asked Ugreen if the expansion slot is x4, x8 or x16.

Edit: Found this product on the c-payne-website: https://c-payne.com/products/pcie-slimsas-host-adapter-x8-to-8i-straight
Its what you are looking for. You only need a x4 to x8 adapter to replace the original backplane in the four bay model and maybe it will fit without one in the 6bay or 8bay model without a adapter cable.

 

[Stux]

I've already seen german youtubers run truenas and unraid on those things... seems like the bios is pretty open and you can do almost anything in it. Apperently you have to remove the build in boot nvme so you can install other os's and enter the bios, but the boot medium is "protected" by a warranty sticker and if you damage/destroy that sticker you loose all warranty.

Fairly certain those stickers are invalid in some countries.

 

[nabsltd]

That being said, I think ODECC is still better then no ECC.

ODECC for DDR5 is only there to bring the error rate down to the same as on DDR4. Literally, DDR5 in the form factor that DIMMs use would not function without it.