Use-case for M.2 ssd on my Qnap Ts-464

[Enquiries]

Hi Nascompares,

Thanks to your youtube videos I've finally decided to buy my very first NAS Server. I went with the QNAP TS-464 4G.

I was only looking for a 2-bay NAS but having watched the video on the 464 made me buy this instead.

But now I spent way over my budget on just the NAS (but no regrets)

Due to this, I have decided to delay buying HDDs and was thinking of buying:

2 x WD Red SN700 NAS NVMe SSD - 250GB each
2 x RAM sticks 8GB each
.. first

I am coming from a NAS setup (if you could call it that) of:

1 x NVIDIA Shield TV pro with two External Portable HD (5GB each) attached

My setup before is just to access my files via LAN and access my multimedia and personal files via smb (samba) to interact and backup files on it.

This will also be my initial use case for my 464 except I can have a Plex Server now, Access my files via Internet and sync my photos (once I have the money to buy HDDs) and use QuMagie

Given my choice of buying ssds first, I am planning to do the following (if possible)

1. Install QTS on SSDs
2. and also use it as cache acceleration moving forward
3. use SSD as the metadata storage for Plex
4. Attach the 2 x External HD (5TB each) on USB ports and serve as my main file containers. I can have PLEX use these drives as my main multimedia folder

I wont be performing any heavy I/O operations on my NAS in the near future (by the way)

Could you let me know your thoughts on this?

I understand that I'm way under-utilising my NAS at the moment, but that's the situation I am in.

Thanks

Ben

[ed]

Congratulations on your new NAS. It is indeed the latest and innovative flagship model.
Installing OS and all apps on the NVMe is a popular choice.
You can not use these SSD for storage and caching at the same time (one or the other). It also makes no sense to have cache if your already run all apps and OS on NVMe.
You can attach USB HDDs and use them as an additional storage space for Plex media. No caching for USB drives is possible.

I hope this helps.