Installing on QNAP TS-459+

[lucaberta (Luca Bertagnolio)]

Hi everyone,

just discovered Rockstor, and I have seen that a couple of users have modified their old QNAP NAS in order to run Rockstor, in particular this thread is very interesting:

Modified QNAP TS-251+ currently running Rockstor succesfully

Ok, So I was bored and curious if I could get Rockstor to install on my old QNAP TS-251+. Spec wise its got a Celeron J1900 2GHz Quad Core and had already been upgraded to 8GB of memory, has dual 1GB NICS and 2 drive bays. The Qnap would only boot from 1 of the USB ports, install went smooth after finding the 1 that it would boot from. Found that the internal storage that came with it was only a 500Mb eUSB SSD, so that had to go to install Rockstor. The 500Mb eUSB SSD plugs into a system board …

I have a very old yet perfectly operational QNAP TS-459+ with the stock 1G RAM and 512MB DOM, which I assume is similar to what is shown in the thread above.

I would need to at least upgrade the RAM to 2G, which is the maximum supported by the Atom K510 CPU, and of course figure out a way to reliably boot Rockstor from a USB drive, which is not really a suggested configuration, as I read from the documentation.

Is the effort worth it, I wonder?

I don’t mind tinkering with hardware and spending a little money to upgrade the RAM and boot device, but only if I would get reasonable performance and feature support from some hardware which is almost 14 years old!

Thanks for any comment you might have.

Bye, Luca

[Tex1954 (Just Old Man)]

@lucaberta

QNAP TS-459+

Howdy and welcome aboard! I looked up your product and being a hardware guy think I have some input.

For minor background, my engineering talents (back in the day) were machine control in robotic applications of sub-micron precision. The hardware designs were high speed DSP and MCU applications written in assembly language. Data processing and operating systems are not my specialty at all.

1. I think the atom could handle a simple NAS application fine, but Rockstor isn’t a simple NAS OS.

2. Just idling at rest, my small 5 disk setup uses 1.35 GB of RAM and 8.45 GB of SSD space.

Rockstor has the capability with BTRFS to take snapshots, run sideways applications in a “Docker” space, run several levels of RAID, and do other various thing that I don’t currently use.

It seems to me that 2GB RAM and 512MB DOM (Flash?) memory would be insufficient to support a Rockstor install.

However, 16/32 GB USB Flash devices are available, but will they fit your board?

MICRON 16GB 9-Pin USB Flash Drive Disk On Module DOM USB (Big 9PIN)

MICRON 16GB 9-Pin USB Flash Drive Disk On Module DOM USB (Big 9PIN) | eBay

Adding another 1GB DDR2 SIMM memory module is apparently simple.

It might just work if you can get that DOM size increased!

I am available for hardware help anytime as well since I’m retired…

GOOD LUCK!

(Big maybe on working…)