I have a QNAP TS-873A 8x bay NAS, it’s been a workhorse for the last 4 years. I wanted to add a server-pulled Intel DC P3700 1.6TB PCIe 3 x4 card for virtual machines and containers since the two built in NVME slots only run at PCIe 3 1x.
Popped the card in, went to create a new volume and boo hiss, the card is not supported and can only be used for ZIL. After checking the hardware compatibility list on QNAP’s site, sure enough, not supported, the only PCIe x4 flash they support is their own branded flash, which is ridiculously expensive and doesn’t have the TBW and features the Intel DC P3700 has.
Well, screw you Joe Boo, you don’t tell me, I tell you! This is obviously a software restraint, the QNAP QuTS hero OS is Linux, so this should be easy enough, and it was.
Change at your own risk!
Prerequisites:
- x86/64 QNAP running QuTS hero (your mileage may very on non-hero OS as I did not test this)
- Admin account on your QNAP NAS
- SSH Enabled on your QNAP NAS
- Your IP address or hostname of your QNAP NAS
- Unsupported flash device installed in your QNAP NAS, this will work with PCIe NVME riser cards and PCIe flash cards. Bifurcation is NOT supported!
Instructions:
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Install your flash
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SSH to your NAS with your admin account
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sudo vi /etc/hal.conf
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Find [Enclosure_23] and change the value of protocol = 5 to protocol = 9
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Save and exit
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Reboot your QNAP NAS
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Create a new volume with your freshly enabled flash
QNAP determines that if it is its own branded card, it will set the protocol value to 9 allowing disk management to have full functionality. If QNAP determines that the device is not a QNAP branded device, it sets the protocol value to 5 and the drive can only be used for caching.
