Syno DS1517+ vs DS3018XS (ESXI Datastore)

[Jasonx82]

Anyone know if I will see a real difference in terms of speed/performance between these 2 models. I will be mainly utilizing it for ESXi Iscsi / Lun for 2-3 test VM's.

$699
Syno DS1517+
Atom C2538 Quad 2.4Ghz
4GB DDR3
4x WD Red 4TB Raid10

$1299
Syno DS3018XS
Intel Pentium1508 Dual 2.2Ghz
8GB DDR4
4x WD Red 4TB Raid10

 

[sinisterDei]

First, to directly answer your question - it depends.

Now, for the details...

In my experience, Synology's iSCSI performance isn't that great and you might consider hosting your VMs on NFS, where we got significantly better performance. iSCSI is 'simpler' though, and we haven't used Synology units in a couple years now so maybe the performance is better.

However, your limiting factor will be the 1 GbE networking unless you add 10 GbE via an add-in card. 1 GbE networking will limit your individual data transfers to around 100 MB/s, though you can bond multiple 1 GbE NICs to at lead load balance the traffic between your multiple VMs, if your switches and ESXi hosts have the capability on their end as well.

Also if you add a 10 GbE card to either of these units, you will *not* be able to add the NVME SSD via that add-on card, since they've only got one PCIe slot.

That said, between the two you listed, the DS3018XS should be the faster unit. It's also twice as expensive.

I don't think either unit is a particularly good deal. If you're *not* going to add the 10 GbE NICs, and this is exclusively for a testing environment, then you could potentially drop even further down the Synology product stack to save some cash.

If the DS3018XS is actually within your price range, then if you abandon the idea of Synology entirely you're *DEFINITELY* capable of building a FreeNAS box with superior performance (you *are* posting on [H]). For $700-ish, you can build this - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Kp9QV6 . That's a 4-core Xeon based system, with 8 GB of RAM, 10 GbE networking, a 32GB boot drive to install your OS, room for 4 2.5" or 3.5" hot-swap drives and two fixed internal 2.5" drives, 1 NVME SSD, and remote IPMI / IP KVM management. It would absolutely decimate the performance of either of the two Synology devices. Please note, you *would* need to add a small fan to the built-in heatsink on the CPU otherwise it'll thermally throttle, since theoretically this mobo/CPU is designed for a 1U rackmount server where it would receive external cooling; last time I used one of these motherboards I bought a small $7 fan and attached it to the CPU with zip ties and all was well, but I'm sure there are about 100 ways to handle it.

Also, one last note about the build I linked. Though the chassis has 6 drive bays (4 hot-swap, 2 internal) the mobo also only has 6 SATA headers, one of which is used by the 32 GB boot drive. So you could hook up the 4 hot-swap bays, and only 1 of the internal 2.5" bays. To be honest, I've never used the internal 2.5" bays. If FreeNAS is capable of being installed on USB, then you could do that and just ditch the 32 GB SATA boot drive, and that'd leave all 6 bays and all 6 SATA slots open for your use.