Thinking about Synology - Talk me out of it

deekortiz3

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 6, 2010
Messages
68
Hey Everyone,

I am looking to build a decent size NAS box. I will be using this for media storage, and serving the content around the house.

I used to have a Norco 4020 running WHS v1 but WHS never could handle that 20+ drives all that well (IMO). Oh, and managing all those SATA cables because I didn't buy the SAS back-plane version sucked. Currently most of my data is sitting on 8 2TB drives in a system that I am getting ready to tear down and in a couple other drives I have in external enclosures.

I picked up 6 4TB drives in preparation to put together a new dedicated storage box. Now since my home build solutions have been less than ideal I am thinking of going with something like a Synology DS2413+ but paying nearly $1,700 for a computer powered by an Atom Processor just does not sit right with me.

The way I see it the Synology box is pretty much plug and play. The interface and software is great from what I have heard and it is a nice compact unit. However, not being able to trans-code 1080p is a big downside, I could probably get over it but I would prefer to have the ability. Also, even though SHR seems to simplify things but it still isn't quite Drive Extender simple (can't add smaller disks to array).

I've been out of the game for over a year now so I am still trying to catch up on everything before I make any decisions.

I'll admit I am a Windows guy so most Linux/Solaris based solutions without a pretty GUI scare the crap out of me. I'd be happy to build something if I know I can get similar flexibility to what WHS used to give me. I am also not interested in running a hardware RAID. Sure, the High Point RocketRAID card I used to run wasn't the best example of a Hardware RAID card but I just prefer a software based RAID solution. I want the flexibility to add drives as needed and have that be as simple as possible.

Really looking for any thoughts or opinions on what I should do and the direction I should go. Any advice helps, thanks guys!
 
Take a look at building an all in one solution. It's not all that scary once you get into it and these forums are filled with people who can give you a hand with things. Here is what I did and what I am running. Works awesome and really provides all sorts of flexibility to do what you want with it. I've been running it for almost 2 years now.

Hardware:
Supermicro X9SCL
Intel Xeon E3-1230
Kingston 16GB ECC RAM
LSI 9201-16i

Software:
vSphere (ESXi) 5.1
- Ubuntu (PlexMediaServer) //connected via NFS share to files stored on OpenIndiana ZFS pool.
- Ubuntu (rtorrent + rutorrent) //connected via NFS share to OpenIndiana ZFS pool.
- OpenIndiana (ZFS, mysql for XBMC library, sabnzbd, sickbeard, couchpotato, headphones)
 
Take a look at building an all in one solution. It's not all that scary once you get into it and these forums are filled with people who can give you a hand with things. Here is what I did and what I am running. Works awesome and really provides all sorts of flexibility to do what you want with it. I've been running it for almost 2 years now.

Hardware:
Supermicro X9SCL
Intel Xeon E3-1230
Kingston 16GB ECC RAM
LSI 9201-16i

Software:
vSphere (ESXi) 5.1
- Ubuntu (PlexMediaServer) //connected via NFS share to files stored on OpenIndiana ZFS pool.
- Ubuntu (rtorrent + rutorrent) //connected via NFS share to OpenIndiana ZFS pool.
- OpenIndiana (ZFS, mysql for XBMC library, sabnzbd, sickbeard, couchpotato, headphones)

I've always thought that ZFS was difficult to add drives and make changes to the storage pools. Maybe it is easier now but some quick searches made it seem like it is still quite an undertaking.
 
I have a Synology 2413+ and I love it, I certainly WONT talk you out of it because its a great unit and I am very happy with it, IMO it was money well spent.I guess it depends largely on your needs, so if you are just looking to store media and serve it up, which is what I use it for, its perfect. It has many features, most of which I don't use right now, but could use down the road. Mine has 12x3TB WD Red drives and is configured for SHR2, its maintenance free and just runs. If you want to buy parts, build a server and setup a ZFS system, go for it, I won't talk you out of that either, but I have neither the desire or the time for that, which is why the NAS solution works for me.
 
I've always thought that ZFS was difficult to add drives and make changes to the storage pools. Maybe it is easier now but some quick searches made it seem like it is still quite an undertaking.

ZFS was made for very large/huge enterprise storage with availability, expandability and best of all datasecurity in mind. If your pool is too small at some day, you add another vdev/raidset to increase capacity and performance as well.

Nowadays you use ZFS for a homeserver. You may not need the best of all data security and you may allow a checkdisk run with data unavailable for days or a disk recover from backup or a non realtime raid security like with snapraid .

If you cannot allow this, you must accept, that you can only extend ZFS pools with mirrors (two disks) or a raid-Z (three disks or more) not with a single disk. But even for a homeserver, this should not be a problem.
 
I won't talk you out of Synology either... I have 4 of them. They work great..very reliable...excellent UI. I prefer to keep my storage separate from my systems and it's hard to build something for what you pay on the Synology plus all the other features.
 
Saving torrents directly to your main ZFS pool is nothing I would recommend. The files will suffer from severe fragmentation due to the COW approach and as long as there is no defragmentation possibility I would avoid that. BTRFS also suffers from this but at least has automatic and manual defragmentation.

I personally use a separate drive (also with ZFS) for torrents and move them to the main pool when they are finished - unfragmented.
 
Off the shelf compared with custom made.
For what an off-the-shelf unit will cost, you can build a NAS and enjoy better performance in most cases along with more chance of recovering data if the NAS fails.
 
Off the shelf compared with custom made.
For what an off-the-shelf unit will cost, you can build a NAS and enjoy better performance in most cases along with more chance of recovering data if the NAS fails.

I totally disagree with what you are saying here. Enjoy better performance? Sure if you get a top shelf raid controller and fast drives, but for a Synology 2413+ at $1799 with throughput of 200MB/s I think its great value. Why does a DIY solution have a better chance of dater recovery then a NAS solution exactly?
 
I totally disagree with what you are saying here. Enjoy better performance? Sure if you get a top shelf raid controller and fast drives, but for a Synology 2413+ at $1799 with throughput of 200MB/s I think its great value. Why does a DIY solution have a better chance of dater recovery then a NAS solution exactly?

And you can exceed that. The 1813+ I'm playing with right now has almost maxed the 4x1Gb several times. I've gotten like 60K IOPS out of it with SSDs. The only downside to a box like this is if you want to run CPU heavy apps... Transcoding 1080p, as OP says, may be one of those. The Atom is going to struggle with that. My DS3611xs doesn't..but it has an Intel i3-2100 in it.

If you're not doing other apps the CPUs in these boxes sit idle all day. Plus you get the benefit of others doing integration work. Latest DSM lets me do SSD read caching on this box along with a lot of other nice features like good vSphere integration.
 
Synology folks, excellent points it would be nice to just have a simple plug and play device.

On the build your own side of things... I would want to use something like Drive Bender or Drive Pool running on top of some flavor of Windows OS. If anyone has any advice specific to that it would be great.

On the non-Windows side... I am only familiar with some of the FreeBSD based NAS options. I was leaning toward going that route if I opt-out of using Windows but I will do some more research into OmniOS + Napp-it since I see it talked about a lot. I have to say though right now ZFS just does not seem like the direction I want to go but I am willing to investigate the option.
 
I totally disagree with what you are saying here. Enjoy better performance? Sure if you get a top shelf raid controller and fast drives, but for a Synology 2413+ at $1799 with throughput of 200MB/s I think its great value. Why does a DIY solution have a better chance of dater recovery then a NAS solution exactly?
Is that all you get, lol

And you can exceed that. The 1813+ I'm playing with right now has almost maxed the 4x1Gb several times. I've gotten like 60K IOPS out of it with SSDs. The only downside to a box like this is if you want to run CPU heavy apps... Transcoding 1080p, as OP says, may be one of those. The Atom is going to struggle with that. My DS3611xs doesn't..but it has an Intel i3-2100 in it.

My Windows based box can read at 600+ MB/sec off each array and write at 95+MB/sec. 4 arrays, do the math, keeps my bandits at my LAN parties fed well.

Lets look quickly at a BYO solution:
$400 - 24-bay case
$180 - Board, chip and RAM
$100 - M1015 flashed to LSI IT firmware
$300 - Chenbro 36-port expander
$0-$130 - OS or your choice (ZFS or Win8)
$100 - PSU
$100 - Quad-port GbE NIC
_____________________
$1180 - $1310 AUD

Now add drives and enjoy.


As for a OTS option and data recovery, blow a board or hardware failure other than a single drive and then consider options of recovering data, there are only two:
  1. Return whole system to manufacturer
  2. Buy another unit the exact same and hope it picks up the array config

BYO option:
Replace failed parts and away you go, total board or OS fail, swap to another system (even with different hardware) and away you go.


Don't believe me, then maybe start reading more of the storage forums and get the drift.
 
My Windows based box can read at 600+ MB/sec off each array and write at 95+MB/sec. 4 arrays, do the math, keeps my bandits at my LAN parties fed well.

More details on the software side please.
As I said Windows is my preferred choice if I build something so I'd like to know how you have it setup.

Thanks!
 
Lost-Benji - I looked at your past posts... surprised to see that you are running Windows 8 and using Storage Spaces. I haven't heard too many good things about Storage Spaces so I have stayed away from it. Any experience with any of the 3rd party pool options?
 
Is that all you get, lol



My Windows based box can read at 600+ MB/sec off each array and write at 95+MB/sec. 4 arrays, do the math, keeps my bandits at my LAN parties fed well.


As for a OTS option and data recovery, blow a board or hardware failure other than a single drive and then consider options of recovering data, there are only two:
  1. Return whole system to manufacturer
  2. Buy another unit the exact same and hope it picks up the array config

BYO option:
Replace failed parts and away you go, total board or OS fail, swap to another system (even with different hardware) and away you go.


Don't believe me, then maybe start reading more of the storage forums and get the drift.

How are you getting 600MB+ with a quad-port NIC? ;) My 1813+ is limited to that because it "only" has 4 NICs. I have a DS3611xs with a dual-port 10Gb that'll push them both very hard.

As for "what happens when it dies" you pop the drives in another Synology (you can move drives between models) or you put them in a Linux system...since underneath that's what a Synology is. Nothing proprietary on the drives.

Build or buy. Choose what works best for the need. It's not as clear cut as many think. I went through all the options a while back when building the first one for my vSphere lab. In the end my time was worth more than the little savings I'd have gotten over building.

Performance is going to be limited by your drives and interconnects. Not the NAS.

EDIT: Why are your write speeds so slow? 95MB? That's not very good.
 
Just got a key for Windows Server 2012...

Thinking I can run this in conjunction with Drive Bender or Stable Bit Drive Pool to effectively have a more modern version of WHS v1.

*Edit* I got the Key through DreamSpark... I have not made a final decision yet.
 
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Figured I should price out a build, this comes out to just over $1,800 without shopping around....

NORCO RPC-4224
Seasonic SS-660XP2
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)
MSI H87-G43
Intel Core i5-4570S Haswell
HighPoint RocketRAID 2760A + Cables
SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD128BW 2.5" 128GB SSD

I am a bit concerned about the RAID Card but I am not running any RAID setup with it so I have a hard time stepping up to a Areca or LSI card.
 
I just started building my home NAS and using a paltry AMD X2, so I might not be able to give you the best advice for someone that is needs that much drives.

I just set up my freenas server using 4x 1.5TB drives and as a novice, I must say it is pretty straight forward and easy. Read the documentation and it is pretty straight forward with simple web gui.

If you are looking at windows based, there are some really good articles about windows 8 based servers. Win 8 (I don't know which version) has this new feature that replaces drive extender in WHS, called Storage Spaces. Operates under the same concept, but its a JBOD with some parity so you aren't likely to lose everything in drive failures. Sharing is the same as WHS, so you might want to look into that.

BUT after all that, if I could spare $1800 for a synology. That would be my first choice over custom built due to simplicity, power draw, compactness, and overall elegance.
 
...I just set up my freenas server using 4x 1.5TB drives and as a novice, I must say it is pretty straight forward and easy. Read the documentation and it is pretty straight forward with simple web gui.

...
Do you guys think FreeNAS or Nas4Free which one is better? GUI, performance, reliability,...? Thanks.
 
Do you guys think FreeNAS or Nas4Free which one is better? GUI, performance, reliability,...? Thanks.

These were originally the same project, but freeNAS split off as they decided to ditch 32 bit processors.

NAS4Free remains 32bit capable, and in general works better on older hardware.

FreeNAS if you're 64 bit capable.
 
I've owned a number of different NAS's including the DS1511+ with a DX510. I enjoyed the Synology a lot it was an awesome unit and very solid for the full two years that I used it, I rarely had any problems with it. Honestly the only real negative thing I can say about the Synology was the price. I paid about $1300 for both units. I was tempted to build my own ZFS setup but I was concerned about trusting my important data to setup I was really unfamiliar with.

A this point I've changed my setup completely and I'm now storing all of my data on ZFS based systems. Honestly it was way easier then I imagined. Given the benefits of the ZFS file system its hard to endorse anything else. I know a lot of people say Synology or QNAP is much easier to get going and its set it and forget it type of deal but honestly Napp-It, FreeNAS and Nas4Free are the same. Most users are going to clone an ISO onto an USB stick plug it in and hit the web GUI (not really hard to do), create some shares for their data and leave it alone.

If your the least bit technical its worth your time to go the ZFS route. If you have absolutely no time or if your not very technical or if your needs are very limited a Synology or QNAP might be the way to go.
 
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