Small size multi HDD enclosure

[Torpedo]

One thing I've learned the hard way is that HDD hate sudden power cuts. I guess SDD units are immune to that limitation, are they?

[ironbut]

I had a couple of SSD's fail in the early days of the species (always under warranty though).

In the past few years I've stuck with Samsung and Crucial and (fingers crossed) haven't had an issue. 

I do manual backups and virus checks at the beginning of every month.

My rig has around 7.5 TB of data and most of the time I can do all that in a little more than a hour.

 

 

I follow a lot of audio archivists activities and read some of the research they put into their efforts to digitize their collections and maintain those archives.

Some of these collections are stored on HDD (spinning) and are meant to preserve and make these assets available for research and the public.

One of the big recommendations is to "spin up" all of the drives annually.

They had discovered drive failures/data losses on drives that weren't accessed since they were first created during their mass digitization projects.

Of course, most of us shouldn't have an issue with that since we should be backing up or using our drives more than once a year.

Imagine spinning up The Library of Congress!

Thankfully, another "best practice" for these archives is to store assets in 3 different places and preserve the original analog sources (although the most "at risk" media like lacquer disks that were quickly deteriorating were prioritized for the digitization) so very few priceless recordings were lost forever.

 

Edited February 22, 2021 by ironbut

[HiWire]

For mission-critical data, you need a UPS attached to your storage system with enough power to allow it to power down fully in the event of an outage or brownout. I like a UPS with voltage regulation as well, to guard against sags and spikes in power supply.

The enterprise-oriented products often have power protection built-in as well, for example, a redundant power supply and power protection on the board (capacitors and/or batteries) as well as non-volatile cache memory against the possibility of power problems.

It kind of goes without saying that RAID is not a replacement for a backup strategy, including offsite backup for most businesses.

Edited February 22, 2021 by HiWire

[Torpedo]

On 2/19/2021 at 6:40 PM, tkam said:

You might want to look at the NAS options from Qnap & Synology that have space for using SSD's as cache drives.  That's becoming more common and can be a nice little performance boost.

After looking at many options and HDD alternatives and capacities, despite I don't have much of an use of a multimedia center at home, having the chance of creating a domestic cloud, VPN and file repository, this option is most likely the wisest despite being larger, more noisy, and more expensive. I have two main concerns about this option, one of them being the compatibility with clients that are allowed on private trackers (rtorrent, qbittorrent, etc), the other one if regarding the relatively small price difference, would it be worth the expense of a 4 bay drive against the 2 bay ones like the Synology DS220+?

[morphsci]

I cannot answer the question about rtorrent or qbittorrent since I do not use them. For the small price difference the 4 bay drives give you either more space or more expandability  or more redundancy depending on how you decide to set things up. As an aside this is my second Synology drive because I am a big fan of their OS software (DSM). To be fair I have never used Qnap so I cannot talk about the two software platforms in comparison.

[HiWire]

I don't know about the rtorrent or qbittorrent tracker question either, but the DiskStation you choose depends on your use case.

The DS220+ has 2 bays and the DS420+ has 4 bays (and they use the same processor), for example, but the DS420+ also has 2 M.2 slots for NVMe SSD cache drives. Using a cache drive makes a huge difference in the performance of the box. In Synology boxes, you can use a minimum one SSD as a read cache or two SSDs as a read/write cache. From a home use perspective, the read cache is more important so you don't have to buy two SSDs. You don't have to set up a cache drive right away – you can always add one later.

You can also expand the RAM on each box to 6GB (they have one slot for upgrading with 2GB on the board already).

The DS220+ can run as JBOD (just a bunch of disks), RAID 0, and RAID 1.

The DS420+ can run as JBOD, and RAID 0/1/5/6/10.

Synology has a proprietary RAID version called SHR (SHR-1 and SHR-2) that allows you to dynamically build a RAID set with different drive sizes. Each RAID type describes the number of allowable drive failures (SHR-1 can tolerate one drive failure and SHR-2 can tolerate two drive failures in their arrays). I've heard that SHR-2 is a form of RAID 6. You need a minimum of one drive for SHR-1 (you can add more later) and four drives for SHR-2.

You can use their RAID Calculator here to figure out how much storage to set up: https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator

The higher-end DiskStation boxes include features like more powerful CPUs and higher RAM capacities, eSATA ports and 10 Gbit Ethernet ports, along with redundant power supplies, PCIe slots, and more disk bays.

Edited March 8, 2021 by HiWire

[Torpedo]

So in your opinion the 200€ price difference between 420+ and 220+ is worth it for the upgradability. What I like most is the idea of being able to set up a 1+0 RAID array, but that's the expensive one since I'd need 3 or 4 disks right away. Their RAID system is good for I would be able to start with 2 disks in RAID 1, then adding more disks and changing it to RAID 10, wouldn't I?. I don't have real performance (speed-wise) needs for large files. Actually the 218 for my real needs and initial budget (yes, I know, it's HC) would be the preferable option. I find very difficult to spot the differences in the Disk Station implementation in Synology boxes. The client implementation is one of the few requirements that I'd like to make sure that works, and one of the reasons I'd favour Synology over QNAP, but it's not easy finding information on that particular.

 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Torpedo

[HiWire]

If you see a need for that kind of performance – you could upgrade to two SATA SSDs in the trays if you were trying to improve the 220+ performance, but it would be expensive at current prices (and I'd only bother setting them up as RAID 1 – no need for striping with SSD speeds).

With the various RAID sets, you need to migrate the data (i.e., copy it out) before reforming the RAID, which is a bit time consuming, whereas with Synology SHR you can add new disks without rebuilding the array.

RAID 10 is theoretically fastest but it does waste a lot of disk space. Using an SSD cache makes the RAID type less relevant in general use, but the RAID type matters more if you're using an all-hard disk setup. I'd definitely recommend upgrading the RAM. Synology's DiskStation operating system is quite economical, but the more you do with a DiskStation, the more memory you'll want.

The DS218 would be all right – the limiting factor is the single Gigabit Ethernet connection. At best, it will be able to move at about 125 MB/s (some modern hard drives can transfer about 250 MB/s). It all depends on your needs and plans to scale up.

Edited March 8, 2021 by HiWire

[Torpedo]

Would the 220 or 420 offer faster Ethernet connection? If I didn't understand wrongly they're all Gigabit Ethernet, but have 2 connection, can these be connected simultaneously to the router to get higher speeds?

Once I'm looking at a networking solution away from my desk, and more expensive, I'd initially stick to mechanical HDDs. What I'm liking is the idea of setting up my own cloud server so I can send to it the pics and videos we take on the go, and also keeping all those file hosting tasks away from my computer which wouldn't need to be on all the time. Since multimedia reproduction wouldn't be a load for it, I'd leave for future upgrades getting more memory or the cache M.2 drives.

Edited March 8, 2021 by Torpedo

[morphsci]

Both the 220+ and 420+ support link aggregation and failover support on their two Ethernet ports. As long as any switches and cables you have support gigabit speeds they will both work well. When I got my first Synology unit I experimented with different RAID setups, but I eventually settled upon their hybrid raid system (SHR). My newer unit has the Cache M.2 drives which has been a game changer for speed and I have not felt the need to switch the main drives from HD to SSD. I also agree with HiWire that you will want to max out the RAM sooner versus later because it can be a bottleneck in the system. 

[HiWire]

Yes, link aggregation is good, but don't mistake it for turning two Gigabit ports into 250 MB/s transfer speed. Each port still operates at its own full speed, but link aggregation allows multiple clients to access the device at faster speeds (e.g., two computers can access the Synology at a full 125 MB/s each rather than 60MB/s over a shared link, theoretically). With a single client, you're still limited to the speed of the port.

Edited March 9, 2021 by HiWire

[Torpedo]

Thanks for the explanation guys. In a two person family there's not much chance that we'll be competing for the resources  

[HiWire]

In practice (on Mac or Windows), you'll probably be auto-mounting the Synology folders via SMB when you boot up, so the rtorrent or qbittorrent clients might see them as regular volumes like your computer's drives.

[Torpedo]

2 hours ago, HiWire said:

In practice (on Mac or Windows), you'll probably be auto-mounting the Synology folders via SMB when you boot up, so the rtorrent or qbittorrent clients might see them as regular volumes like your computer's drives.

But that would have the disadvantage of stopping the client when the computer is off, and it using computer resources instead of NAS', wouldn't it? My idea was leaving the NAS as a seedbox on its own independently of what goes on in the computer.

[HiWire]

The NAS never sleeps. If you can run web services on the box, the PC/Mac doesn't need to be an intermediary (Synology has a ton of apps – I usually start by looking at Synology's before going to the third-party lists).

I think you can set up the Synology Download Station app to manage the torrents (documentation here): https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DownloadStation/download_setup

[Torpedo]

Thanks, I had looked at that, but it didn't really clarify how to get working any of the programs I need. To work on certain sites they must be only the allowed versions. I'll learn that once I get the device and I can see how it goes.

[Torpedo]

Short update, mainly to thank you for your opinions and assistance. I've got a Synology 920+ NAS and a couple of 16TB server HDD. Once this is set up and working, I'll decide if I add more RAM and/or a M.2 drive to be used as cache. This unit admits up to 4GB RAM extension, but it's been tested to work well with an additional 16GB DIMM for 20GB RAM.

Main concern is how noisy it's going to be with 2 fans and up to 4 HDD, but I can always replace HDD for SSD units sacrificing capacity. Fortunately it can be placed away from my desk.

[morphsci]

Nice Antonio. H-C approved decision!

[HiWire]

Congrats! I recommend using the Btrfs file system since Synology's newest features require it:

https://www.synology.com/en-ca/dsm/Btrfs 

[luvdunhill]

I did some wiring clean-up on this side of my server… now just need to do the other side!