4 ms·

> It's really convenient, ... > ... would have expected something on Synology's status > programs to show a problem, but they were all green, > so that

by Jedd 11y ago

> It's really convenient, ... > ... would have expected something on Synology's status > programs to show a problem, but they were all green, > so that was annoying. So perhaps not all that convenient. I went down the QNap path a couple of years ago, on the assumption it'd be robust, well patched, more convenient, and basic functionality would work / be tested. I was wrong on most counts, and am now basically scared off these low-end SOHO systems entirely.

pyre 11y ago
It's convenient most of the time, but sometimes building your own stuff is inconvenient most of the time. It's all about trade-offs. For example, a while back I had to track down an issue on a server with Nagios constantly triggering memory low errors. Turns own that when you stat a lot of files, XFS will load all of that file information into cache in the kernel's slab. This causes some RAM stats to be skewed. This RAM will be instantly freed if needed, but some system stats count it towards "RAM usage." My question is: How does one incorporate all such edge-cases into something that is user-friendly? How many system admins even know how to track down such an issue (in the absence of a flashy UI)? Unless you want to vertically integrate the system from hardware => kernel => UI, then you're bound to have these sorts of issues where everyone is only paying attention with what's happening in their own little area of concern and multiple decoupled systems can end up interacting poorly (even when their local actions make sense to them).
- laumars 11y ago
  Re cached memory, isn't that how all file systems work across all the major operating systems? The kernel space will cache files to reduce disk IO but will immediately free that memory if a requesting application allocated more memory that's what's available in free memory alone. Which is why file servers perform best with ooodles of RAM and why one should always look at both the free + cached memory when calculating available memory on more general purpose systems. Or was your NAS behaving subtly different from the standard above? (eg how ZFS cache doesn't appear as FS cache in ZoL despite freeing in much the same way as the above)
  - pyre 11y ago
    This is a specific XFS behaviour. In this case, the slab was using up 4GB of RAM on a 8GB machine, and all of the normal tools were telling us that we were running out of free space in RAM. No such problems on other file systems.
- e40 11y ago
  What they offer is a good form factor with lower power. What would you suggest for a home brew, that would match size and power consumption?
  - SirMaster 11y ago
    Form factor? A case like these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219048 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219054 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163255 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163... http://www.u-nas.com/product/nsc800.html http://www.u-nas.com/product/nsc800.html Low power usage? Well many Synology units use Intel Atom CPUs. Anyone can buy a small board that has these same Intel Atom CPUs and stick them in those cases. Or make your server with NUC parts which use laptop CPUs. Like <15W parts. Even higher end CPUs these days idle at really low wattage. So your NAS when idling wont use much power.
nassy 11y ago
Well that's disappointing. I just bought a QNap TS-251+ to replace my Microserver FreeNAS since I was tired of all the sysadmin work, needed something lower profile and wanted features like automatic Google cloud storage sync. It seemed like QNap has a boatload of excellent features, and I was really hoping it works without glitches. But now that I'm stuck with it.. we'll see...
- creshal 11y ago
  Patch support for SOHO NAS systems is miserable. We bought some Cisco and Qnap NAS systems a few years ago. Every feature I touched had some bug or another, or not the features I needed, or remote changes (Google sync, Apple Time Machine) broke a feature and it was never patched, etc. pp. … After six months they were all reconfigured to expose a single iSCSI drive and a Linux box did everything else.
  - Jedd 11y ago
    Very similar to my experience. A multitude of features I would never want to use, partly out of doubt (security, stability, etc). My primary need was native (robust, sane, GUI-driven) iSCSI presentation ... which it completely failed to provide out of the box. That is, with a single iSCSI target, any significant activity over a GbE link would cause the QNap to crash. QNap support guided me towards a beta release of their software -- this solved the immediate problem, but I've never felt comfy upgrading (a one way process) from that release for fear of breaking iSCSI or other basic features. A less than ideal situation.
  - puzzlingcaptcha 11y ago
    I got a low-end 2-bay qnap for home and quickly ended up putting Debian on it (http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/qnap/ http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/qnap/) It's very well supported (running kernel 4.3 from testing now, the only thing that doesn't work is the crypto accelerator) and it gives you a lot of flexibility while keeping the advantages of the hardware (low cost, footprint and power consumption).
    - 11y ago

by Jedd 11y ago

pyre 11y ago

It's convenient most of the time, but sometimes building your own stuff is inconvenient most of the time. It's all about trade-offs. For example, a while back I had to track down an issue on a server with Nagios constantly triggering memory low errors. Turns own that when you stat a lot of files, XFS will load all of that file information into cache in the kernel's slab. This causes some RAM stats to be skewed. This RAM will be instantly freed if needed, but some system stats count it towards "RAM usage." My question is: How does one incorporate all such edge-cases into something that is user-friendly? How many system admins even know how to track down such an issue (in the absence of a flashy UI)? Unless you want to vertically integrate the system from hardware => kernel => UI, then you're bound to have these sorts of issues where everyone is only paying attention with what's happening in their own little area of concern and multiple decoupled systems can end up interacting poorly (even when their local actions make sense to them).

laumars 11y ago
Re cached memory, isn't that how all file systems work across all the major operating systems? The kernel space will cache files to reduce disk IO but will immediately free that memory if a requesting application allocated more memory that's what's available in free memory alone. Which is why file servers perform best with ooodles of RAM and why one should always look at both the free + cached memory when calculating available memory on more general purpose systems. Or was your NAS behaving subtly different from the standard above? (eg how ZFS cache doesn't appear as FS cache in ZoL despite freeing in much the same way as the above)
- pyre 11y ago
  This is a specific XFS behaviour. In this case, the slab was using up 4GB of RAM on a 8GB machine, and all of the normal tools were telling us that we were running out of free space in RAM. No such problems on other file systems.
e40 11y ago
What they offer is a good form factor with lower power. What would you suggest for a home brew, that would match size and power consumption?
- SirMaster 11y ago
  Form factor? A case like these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219048 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219054 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163255 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163... http://www.u-nas.com/product/nsc800.html http://www.u-nas.com/product/nsc800.html Low power usage? Well many Synology units use Intel Atom CPUs. Anyone can buy a small board that has these same Intel Atom CPUs and stick them in those cases. Or make your server with NUC parts which use laptop CPUs. Like <15W parts. Even higher end CPUs these days idle at really low wattage. So your NAS when idling wont use much power.

nassy 11y ago

Well that's disappointing. I just bought a QNap TS-251+ to replace my Microserver FreeNAS since I was tired of all the sysadmin work, needed something lower profile and wanted features like automatic Google cloud storage sync. It seemed like QNap has a boatload of excellent features, and I was really hoping it works without glitches. But now that I'm stuck with it.. we'll see...

creshal 11y ago
Patch support for SOHO NAS systems is miserable. We bought some Cisco and Qnap NAS systems a few years ago. Every feature I touched had some bug or another, or not the features I needed, or remote changes (Google sync, Apple Time Machine) broke a feature and it was never patched, etc. pp. … After six months they were all reconfigured to expose a single iSCSI drive and a Linux box did everything else.
- Jedd 11y ago
  Very similar to my experience. A multitude of features I would never want to use, partly out of doubt (security, stability, etc). My primary need was native (robust, sane, GUI-driven) iSCSI presentation ... which it completely failed to provide out of the box. That is, with a single iSCSI target, any significant activity over a GbE link would cause the QNap to crash. QNap support guided me towards a beta release of their software -- this solved the immediate problem, but I've never felt comfy upgrading (a one way process) from that release for fear of breaking iSCSI or other basic features. A less than ideal situation.
- puzzlingcaptcha 11y ago
  I got a low-end 2-bay qnap for home and quickly ended up putting Debian on it (http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/qnap/ http://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/qnap/) It's very well supported (running kernel 4.3 from testing now, the only thing that doesn't work is the crypto accelerator) and it gives you a lot of flexibility while keeping the advantages of the hardware (low cost, footprint and power consumption).
  - 11y ago