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Kudos to Synology for having a process to recover on a Linux box if the Synology box craps the bed. I was reading this story thinking "this is a good lesson on

Kudos to Synology for having a process to recover on a Linux box if the Synology box craps the bed. I was reading this story thinking "this is a good lesson on why you don't buy an expensive SAN, unless you can afford to buy two". But, the other lesson is: Backups. Sounds like backups were shut off 6 months prior. The other lesson is: Monitoring. Backups were going to the USB drive, but it that stopped working at some point. Unless you have some tested monitoring of your backups, you are likely to lose data. Glad this story had a happy ending.

Karunamon 8y ago
The nice thing about Synology storage stuff is that it's a nice GUI (seriously, they're about the only company I can think of that's doing appliance management right) on top of standard and battle-tested open source tools. This was one of the reasons I was okay with paying their prices. Even if the device completely craps the bed, I'll be able to hook the drives containing absolutely normal LVM/btrfs volumes up to another machine and get my data out.
- jen729w 8y ago
  It’s the reason I’m desperate to get my pro-photographer best mate off her old Drobo and on to a new Synology. Should be happening in the next few weeks, and not a minute too soon. The Drobo is literally a black box to me. It either mounts and you can see disks, or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t ... well. Yep. Right-o. I’ll try rebooting it, I guess.
- marmaduke 8y ago
  What about that “hybrid raid” stuff they have? What is it?
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    It's just a particular LVM configuration with a nice UI https://superuser.com/a/1367697 https://superuser.com/a/1367697
- petre 8y ago
  Btrfs is battle tested? https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Gotchas https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Gotchas We use a box with 2x2TB mirror zpools. It runs Nas4free off an 128GB SSD. Initially we wanted to use Freenas but ir needs 16GB of RAM, while Nas4free works fine with 8. It also does SMART monitoring sending emails when something is up.
  - doublepg23 8y ago
    FreeNAS works fine with 8GB RAM, especially with such little data
  - ValentineC 8y ago
    On the btrfs Parity Raid issue: Synology uses btrfs on md RAID [1], so I believe it's more stable than the native btrfs implementation. [1] https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/What_was_the_RAID_implementation_for_Btrfs_File_System_on_SynologyNAS https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutoria...
- lostlogin 8y ago
  It’s nice for running Docker in too and give a beginner a fairly gentle introduction. The boxes are also really nice in that you have a range of configuration options that lets you get what you need. Don’t put big Seagate drives in it if it’s near where you sleep though as they make a bit of noise as they grind.
kijin 8y ago
> Sounds like backups were shut off 6 months prior. Exactly. Onsite backup is not a backup, especially if it is directly connected to the primary data store.

Karunamon 8y ago

The nice thing about Synology storage stuff is that it's a nice GUI (seriously, they're about the only company I can think of that's doing appliance management right) on top of standard and battle-tested open source tools. This was one of the reasons I was okay with paying their prices. Even if the device completely craps the bed, I'll be able to hook the drives containing absolutely normal LVM/btrfs volumes up to another machine and get my data out.

jen729w 8y ago
It’s the reason I’m desperate to get my pro-photographer best mate off her old Drobo and on to a new Synology. Should be happening in the next few weeks, and not a minute too soon. The Drobo is literally a black box to me. It either mounts and you can see disks, or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t ... well. Yep. Right-o. I’ll try rebooting it, I guess.
marmaduke 8y ago
What about that “hybrid raid” stuff they have? What is it?
- kalleboo 8y ago
  It's just a particular LVM configuration with a nice UI https://superuser.com/a/1367697 https://superuser.com/a/1367697
petre 8y ago
Btrfs is battle tested? https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Gotchas https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Gotchas We use a box with 2x2TB mirror zpools. It runs Nas4free off an 128GB SSD. Initially we wanted to use Freenas but ir needs 16GB of RAM, while Nas4free works fine with 8. It also does SMART monitoring sending emails when something is up.
- doublepg23 8y ago
  FreeNAS works fine with 8GB RAM, especially with such little data
- ValentineC 8y ago
  On the btrfs Parity Raid issue: Synology uses btrfs on md RAID [1], so I believe it's more stable than the native btrfs implementation. [1] https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Storage/What_was_the_RAID_implementation_for_Btrfs_File_System_on_SynologyNAS https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutoria...
lostlogin 8y ago
It’s nice for running Docker in too and give a beginner a fairly gentle introduction. The boxes are also really nice in that you have a range of configuration options that lets you get what you need. Don’t put big Seagate drives in it if it’s near where you sleep though as they make a bit of noise as they grind.

kijin 8y ago

> Sounds like backups were shut off 6 months prior. Exactly. Onsite backup is not a backup, especially if it is directly connected to the primary data store.