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After watching Geerling's video on YouTube about building an ARM NAS I almost went that direction -- but opted for a Synology DS918+ instead because my need for

by mikece 5y ago

After watching Geerling's video on YouTube about building an ARM NAS I almost went that direction -- but opted for a Synology DS918+ instead because my need for a NAS is not just experimental but something that needs to work reliably.

Lownin 5y ago
What happens when the Sinology dies? Do I have to buy another Synology to mount my array again? Does it have to be the same model, or family of models?
- mikece 5y ago
  I haven't tried pulling one of the drives from my system and trying to read it with another box but I imagine just about any Linux system should be able to read BTRFS drives, no? Under the covers Synology's DSM is Linux with some proprietary apps on top.
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    Yeah I know at least ASUSTOR's ADM and Synology's DSM are both basically lightweight Linux distros (usually on an older kernel than what you'd expect building something custom), and they use standard Linux storage tooling (for mdadm RAID or btrfs).
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  I haven't tested it on Synology, but at least on ASUSTOR, the RAID arrays are set up using mdadm internally—so I was able to pull the drives, plug them into a Pi through a SATA card, and recover the array pretty easily using mdadm. The vendor NASes do seem to add extra partitions besides just one main 'md0', though—so you probably couldn't expect to yank the drives from a Synology and pop them into an ASUSTOR directly. I also tested pulling drives configured in the Drivestor and putting them in the Lockerstor, and that worked, but there were quirks if I tried in the opposite direction. In the end, I would rather make sure I have a complete/separate backup of the NAS before attempting to move the drives, just in case.
- aparks517 5y ago
  I'd lean toward restoring from backup either way, since the hardware failure might have caused data corruption that's not immediately obvious.
- psz 5y ago
  Yeah. You can pull drives out and mount them in regular Linux. Synology uses standard Linux tools. https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_from_my_DiskStation_using_a_PC https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_...
timbit42 5y ago
What do you think about Synology only allowing their rebranded Toshiba drives to work in their NAS? That's a deal breaker for me. EDIT: Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179
- kencausey 5y ago
  Where did you get that idea? Below are links to Synology acknowledged compatible drives with multiple brands and even that doesn't imply that only these will work: https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS918%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ... https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS918%2B&category=m2_ssd_internal&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ...
  - johngalt 5y ago
    That's a Synology released four years ago. Contrast with a model released in February this year. Not a single drive non-Synology drive on the HCL larger than 4TB: https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=RS2421RP%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ... It's not a hard requirement to use Synology drives, but on the newer/higher-end models the options to not use Synology drives are very limited. For example the FS2500 only has four models of SSD on the HCL and two are Synology. IMHO, the price premium for the Synology branded drives is reasonable. Pay for the validated drives. Maintaining a broad HCL is no small task. https://blog.synology.com/in-pursuit-of-reliability-hat5300-enterprise-hard-drives https://blog.synology.com/in-pursuit-of-reliability-hat5300-...
- sigjuice 5y ago
  Is there a specific Synology NAS model with this restriction? I happen to have Western Digital drives in my Synology DS920+.
  - timbit42 5y ago
zerkten 5y ago
You are right that Synology (or an equivalent appliance) is often best. It's more complicated for geeks and data hoarders once we've been using a Synology for a while. When people go down the Synology path they are often running apps and doing more than providing a big pool of storage. I'm finding that my needs have changed towards my NAS being only a pool of storage on my local network. It is there as the first tier of backups to speed up disaster recovery. I feel confident that I could move to a more DIY NAS solution because it would only be used for NAS storage. It's not ideal, but an old desktop is now much better for my app needs, including Plex. Ideally, I'd have a single app box with the power consumption of 4-5 Raspberry Pi. I have only found a couple of ARM server solutions which are fairly old and ARM doesn't have standard sockets etc. because the focus seems to be on SoC instead of replicating what I'm used to with PCs and ATX mobos.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  I have used an ARM Synology NAS but found it highly inadequate for running services ... or anything but basic storage, really. Only the x86 models support running Linux containers, packaging an application for Synology didn't exactly seem easy to to and the UI is almost unusably sluggish and has super confusing UX (it emulates a desktop environment in the browser ... right, very cool). Running an own standard Linux-based NAS is more effort, but not terribly so. The additional flexibility may be worth it: It makes it quite painless to integrate with other data sources and sinks for backups and stuff and can run a lot of personal services (home automation, budgeting tool, IRC bouncer ...).
  - tyingq 5y ago
    There seemed to be change on their low-end stuff when the DS120j/220j came out. The processor and RAM finally seemed enough to not spin off into oblivion, if you avoided the software that catalogs image files. They are dual-core, 512MB RAM, where the previous DS110j was single core, 128MB RAM and the DS115j was single core, 256MB RAM. The previous models just ran way too close to CPU starvation or swapping hell.
- Helmut10001 5y ago
Terry_Roll 5y ago
And I use pi's as interchangeable/swappable processors for a variety of different tasks. Its only casing which people tend to miss with pi's which can be addressed with 3d printing.
Hamuko 5y ago
My Synology has been anything but realiable in the past month or so. I've twice had to hard reboot it because it stops working. I think it stops writing all data, which means that even something as simepl as "echo "" > out" will hang forever. Can't even turn it off because DSM stops responding and "sudo reboot" hangs. I have no idea whether it's a disk going bad, the file system going bad or the entire device going bad. It did give a warning that an I/O command timed out on one of the disks, but I've yet to get a S.M.A.R.T. extended test completed on the disk.
- no_time 5y ago
  Does it hang with ssh timing out? In that case, next time it hangs try opening it up and logging in via the UART interface available on most Synology NASes. Also it may give you extra info if the kernel panicks.
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    No, it's usually just the individual command that hangs. I'm pretty sure I could just ^C end the `echo "" > out` command.
hackshack 5y ago
I agonized about this for years. I wanted a proper server, not something embedded or a Pi with a rat's nest of cables, that would still fit in a credenza in the living room. Ended up getting an HP MicroServer Gen8 and absolutely love it. Same cube design as the DS918+, but with proper iLO (remote media, etc.), lots of boot options, and very stoutly built. It feels like a real HP DL300-series server (the Gen9 does not IMHO). I bought it as it was being discontinued. It's running VMware ESXi with FreeNAS on top of that, with an LSI SAS card connected to the drive bays, then hardware-pass-through'ed to the FreeNAS VM. I've got the home's DNS server, Pi-hole, Unifi controller, test VMs, etc. happily virtualized alongside FreeNAS. 16GB RAM total, with 8GB dedicated to FreeNAS. Boot is off a microSD card (on the motherboard, naturally) and VM datastore is on an SSD connected where the optical drive would go. I know I'm violating several recommendations here (low RAM, virtualized FreeNAS, SAS card passed through, etc. etc.) but it does indeed work, very well in fact. 2+ years of serving the home. With the Gen8, HP built almost the perfect home server for tech-oriented types... pity they cost-reduced its successor.
- abrookewood 5y ago
  Yep, I did the same, though currently running on a much older version. Ubuntu, ZFS and a bunch of mirrored drives. The thing has been rock solid for years.
- lukeh 5y ago
  Yeah, doing the same, albeit with Solaris (probably a dumb choice but at the time, wanted stable ZFS).

by mikece 5y ago

Lownin 5y ago

What happens when the Sinology dies? Do I have to buy another Synology to mount my array again? Does it have to be the same model, or family of models?

mikece 5y ago
I haven't tried pulling one of the drives from my system and trying to read it with another box but I imagine just about any Linux system should be able to read BTRFS drives, no? Under the covers Synology's DSM is Linux with some proprietary apps on top.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  Yeah I know at least ASUSTOR's ADM and Synology's DSM are both basically lightweight Linux distros (usually on an older kernel than what you'd expect building something custom), and they use standard Linux storage tooling (for mdadm RAID or btrfs).
geerlingguy 5y ago
I haven't tested it on Synology, but at least on ASUSTOR, the RAID arrays are set up using mdadm internally—so I was able to pull the drives, plug them into a Pi through a SATA card, and recover the array pretty easily using mdadm. The vendor NASes do seem to add extra partitions besides just one main 'md0', though—so you probably couldn't expect to yank the drives from a Synology and pop them into an ASUSTOR directly. I also tested pulling drives configured in the Drivestor and putting them in the Lockerstor, and that worked, but there were quirks if I tried in the opposite direction. In the end, I would rather make sure I have a complete/separate backup of the NAS before attempting to move the drives, just in case.
aparks517 5y ago
I'd lean toward restoring from backup either way, since the hardware failure might have caused data corruption that's not immediately obvious.
psz 5y ago
Yeah. You can pull drives out and mount them in regular Linux. Synology uses standard Linux tools. https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_from_my_DiskStation_using_a_PC https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_...

timbit42 5y ago

What do you think about Synology only allowing their rebranded Toshiba drives to work in their NAS? That's a deal breaker for me. EDIT: Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179

kencausey 5y ago
Where did you get that idea? Below are links to Synology acknowledged compatible drives with multiple brands and even that doesn't imply that only these will work: https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS918%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ... https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=DS918%2B&category=m2_ssd_internal&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ...
- johngalt 5y ago
  That's a Synology released four years ago. Contrast with a model released in February this year. Not a single drive non-Synology drive on the HCL larger than 4TB: https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=products&model=RS2421RP%2B&category=hdds_no_ssd_trim&p=1&change_log_p=1 https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=produ... It's not a hard requirement to use Synology drives, but on the newer/higher-end models the options to not use Synology drives are very limited. For example the FS2500 only has four models of SSD on the HCL and two are Synology. IMHO, the price premium for the Synology branded drives is reasonable. Pay for the validated drives. Maintaining a broad HCL is no small task. https://blog.synology.com/in-pursuit-of-reliability-hat5300-enterprise-hard-drives https://blog.synology.com/in-pursuit-of-reliability-hat5300-...
sigjuice 5y ago
Is there a specific Synology NAS model with this restriction? I happen to have Western Digital drives in my Synology DS920+.
- timbit42 5y ago

zerkten 5y ago

You are right that Synology (or an equivalent appliance) is often best. It's more complicated for geeks and data hoarders once we've been using a Synology for a while. When people go down the Synology path they are often running apps and doing more than providing a big pool of storage. I'm finding that my needs have changed towards my NAS being only a pool of storage on my local network. It is there as the first tier of backups to speed up disaster recovery. I feel confident that I could move to a more DIY NAS solution because it would only be used for NAS storage. It's not ideal, but an old desktop is now much better for my app needs, including Plex. Ideally, I'd have a single app box with the power consumption of 4-5 Raspberry Pi. I have only found a couple of ARM server solutions which are fairly old and ARM doesn't have standard sockets etc. because the focus seems to be on SoC instead of replicating what I'm used to with PCs and ATX mobos.

solarkraft 5y ago
I have used an ARM Synology NAS but found it highly inadequate for running services ... or anything but basic storage, really. Only the x86 models support running Linux containers, packaging an application for Synology didn't exactly seem easy to to and the UI is almost unusably sluggish and has super confusing UX (it emulates a desktop environment in the browser ... right, very cool). Running an own standard Linux-based NAS is more effort, but not terribly so. The additional flexibility may be worth it: It makes it quite painless to integrate with other data sources and sinks for backups and stuff and can run a lot of personal services (home automation, budgeting tool, IRC bouncer ...).
- tyingq 5y ago
  There seemed to be change on their low-end stuff when the DS120j/220j came out. The processor and RAM finally seemed enough to not spin off into oblivion, if you avoided the software that catalogs image files. They are dual-core, 512MB RAM, where the previous DS110j was single core, 128MB RAM and the DS115j was single core, 256MB RAM. The previous models just ran way too close to CPU starvation or swapping hell.
Helmut10001 5y ago

Terry_Roll 5y ago

And I use pi's as interchangeable/swappable processors for a variety of different tasks. Its only casing which people tend to miss with pi's which can be addressed with 3d printing.

Hamuko 5y ago

My Synology has been anything but realiable in the past month or so. I've twice had to hard reboot it because it stops working. I think it stops writing all data, which means that even something as simepl as "echo "" > out" will hang forever. Can't even turn it off because DSM stops responding and "sudo reboot" hangs. I have no idea whether it's a disk going bad, the file system going bad or the entire device going bad. It did give a warning that an I/O command timed out on one of the disks, but I've yet to get a S.M.A.R.T. extended test completed on the disk.

no_time 5y ago
Does it hang with ssh timing out? In that case, next time it hangs try opening it up and logging in via the UART interface available on most Synology NASes. Also it may give you extra info if the kernel panicks.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  No, it's usually just the individual command that hangs. I'm pretty sure I could just ^C end the `echo "" > out` command.

hackshack 5y ago

I agonized about this for years. I wanted a proper server, not something embedded or a Pi with a rat's nest of cables, that would still fit in a credenza in the living room. Ended up getting an HP MicroServer Gen8 and absolutely love it. Same cube design as the DS918+, but with proper iLO (remote media, etc.), lots of boot options, and very stoutly built. It feels like a real HP DL300-series server (the Gen9 does not IMHO). I bought it as it was being discontinued. It's running VMware ESXi with FreeNAS on top of that, with an LSI SAS card connected to the drive bays, then hardware-pass-through'ed to the FreeNAS VM. I've got the home's DNS server, Pi-hole, Unifi controller, test VMs, etc. happily virtualized alongside FreeNAS. 16GB RAM total, with 8GB dedicated to FreeNAS. Boot is off a microSD card (on the motherboard, naturally) and VM datastore is on an SSD connected where the optical drive would go. I know I'm violating several recommendations here (low RAM, virtualized FreeNAS, SAS card passed through, etc. etc.) but it does indeed work, very well in fact. 2+ years of serving the home. With the Gen8, HP built almost the perfect home server for tech-oriented types... pity they cost-reduced its successor.

abrookewood 5y ago
Yep, I did the same, though currently running on a much older version. Ubuntu, ZFS and a bunch of mirrored drives. The thing has been rock solid for years.
lukeh 5y ago
Yeah, doing the same, albeit with Solaris (probably a dumb choice but at the time, wanted stable ZFS).