Planning NAS Upgrade

[Mike McCall]

I currently have a Synology DS212j which has served me well. My wife is an amateur photographer so there's about 8k pictures, and I also use it for local backup of a mixed environment (Mac/PC), as well as business storage. It's still working fine, though I'm getting nervous about it's age. The drives are WD Red about 2-years old.

I'll probably stick with something 2-bay as cost is a factor and I'm not doing anything which requires more than RAID-1. I may consider a 4-bay if there's a compelling reason, but the additional cost may be prohibitive.

The Synology has been a really good NAS and is why another one is attractive. I'm thinking the DS218+ as a possible candidate. The change would be the simplest and I like the Active Backup for Business product, though it doesn't currently support Mac's.

An alternative might be the Qnap TS-251+, though it seems to be getting a bit long in the tooth at this point. Qnap offers better hardware and many of the available software packages look interesting. I have no first-hand experience with Qnap, though they seem to be quite good as well. The Qnap is only available on Amazon through 3rd-party sellers, which suggests to me it might be being replaced.

The Synology products often seem to be compared to Apple (not comforting at all to me), while Qnap gets compared to Android in terms of software approach. Qnap has the better hardware, which is always tempting. Of course Qnap would also be something new and shiny to me which is it's own temptation.

So, what do you think?

 

[Sky-Knight]

I've had good luck with the few QNAP devices I've deployed. The only suggestions I have:

1.) be patient, some upgrades can take far longer than you'd expect
2.) have a backup, some firmware updates can nuke your drives!

I suppose the Synology is very similar in most respects.

 

[Mike McCall]

I've had good luck with the few QNAP devices I've deployed. The only suggestions I have:

1.) be patient, some upgrades can take far longer than you'd expect
2.) have a backup, some firmware updates can nuke your drives!

I suppose the Synology is very similar in most respects.

Interesting. With the Synology neither DSM nor package updates typically take more than about 10-min. There has never been a device firmware update I can recall, so no apparent ensuing risk. Qnap provides device firmware updates as well as OS and package?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Interesting. With the Synology neither DSM nor package updates typically take more than about 10-min. There has never been a device firmware update I can recall, so no apparent ensuing risk. Qnap provides device firmware updates as well as OS and package?

The OS updates are the firmware updates, and the package updates are separate. Now, the former does pretty well if you keep up with it. But I had let mine lapse, and lurching it forward almost two years at once resulted in a brick. I had to do a full firmware recovery on it to get it back, and somewhere in that process the disk got formatted. I could have made an error along the way myself, but I didn't care much about the data on the disk as it was all backup images. Once the appliance was updated and reinstalled, I just made shadowprotect run a new full.

That's happened ONCE... And they do warn you to have a backup before you do those big updates.

 

[Mike McCall]

The OS updates are the firmware updates, and the package updates are separate. Now, the former does pretty well if you keep up with it. But I had let mine lapse, and lurching it forward almost two years at once resulted in a brick. I had to do a full firmware recovery on it to get it back, and somewhere in that process the disk got formatted. I could have made an error along the way myself, but I didn't care much about the data on the disk as it was all backup images. Once the appliance was updated and reinstalled, I just made shadowprotect run a new full.

That's happened ONCE... And they do warn you to have a backup before you do those big updates.

I think of OS and firmware updates as completely separate. It seems to me they really should be handled separately anyway. I don't think I'd want to do a BIOS update at the same time I'm doing a Windows update. That said, I get your point since the OS isn't installed separately to a disk but to a chip. They're just different and separate in my head.

I do like the better hardware specs for the Qnap devices. Any thoughts on the TS-251+ and a soon to be replacement?

 

[Markverhyden]

Why not kill two birds with one stone. Take a standard desktop, they should all have 4 SATA ports. Install FreeNAS on a USB stick, pop in 4 drives, preferably of the same size, and setup that. You learn more about NAS, Linux (actually BSD), and have a fully functional NAS.

 

[Mike McCall]

Why not kill two birds with one stone. Take a standard desktop, they should all have 4 SATA ports. Install FreeNAS on a USB stick, pop in 4 drives, preferably of the same size, and setup that. You learn more about NAS, Linux (actually BSD), and have a fully functional NAS.

FreeNAS is a good idea in many ways. By the time I buy the hardware & drives I'm likely to spend more than I would with Synology or Qnap. Mainly due to my hedonistic approach to projects like that. I don't currently have suitable hardware available, and my lust for new and shiny could well get out of hand.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@Mike McCall with QNAP... that line is very blurry. The OS IS the firmware. There is no "BIOS" update. The BIOS on the platform is just enough boot code to load an image. The OS is installed to the hard disk that's in the unit. It doesn't work like a standard PC.

I love FreeNAS too... but power consumption will eat you alive with an old desktop in the storage role. The NAS will cost a bit, but it'll also save you that money in power in the first year, much less each following year.

Now the upside of FreeNAS, is the storage formatting and such is all Linux standard. So if the platform fries, you can just read the disks in something else. I'm pretty sure the QNAP would require more work, I've never tried to read the disks with another platform though.

 

[Mike McCall]

@Mike McCall with QNAP... that line is very blurry. The OS IS the firmware. There is no "BIOS" update. The BIOS on the platform is just enough boot code to load an image. The OS is installed to the hard disk that's in the unit. It doesn't work like a standard PC.

I love FreeNAS too... but power consumption will eat you alive with an old desktop in the storage role. The NAS will cost a bit, but it'll also save you that money in power in the first year, much less each following year.

Now the upside of FreeNAS, is the storage formatting and such is all Linux standard. So if the platform fries, you can just read the disks in something else. I'm pretty sure the QNAP would require more work, I've never tried to read the disks with another platform though.

Yeah, that's why I said it's in my head and I understand your point. I know they're not the same.

I'm not opposed to building my own, but I do have other considerations. You make a good point about power consumption which I hadn't thought of. Still, I would have to purchase hardware which is likely to break my budget quickly. At that point I'm likely to opt for 4-bays and drives to go in it. Clearly more fun, but well outside the budget.

 

[HCHTech]

There is something to be said for sticking with Synology as you are already familiar with it. Do you want to learn something new for this project? "Better" hardware is surely relative. Is there a problem with the current setup you want to solve when you get it's replacement? Is it too slow, etc.?

One tip, if you're doing backups, pick up a unit with dual NICs and bond them. That will let multiple machines simultaneously backup as fast as the disks will write the data.

 

[alexsmith2709]

I've got the TS-253 Pro. I find it quite good. i use it as a backup and a media centre. I've got no experience with any other NAS brand. There are plenty of apps for it and you can add various repo's that arent the QNAP official one.
Like you, my partner is a amateur photographer. I've got 2 x 8TB WD Gold in a RAID1. These drives are pretty noisy, it didnt cross my mind that they would be so much louder than the 2 x 3TB WD Red i had in there before. I got the Gold because the Reds were out of stock at the time and these were only £3 each more than the Red's and i thought the increase in speed would be worth it. It might be, but the noise increase is not as mine is next to my computer and TV in the living room.

 

[Your PCMD]

Here's what I did for a client that had a Synology that was taken out by a storm. They didn't want to spend over $500 to replace it and the 4 drives but they wanted the Synology interface. They had less than 500 mbs of files.

ASRock DESKMINI $110, Intel G3930 $45, 8gb RAM out of a laptop FREE, 2 1TB SSD's $180 and a 16GB USB drive for boot for just shy of $350. Then I used xpenology and all is still working flawlessly.

 

[Mike McCall]

There is something to be said for sticking with Synology as you are already familiar with it. Do you want to learn something new for this project? "Better" hardware is surely relative. Is there a problem with the current setup you want to solve when you get it's replacement? Is it too slow, etc.?

One tip, if you're doing backups, pick up a unit with dual NICs and bond them. That will let multiple machines simultaneously backup as fast as the disks will write the data.

My Synology has been great and there's good reason to get another. It may be where I end up. That said, it's things like dual NIC's and quad core processors that have me eying Qnap for similar money.

 

[Mike McCall]

I've got the TS-253 Pro. I find it quite good. i use it as a backup and a media centre. I've got no experience with any other NAS brand. There are plenty of apps for it and you can add various repo's that arent the QNAP official one.
Like you, my partner is a amateur photographer. I've got 2 x 8TB WD Gold in a RAID1. These drives are pretty noisy, it didnt cross my mind that they would be so much louder than the 2 x 3TB WD Red i had in there before. I got the Gold because the Reds were out of stock at the time and these were only £3 each more than the Red's and i thought the increase in speed would be worth it. It might be, but the noise increase is not as mine is next to my computer and TV in the living room.

I've had good luck with the reds and will likely continue with them. Interesting about the additional noise though.

 

[Sky-Knight]

WD Gold drives are noisy, I have one in my desktop. But I strange... I like listening to the popcorn. Red drives are substantially less expensive, but also a TON slower. But I'm not sure any of these NAS units mentioned here can even use a gold to its full potential. But that nice 5 year warranty is hard for me to give up, so I tend to lean on the Golds myself.

 

[Haole Boy]

Now the upside of FreeNAS, is the storage formatting and such is all Linux standard. So if the platform fries, you can just read the disks in something else. I'm pretty sure the QNAP would require more work, I've never tried to read the disks with another platform though.

I realize that this is not an apples to apples comparison, but you can do the same thing with Synology. I had a customer with a 4-bay Synology NAS that died. I just happened to have a newer version of the Synology 4-bay NAS. Took his drives and put them in my NAS, was able to recover all his data for him.

Just another thing for you to ponder...

Harry Z

 

[Sky-Knight]

@Haole Boy, Interesting. I'd assume the QNAPs would do something similar, but I've never tried it.

 

[alexsmith2709]

QNAP you can access the drives from linux, i believe it is ext3 or 4 formatted. I have done it by using mdadm and Ubuntu. I mounted the array and could access the data without any issues.

 

[HCHTech]

Took his drives and put them in my NAS, was able to recover all his data for him.

I just did this for a client last month as well. His Synology had a motherboard failure, we bought a new one (there was a requirement that it use the same processor line since they have models that use different processors), put his drives in and ran their migration routine - it was a trivial process.

 

[Mike McCall]

I realize that this is not an apples to apples comparison, but you can do the same thing with Synology. I had a customer with a 4-bay Synology NAS that died. I just happened to have a newer version of the Synology 4-bay NAS. Took his drives and put them in my NAS, was able to recover all his data for him.

Just another thing for you to ponder...

Harry Z

This is a significant motivation to get another Synology. Being able to move the drives to a new NAS easily makes the process easier and less risky. I think Qnap does the same thing. It's not terribly difficult to switch from one manufacturer to the other, but there are a few more steps in the process.