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I'm planning on using some of that Xmas cash to replace my aging Drobo B800fs as the my primary storage and instead go with the Synology DS1815+

Synology DS1815+

Any of you have any experience with them? The plan is to make this my new media storage (TV, Movies, etc..), use my Drobo as 2nd for PC/Server backups, and my ReadyNAS for crap files. The Drobo has a limit of 32TB, which I'm almost at now but the Synology will take larger drives and can even have an expansion unit attached to increase its capacity. It's supposed to be a solid unit.

Any thoughts? No, I don't want to build a FreeNas box. I've already gone that route before and I want to keep things simple, as well as have support.

i've used their rackmount solutions before at a previous job. it was used for file sharing (internal and external), general file dumping ground, and some non-critical backups.

the only complaints i had was related to how it handled AD integration and managing permissions on the shares, but that won't matter to you at home. the interface was "cartoonish", but did the job and had a ton of features.

might be useful - don't know different model

http://www.eteknix.com/synology-ds216se ... as-review/

Losbot wrote:Any thoughts? No, I don't want to build a FreeNas box. I've already gone that route before and I want to keep things simple, as well as have support.

I've had an Unraid server for probably 6+ years and I've never really had any bad issues other than a cheap PSU dieing and the occasional drive dying. Current version is really great and solid. But keep in mind, I don't use cheap hardware. Norco chassis using a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H with a Seasonic Platinum PSU and using SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 for the sata controllers. My current goto drives are HGST. 43TB with plenty of room to grow.

wvjohn wrote:might be useful - don't know different model

http://www.eteknix.com/synology-ds216se ... as-review/

Thanks! Hadn't seen that link yet.

psypher wrote:I've had an Unraid server for probably 6+ years and I've never really had any bad issues other than a cheap PSU dieing and the occasional drive dying. Current version is really great and solid. But keep in mind, I don't use cheap hardware. Norco chassis using a Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H with a Seasonic Platinum PSU and using SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 for the sata controllers. My current goto drives are HGST. 43TB with plenty of room to grow.

Yeah, the Unraid was another consideration but I just don't want to build it myself. Normally I'd be all over it but it IS nice to have real tech support I can call and say "Hey! It's broke. Ship me another overnight!". LOL

I just want to make sure I'm not missing out on any other brands that I might have overlooked which may have a better feature set.

Losbot wrote:Yeah, the Unraid was another consideration but I just don't want to build it myself. Normally I'd be all over it but it IS nice to have real tech support I can call and say "Hey! It's broke. Ship me another overnight!". LOL

I just want to make sure I'm not missing out on any other brands that I might have overlooked which may have a better feature set.

Well that doesn't normally happen with any company. And usually when it breaks, it's out of warranty. For something like this, I rather have full control over it. It's really nothing special, it's still just a computer in a large chassis. Anything that fails on it, I can easily replace myself within 24 hrs and the forum is very active and helpful. I've never had an issue that wasn't resolved on the forum or by someone on the forum.

With the current version, I've got all kinds of Docker apps running on it as well.

psypher wrote:Well that doesn't normally happen with any company. And usually when it breaks, it's out of warranty. For something like this, I rather have full control over it. It's really nothing special, it's still just a computer in a large chassis. Anything that fails on it, I can easily replace myself within 24 hrs and the forum is very active and helpful. I've never had an issue that wasn't resolved on the forum or by someone on the forum.

With the current version, I've got all kinds of Docker apps running on it as well.

My Drobo actually had 3yrs of warranty and before it expired, I extended it twice by 2 more years. In that time, they replaced the unit with the newer model. I simply pulled the drives, inserted them in the same order into the new unit and powered it up. Config is stored on the drives so it was quick and painless.

I'm looking for more features than the Drobo offers at this point.

Got any good links I can read through on the Unraid Psypher? I'm always curious.

Losbot wrote:My Drobo actually had 3yrs of warranty and before it expired, I extended it twice by 2 more years. In that time, they replaced the unit with the newer model. I simply pulled the drives, inserted them in the same order into the new unit and powered it up. Config is stored on the drives so it was quick and painless.

I'm looking for more features than the Drobo offers at this point.

Got any good links I can read through on the Unraid Psypher? I'm always curious.

Ah ok, well yea if you the ability to extend it then I see why it was an attractive choice. Well they've revamped their website so you should be able to get all the info you want from there. http://lime-technology.com/

But of course if you have any questions on it, feel free to ask. But I can give you a quick run down.

If you can build a PC yourself, then that's a good start. Mostly because if you want/need something with a ton of drives, then you'll need to either have a tower than can hold enough drives or you'll be buying something like a Norco which can hold 20 or 24 drives. Personally I love having the Norco because when a drive dies it's really nice just being able to pull the drive tray out. You can actually download a free version that only limits the number of drives you can have to test it out. The Unraid software all goes on a USB stick, there really isn't much of an install other than preparing the USB flash drive with the software. Once it's running you'll access their web interface which is really nice to configure and get the drives up. This is where it gets to be a bit of pain initially. While the architecture allows you to easily just add drives to increase storage without needing to rebuild the array, the drive has to be cleared (all 0s written to it). 4TB+ drives take close to 24 hrs to clear out. Thankfully with the right scripts installed and plugins you can prepare a drive through the web interface before adding it to the array. The way Unraid works is that instead of stripping data across all drives, it uses a single parity drive that is used to calculate the parity across all drives. Each drive is treated individually, so complete files are written to each drive. This is where Unraid has a huge advantage as a media server. When you are accessing your media, it only needs to spin up the drive that has that specific media. It doesn't need to spin up all the drives as a typical raid stripped system would need. The new Docker support in Unraid 6 is great. It lets you easily add applications like SickBeard, Sabnzb, etc.. all running in their own standalone container. This makes it way more than just a NAS. It can even be a VM host if you want as well.

I'm using Unraid. Have been for years. I like it. It's ideal for media, not so ideal for straight data backups.

It's a funky system, not a true RAID, although there is redundancy. I have an 8TB box setup for storing ripped DVDs and TV series.

While you can make your own Unraid box out of any old hardware, they also do sell hardware pre-installed with Unraid.

I can't comment on the 1815 model but I just setup the 415+ and so far it's solid and fast. I upgraded my ancient Readynas NV unit to this after the PSU failed. The Synology web UI is pretty darn good too, i've impressed. Just don't open it up to internet and you should be fine.

EnglishRobbie wrote:I can't comment on the 1815 model but I just setup the 415+ and so far it's solid and fast. I upgraded my ancient Readynas NV unit to this after the PSU failed. The Synology web UI is pretty darn good too, i've impressed. Just don't open it up to internet and you should be fine.

I've got a ReadyNas NV+ as well that I bought in 2007, that's still humming along just fine to this day.

I run a Netgear ReadyNas Duo with a two drive mirror. Works solid and has been up for many years.

another synology review at Ars http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/e ... ving-room/

wvjohn wrote:another synology review at Ars http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/e ... ving-room/

Wrong link maybe? That's a gaming PC being built.