Discuss: Understanding Routers, Switches, the Internet and Network Hardware

I have some questions relating to drive expansion on SHR/BTrFS, QTS/Ext4 and QTS-hero/ZFS. On each of these combinations, ...

(1) Can you begin with 1 drive without being locked into JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1 or RAID 5?
(2) Can you begin with RAID 1, and later, easily change/expand to RAID 5?
(3) Can four drives set up as two RAID 1 pairs be easily expanded to a 4-drive RAID 5?
(4) I know that SHR/BTrFS allows expansion with larger drives without loosing their capacity. Can either of the others do this?
(5) In each of the combinations, if an additional drive is added to a RAID 5, can the data be evenly distributed over the whole RAID? ...easily?

Thank you in advance for the assistance.

Hi,

I'm a big fan of your site and there's so much great information. I'm looking for some help, I tried buying the QNAP 251D, but they're sold out everywhere with backorders going all the way to August and any other sellers are just purely price gouging. I'm not a hardcore NAS user, just want to upgrade and have more features to not rely on Cloud services anymore, upgradability in ram and network cards, and based on your videos, seems that QNAP is the way to go.

I like how you And I've watched some of your videos comparing 251D vs TS-253BE and was hoping you can shed some light if you can't find the 251D, what would be your second best alternative? comparable in 2 bay.

Thank you in advance!

What is Synology VPN Plus and Why are Free Licenses a Good Thing?
In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses have adopted work from home policies. Synology's wireless routers featu

Hi, Hope you’re doing well and staying safe. I’m a part time photographer and also getting into video. I’m using a Seagate 5tb hard drive and getting to the point of filing it up-mostly all photos with some video although I do hope to start doing more video. I have had Dobos and have a 5N but now that I haven’t hooked back up simply because I made the mistake of using part of it as back up for Time Machine and now I’m using a windows machine. I’m looking at the Synology since I have a friend who swears by them and tells me to get rid of the Drobo. I’ve just had time to go through all my pictures and organize them properly with all this time at home lately and want to move forward with a solid platform. It would be nice to be able to have multiple computers access as well as possibly stream videos to a tv at some point.
Cheers!
Robert

Hello,

Regarding the following article (https://nascompares.com/2019/03/12/best-10gbe-upgrade-card-of-2019-for-nas/, are any of these cards compatible with ESXi? except the synology one I guess.

As you understand, I want to hook one Synology and one or more ESXi servers on a 10GBe network. ESXi which I use usually 6.5 or 6.7 and I use only stock images (Dell, HP, Cisco etc).
Searching on the VMware forums, didn't bring me any luck. I am looking forward to buy some NICs.

Please do keep up the good job.

Thank you so much.

Discuss: 2.5GBE and 5Gbe NAS Explained

Hello!

I was wondering If the Xpenology could work on a Banana Pi W2 board, that's based on the same Realtek RTD1296 that Synology uses on a series of entry level products.

Hi, it took me a while to choose which NAS to go for, but I finally went with the Nimbustor 4 and I populated it with 4 x 4gb WD Gold drives and I upgraded the Nas RAM to 16gb of DDR 4.
I have the Nas connected to my TV via hdmi and have a library of content using Plex server...
After a few days I noticed that some files wouldnt play, with a message being displayed saying something along the lines of, server not powerful enough.. it took me a while to realise that although the NAS is connected via hmdi, Plex was not being utilised via hdmi (asustor portal) and that I needed the Plex media player installed in Portal to stream directly....
However, I cannot find this and although I've found a version 1 Plex media player APK, it doesn't show support for the Nimbustor 4 and won't install...
This is pretty annoying, as this setup cost over £1k and it cant transcode high quality to my TV or provide the software to direct stream via HDMI. Can you advise or do you have any ideas for a remedy, Emby maybe¿

Greetings, and thank you for producing such informative content.

I'd appreciate your advice on whether I should purchase a Netgear RR4312X2 or a Synology RS1619xs+ for a high-end residential application.

The residence will have a rack.

The main use will be as Time Machine backup for up to 5 computers running Mac OS X. I would like a set-it-and-forget it backup solution. A secondary use, much less important, will be as a music/video server.

There are two scenarios of interest, based upon the brand of ethernet switch:

• Scenario A: Netgear M4300-52G-PoE+.
• Scenario B: Ubiquiti USW-Pro-48-POE Gen 2.

In each of these scenarios, which NAS is preferred—Netgear or Synology?

Thanks so much.