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Advice, Ideas, Suggestions? - DaveInMilwaukee - 05-04-2023
Advice, Ideas, Suggestions?
I currently have three NAS devices, at my two houses, and I’m going to be upgrading them.
At one house, I have two Synology boxes.
My first was/is a 220J. I quickly outgrew it, it has two 10tb Iron Wolf drives in SHR. I was using it for Plex and Audio Station, but I’m moving all of my Plex to my other NAS.
About the only upgrade I could do to this box is replace the drives with larger ones (maybe 16tb). Regardless, I don’t have a lot of use for this NAS anymore.
I purchased a second Synology, a 1821+ and I’m pretty happy with it. So far, I’ve installed 4 16tb Seagate Exos drives. It serves Plex to me and my friend that lives in my building, and it could also serve my Audio Station. I’m running Wyze Bridge on it via Docker, and I plan to run Home Kit and Home Assistant on it in the future.
Upgrade Plans:
Drives: l plan on getting two DX517’s when I run out of storage (Drive Space). Should I start buying larger drives like the 20tb exos’s, filling the remaining 4 slots with larger drives, and then start moving drives over to the DX517’s once I fill up the 1821+? That seems like the logical thing to do. I plan to make each box have its own volume.
Memory: l plan upgrade the memory. Currently, I’m thinking about getting the Crucial, 32gb kit, but should I consider upgrading to 64gb?
Network Card: I’d like to get a 10gb card, with two NVME slots.
NVME: I’d like to fill my two NVME slots as well. This leads to the question, what size, and what configuration? I’m thinking about one set for Read/Write Cache, and one set for the storage pool. Obviously, I’d like the biggest size I can afford for the storage pool, maybe a pair of 4gb? I’m not really sure how big I should make my Cache drives though. I’m a fan of overkill, but I don’t want to waste money either.
Finally, is there a difference where I put them? For example, the storage pool in the box and the cache on the network card, or vice versa?
At this location, I don’t own anything more than a single 5 Port Ethernet hub, so I’ll need to get something capable of 10gb, plus an adapter for my laptop. I’m on the fence about managed/unmanaged, but with SMB Multichannel, I might consider unmanaged.
Next up, is my main house, where I have a Qnap TVS-H874 (the i5 with 32gb).
Drives: I currently have 4 18tb drives installed. As before, wondering if I should switch to larger and move drives into expansion boxes when the time comes.
Two expansion slots, three wants: I’d like to get a TL-D1600S box, and that would take up one slot. Then, I’d like to add a 10gb card with 2 NVME slots. But it would be cool to have a dedicated GPU also.
NVME: Same story as my Synology, the only difference is that on the box, I have the 4.0 instead of the 3.0. That said, once again, what do I put where?
First world problems, I know. I’m just curious to hear what others think. Hopefully I’ll buy everything I mentioned, but who knows, maybe I’ll come to my senses… Or maybe my wife will figured out how much money I spend on this stuff.
Oh, and I just learned about the Qnap Guardian series.
RE: Advice, Ideas, Suggestions? - ed - 05-05-2023
It sounds like you have a solid plan for upgrading your NAS devices. Here are some suggestions and ideas:
Drives: Switching to larger drives and moving drives to expansion boxes as needed is a good plan. However, you may want to consider the cost per TB when deciding on drive size. Sometimes the larger drives have a higher cost per TB, so you may want to calculate the overall cost before making a decision.
Memory: Upgrading to 32GB of RAM is a good start, and 64GB may be overkill depending on your use case. If you plan on running a lot of Docker containers or virtual machines, then more RAM could be beneficial.
Network card: A 10Gb network card is a good upgrade, especially if you plan on transferring large files or streaming high-quality video. The NVME slots on the card can be used for cache, but keep in mind that cache only benefits certain workloads. You may want to test your use case with and without cache to see if it makes a difference.
NVME: It's a good idea to use one set of NVME drives for cache and another set for the storage pool. As for size, it depends on your workload. For cache, you may want to start with 1-2TB and see if it makes a difference. For the storage pool, go with the largest size you can afford.
Placement: You can place the storage pool and cache drives on different devices (e.g., storage pool on the box and cache on the network card) or on the same device. It depends on your workload and performance needs.
Networking: A 10Gb switch is necessary to take advantage of the 10Gb network card. If you have a small network, an unmanaged switch should suffice. However, if you have a larger network, a managed switch can provide better control and optimization.
GPU: A dedicated GPU can be beneficial if you plan on running virtual machines or using the NAS for media transcoding. However, it's not necessary for most use cases.
Qnap Guardian series: The Qnap Guardian series is a good option if you need a NAS with higher performance and more advanced features. However, it's also more expensive than the regular Qnap models.
Overall, it sounds like you have a good plan for upgrading your NAS devices. Just keep in mind that some upgrades may not be necessary depending on your use case.