Synology Technical Assistance & Buying advice

[Enquiries]

Hi Guys,

I’m a subscriber and regular viewer/reader. Thanks for the fantastic videos and website, you do a terrific job and are much appreciated. As Rob says, I’ll get right to it…

• My current NAS environment: DS415Play, SHR, (4) 3TB WD Red & DS 214 SHR, (2) 3TB WD Red.
o I use Hyper Backup nighty backing up the 415 to the 214 and I also nightly run an rsync copy via Hyper Backup.
• Dell XPS 15 laptop.
• DS 415Play has only one 1Gbe ethernet port which I have connected to my router, a NETGEAR Nighthawk A6000 Model RAX120. DS 214 also connected to router via 1Gbe.

Use Case: Amateur Photographer, edit RAW photos on Adobe Lightroom Classic, which I also use as my organizer/file system and Adobe Photoshop. Recently retired and doing more and more photography and plan to do more video shooting and video editing using Adobe Premier Pro. Single user for photo editing and myself and one other user, my wife on a laptop, both for general file service on NAS. Both currently work over Wifi.

Issues/Questions:
• Indexing on uploading larger volumes of photos after a shoot or trip is extremely slow and while crunching through it the NAS is slow to respond to even basic file service use and interaction with Lightroom (eg. importing photos) is very labored. After a recent trip uploading 2000 images of roughly 50-60MB each was quite painful. Then after edits the NAS will index each time which is also slow.
• DSM 7+ not recommended on my DS415Play and neither current NAS supports BTRFS
• I don’t like to be in arrears on operating systems and would like to get to the latest version of DSM and begin using direct connect for higher speed data transfers like 10Gbe. My Dell has thunderbolt USB C and specs say it will support 10Gbe. My NAS is in my office and I would direct connect, my wife’s office is in another area of the house and she will remain on Wifi for now.
• With your helpful videos I have investigated the DS1621+, the DS 1522+ and now the DS 923+. Armed with all of Rob’s fabulous work on each of these I am trying to weight the pros and cons of each and hope you can help me sort through what might be best….I like the notion of the Quad Core and the standard PCIe 10Gbe Card slot on the DS1621+ vs the new proprietary card on the 1522+ and the 923+, the standard can be had with dual ports and the new version only is available with one. But the 1621+ is kind of old at this point. The 1522+ has 8GB memory but only a dual core processor. The 923+ is dual core with 4GB RAM.
• Frankly I don’t know which feature(s) are most important to consider for my use case. CPU? Which is best for me?, amount of RAM? But RAM choice seems more forgiving as it is upgradable (how much do I need?)but the CPU is, of course locked in once we choose a unit.
• Also not sure of best way to connect the networking….Would I use a USB C/Thunderbolt 10Gbe adapter on the PC and connect to a 10Gbe switch with at least (2) 10Gbe ports connect the NAS to a 10Gbe port on the switch and then connect the NAS to the Router via one of the 1Gbe ports on the NAS? I have been told this approach would better than directly connecting the laptop through the Thunderbolt / 10gbe adapter directly to the 10Gbe port on the NAS and connecting the NAS to the router via a 1Gbe port. ?
• My intention is to populate the new NAS with new WD RED Pro (likely 4 or 6TB) as I think from your reviews that the 7200RPM will help and get me away from the whole SMR issue. But I would like to keep the DS415Play with the WD Red as my backup unit, if that is advisable. I am wondering if the DS415Play could handle the DSM 7+ if it were only being used as destination for Hyper Backup and rsync?
• From what I have gathered, it doesn’t seem like SSD Cache will not be of much benefit to my use case. Is that so?

I hope I have given you enough information in a somewhat cogent presentation to be able to offer some advice. I know my case is very unexciting compared to the heavy, challenging things you guys deal with but I hope you will favorably consider my request for assistance.

Again, thank you both for all you do.

Regards,
Joseph

[ed]

Yes, every time there is a new OS update, old NAS systems need to do more and more work with the same hardware. It gets really difficult with the new DSM7. This is why Synology have set a life expectancy of their products no longer than 10 years. This is where they stop supplying any updates.
Creating metadata during the indexing process will get slower every year. This includes data transfer speeds. Especially with small files where CPU need to work harder. Replacing one or two bays with SSD and installing DSM and app on this media will speed things up. But you will need to reset the system.
You can also connect directly if you have multiple LAN ports. This will give you full bandwidth of that LAN connection (either 1Gbe or 10GbE). Some models have 2 or 4 LAN connections. All of these can be connected to a router/switch. The load balancing function will use all lanes to deliver data.
DS1621+ seem to be older model, but it has two extra cores on the CPU. This is quite helpful if you also use NAS for other things like virtual machines. Dual-core models are good for home / soho office. Otherwise, all of these Ryzen-based models can deliver 10gbe speeds.
When deciding what is more important, it is surely the CPU. RAM can be upgraded, but CPU will not. Having a quad-core CPU will ensure 10 years of life span. DS1621+ still has 8 years on the clock. DS1522+ comes with 10 years support https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/...621+/DS923+
https://www.synology.com/en-uk/products/status
I would connect via Thunderbolt/10GbE adapter if there was only one user. But technically this adapter will cost similar to a 2 port 10gbe switch. So maybe it is something to consider. https://nascompares.com/2018/01/19/cheap...-switches/
You can connect directly to your PC and a router at the same time.
Filling your NAS with Pro drives is not a bad choice. It gives you a 5years warranty. But it is also noisy if you keep your NAS on a desktop or living room. WD Red Plus drives are quieter and are non-CMR type of drives. The new DS923+ will support NVMe to be used for DSM and app. This could eliminate noise completely. HDDs can then be used for archives and other less often accessed data storage.
Older NAS such as 415play can be used for automated backups with no problems. You could even set it up RAID0 with no drive redundancy to increase the performance.
SSD cache is only useful for business environments, virtual machines, web servers etc. It serves as a boost for HDD RAID where SSD RAID is not an affordable option.

I hope this helps.



Thank you for your support, this really helps us go.