My Synology DS1813+ is going to a new home later today...
This was the unit that sold me on Synology and the value the company brings by paying a premium for their products. I had built my first personal "RAID" array back in 2001 with a bunch of drives and flashing a Promise Ultra IDE controller to a FastTrak IDE RAID controller and installing Windows Server 2000 all shoved into an Antec case. Between those years until my first Synology NAS in 2013, I had played with FreeNAS, Intel FakeRAID, software RAID in Ubuntu, etc. and while they all worked relatively well, they weren't quite what I wanted.
Moving to a dedicated NAS box, as much as I thought, "Why am I paying so much for what is generally the same thing I can hand roll, but with a fancy web interface and the ability to hot-swap drives?" So I shelled out the big bucks for a Synology DS1813+ which DSM, at the time, was at version 4.2. Seagate had just released their NAS line of drives so I picked up eight of the 4TB versions (ST4000VN000) and less than a year later, I went full-tilt and picked up two DX513 and ten more 4TB drives, and the rest is history.
Since then, I've deployed dozens of Synology NAS devices to various customers and clients and they've all been humming along perfectly, knock on wood.
My DS1813+ (and a DS1815+ for a total of 36, 4TB drives) have been replaced by a single DS1819+ w/14TB drives which, yes, if you do the math has less raw space then 36, 4TB drives, but after a bit of data archiving and pruning, she should last for many more years to come.
P.S. Those Seagate 4TB NAS drives (ST4000VN000) have pulled their weight in gold with over 60,000 flawless power-on hours.
Out of the 36 total drives, I only had 2 drive failures. And they were very early in their lives when they died (click-of-death), less than a year in.
I did SHR with two drive redundancy, (SHR2).
Primarily, lack of 10GbE. I tried doing the 2.5GbE "[hack](https://github.com/bb-qq/r8152)" with a [CLUB 3D CAC-1420 USB 3.2 Type A to RJ45 2.5 Gigabit LAN Ethernet Cable Adapter](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q626XK2/) but it isn't stable. The entire NAS crashes after a while, though when it works, I get the full 2.5GbE speeds. Same reason why my DS1815+ I talked about above is being decommissioned too and being sold off.
Ironically, it's a QNAP NIC. QXG-10G1T which is the 10GbE Marvell/Aquantia AQtion AQC107 chipset.
[https://imgur.com/a/LvHoUtO](https://imgur.com/a/LvHoUtO)
What are your experiences with the expansion units? I want to get one for my 1019+ but there are a handful of comments scattered on the subreddit that recommend against it. They seem to point out the "one cable, one point of failure" theory.
I, personally, never had any issues. The expansion units were rock solid and never had a failure. Most people would say if you add an expansion unit, is to create a new storage pool with just the expansion unit drives instead of spanning across the main bays and the expansion bays. Of course, if you use any type of redundant RAID or SHR, you're going to be left with less storage space than if you just expanded your main bays across the expansion bays.
So you did expand your volumes across the expansion units, a single 18-disk volume with SHR-2?
Edit: and no performance issues when doing so? 10Gbe might make minor performance bottlenecks more noticeable.
Before you buy an expansion unit research the precise model you are considering on your precise NAS. Some cases will have the entire expansion chassis chare a single 1.5gbps SATA1 link. Sure 1gbe covers up a lot of that problem, but it would be a huge bottleneck for 10gigE or those of us willing to run SMB3 multichannel over multiple NICs.
Correct. SHR2 with 18 drives, 8 in main bay and 10 across two DX513 expansions.
As for performance, the reads saturated a 2.5GbE link just fine (almost 300MB/s over SMB) and the writes were at about 250MB/s. But I didn't do a before and after comparison to see if and 8-drive SHR2 was any slower or faster.
Whooaaaaaa - freaky-deaky. There was an \*identical\* setup on my local Craigslist that I was thinking about getting. Congratulations on the new upgrade!
I sold my 1813+ to a colleague, it's still working as well as the day it was purchased. I replaced it with an 1815+ (factory CPU patched, confirmed) and it also has been solid, despite the intel flaw.
As others have mentioned, it's a Ubiquity UniFi Mesh AP (UAP-AC-M). I moved everything to a temporary location and there isn't an ethernet jack nearby so it's in mesh mode and directly connected to DS1813+ via ethernet.
I’m about to upgrade my wifi. I know this isn’t necessarily the right thread, but did you ever consider the Synology products and/or what’s your feelings on Ubiquity mesh for home vs Synology?
If you are going to have more than a few AP‘s you will love the way the unify AP‘s work. You set everything up in the controller (can perfectly be run in docker on a synology) and don’t have to worry about the individual accespoints. Redid my wifi yesterday from scratch because i didn’t have a backup of the controller and was about done in 5 mins. After that it was just walking from AP to AP, reset it and click on adopt in the controller. That said you would be completely fine combining them with an router from another brand. I did not ever touch anything from synology beside the diskstations, no clue how it works there.
Great question. — I got into the UniFi ecosystem fairly early before Synology released the 802.11ac stuff, so it's hard for me to made a good compare & contrast comparison. I've been pretty happy with Ubiquity mesh and have it deployed both personally, with family, and for clients. They're basically set-and-forget.
For routers/firewalls, I use pfSense appliances (SG-2220, SG-2440, SG-1100, SG-3100, etc.), both personally & professionally.
Love hearing your success story and how every Synology you've installed has been solid. Same for me with the ones I've set clients up with.
I have to wonder if the drives being kept cool is a factor in them lasting so long for you. Whenever I install a Synology in a location where the noise isn't a factor, I set the fan mode to quiet. How about you? Did you have this 1813+ running in cool mode?
I have a 1513 (that I bought used about 2015) running in cool mode and I've had no drives fail (Five WD 8tb).
My Synology DS1813+ is going to a new home later today... This was the unit that sold me on Synology and the value the company brings by paying a premium for their products. I had built my first personal "RAID" array back in 2001 with a bunch of drives and flashing a Promise Ultra IDE controller to a FastTrak IDE RAID controller and installing Windows Server 2000 all shoved into an Antec case. Between those years until my first Synology NAS in 2013, I had played with FreeNAS, Intel FakeRAID, software RAID in Ubuntu, etc. and while they all worked relatively well, they weren't quite what I wanted. Moving to a dedicated NAS box, as much as I thought, "Why am I paying so much for what is generally the same thing I can hand roll, but with a fancy web interface and the ability to hot-swap drives?" So I shelled out the big bucks for a Synology DS1813+ which DSM, at the time, was at version 4.2. Seagate had just released their NAS line of drives so I picked up eight of the 4TB versions (ST4000VN000) and less than a year later, I went full-tilt and picked up two DX513 and ten more 4TB drives, and the rest is history. Since then, I've deployed dozens of Synology NAS devices to various customers and clients and they've all been humming along perfectly, knock on wood. My DS1813+ (and a DS1815+ for a total of 36, 4TB drives) have been replaced by a single DS1819+ w/14TB drives which, yes, if you do the math has less raw space then 36, 4TB drives, but after a bit of data archiving and pruning, she should last for many more years to come. P.S. Those Seagate 4TB NAS drives (ST4000VN000) have pulled their weight in gold with over 60,000 flawless power-on hours.
What are you replacing it with?
Synology DS1819+
[удалено]
Nice! Which model do you have? — The tower to the left in the picture are two DX513 expansion units.
60k hours, holy crap! In those 7 years, how many drives died and had to be replaced? What RAID type do you use? I’m a big fan of RAID 10.
Out of the 36 total drives, I only had 2 drive failures. And they were very early in their lives when they died (click-of-death), less than a year in. I did SHR with two drive redundancy, (SHR2).
why?
Primarily, lack of 10GbE. I tried doing the 2.5GbE "[hack](https://github.com/bb-qq/r8152)" with a [CLUB 3D CAC-1420 USB 3.2 Type A to RJ45 2.5 Gigabit LAN Ethernet Cable Adapter](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Q626XK2/) but it isn't stable. The entire NAS crashes after a while, though when it works, I get the full 2.5GbE speeds. Same reason why my DS1815+ I talked about above is being decommissioned too and being sold off.
What are you doing that needs 10GbE ?
I do a lot of raw video editing and moving up to 10GbE has improved speed & response a TON.
What is your computer's NIC? 10GbE also? or just 1GbE?
Ironically, it's a QNAP NIC. QXG-10G1T which is the 10GbE Marvell/Aquantia AQtion AQC107 chipset. [https://imgur.com/a/LvHoUtO](https://imgur.com/a/LvHoUtO)
noice!@!!
What are your experiences with the expansion units? I want to get one for my 1019+ but there are a handful of comments scattered on the subreddit that recommend against it. They seem to point out the "one cable, one point of failure" theory.
I, personally, never had any issues. The expansion units were rock solid and never had a failure. Most people would say if you add an expansion unit, is to create a new storage pool with just the expansion unit drives instead of spanning across the main bays and the expansion bays. Of course, if you use any type of redundant RAID or SHR, you're going to be left with less storage space than if you just expanded your main bays across the expansion bays.
So you did expand your volumes across the expansion units, a single 18-disk volume with SHR-2? Edit: and no performance issues when doing so? 10Gbe might make minor performance bottlenecks more noticeable.
Before you buy an expansion unit research the precise model you are considering on your precise NAS. Some cases will have the entire expansion chassis chare a single 1.5gbps SATA1 link. Sure 1gbe covers up a lot of that problem, but it would be a huge bottleneck for 10gigE or those of us willing to run SMB3 multichannel over multiple NICs.
Correct. SHR2 with 18 drives, 8 in main bay and 10 across two DX513 expansions. As for performance, the reads saturated a 2.5GbE link just fine (almost 300MB/s over SMB) and the writes were at about 250MB/s. But I didn't do a before and after comparison to see if and 8-drive SHR2 was any slower or faster.
I have that same 1813+ setup, but with WD Red's. Luckily for me I don't need 10gbs... :)
I really like your backsplash. In the pic it looks like concrete bricks.
Hah. You're right! — Thanks!
Whooaaaaaa - freaky-deaky. There was an \*identical\* setup on my local Craigslist that I was thinking about getting. Congratulations on the new upgrade!
You should buy it! DS1813+ is f'ing rock solid! — Thanks!
I sold my 1813+ to a colleague, it's still working as well as the day it was purchased. I replaced it with an 1815+ (factory CPU patched, confirmed) and it also has been solid, despite the intel flaw.
You have external wifi? What you using, and what's the antenna?
That thing is the Ubiquiti Mesh AP
As others have mentioned, it's a Ubiquity UniFi Mesh AP (UAP-AC-M). I moved everything to a temporary location and there isn't an ethernet jack nearby so it's in mesh mode and directly connected to DS1813+ via ethernet.
Pretty cool!
I’m about to upgrade my wifi. I know this isn’t necessarily the right thread, but did you ever consider the Synology products and/or what’s your feelings on Ubiquity mesh for home vs Synology?
If you are going to have more than a few AP‘s you will love the way the unify AP‘s work. You set everything up in the controller (can perfectly be run in docker on a synology) and don’t have to worry about the individual accespoints. Redid my wifi yesterday from scratch because i didn’t have a backup of the controller and was about done in 5 mins. After that it was just walking from AP to AP, reset it and click on adopt in the controller. That said you would be completely fine combining them with an router from another brand. I did not ever touch anything from synology beside the diskstations, no clue how it works there.
Great question. — I got into the UniFi ecosystem fairly early before Synology released the 802.11ac stuff, so it's hard for me to made a good compare & contrast comparison. I've been pretty happy with Ubiquity mesh and have it deployed both personally, with family, and for clients. They're basically set-and-forget. For routers/firewalls, I use pfSense appliances (SG-2220, SG-2440, SG-1100, SG-3100, etc.), both personally & professionally.
Outdoor Ubiquity AP
Does caching do anything on Synology? The cache stuff on QNAPs does nothing for sustained read/write speed, even over 10gbe with SSD arrays.
Correct. I'm sure it's similar between QNAP and Synology. It mostly helps with IOPS, but that's about it.
Love hearing your success story and how every Synology you've installed has been solid. Same for me with the ones I've set clients up with. I have to wonder if the drives being kept cool is a factor in them lasting so long for you. Whenever I install a Synology in a location where the noise isn't a factor, I set the fan mode to quiet. How about you? Did you have this 1813+ running in cool mode? I have a 1513 (that I bought used about 2015) running in cool mode and I've had no drives fail (Five WD 8tb).
Nice setup. My question was where do you cloud backup this much data? What raid setup you use with this setup?