Synology

965 readers

1 users here now

Synology

This is a place for all topics regarding Synology hard- and software - especially (but not limited to) their NAS devices.

Just one thing: Let’s please be pleasant to each other and respect that people have different experience levels. Some are pros, some are noobs, yet everybody may have good ideas or interesting questions to ask and comments to make, and all of these shall be heard and appreciated. ❤️

And since we know from TV that all IT nerds 🤓 are h4xx0rs and wear hoodies all the time (if not even ski masks) in front of their computers, I chose an appropriate banner image (image credit).

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

bubu@feddit.de

DS920+ adding a DX517 (lemmy.self-host.site)

submitted 1 year ago by matthewc@lemmy.self-host.site to c/synology@feddit.de

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have a DS920+ full of 16TB HHDs. I am considering adding a DX517. Is it possible to move my HDDs into the expansion unit and maintain the existing raid while installing SSDs into the original four bays? Does it make sense to put the HDDs in the expansion because they connect over a single eSATA cable? Does it make any sense to try and optimize like that considering all of the NICs are 1gb?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] mrmintyfresh@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

According to the dx517 specs on the Synology site:

“To have better performance, we recommend creating storage volumes physically located within the same NAS or Expansion Unit, rather than creating volumes across your NAS and Expansion Unit.”

I’m considering getting a dx517 as well so this was a nice rabbit hole to go down. I think your gut feel about the single esata cable is accurate.

Edit: And drive order shouldn’t matter. Obviously take a backup if you can but you should be able to power down, move the drives, and power back up and it continue to work without skipping a beat. At least using the default SHA RAID or w/e.

[–] matthewc@lemmy.self-host.site 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not just performance; I can’t imagine it would be good for five drives of a volume to go missing if a single cable fails.

I’m wondering if I can move my four current drives into the DX517 and save the volume. Can I just move the drives around without consequence?

I’m starting to think a second NAS full of SSDs would be best to host home lab applications off of instead of trying to make it work with my current NAS and an expansion unit.

[–] mrmintyfresh@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I’ve never done it but it is my understanding that you can move the drives around. The expansion unit literally just makes it seem like you have more slots in your existing system. The system identifies the drives by their UUIDs which is why I’m thinking it isn’t a crazy idea to be able to move them around.

I had a nas server with a raid card where I had to ensure a specific drive went to a specific sas port but I think this is more like ZFS where you (and in this case DSM automatically) can just identify drives by their ID.

I like the idea of a second unit but in my case the newer models don’t seem to use intel anymore and don’t have h.265 decoding offload. If that isn’t important to you or you’d buy an older model then maybe not a terrible way to go.

Finally, I don’t know your comfort level but building a little NAS server from older gen server/workstation parts off of ebay (minus the drives) will get you pretty far bang-for-your-buck wise.