Anyone tried Synology's new BTRFS capable NAS's?

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leonroy

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Oct 6, 2015
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Looking at moving from custom built NAS boxes using Supermicro hardware and FreeNAS to Synology's RackStation units.

Looking to reduce the time spent messing around with supporting the FreeNAS boxes and wondering if the Synology BTRFS NAS's are as reliable and fast at snapshotting data as FreeNAS?

Does anyone have any experience with Synology's new range and if so what're your thoughts on day to day use?
 

capn_pineapple

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Aug 28, 2013
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I've got an RS815RP+ running in production at the moment.
So far so good, 4 drive RAID6 of 8TB drives with a single BTRFS volume as the RSync location for our NetApp backup/archive.
R6 was chosen for expandability of the volume as we don't need R10 benefits.
The device will be sent offsite to another office once we're happy with the health of the backup regime.

Things to note:
We're not running compression.
We're not running encryption (yet)
What the NetApp said was a 5TB volume is only 1.5TB on the Synology (again, no compression)
Snapshots have been setup though have not been invoked as of yet (still testing some stuff)
Dat GUI :cool:
 
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capn_pineapple

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Aug 28, 2013
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Sounds like the remote storage is attached as a flexvol.
That is correct, in which case it's seeing the volume size not the used data size.
That puts a stop to the confusion, ta.

Thanks for the feedback. How quick are snapshots to take and view?
That is an awesome question that I will answer when I get a chance to take a look at that again. For now though, I'm off IT stuff at work and doing HSEQ/R&D stuff for the forseeable future (a well needed break)
 

TuxDude

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Sep 17, 2011
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... So far so good, 4 drive RAID6 of 8TB drives with a single BTRFS volume ...
FYI - BTRFS's parity raid implementation is NOT production-ready - see this recent mailing-list message as an example: Re: Runaway SLAB usage by 'bio' during 'device replace' -- Linux BTRFS And that is in reference to the current kernel, which is probably quite a few versions ahead of whatever Synology is shipping.

BTRFS seems to be pretty stable/mature/usable in either single-device or multi-device raid-1 modes, which would include putting BTRFS on top of md-raid5/6 if you wanted to run that way, though in that case the checksumming can only detect errors - BTRFS needs to be doing the raid part for it to be able to repair corruption.
 

mago277

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Apr 23, 2016
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I own a DS716+, what you said about Btrfs on DSM6 Is part true, but not the truth.

Synology's Btrfs run on top of Synology volume manager which handles the disk pool either as MD Raid or as Synology Raid, remember it's running on Ubuntu not on bsd (DSM is based on Ubuntu Server LTS) Synology used Btrfs to offer you copy on write and snapshots as most wanted features and are well implemented, DSM is very easy to manage and critical updates are quickly delivered.

That's all the good about Synology, if you are comfortable with Synology approach, go for it, the hardware is good but not as good as your previous supermicro, Synology is commodity appliance I use mine at home where shines DSM very easy versatile it's an diy Swiss knife server, but at my business I have a custom build 1U sever with 8 2.5" hdd running on centos-kvm on a BTRFS pool over MD Raid 6 (very similar to Synology), most applications run on Docker, and we run vm with other services as a dedicated maria dB, fpsense and Kodi on KVM. Issues none, also we run or own backup script on python, this configuration has about 5 month running 24/7 w/o full down time (only when upgrading an app and similar given is a vm/Docker box don't implies full server downtime) further this sever run on a Xeon E3v4 fill ecc ram, most Synology server don't offer ecc ram this causes false alarm on raid failures and down time, consider this.

IMHO Synology is better suited for home small office, not for 24/7 medium scale operations.
 

leonroy

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Oct 6, 2015
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mago277 thanks for the feedback. I'd agree - it's great that Synology are offering Docker on DSM6 but only their flagship rackmount models seem capable of handling even light loads.

Your custom built 1U server with 8x 2.5" drives sounds interesting.
  • Is it all custom install software or a distro like Proxmox?
  • Do you use any sort of WebUI to manage it?
  • Any reason you didn't go for ZFS instead of BTRFS?
 

mago277

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Apr 23, 2016
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mago277 thanks for the feedback. I'd agree - it's great that Synology are offering Docker on DSM6 but only their flagship rackmount models seem capable of handling even light loads.

Your custom built 1U server with 8x 2.5" drives sounds interesting.
  • Is it all custom install software or a distro like Proxmox?
  • Do you use any sort of WebUI to manage it?
  • Any reason you didn't go for ZFS instead of BTRFS?
Synology supports Docker on all Intel based NAS, You are confused with DSM ON Docker (running an DSM 6 image on a Docker container) this feature is reserved to new NAS Based on Intel.

Docker is exceptionally efficient, I use half dozen images and the system never touch 2gb ram neither more than 20% (my ds716+).

My custom built server is based on supermicro 1018D-73MTF I got at Amazon on less than 500$ with cpu and 16gb ram didn't touch 1 Grand, my HDD all are 2 tb each for 12 tb usable with double failure redundancy, I plan to move to full ssd on next 18mo, and a 16GB sata DOM, no sata pci card all 8 hdd are wired to the motherboard, later maybe I add a mellanox card or a 10GbT card (I installed a Zotac GeForce 710 to drive video to our meeting / training / party room).

The server software from scratch is custom, it ran centos 7 with kvm-webVirtMgr.
Centos 7 is managed by command line (in this setup is rare need to touch main host os).
I ran a RancherOS vm for Docker.
I considered webmin as Web gui for main centos, no actual need yet, only complicated task is to create a new Btrfs pool, this is done 100% on scripts or using the text based interface, some IT managers would opt for ISPConfig since it manage Btrfs and s bunch of functions, even Plesk, I don't consider actual need, command line for Btrfs is not as complicated

My sever configuration w/o hdd from Synology or qnap start close 2000 w/o comparable quality and attached to 3.5“ hdd.

I Don't go on zfs since I'm concerned on its long term development, seems the industry/it developer community it's better aligned behind Btrfs. Whatever I don't use dedup if so I'll Ned 64GB Ram on my serverr.
 
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