Array of Samsung 870 EVO in a Synology NAS ?

[Smbaker]

I've been contemplating building myself a SSD NAS. I'm happy with Synology. I'm happy with Samsung. Can I put them together and not have it be a stupid thing?

The TBW is 2400 TB on the 870 EVO 4TB. The TBW on a WD RED NAS SSD is 2500 TB. Neither one of them has power loss protection. It feels like I'd be paying $200/SSD extra for the WD for no good reason other than for it to have "NAS" in the name.

Enterprise drives are not feasible. This is for personal use.

I'm looking for someone to tell me if I'm missing something.

 

[i386]

Everytime I dream of an all flash array I realize what it would require, how expensive that is and that advantages/costs are too low for my servers/lab at home

Can I put them together and not have it be a stupid thing?

Maybe in a "write once, read once/many scenario".

 

[BlueFox]

I wouldn't get too hung up on endurance. Consumer hard drives are only rated for ~180TB a year by most manufacturers (regardless of drive size). Can't think of a compelling reason to pay extra for the WD SSDs over the Samsung ones either. Depending on your workload, might even be able to go QLC and not notice any difference.

 

[Smbaker]

Yeah, that's what I figure. While there would be some churn on the NAS as I do NFS-mount parts of it, it's also the case that the majority of what is on it would be just static data sitting around (backups, snapshots, video collection, etc). The drives will be long obsolete before I hit the TBW limit. I'm not really worried about that.

I just want to hear whether there's any horror stories about the array constantly exploding due to drive dropouts or something like that.

 

[samat.io]

I've a few Synology NAS using 870 QVO, and one using Synology using 860 EVOs. They work fine. QVOs are not on Synology's compatibility list and the NAS complains constantly, but it's fine otherwise.

I agree w/ BlueFox, don't get hung up on endurance. In a Synology, it's unlikely you'll get enough use to make a meaningful dent. My oldest QLC array after 1.5 years still has 97% life remaining.

It should also go without saying that unless you're using 10 Gbit or higher networking, this very much is an expensive waste.

 

[Smbaker]

Yes, I have 10 GbE, via a Mellanox card.

I'm probably also going to seize the opportunity to upgrade to a DS1821+ (from a DS1819+) and add encrypted volumes. Any idea on what the real world impact of the encrypted volume would be on an 1821? I'm assuming less impact than on a 1819.

 

[samat.io]

I've tried encrypted volumes on an DS1819+, and gave up — way too slow! At least, too slow to saturate 10GbE. I guess it's fine for 1GbE but then you're wasting the SSDs.

I'm wondering if the CPU in an DS1821+ is much better, but I doubt it's good enough to saturate 10 GbE.

 

[Smbaker]

Encrypted volumes is perhaps not a deal-breaker, but it would be nice. Was your experience mostly a write bottleneck, read bottleneck, or both? I will have to run some experiments first, if/when I decide to proceed with this array.

 

[samat.io]

Write bottleneck, don't recall the numbers.

 

[oneplane]

I've tried encrypted volumes on an DS1819+, and gave up — way too slow! At least, too slow to saturate 10GbE. I guess it's fine for 1GbE but then you're wasting the SSDs.

I'm wondering if the CPU in an DS1821+ is much better, but I doubt it's good enough to saturate 10 GbE.

While you'd be wasting the SSDs for bandwidth, you still get the benefits of near-zero-access times. Very useful for clients that have an absolute mess of files and folders they browse all day.

This is a general benefit of SSDs in a not-so-heavy-loaded NAS anyway, you get that instant access but since you won't be nuking the flash with DWPD you still get to use them for a long time.

 

[Smbaker]

I have some crystaldiskmark results. These are from a Windows 10 PC to Synology DS1821+ using Mellanox 10 GbE NICs and a Brocade ICX 6450, over SMB/CIFS. Numbers reported are Q32T1 with a 32 GiB size. Five 870 EVO 4TB in a SHR-1.

With encryption: 585 MB/s read, 301 MB/s write
Without encryption: 1145 MB/s read, 789 MB/s write

So the impact of encryption on sequential performance was about half. Now I just have to decide whether losing half my performance is worth gaining the security. Certainly it is for some data, but maybe not necessarily for all data.

 

[autoturk]

Do you have any updates on this setup? I am considering going for 4 x 4 TB of the TLC 870 EVO because of the recent price drops, so wanted to see how your long term experience has been. Thanks!

 

[oneplane]

I have a quick SMART rip of a 4TB 870 QVO which should be 'worse' than an EVO and is currently at 99% health remaining:

ID	Attribute	Value	Worst	Threshold	Raw Data

5	Reallocated_Sector_Ct	100	100	010	0
9	Power_On_Hours	095	095	000	20788
12	Power_Cycle_Count	099	099	000	31
177	Wear_Leveling_Count	099	099	000	7
179	Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot	100	100	010	0
181	Program_Fail_Cnt_Total	100	100	010	0
182	Erase_Fail_Count_Total	100	100	010	0
183	Runtime_Bad_Block	100	100	010	0
187	Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt	100	100	000	0
190	Airflow_Temperature_Cel	073	064	000	27
195	ECC_Error_Rate	200	200	000	0
199	CRC_Error_Count	100	100	000	0
235	POR_Recovery_Count	099	099	000	7
241	Total_LBAs_Written	099	099	000	32524655109

Seem to be holding up fine. Mostly deployed in digital agencies with mixed Mac/PC users, mostly Adobe CC usage. I mix them with 4TB WD Red SATA SSDs on a 50-50 ratio, about 6 per chassis. (1821+ and similar) Usually configured with 10TB usable storage, about 2-drive failure tolerance (depends on Synology model, and amount of hot and cold spares available).

Big benefit of consumer-available drive is the ease of remotely guiding someone to buy and replace a disk. Ironic: that is more expensive for them since they get billed by the hour for that. But it's their choice.

 

[autoturk]

I have a quick SMART rip of a 4TB 870 QVO which should be 'worse' than an EVO and is currently at 99% health remaining:

ID	Attribute	Value	Worst	Threshold	Raw Data

5	Reallocated_Sector_Ct	100	100	010	0
9	Power_On_Hours	095	095	000	20788
12	Power_Cycle_Count	099	099	000	31
177	Wear_Leveling_Count	099	099	000	7
179	Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot	100	100	010	0
181	Program_Fail_Cnt_Total	100	100	010	0
182	Erase_Fail_Count_Total	100	100	010	0
183	Runtime_Bad_Block	100	100	010	0
187	Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt	100	100	000	0
190	Airflow_Temperature_Cel	073	064	000	27
195	ECC_Error_Rate	200	200	000	0
199	CRC_Error_Count	100	100	000	0
235	POR_Recovery_Count	099	099	000	7
241	Total_LBAs_Written	099	099	000	32524655109

Seem to be holding up fine. Mostly deployed in digital agencies with mixed Mac/PC users, mostly Adobe CC usage. I mix them with 4TB WD RED SATA SSDs on a 50-50 ratio, about 6 per chassis. (1821+ and similar) Usually configured with 10TB usable storage, about 2-drive failure tolerance (depends on Synology model, and amount of hot and cold spares available).

Thanks! This is helpful!