Synology DSM 5.0 Beta is out - enterprise features coming

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dba

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Feb 20, 2012
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The upcoming Synology DSM 5.0 software is now available as a beta, and it looks pretty darn good.

Features presentation: Preview: Synology DSM 5.0: Disk Station Manager gets a make-over - SSD Caching / Memory Compression | Hardware.Info United States

Beta download: Index of /download/beta/DSM5.0_beta/4418

Video of using the UI to create a 1PB cluster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9kE0xNh2-8

Some highlights are:
* SSD read AND write caching (only on *xs model hardware, at least for now)
* app-consistent iSCSI snapshots triggered via VMWare, Windows, and Hyper-V
* iSCSI read coalesce to improve random read IOPS by 6x - could be huge for VMs.
* Scale-out clustering with redundancy, striping, or RAID across up to 12 NAS devices (XS and XS+ hardware only)
* Centralized management UI
* Sync to dropbox, google drive
* Lots of new mobile and media features
* Vague mention of other improvements to snapshots
 
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33_viper_33

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Aug 3, 2013
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Two questions:

1) What service is its RAID based off of?

2) Why Synology when I can use OpenIndiana to get ZFS, ISCSI, RDMA, etc with good driver support. The only down side with solaris is the interface isn't as novice/average joe friendly.
 

dba

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Two questions:

1) What service is its RAID based off of?

2) Why Synology when I can use OpenIndiana to get ZFS, ISCSI, RDMA, etc with good driver support. The only down side with solaris is the interface isn't as novice/average joe friendly.
Synology uses mdadm under the covers, though they talk about their "hybrid" RAID which might include some proprietary stuff bolted onto mdadm.

My opinion is that the benefit to Synology is that their home and SOHO hardware is small, cute, very low power, and extremely quiet, and once you have one, you start discovering the apps which, like the rest of the Synology, are useful and extremely easy to install and maintain. I'm a huge performance nut at work, but for home use I just love the friendly little set-it-and-forget-it Synology.

Once you start needing serious performance, Synology has 2,000MB/s offerings for you in their RS line, but something like Napp-it is going to give you more performance for the dollar if you are comfortable designing, building, and maintaining your own servers. You'll spend 10x more of your time messing with it than you would having bought a commercial NAS, but that's a benefit if it's a hobby for you, and might be worth it if you are cash constrained. I'm not saying that ZFS/napp-it is difficult to build and maintain - it isn't - I'm just noting that a Synology can be deployed by a six year old.
You may have read that I recently built an Xpenology (Synology clone) box out of an HP DL180G6. Why did I do so when napp-it was right there waiting to be booted from usb? Because I wanted something that integrated seamlessly with my home Synology and was as easy to maintain, even if I had to give up the awesomeness that is ZFS. When I need serious throughput I still use my Windows 2012 storage server with SMB3, though I'd probably dump it if I could build a production-ready Solaris+ZFS+SMB3 box.
 
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Jeggs101

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These guys seem to be way ahead of Drobo, QNAP and Thecus at this point.
 

nitrobass24

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Have we confirmed no SMB3 for DSM 5.0? I havent seen a change log, but all it would take is for them to update to Samba4.

Also do we have any technical details of the new SSD Caching? Is it based on bcache?
 

OBasel

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Dec 28, 2010
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Scale out is like lefthand right?

I thought the biggest change is UI
 

Patrick

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I just sent Synology a note on Samba 4. We shall see.
 

dba

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Have we confirmed no SMB3 for DSM 5.0? I havent seen a change log, but all it would take is for them to update to Samba4.

Also do we have any technical details of the new SSD Caching? Is it based on bcache?
There are so many people looking for SMB3, and it would boost their performance so much, that I can't imagine they wouldn't highlight it in the beta docs if it existed. I rather expect Synology to wait for Samba4/4.1 to get very stable before adopting it for their NAS devices.
 

PigLover

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Samba4 - as of this week's nightly development load of 4.2 - does support SMB3 for experimental use only. This will help and gives you enhanced security and rights management features that come with SMB3. It will also give you some small performance improvement. But the real big win with SMB3 comes with multipath (and then even bigger win with RMDA). Neither Multipath or RDMA are on the official workplan for 4.2. It is still listed by the Samba project as simply "future"
 

mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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yeah the main gain of smb3 is the ability to go faster with multiple connections to/from the same host, it scales reasonably well with older 10gbe networking and multiple vcpu's in esxi. Windows 2012 is light years ahead of everyone else as usual and what keeps me coming back to using it for storage.
 

dba

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Samba4 - as of this week's nightly development load of 4.2 - does support SMB3 for experimental use only. This will help and gives you enhanced security and rights management features that come with SMB3. It will also give you some small performance improvement. But the real big win with SMB3 comes with multipath (and then even bigger win with RMDA). Neither Multipath or RDMA are on the official workplan for 4.2. It is still listed by the Samba project as simply "future"
Not even 4.2? That's disappointing to say the least, though I bet Microsoft is happy about it.
 

dba

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Some folks who have been poking around the Synology DSM 5.0 operating system beta code believe that a future version of DSM will include KVM support - as in the ability to run virtual machines within the Synology machine itself.

This would require dramatically more RAM, and would benefit greatly from more CPU cores. Maybe a new round of Synology hardware using Intel Avoton CPUs?
 

Patrick

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Some folks who have been poking around the Synology DSM 5.0 operating system beta code believe that a future version of DSM will include KVM support - as in the ability to run virtual machines within the Synology machine itself.

This would require dramatically more RAM, and would benefit greatly from more CPU cores. Maybe a new round of Synology hardware using Intel Avoton CPUs?
Rumor from CES was this fall we may see a refresh of some of the units. Avoton would be a good fit.
 

HellDiverUK

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Jul 16, 2014
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So, DSM 5.1 is out, and still stuck with SMB2.0 as far as I can tell. Shame, the ancient Samba version is basically why I stopped using a Synology.
 

Pri

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Jul 30, 2014
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They really seem to be dragging their feet on SMB3.0 - Has anyone read a statement from them as to why they haven't implemented it yet? SAMBA4 has had it for a long time now.
 

PigLover

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They really seem to be dragging their feet on SMB3.0
Its not Synology dragging their feet. Synology does not - for the most part - write their own network stacks. They get their SMB support by using the Open Source Samba4 project.

Samba actually does support SMB3.0 today (and likely so does Synology). What they do not support is what everybody wants - which is SMB Multipath. Currently the Samba project has not prioritized SMB Multipath because (a) its really hard and (b) their first priority is finishing full support for Active Directory.

Synology won't be putting SMB Multipath into their products until after it arrives as part of Samba. And right now its not on the priority worklist for the Samba project.
 

Pri

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Jul 30, 2014
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From what I read online Samba4 already had it and qnap has had SMB3 support for more than half of this year already?