Which RAID configuration did you select and why? Going to be setting up my DS1815+ this week using 5 WD 4TB RAID drives.
Synology Box RAID configuration
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RAID 1. I have a Synology DS716 II+ with 2 WD Red Pro 3 tb drives...why...my only option with just 2 bays.
Can you have a SDD disk and WD Red Pro drive, keeping RAID 1? Can we be sure that the server will always read from the SDD drive?
I used the default Synology RAID system. Don't know if it's an alternate to RAID 5 or 10 or ??????????
And be done.
If you have misgivings about what HDD the data is read from then use SSD for all your drives. They are getting cheaper, about $350 for a 1 TB Samsung SSD and prices will continue to fall. That is where the beauty of Synology Hybrid Raid comes into play. With regular RAID, say RAID 5 if you were to use four 1 TB disk your real capacity would 3 TB. If later you'd want to add a 2 TB SSD to the mix, with regular RIAD 5 your total capacity would remain at 3 TB... (the smallest disk determines the total capacity in RAID 5) with SHR you get a little more with just one 2T added to the three 1 TB drive your total capacity could be 4 TB when using SHR ... I don't remember the exact value. The you can add another 2 TB drive and your total storage capacity would increase slightly again. Up to a maximum of 6 TB when using all four 2 TB SSD.
Did I make sense ?
I use SHR-2 with five 4tb enterprise-class drives
Synology Hybrid Raid gives you protection from one drive failing. If any one drive fails you can fully recover. Basically all you have to do is insert a new drive in place of the failed unit and it will rebuild the whole setup
SHR-2 is the same, except it provides for up to two drives to fail.
You have enough bays, and drives are cheap enough, that I'd go with SHR-2.
One more thing to keep in mind. please back-up your NAS regularly. RAIDx (be it 0,1, or 10,etc) can and do fail at times resulting in corrupt data. IOW you may not be able to play the entire content of most pieces or simply not play anything recognizable.
Another thing with RAID5, Large HDD systems takes a very long time to rebuild in the case of a Disk Failure for example, a 12 TB may take up to a week to rebuild! During rebuilding the NAS is somewhat usable but not a guarantee and if anything happens to another disk during rebuilding ( a real possibility) then all bets are off. The best is to have two NAS and get them to synchronize/mirror each other. NAS are getting cheaper by the day. in a hobby of $2000 power cord.. A $1000 NAS with 12 TB of RAID 5 storage capacity is a bargain. The second NAS doesn't need the fancy drives, just regular Hard Disk Drives these days a 4 TB is about $150 and sometimes less... There exist programs to do that . One of the cheapest (its free) and easiest software to use is synctoy from the good people of MicroSoft
Another thing with RAID5, Large HDD systems takes a very long time to rebuild in the case of a Disk Failure for example, a 12 TB may take up to a week to rebuild! During rebuilding the NAS is somewhat usable but not a guarantee and if anything happens to another disk during rebuilding ( a real possibility) then all bets are off. The best is to have two NAS and get them to synchronize/mirror each other. NAS are getting cheaper by the day. in a hobby of $2000 power cord.. A $1000 NAS with 12 TB of RAID 5 storage capacity is a bargain. The second NAS doesn't need the fancy drives, just regular Hard Disk Drives these days a 4 TB is about $150 and sometimes less... There exist programs to do that . One of the cheapest (its free) and easiest software to use is synctoy from the good people of MicroSoft
I use -2- 24 terabyte NAS units which mirror each other. one is upstairs from my listening room and feeds my listening room server (CAPS v4 Lampizator Komputer clone). the other NAS is in my house connected to the other NAS over a Gigabyte network. each NAS has -4- 6 terabyte drives. both NAS units have one empty bay for expansion.
works great without any drama. I have about 16 terabytes of music files which are mirrored.
Raid 1 or raid 10 are optimized for write performance and have a heavy capacity tax of 50% (mirrored). However these are best because it is an exact copy of the data not spread out across several drives in a Raid 5/6. If you didnt already buy the box I would recommend two smaller drive count Synology devices and mirror them as Mike suggested
Also do not use raid 5 unless you have a backup as Frantz pointed out you can lose 1 drive and retain the data, but the rebuild period will be days (min 2). During this time you are exposed to a second drive failure while it is rebuilding and if you are using 4TB drives that is a large amount of data to lose.
Anything 2tb or larger use Raid5 and Raid 6 if using 3tb+. Drive dependent not total capacity dependent.
If you already have the Synology box then I would do a Raid 5 with a backup device(s) or a raid 6 with a spare hard drive on hand to hot swap it.
I would also add a UPS to the plug this into since if you have a power outage and the data is not done being written it can corrupt your entire storage.
Very true and in the case of the Synology, you can have the NAS control some UPS. This allows a graceful NAS shutdown once the UPS battery is below a certain level of charge.
And in Mike Lavigne's situation, where he has a mirroring setup of two identical NAS, Synology Hybrid RAID is not an option.
Why not? That is exactly what I have and a little more: I have my music in 3 NAS: Two (2) in Haiti ( House and Office) and One in Miami (Office).
Answer is in the help file, under the High Availability topic if I remember... Stated SHR not an option in that scenario.
HA = When one box fails the other box is active and that is not the same as having a backup. HA is really only relevant when you need to have no downtime and for an audio guy he can live for 5 min while the other system boots up.
Tell me how having a totally duplicate mirrored NAS is not like having a backup? Granted, I suppose, some catastrophe could take out both systems, but we're starting to get into some pretty unlikely scenarios. Having a backup of tens of terabytes also requires additional investment in hardware, so for me a fully mirrored system like Mike is running seems like a pretty optimal solution. If the array gets corrupted, or there is a disk failure (absent a hot boot spare), there is still a fair amount of time for the NAS to rebuild the array. Having a High Availability solution would take the wait out of that scenario. But... every option carries some risks.
My original point was that SHR has some instances where it may not be the best or even possible option, like a HA mirrored NAS.
Splitting hairs with me buddy.
A backup is backup no matter where you decide to back up the data. HA is a feature to leverage said backup. If you have 2 Synology boxes and one is not working (or is rebuilding) you can just map the IP address to the one that box that is on your source. Might take you a bit of time but is an option for music playback until the array rebuilds.
HA is a feature that if your storage has to be rebuilt or goes offline the other one Immediately takes over given so you are never experiencing downtime. Hence the term High(ly) Available or HA.
I personally think you should stay far away from RAID especially with large drives. My personal backup solution is single drives on the NAS (I use QNAP) and then I have two external backup USB drives for each NAS drive.
Since HDD are guaranteed to fail at some point then the possibility of having more than one fail in a Raid5 is highly probably and have seen the tears flow when it happens. Raid if not used for the performance benefits it offers is just a simplified way to manage a large pool of storage... so it really isn't a requirement. But in yours and Mikes scenario having a backup on a separate box with a separate raid is certainly a very good approach.
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According to Raid-failure.com the probability of a successful rebuild after 1 drive in a 5 drive array fails is 99.8%. "Highly probable" is way overstated.
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