NAS Advice for MSAccess DB Backend

[maruhi]

Does any members have feedback on Synology support?

I had timely support from QNAP during the time I was setting up TS-253Pro last year but I am experiencing something very different when I ran into this oplocks issue with TS-453A installation.

Since this is only my second QNAP install I was jus wondering how Synology's support is. Do they provide number to call in on top of a support tix system?

 

[Shabbir Rao]

Go ahead and get a QNAP. I am using QNAP and Synology both are good to use and easy to setup but I would prefer QNAP because it is easy to create packages in QNAP with any third party back up software.

 

[maruhi]

Thank you for the input. Can you speak to support responsiveness of Synology?

 

[stevech]

Thank you for the input. Can you speak to support responsiveness of Synology?

I've owned a DS212 for several years. About 2 times I called (Calif. office) for help and spoke to an engineer rather than a level 1 dolt). But I'm tech-savvy and haven't needed help in 2 years or so. The user forum is good, if you filter out the B.S.

A recommendation made here is to choose based on your ability to add 3rd party programs to the NAS. I never do that. My data is too important to risk farting around with its OS internals myself, and repeat reconfig custom stuff for each new OS release. For Synology and QNAP, that's about twice a year. But I wait for a new release to be 6 months old, and read the user forum gripes before making the change. These vendors have minor updates for security now, since the open SSL debacle.

 

[sfx2000]

With regards to QNAP - just to check their support - I opened up a ticket...

While a bit slow at response, they were able to ID the issue, and recommend appropriate actions...

I already knew the answer, and it wasn't a trivial problem - their Softswitch/Virtual switch changes with regards to QTS 4.2 and Virtualization Station (that update changed some things with regards to how the host IP config was, long story...)

When I say "slow", it's in comparison with an Enterprise/Carrier Grade SLA's where we spend big bucks on support contracts - there, one can expect a customer response within an hour or so...

QNAP's response was within 24 hours, and the ticket closed with the issue resolved... I was pretty happy as a non-support contracted customer.

 

[maruhi]

Great feedback and thank you for taking an extra step to test the waters - greatly appreciate it!

An update from my side:

I finally got a call back and it wasn't from the current engineer helping me through the tix system (I have pleaded to him to call me back for several days already but it fell on deaf ears).

Out of desperation, last night I reopened an older support tix that was assigned to a very responsive engineer when setting up the TS-253Pro last year and he called me back this afternoon! He also suggested to reopen another old tix because - little did I know back then - that old tix was handled by a senior support engineer.

I just finished replying and explaining what I observe so hopefully I will get good inputs tomorrow so I can ascertain if there is a root cause or I need to ditch NAS for this project and go Plan B (of course the latter will mean eating the cost of TS-453A).

I thought of something while talking to this responsive engineer this afternoon ... I would like to ask here if what I am thinking is logically sound or I'm way off in lala land ... here goes:

1. if Oplocks is enabled, application will get the data from the local memory cache;
2. if Oplocks is disabled, application will get the data from the NAS over the LAN;
3. if above statements are true, the application is blind to the OS feature of Oplocks and the number of packets required to accomplish the operation should not change whether Oplocks is ENABLED or DISABLED;
4. latency introduced, all other things being equal, is because it has to get the info over the LAN when Oplocks is disabled.

Is above sound or not sound?

 

[maruhi]

Duh, never mind the question. What was I thinking!

Going to local memory cache to get data (Oplocks enabled) will not create network packets after the first initial access to load the file into memory while going over the LAN (Oplocks disabled) will.

 

[maruhi]

While waiting for reply got on the wire onsite and experimented some more in wireshark while capturing ... I don't know if these stats of "service response times" ... what are they telling me (if anything) as yellow highlights are the numbers different when running against a shared folder with oplocks disabled. Running 5000 loops of read/write to FoxPro database:

 

[RMerlin]

On a customer's QNAP I had to reconfigure a few things to get their Access DB to work properly. I think that one of them required changing the file security support to fully support Windows ACL, otherwise the DB would fail whenever trying to run a compression operation on it.

Unfortunately I forgot the details, it was a year or two ago

 

[maruhi]

Thank you for the input! Interesting and another stone to turn come Monday. Interesting too since Oplocks is a windoze "thing" then maybe there's something to it even though it goes through SAMBA. Definitely a worthwhile thing to try

 

[maruhi]

@RMerlin ... since it was MS Access you were alos trying to turn Oplocks OFF?

 

[RMerlin]

@RMerlin ... since it was MS Access you were alos trying to turn Oplocks OFF?

I don't remember if I kept it enabled or disabled, sorry - been too long since I worked on this case, and I don't have remote access to that customer's NAS. I remember it was one of the settings I did explore, but in the end the fix was to enable Windows ACL support.

 

[maruhi]

Thank you. I'm going to test that

 

[maruhi]

@RMerlin: Thank you again for that possible application to my situation. Unfortunately it didn't work (applied advanced Windoze ACL support, restarted & tested). Nonetheless it was worth a shot as oplocks relates to Windoze ... and I have another item on my troubleshooting checklist if I run into these situations with Windoze specificity

 

[maruhi]

Thank you all for your inputs

I have some more questions regarding oplocks, NAS & Windoze clients so I'll start a new thread (I've thread jacked this thread too long --- sorry).

 

[Shabbir Rao]

Go for any NAS device along with a better and most importantly workable third party software. I am using multiple NAS devices QNAP and Synology both on different locations along with a back up software Syncrify which is working very good for me so far. It provides all latest techniques of back up and it is also compatible with all known OS available in the market.