New Setup of 918+. SHR1 vs RAID 5?

[jderosa3]

SHR1 vs RAID 5? Thoughts

I am about to get my NAS up and running sooner. Here are my specs and usage:

• DS-918+
  
  
• 16GB RAM
  
  
• 2x M2 970 EVO 500GB SSDs
  
  
• 4x 4TB Seagate Iron Wolf
  
  
• Connected to a Asus AC68U Wifi Router
  

I want to use this as a SOHO NAS with use for music and video stream to up to 3 devices at once. I will store work and personal data on it including pictures. I may also host a WordPress site or two off of it. I am struggling of how to intially setup the drives.

I want more space but couldnt afford the bigger TB drives. In which case I would have went with SHR2 and/or RAID 6, but since I didn't I am stuck with SHR1 or RAID 5. Outside of the fact you can mix and match drives with SHR... If I decide to expand the array later as costs come down on drives should I opt for SHR?

Concerning file systems... EXT or BTRFS? From what I read BTRFS might be good and stable now and offers me snapshots and the ablity to play with Virtual Machines on the NAS. What are your thoughts?

Please help guide me with these thoughts on RAID type (knowing I want I mentioned above) and File System type.

I was going to go with SHR and BTRFS? Go for it? Or talk me out of it?

Thanks!

 

[coxhaus]

I have never run a NAS but I have built many hot swap RAIDS. RAID10 will give you faster access and RAID5 will give you more space. If you can use the SSDs for caching then it may not matter for speed. So you may be better off using RAID5 since you get more space and caching negates the RAID10 speed increase.

PS
When it comes to RAID more smaller drives are faster.

 

[Marin]

SHR1 vs RAID 5? Thoughts

I am about to get my NAS up and running sooner. Here are my specs and usage:

• DS-918+
  
  
• 16GB RAM
  
  
• 2x M2 970 EVO 500GB SSDs
  
  
• 4x 4TB Seagate Iron Wolf
  
  
• Connected to a Asus AC68U Wifi Router
  

I want to use this as a SOHO NAS with use for music and video stream to up to 3 devices at once. I will store work and personal data on it including pictures. I may also host a WordPress site or two off of it. I am struggling of how to intially setup the drives.

I want more space but couldnt afford the bigger TB drives. In which case I would have went with SHR2 and/or RAID 6, but since I didn't I am stuck with SHR1 or RAID 5. Outside of the fact you can mix and match drives with SHR... If I decide to expand the array later as costs come down on drives should I opt for SHR?

Concerning file systems... EXT or BTRFS? From what I read BTRFS might be good and stable now and offers me snapshots and the ablity to play with Virtual Machines on the NAS. What are your thoughts?

Please help guide me with these thoughts on RAID type (knowing I want I mentioned above) and File System type.

I was going to go with SHR and BTRFS? Go for it? Or talk me out of it?

Thanks!

Perhaps these links may be helpful to you:


https://dongknows.com/how-to-turn-a-wi-fi-router-usb-port-into-a-nas-server/

https://dongknows.com/synology-ds218-review/

https://dongknows.com/why-you-would-want-a-synology-nas-server/

The third link talks about SHR.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[coxhaus]

I have always been a believer you need to run matching drives in a RAID. But at some point over time the firmware changes on the newer drives and if you replace a drive it will be a different firmware. Sounds like SHR will solve the matching drive issue. What is the cost of running SHR? Does SHR run the RAID based on the slowest drive? I don't know the answer. Maybe SSD caching comes into play again. 1TB of caching is a lot for home setup.

 

[ddaenen1]

I have always been a believer you need to run matching drives in a RAID. But at some point over time the firmware changes on the newer drives and if you replace a drive it will be a different firmware. Sounds like SHR will solve the matching drive issue. What is the cost of running SHR? Does SHR run the RAID based on the slowest drive? I don't know the answer. Maybe SSD caching comes into play again. 1TB of caching is a lot for home setup.

You can run RAID with non-matching drives as long as you understand that the NAS will partition all drives at the same size, being the size of the smallest drive and all remaining capacity of the bigger drive(s) remain untouched during the formatting process. As for file systems, to my knowledge BTRFS is the way to go.

 

[coxhaus]

I was thinking more inline with non-matching drives related to hardware differences like with different head to platter access times. Maybe different rotation speeds. Also the densities of the platters this relates to the blocking on the drive the number of heads and platers and how much the heads need to move on the platters. I almost forgot caching on the drive. This makes some drives faster than other drives.

 

[Clark Griswald]

@jderosa3
I recently setup my 918+ w/ similar upgrades.
This was my first "real" NAS and prior to purchasing, I read (& over-read ) the Synology community, and outside reviews of the Synology software/apps, and I chose to use SHR1 and BTRFS.