That said, when setting up the Gold HDDs, we actually hit a limitation of the filesystem. There is an upper limit on volume size, so we first had to make a volume with the max size of 103.5TB (as you can see in the image below). DSM will install and reboot when finished. After a few minutes have passed, open a new tab and navigate to http://find.synology.com. Your DiskStation should show up and you will be able to connect. Data scrubbing inspects your volumes and modifies detected inconsistencies. In simple terms, this protects your NAS against bit-rot. There isn’t a specific schedule that’s mandatory, but it’s a good idea to run it at a minimum, bi-annually. For our testing, we configured the Synology DiskStation DS1821+ in RAID6 in both iSCSI and SMB using both an HDD and SSD configuration using the following drives:

If you're using the DS1621+ and want to upgrade to the DS1821+ to take advantage of the two extra drive bays, the process is the same as when you migrate from one Synology server to another. Retention: Select how many snapshots you’d like to retain. Depending on the file type (and size), you’ll most likely have different retention policies for different folders.

The performance you need

After that, you can install them via the slot on the server's underside. The process is easy and painless. All you need is a small Philip-head screwdriver. Synology DS1821+: SSD caching upgrade This next section will determine how much of the volume you’d like to allocate. Generally, most people will use all of it, so you can select Max.If you’d like to use something smaller, you can enter the value. During the memory test, your Synology NAS will be rebooted. It will recover after another reboot if its memory is normal and passes the test. However, if the memory test fails to finish or shows that there is an error, the memory may be faulty. In this case, you are strongly recommended to return your Synology NAS for repair. Just in case you have installed a non-Synology memory module, please remove it and rerun the memory test. Though once again you should remember that Synology do not recommend using memory modules that are not from Synology themselves, so this test may not be indicative of the health of unofficial memory in your Synology NAS. Alternatively, you can perform as many actions and processes as possible (scans, copy/pastes, thumbnail generation, transcode a 4K file, RAID changes, synchronisation, etc) at once to see how the task manager and resource monitor behaves in the Synology DS1821+. It should spike each time and at a greater height as you do more and more and once it exceeds the memory you had previously installed, this is a good confirmation that the installation is working fine. PCIe add-in cards, expansion units, and storage drives are sold separately. Refer to the compatibility list for compatible devices. Synology SNV3400 series M.2 NVMe SSD drives can be installed through the built-in M.2 slots to enable SSD caching or create SSD storage pools. Drives are sold separately.

The more is always, the better in terms of capacity, but generally, you won't need drives larger than 250GB for caching. The 5-bay DX517 expansion unit uses an eSATA connection, which caps at 5Gbps, to connect to the server. After setting up a Synology NAS, most people are interested in accessing their NAS from outside of their local network. Considering you can find hard drives of 20TB and higher capacities nowadays, the number of drive bays is not that important. So, if one can live with fewer bays, the DS1821+ has nothing to justify the more expensive cost compared to the DS1621+. While we went through the initial Synology NAS setup process, there are many additional items you can use your NAS for. I have a bunch of tutorials that I will link below showing how to complete certain actions. Keep in mind, there are a ton of apps you can install and these are my favorite Synology NAS apps that you can install! 4.1 Accessing your Synology NAS Outside of Your Local NetworkFor our standard deviation latency results, the 22TB Gold hit 14.04ms through 408.46ms (SMB) and 16.83ms to 245.49ms (iSCSI).

By default, Synology NASdevices have a bunch of different ways that they can be monitored. However, monitoring does very little if you aren’t being notified of issues that have occurred on your NAS. In the first of our enterprise workloads, we measured a long sample of random 4K performance with 100% write and 100% read activity. Looking at IOPS, the Synology DiskStation DS1821+ HDD configuration recorded 1,550 IOPS write and 595 IOPS read in SMB, while hitting 1,575 IOPS write and 4,153 IOPS read in iSCSI. With SSDs, it showed, expectedly, significant gains (as is the case in the rest of the performance review) with 38,633 IOPS write and 26,209 IOPS read in SMB and 37,339 IOPS write, and 99,988 IOPS read in iSCSI. Usable capacity for each volume will be lower than the maximum volume size and is dependent on the filesystem and the amount of system metadata stored. In any case, installing the SSDs onto the server is super easy. The two M.2 slots are inside the server's left wall. Take the first and second drive bays out, and you can reach them. Synology DS1821+: 10Gbps NIC card upgrade In our SSD configuration, we saw better performance, to no surprise. In 4K read the DS1821+ saw 38,633 IOPS write and 26,209 IOPS read in SMB and 37,339 IOPS write and 99,988 IOPS read in iSCSI. Looking at 4K average latency, the NAS saw 6.62ms write and 9.77ms read in SMB and 6.85ms write and 2.56ms read in iSCSI. With our 8K sequential test, the SSDs in the NAS hit 53,992 IOPS write and 56,436 IOPS read in SMB and 56,181 IOPS write, and 57,101 IOPS read in iSCSI. In 128K sequential, the NAS hit 458MB/s write and 463.1MB/s read in SMB and 457.6MB/s read and 462.9MB/s write in iSCSI.

Works best with Synology drives

The easiest way to think of snapshots is that they “freeze” your files in time and allow you to recover those files later if necessary. The Synology DiskStation DS1821+ is an 8-bay NAS solution designed for SMBs looking for an effective way to store and protect their data. Like others from the line, this 8-bay NAS solution features an AMD Ryzen CPU and two M.2 2280 slots for NVMe Cache, which helps to drive its solid performance. Businesses can also significantly increase the capacity of the DS1821+ using dual DX517 expansion devices, which ups the drive count to 18 for a maximum single volume size of 108TB. It’s important to know that although there are many different kinds of Synology NAS, this guide is for the DS1821+ NAS. Although many of the Diskstation range are similar, there are many differences in Memory module frequency, size and capacity support between the hardware architecture of devices, so make sure you are only following this guide if you want to upgrade the memory unofficially on a Synology DS1821+ NAS drive. For standard deviation, the WD Gold recorded 611.48ms read and 333.9ms write in SMB, and 51.12ms read and 165.22ms write in iSCSI. Milton Keynes, United Kingdom – December 10, 2020 – Synology Inc. today introduced its next-generation 8-bay NAS. The DS1821+ is a solution designed for high-capacity and high-performance data management and storage. Its application ecosystem, versatile performance capabilities, and storage expandability enable content creators and businesses to easily store and secure their files.

What's most notable, though, is that it's basically the DS1621+ plus two drive bays. The two share the same hardware specs -- both are the firsts from Synology that use an AMD Ryzen quad-core CPU. With that, let's proceed with the upgrade. For this post, I did the upgrades on a DS1821+, but the processes and parts are the same on a DS1621+. Synology DS1821+: RAM upgrade At this point, you will need to create rules that allow traffic into your NAS. The first thing you need to ensure is that you allow traffic to DSM. And finally, the servers have a PCIe slot for an add-on card. In this case, you can use it to add 10Gbps connectivity to the servers -- another must if you're into Multi-Gig.The WD Gold 22TB drive is designed to lower TCO for organizations, as they allow for more capacity without having to increase physical footprint or the same capacity at a lower physical footprint. Not only that, the Golds are one of the best-performing 3.5″ HDDs we’ve seen in our lab. Powered by an AMD Ryzen CPU, the Synology DS1821+ is an easy-to-use 8-bay NAS aimed more at SMBs that require a bit more performance and capacity. It features two M.2 slots for NVMe SSD cache as well as 10GbE connectivity (though this must be added via one of its PCIe expansions slots). Overall, the Synology DiskStation DS1821+ is a strong performer for an SMB NAS. You will need two drives if you want to cache for both writing and reading -- so it's a good idea to get two. There are certainly exceptions to this (like when DSM 7 was first released) where you might not want to be first to update. However, as time goes on, you will notice that you connect to your NAS less frequently than you initially did, and this is where I believe automatic updates add value.