Synology DS1813+ as an alternative

cannot fathom how a business such as Limetech is even surviving at this point with all of the other more modern and flexible options out there today.

Just out of curiosity, what are some of the "... more modern and flexible options out there ..."  ??

I'm really not aware of anything else that provides fault tolerance; lets most drives stay spun down while you're accessing data;  provides a unified single folder interface to the whole storage array (e.g. shares); and allows you to mix drive sizes (and even interfaces).    At least nothing that's any more commercially viable than UnRAID.

Clearly a good RAID controller can provide essentially the same thing in terms of a unified access (i.e. a single "drive" that contains all of the storage); but it won't let you mix drive sizes, and won't let you access data without spinning up all drives.

And FlexRAID and a few others are trying to provide similar capabilities to UnRAID ... but their stability (i.e. Beta versions, etc.) is hardly any better than UnRAID.    My v4.7 server currently has 170 days of uptime; and had about 300 before that ... it only shuts down when we have extended power failures.  My v5 server only has ~ 30 days, as I've been updating it with each RC and added a drive last month, but once v5 final is installed on it, I suspect it will be just as stable as its 4.7 "brother".

I completely agree that the v5 release schedule is getting a bit ridiculous => not so much that it's taking so long; but that there is virtually no STATUS info posted.    I like that Tom's mindset is "don't release it if I know about problems" ... but do NOT like that there's not at least an occasional status note.    But I think the set of  "... all of the other more modern and flexible options ..." is a pretty small set (e.g. null).

Synology DS1813+ sounds to be where I'm headed...

And quite honestly...while you may think that many are still around - the fact of the matter is that the only one's still around are the few - most of them have left long ago in search of more mainstream NAS devices. I truly do believe that those left here in the forums are few rather than many.

I want all the features, none of the hassle of having to read and read and read these forums any longer, and to be able to plug it in and go. That's what I feel most want these days. I have gone the route of Unraid long enough now to know that while it is rock-solid (4.7), it's just not up to par with pre-built NAS's being made by Synology, Qnap etc.

It's just too easy now to buy one of those, plug it in and never think about it again. Who the heck wants to wonder if each and every device is compatible any longer....those days my friends are long gone - thus my same feelings at this juncture about Unraid's future.

And one more thing....I have no clue as to how Tom is making any $ off this concept any longer. If you think selling license key's is going to cut it, you are wrongly mistaken. I haven't seen any of his servers for sale in years at this point. Is he surfing these days or what?

Synology DS1813+ sounds to be where I'm headed...

 

I want all the features, none of the hassle of having to read and read and read these forums any longer, and to be able to plug it in and go. That's what I feel most want these days. I have gone the route of Unraid long enough now to know that while it is rock-solid (4.7), it's just not up to par with pre-built NAS's being made by Synology, Qnap etc.

 

You know, I agree with you and after the lack of updates, and being a long time unRAID supported, I'm thinking of going this direction as well.

Synology DS1813+ sounds to be where I'm headed...

 

And quite honestly...while you may think that many are still around - the fact of the matter is that the only one's still around are the few - most of them have left long ago in search of more mainstream NAS devices. I truly do believe that those left here in the forums are few rather than many.

 

I want all the features, none of the hassle of having to read and read and read these forums any longer, and to be able to plug it in and go. That's what I feel most want these days. I have gone the route of Unraid long enough now to know that while it is rock-solid (4.7), it's just not up to par with pre-built NAS's being made by Synology, Qnap etc.

 

It's just too easy now to buy one of those, plug it in and never think about it again. Who the heck wants to wonder if each and every device is compatible any longer....those days my friends are long gone - thus my same feelings at this juncture about Unraid's future.

 

And one more thing....I have no clue as to how Tom is making any $ off this concept any longer. If you think selling license key's is going to cut it, you are wrongly mistaken. I haven't seen any of his servers for sale in years at this point. Is he surfing these days or what?

I don't disagree with your conclusion ... in fact, the DS1813+ is quite nice => very nice performance, and low power [75.19W (Access), 34.12W (HDD Hibernation)].    Stick 8 WD Reds in one of those, and you'll have 21TB of very reliable storage.  However ... they're $1100 plus the disks.  For ~ $500 (plus disks) you can build a very nice 7-drive system with UnRAID Plus and a Lian-Li PC-Q25B case that will have almost identical idle power consumption, and much lower "typical use" power consumption (since all drives don't have to spin up, a typical media stream will be using ~ 40W).

It really depends a lot on what you use UnRAID for.  If you want a reliable storage server, it works very well.  The VAST majority of issues are with the plugins and addons folks are installing "on top of" their UnRAID installs.   

If you want more than just storage, then the additional features Synology provides do have the advantage that they're tested and known to work.  UnRAID add-ons don't have any such "certification" process ... and with the "moving target" of the available releases, it's very difficult to know what works with what.

I agree it's a tough choice.    But UnRAID is still a very good choice if storage is the goal.    I think that's why a lot of folks are moving to ESXi, where you can have a "stock" UnRAID providing very stable high-capacity storage;  and other VMs that do the "heavy lifting" for other applications that you want to use that may not be quite as stable.

Do you by chance know if the Synology products spin up all drives when accessing one stream for example? Are you saying that Unraid beats it out in this department?

Do you by chance know if the Synology products spin up all drives when accessing one stream for example? Are you saying that Unraid beats it out in this department?

Yes, the Synology units spin all the drives up ... the advantage is faster transfer speeds (since the data is striped like a standard RAID-5);  the disadvantage is power consumption.  And faster speeds make no difference in a media-streaming application.    But of course with low power drives like WD Reds it's still fairly low ... Synology advertises 75W with drives spun up (clearly this presumes the use of low-power drives, since it's about a 5W/drive average).    But a single 5W drive spinning is clearly going to use less power than 8 of them    [the "UnRAID advantage"]

Do you by chance know if the Synology products spin up all drives when accessing one stream for example? Are you saying that Unraid beats it out in this department?

 

Yes, the Synology units spin all the drives up ... the advantage is faster transfer speeds (since the data is striped like a standard RAID-5);  the disadvantage is power consumption.  And faster speeds make no difference in a media-streaming application.    But of course with low power drives like WD Reds it's still fairly low ... Synology advertises 75W with drives spun up (clearly this presumes the use of low-power drives, since it's about a 5W/drive average).    But a single 5W drive spinning is clearly going to use less power than 8 of them    [the "UnRAID advantage"]

Can you use any size drives? I mean mixed drive sizes.

Can you use any size drives? I mean mixed drive sizes.

According to the specs you can use up to 4TB drives ... and I suspect that's not really the limit, but just reflects the maximum size drives that are available (i.e. I suspect it will work with the 5TB WD Reds coming out at the end of this year).

But no, you can't mix drive sizes.

Do you by chance know if the Synology products spin up all drives when accessing one stream for example? Are you saying that Unraid beats it out in this department?

 

Yes, the Synology units spin all the drives up ... the advantage is faster transfer speeds (since the data is striped like a standard RAID-5);  the disadvantage is power consumption.  And faster speeds make no difference in a media-streaming application.

Another disadvantage is drive wear and tear. When all the drives are spun up and used for striped-data reads or writes (standard RAID arrays), they wear at the same rate. This tends to lead to higher chances of having multiple drive failures near each other.

Another disadvantage is drive wear and tear. When all the drives are spun up and used for striped-data reads or writes (standard RAID arrays), they wear at the same rate. This tends to lead to higher chances of having multiple drive failures near each other.

... which has a further implication:  it tends to increase the likelihood of a 2nd drive failure during a rebuild ... which in a traditional RAID scenario = catastrophic data loss.    This is part of the reason enterprise RAID systems are tending to move towards RAID-6, so they can sustain two drive failures.

Note that another reason for moving towards RAID-6 (i.e. tolerance of dual drive failures) is that as drive capacities get very large, the probability of a 2nd failure gets fairly high.  So even in an UnRAID environment ... where drive failures aren't as catastrophic AND drives aren't as uniformly "worn" so hopefully aren't as likely to fail near-simultaneously, there's still a high demand for a move towards dual drive failure fault tolerance.

I am not here for flaming and I haven't been a long time(9mos) user of unRaid my server has been up since then and the only reboot I had was upgrading to a latest rc.  I have not encountered any problem since then. It is functioning like what I expected (a fileserver with parity protection) and the addons are just a bonus for me. I agree about the development stages it is slow but still you cannot change the fact that it is working as it is. You may be bored about what unRaid has to offer but how it function is the really important part. My average speed during parity sync is at 120mb/s I am not sure whether it is slow or fast since I don't mind the server at all. Now I feel that my server is pretty much powerful for unraid so I am thinking of converting it to ESXi and put the unraid on a vm so I can maximize the server with more VM's in it which you can't do in any other pre-built NAS like Synology. Every device has its own pros and cons and what people need to do is stop comparing and accept it and be contended about it. Cheers! 

I recently (past couple days) had been looking at Synology products. If I were to make that move, the DS1813+ was the one I was looking at. It can do everything I currently use my unRAID server for and has some added benefits. The downside is the price. I used an old PC I had when I built my unRAID and it has been running pretty reliably for over 2 years. It cost me less than $500 to build with a capacity of 15 disks. If you want that kind of capacity in a Synology it will cost you $2k. The DS1813+ has 8 bays and you can expand it to 18 with two additional 5 bay devices. The price difference to me is the biggest thing. The only big difference I see for switching to Synology would be the speed.

I recently (past couple days) had been looking at Synology products. If I were to make that move, the DS1813+ was the one I was looking at. It can do everything I currently use my unRAID server for and has some added benefits. The downside is the price. I used an old PC I had when I built my unRAID and it has been running pretty reliably for over 2 years. It cost me less than $500 to build with a capacity of 15 disks. If you want that kind of capacity in a Synology it will cost you $2k. The DS1813+ has 8 bays and you can expand it to 18 with two additional 5 bay devices. The price difference to me is the biggest thing. The only big difference I see for switching to Synology would be the speed.

Another advantage at least to me would also be space and noise. My current unRAID server is pretty noisy and take up the space of a full tower. Space is very limited in my apt, and any extra would be very nice.

After a few years, your Synology hardware dies ...

Isn't every data definitely lost if you haven't the same spare Synology?

The ability to recover from a disaster really says something about the technology used in unRAID.

Actually Synology is also fault-tolerant, so that's ALMOST a wash ...with one BIG exception:  If a disk dies, there's basically no difference.  But if the physical machine dies, it's a different story.  I have no doubt that you can recover the data from a Synology box in that case ... either by buying another Synology; using commercial RAID recovery tools like RAID Reconstructor; etc. -- BUT with UnRAID you simply move your disks to another system; plug in the flash drive; and boot 

You DO, of course, have to have another system that can handle all your drives;  but the same thing is true for any other system (Synology or any other competitor).    And with UnRAID, that system almost certainly CAN cost less [Many of us only buy fairly high quality hardware, so it may not].

Another advantage at least to me would also be space and noise. My current unRAID server is pretty noisy and take up the space of a full tower. Space is very limited in my apt, and any extra would be very nice.

Build yourself a Lian-Li PC-Q25B based system 

VERY small; VERY low power;  VERY quiet; built-in hot-swap cages for 5 drives (with room for 2 more).

Prices vary depending on just what's on sale at any given moment, but mine cost ~ $400 plus the drives.  Draws ~ 20W on idle, ~ 45W with all drives spun up and doing a parity check (6 3TB WD Reds); and is VERY quiet.  I used the SuperMicro X7SPA-H-D525-O Atom board;  but if you want more power you can use an ASUS P8H77-I and a Core i3/5/7 => your idle will be a bit higher (~35W), but all the other characteristics will be the same (small/quiet/low-power).

For any UnRAID system that doesn't need more than 20TB, that's the only configuration I recommend any more ... and once the 5TB WD Reds are available, it will support up to 25TB "as is" and 30TB with an add-in card to provide another SATA port !!      [i'm a die-hard Intel guy;  but if you want 7 SATA ports without the need for an add-in card, you CAN get a mini-ITX board with 7 ports using AMD:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157357 ]

... and by the way, the new Plus license key supports 7 drives => so this case is perfect for a maxed-out Plus system.      Which can now be a VERY nice system with high capacity drives.  I built mine last year, and filled it with 3TB Reds ("filled" is relative -- I could still add one more drive if I add a controller card).    So mine has 15TB.    But with 4TB drives available now (for less than I paid for the 3TB units);  and 5TB coming at the end of the year, this is a VERY attractive option for a storage server.

A quick google suggests the DS1813+ is around £1000 to buy here in the UK. That's about $1500.

That's bare with no drives. Let's say we build the same unraid server with the same amount of drives so we will write off the cost of drives and just focus on machine costs.

You can build an unraid server that functions the same for a lot less. You can in fact build one that functions to arguably an acceptable standard for its main intended use as a media streaming server for very little, using older - often recycled - parts. I would argue that you could buy an old machine/server second hand for under £50/$50 and it work ok.

But let's be fair and assume we want something modern and reasonably powered for an unraid server. I would take my machine as a good example. Modern USB3 Intel Motherboard, low spec (but adequate) Intel Dual Core CPU, 4gb RAM, my old PSU reused, second hand huge case. This all cost me easily under £200.

It's really whether you can afford to pay a price premium for the ease of plug and play, and the electricity bill/heat/noise of constantly running 8 drives. Different situations call for different things. I would also worry as somebody had already pointed out, that the internals (not the disk drives) can fail, leaving you a difficult recovery. If the Synology product used a one off bespoke RAID controller/card custom made for/by Synology, then the only way to get your drives back up and running under the same RAID array would be to buy the same product again or if it is end of life, to speak to Synology and see what they can offer you. Potentially problematic.

If your unraid server dies you can be up and running very easily with new hardware. If your USB drive fails you can move your drives externally to another Linux Resier FS server and pull the data off.

I cannot see any products that have come out that can spin down the drives like unraid, and do not limit the user to X number of drives, and do not limit the capacity of the total storage array not being able to expand drive sizes. Essentially these products commercially are based on RAID5. This is the problem. We are talking about the limitations of RAID5 commerical products.

Nobody has made a real unraid competitor yet because we are talking about software level improvements first, and this comes so far only with indy outfits like unraid and flexraid.

Here where I live the DS1812+ (don't have the DS1813+ yet) is priced at !!!! $2000 !!!!.

Not even an option !

drives aren't as uniformly "worn" so hopefully aren't as likely to fail near-simultaneously

Remove the double negative and paraphrasing;

drives uniformly "worn", are as likely to fail near-simultaneously.

Perhaps you have some research supporting this uniform wear statement?

My knowledge is perhaps out of date. But public research on consumer disk drives indicates there is no such pattern

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Actually Synology is also fault-tolerant, so that's ALMOST a wash ...with one BIG exception:  If a disk dies, there's basically no difference.  But if the physical machine dies, it's a different story.  I have no doubt that you can recover the data from a Synology box in that case ... either by buying another Synology; using commercial RAID recovery tools like RAID Reconstructor; etc. -- BUT with UnRAID you simply move your disks to another system; plug in the flash drive; and boot 

 

You DO, of course, have to have another system that can handle all your drives;  but the same thing is true for any other system (Synology or any other competitor).    And with UnRAID, that system almost certainly CAN cost less [Many of us only buy fairly high quality hardware, so it may not].

I'm talking a "real" disaster.  a multi drive disaster where you cannot salvage a large portion of the drives.

It's multi-drive issues that reveal the value of unRAID and it's lack of striping.  I've been using linux software raid since the early days.  The only time I've lost data that I could not recover was with RAID5.  Since then it's been RAID1 and then onto unRAID.  Half my server was underwater, and I was still able to access the other half of the drives to pull off critical data.

drives aren't as uniformly "worn" so hopefully aren't as likely to fail near-simultaneously

 

Remove the double negative and paraphrasing;

drives uniformly "worn", are as likely to fail near-simultaneously.

 

Perhaps you have some research supporting this uniform wear statement?

 

My knowledge is perhaps out of date. But public research on consumer disk drives indicates there is no such pattern

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf

Multi drive failures are more likely to happen when you purchase drives en mass from one vendor of one drive type at the same time.  While I do not know of public research to indicate a pattern. I can speak from experience with my hosting company. 

We used to purchase large drive quantities at a time to get discounts. We found that drives tended to fail in batches. We had to stagger our drive purchases from multiple vendors at different times.  There were just too many close calls. Even in RAID1 arrangements.

Multi drive failures are more likely to happen when you purchase drives en mass from one vendor of one drive type at the same time.  While I do not know of public research to indicate a pattern. I can speak from experience with my hosting company. 

We used to purchase large drive quantities at a time to get discounts. We found that drives tended to fail in batches. We had to stagger our drive purchases from multiple vendors at different times.  There were just too many close calls. Even in RAID1 arrangements.

... Agree that drives tend to fail in batches.  My experience matches that as well.

One point that is often missed r.e. the likelihood of data loss with multiple drive failures:  UnRAID (and any other RAID system) is NOT a Backup !!    Fault-tolerance is to allow a system to continue working after a drive failure;  it is NOT a replacement for backups.    UnRAID is certainly much less likely to cause significant data loss if multiple drives fail;  but even if you do lose more than one drive, all you SHOULD have to do is replace the failed drives, then just restore the data from your backups