Synology NAS w/ SSD's, is it worth it?

[thecompu-doctor]

Hi everyone, I'm looking at a solution for a advertising agency that is a 99% mac shop. They have about 10 users that will be using this system, but primarily 3-4 designers will be the main users. They currently have an older Synology DS410 that is still going strong 4.5 years after deployment without a single drive failure! It has the storage, just not the horsepower to keep up with their current needs.

We're looking at adding in a newer higher performance synology NAS to become their primary and keep their old DS410 for secondary and archival purposes. I'm thinking about a DS715 (two bay, quad cpu, 2gb ram) with twin samsung evo 1tb's in a raid 1. Since large bulk storage is not a big concern for this upcoming system, but performance is, I'm leaning towards SSD's. I've deployed many dozens of synology NAS's over the years, but this will be the first time I've considered SSD's. So, has anyone else done something like this and is it worth going with SSD's over traditional when it comes to a NAS?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What kind of network do they have to support it....
Our Synology, an RS2212+, has 4x WD Red drives in it. The Red drives are 5,900rpm....you'd think they are slow.
But they're setup in the Synology hybrid RAID...so there is striping...increased speed. I just copied a 500 gig file from as a test....average in the mid 70 MB/s range for transfer speeds. That's going through 2x switches...a Cisco Catalyst, and an HP ProCurve...both gigabit.

If I have a bunch of WD RE series...or Blacks...might be a little faster. But so much depends on the network hardware...and of course the workstation end...the speeds of the workstation/laptop hard drives. And it's quite hard to actually achieve..and sustain....over 100 MB/s over a gigabit LAN. Theoretical max is 125MB/s.

Add to the mix...can the NAS itself allow transfers as fast as the SSDs would allow? You've got to carefully select a model of NAS that has the nut (CPU, chipset, RAM) to transfer. Many NAS's are designed assuming spindle drives.

That's a lot of money for just a TB NAS. But if the client wants it..and is willing to pay....why not!

 

[Markverhyden]

^^^^ There is more to the equation than just the speed of SSD's. This is especially true for SSd's that are not local to a machine. Many times the speed is wasted. Not mention the problems that the EU maybe experiencing come from a different source. One of my customers, using a MacMini with Firewire attached mass storage, started experiencing significant problems with InDesign crashing. Sometimes several times a day. After testing and investigation I found out that somehow they had mapped the shares using SMB and not AFP. Turned off SMB, re-mapped the shares as AFP and the problem went away.

When you are talking about NAS there are many links in the chain that need to be evaluated.

 

[phaZed]

Hey Compu-doc

I'm going with the others. I have a DS415+ that I deployed. Tried two 240gb (Not four) in it and speeds were no faster over the network than with 4 HDDs. The only place I saw any improvement was (obviously) for inter-Synology operations like the virus scan or running "Backup of the Backup" scripts that transfer a lot of data within the Synology (One folder to another). So it does slightly help for things that are not going over the network.

 

[DataMedics]

Might I suggest that instead of doing an all SSD NAS, you might consider just using the SSD cache feature that Synology has. You only need to install one SSD and the rest can be traditional HDDs. It'll automatically cache the most frequently accessed data and keep it on the SSD for you. This can cut down the cost and still provide more storage capacity in the end, while offering SSD type performance in most cases.

But as StoneCat mentioned, your ethernet connection is likely to be the biggest bottleneck anyway. That's why bigger units have multiple NICs in them. My 8 bay Synology has 4 Gigabit connections to it.

 

[Knightsman]

We even get up to 100 MB/s. I love these Synologys. Although, Synology to Synology is 40-60 MB/s...its very odd.

 

[thecompu-doctor]

What kind of network do they have to support it....

They are running a 24 port netgear prosafe (?) gig un-managed switch. As I'm thinking about it, I can't swear to it that all machines are hard lined though, they may have some on wifi. I'll be sure to check into that ASAP. I helped this client set up the network and original DS410 about 4.5 years ago. This is when it was just two people and I didn't hear anything from them until about 4 weeks ago.

^^^^ After testing and investigation I found out that somehow they had mapped the shares using SMB and not AFP. Turned off SMB, re-mapped the shares as AFP and the problem went away.

I'm not sure, again I've not examined everything here. The client approached me stating that they're having slow response issues with their current demands when it comes to accessing data on the NAS. Being that it is a DS410, its running on 128mb of ram, thus very little horse power. So in addition to bumping the horsepower of the new NAS, i was wondering if there would be a large benefit with going SSD vs HDD.

Hey Compu-doc
I'm going with the others. I have a DS415+ that I deployed. Tried two 240gb (Not four) in it and speeds were no faster over the network than with 4 HDDs. The only place I saw any improvement was (obviously) for inter-Synology operations like the virus scan or running "Backup of the Backup" scripts that transfer a lot of data within the Synology (One folder to another). So it does slightly help for things that are not going over the network.

Hey Aaron, so you've tried it with SSD's?

Might I suggest that instead of doing an all SSD NAS, you might consider just using the SSD cache feature that Synology has. You only need to install one SSD and the rest can be traditional HDDs. It'll automatically cache the most frequently accessed data and keep it on the SSD for you. This can cut down the cost and still provide more storage capacity in the end, while offering SSD type performance in most cases.

But as StoneCat mentioned, your ethernet connection is likely to be the biggest bottleneck anyway. That's why bigger units have multiple NICs in them. My 8 bay Synology has 4 Gigabit connections to it.

Can you point me in the direction to read more about this cache feature? I always setup my DS's up with synology's hybrid raid, but I'm not familiar with this additional cache feature/configuration.

I agree, the DS I'm looking at for them has twin NIC's.

 

[phaZed]

Hey Aaron, so you've tried it with SSD's?

Ya, tried the SSD's (Sandisk or Crucial 120GB IIRC at the time) for 5-7 days before I handed over the equipment to the client with HDD's. I was looking at possibly purchasing a DS415+ for my shop for general storage and possible video editing, hence the SSD's. Since I already have a server chock full of HDD's, I just stuck with that. As for the Video Editing.. much better idea just to put the SSD's in the machine itself so I scratched the Synology idea when I found out how it performed... was just simply a network bottleneck and the 415+ only has a single NIC... so no Teaming or LAG.

 

[TAPtech]

The new DSM has a built-in load balancing feature that does not require a fancy switch. Works similar to Windows Server multi-NIC load balancing.

With that being said, it ain't going to make any difference to a single user. I've done a few Synlogy units, I like to use WD Red units, and they always get up to about 100MB/s over a gigabit network. That's the limit. If you have multiple users accessing files at the same time, well that's where you want multi-NIC and load balancing, as well as multiple drives. Then maybe you can get that 100MB/s to two users at once.

Call me crazy, but depending on the environment, you could just add the SSD to the individual machine and use Cloudstation to sync the files. You'll have the standard issues associated with users accessing files at the same time, but you will go from slow network speeds to mega SSD speeds.

 

[BlackLabTechs]

Just for comparisons sake - I've got a DS1515+ with 4 WD Reds in it. Backupper is reporting 120 to 132MB/s backup to the NAS. Doing a compressed image so I'm sure that throws it off a bit but still good speed. Hardwired through a UBNT ToughSwitch.

 

[thecompu-doctor]

Thanks everyone, I can confirm they are using a hardwired gigabit environment. So I'm leaning toward the DS715 like previously mentioned, but likely with regular WD red drives instead of the SSD's. I'm going to a synology conference next week in DC and will chat with them about this project and report back what the "sales" guys have to say too.

 

[BlackLabTechs]

For another reference point - here is a DS415+ with 4 wd reds and only 1 nic plugged in transferring 100MB/s speed.