NAS hardware

[whitey]

Hi,
I'm new to networking and trying to work out what NAS to buy to suit my needs. Basically this is my current situation -

• CAT5e or 6 (not sure which) cable throughout my house
• currently have a ASUS AC1900 router (looking to upgrade to WIFI 6 router in the medium term)

I'm looking to get a NAS to allow me to -

• connect 2x PoE IP 15w cameras and record locally on NAS as well as remote access
• Jellyfin media server to be connected to smart TV and computers
• General file storage with infrequent remote file reading
• potential photo backup service

My questions are mainly around how many drives I require, the type SSD or HDD and the configuration. Is it best to allocate a separate drive for the surveillance cameras? If so can I then still get away with a 2 bay NAS? The files I will be keeping on the NAS for the media centre and other files are not critical if they get lost so I don't require mirroring or even redundancy RAID although extra speed would be good of course.

Would HDD for everything best suit my needs for the price or should I look at SSD for 1 or all of drives? Would there be a great benefit to choose a NAS with the option to add M.2 NVMe SSD caching and/or should I upgrade RAM to at least 4gb (most of the NAS options I'm looking at have 2gb standard)?

The two NAS options I'm looking at are DS220+ and DS423+. Thanks in advance

 

[ctrlaltdelete]

Go for the DS423+
Data and media files: 2 x HDDs SHR1 BTRFS WD red plus
Surveillance Station: 1 HDD Basic WD purple
Let the 4th bay free for further upgrades, expand the existing pool to 3 HDDS or an SSD for Docker or VM

The DS423+ comes with 2 licenses for cameras, but you need a POE-Switch to connect the cams.
Jelly works fine on the DS423+

Upgrade the RAM with 16 GB, DSM uses free RAM as Cache, you dont need to use original synology RAM, maybe have a look at reddit, in Germany we often use www.speicher.de

 

[Rusty]

Welcome to the forum.

In general this whole thing will depend on your needs and the call will be yours alone.

Considering what was mentioned here as a requirement, imho it would be best to go with a '+' model NAS that fits your needs and budget.

DS220+ will soon get a replacement, the DS224+, that is yet to be rolled out or announced but it will have that name. The 423+ is a fresh mid range 4-bay nas that will more then enough cover all your needs.

Is it best to allocate a separate drive for the surveillance cameras?

While best practice would suggest to run a separate disk (even a different type of disk) if this is not an option it will run fine against your default volume with the drives that you have installed.

If so can I then still get away with a 2 bay NAS?

Something to think about. If you do want to have those recordings up all the time, some sort of raid for uptime (not backup) will be needed. As said before there will be no issue to use Surveillance Station tasks on your "main" volume if you decide to run a mirror array with 2 drives.

Would HDD for everything best suit my needs for the price or should I look at SSD for 1 or all of drives?

SSD vs HDD in terms of quality and experience will almost be identical in terms of surveillance tasks. The NAS will be faster and snappier with SSD ofc, but it all depends if you will be able to utilize that speed on the network segment.

Would there be a great benefit to choose a NAS with the option to add M.2 NVMe SSD caching and/or should I upgrade RAM to at least 4gb (most of the NAS options I'm looking at have 2gb standard)?

RAM upgrade would be welcome in any case, but M2 usage is something that some models support more and more, and by the looks of it, Synology will support it on more new and older models (usable volumes not just as cache). So as a long term investment it would be beneficial.

 

[whitey]

Go for the DS423+
Data and media files: 2 x HDDs SHR1 BTRFS WD red plus
Surveillance Station: 1 HDD Basic WD purple
Let the 4th bay free for further upgrades, expand the existing pool to 3 HDDS or an SSD for Docker or VM

The DS423+ comes with 2 licenses for cameras, but you need a POE-Switch to connect the cams.
Jelly works fine on the DS423+

Upgrade the RAM with 16 GB, DSM uses free RAM as Cache, you dont need to use original synology RAM, maybe have a look at reddit, in Germany we often use www.speicher.de

Hi thanks for the reply, that makes sense what your saying. Yes I was going to get a 8 port switch with 4 PoE ports.

With the RAM I thought the 423+ could only be upgraded with an additional 4gb? Would my uses need much more than 2gb? Sorry I didn't quite understand about the m.2 nvme ssd, is it not worth getting a GB of this as well?

I would like to run Docker I forgot to mention that - so SSD would be good for this? Would SSD be suitable for the surveillance cameras as well? I don't mind paying a little extra and getting a little less storage to record video (just a home user I don't need a month of recordings plus I will probably just use motion detection while home). I think I value more the quietness and power consumption more than excess saved video (might seem strange I know). I just don't know about how they stack up for durability and reliability for such a task? If SSD is ok, is it possible to use Docker with that drive, and just have 2x HDD SHR1 NAS drives for the rest of my data storage and media centre access? Leaving an additional bay spare.

Thanks very much for the reply again

 

[whitey]

Welcome to the forum.

In general this whole thing will depend on your needs and the call will be yours alone.

Considering what was mentioned here as a requirement, imho it would be best to go with a '+' model NAS that fits your needs and budget.

DS220+ will soon get a replacement, the DS224+, that is yet to be rolled out or announced but it will have that name. The 423+ is a fresh mid range 4-bay nas that will more then enough cover all your needs.


While best practice would suggest to run a separate disk (even a different type of disk) if this is not an option it will run fine against your default volume with the drives that you have installed.


Something to think about. If you do want to have those recordings up all the time, some sort of raid for uptime (not backup) will be needed. As said before there will be no issue to use Surveillance Station tasks on your "main" volume if you decide to run a mirror array with 2 drives.


SSD vs HDD in terms of quality and experience will almost be identical in terms of surveillance tasks. The NAS will be faster and snappier with SSD ofc, but it all depends if you will be able to utilize that speed on the network segment.


RAM upgrade would be welcome in any case, but M2 usage is something that some models support more and more, and by the looks of it, Synology will support it on more new and older models (usable volumes not just as cache). So as a long term investment it would be beneficial.

Thank you for the reply.

I think I'm leaning towards the 423+ if I can get a better price on it just to give me some better futureproofing.

As suggested by ctrlaltdelete I think I would like to consider running a separate disk for surveillance as I should have room (I don't have a big need to run 4 disk in RAID for my remaining data storage. I'm interested in the SSD option though, you mentioned it would be good for surveillance. I would value the NAS to be as quiet as possible and keep power consumption low. I don't mind if the storage size is lower for the price as I really don't need to store a month of surveillance data or anything, it's for home use mainly motion detection. I did read somewhere that SSD for surveillance is a bad idea as the write amplification especially when it is filled beyond 70% will affect the endurance (something about TLC/MLC cells not coping with sustained writing) particularly on Samsung EVO. Also the power they said wasn't necessarily lower. They also said the NAS is designed to cool HDD and will be too much for SSD and further reduce reliability.

As far as the bottlenecks in my home network I doubt I can fully utilise storage drive max speeds as I don't have everything setup for 10gb or anything (probably only have cat5e cable but I haven't checked)

Also could this be used for Docker, I forgot to mention I would want to run this. And sorry I didn't quite understand what you meant about running the surveillance on a RAID for uptime, is this to increase read speeds or something?

If I get the 423+ with m.2 SSD suppose is it worth putting in a 1gb stick in my situation? And should I upgrade the RAM above 2gb? Thankyou very much again.

 

[Rusty]

I did read somewhere that SSD for surveillance is a bad

I said you can run SSD for surveillance, but depending on the amount of data and the size of the footage, yes, it will have an effect on the drives, just like any other r/w operation.

If you do end up getting a 423, having a separate disk for surveillance will be good idea for sure.

And sorry I didn't quite understand what you meant about running the surveillance on a RAID for uptime, is this to increase read speeds or something?

I meant in terms of uptime, not speed. With a single drive for surveillance, if that drive fails you will lose the data, in a raid configuration you will still be able to continue to use the service and access the data.

If I get the 423+ with m.2 SSD suppose is it worth putting in a 1gb stick in my situation

That depends. 423 support m2 drives for both cache (various brands) and usable storage pools (but atm only with Synology nvme drives!). Still if you will be running at least one of those bays with an SSD, and you have your apps and services on it, having an nvme drive as a cache for that same ssd volume will be useless. On the other hand if you will support your HDDs with that m2 cache you will notice the benefits but in specific cases.

For example DB operations, working with a large amount of small files, any platforms that utilize a DB like presentation of data (media center solutions for example), VMs, etc. On the other hand if you will expect speed bumps while copying large files, that will be a waste of money.

RAM upgrade will be a welcome addition. with its officially supported 6GB of ram you will have a well balanced device that will be more then a match for anything you tell it to do (within reasonable expectations). Personally I would max out the RAM considering you are looking into Docker as well. Regardless if those will be small utilization solutions or some DBs, the extra RAM will be great for the overall experience. Also, it will future proof the NAS itself.

 

[whitey]

Thank you for the clarification I appreciate your help