Some general questions and thoughts

[intelligence]

Hello!

 

I'm trying to figure out the best approach to using XPEnology on a future NAS.

 

1. What's the best approach of using XPEnology, VM or standalone? Ideally I'd like the experience to be as similar to using a Synology NAS as possible, thus I rather not go the VM way and have XPEnology installed as the main OS.

 

2. If employing XPEnology as the main OS of the NAS. How will that work with updates in the future? As XPEnology is not official I feel that it's a bit risky with the update bit. Once installed and configured, should I just leave it at the current version and be happy? To me it's not an option to backup of a NAS with 9TB storage everytime you need to upgrade DSM.

 

3. What happens if the motherboard (or any other part) of my NAS would die. Do I need to replace it with the exact same motherboard/part?

 

As I understand, DSM is put on each drive used as storage, is that correct? Would be so great if DSM just was on the USB. In that way you could just switch the USB to an upgraded DSM when a upgrade would come along.

 

These are just some thoughts I have about this project. As great as it sounds, it poses alot of questions about stability and upgradability that makes me feel that using DSM on a non-Synology NAS without a secondary backup machine poses some threats to my data.

 

I really love DSM, but to me a Synology NAS is not worth it at this point, performance wise. You pay alot (considering) and get a sub performing machine.

 

Do you guys have any thoughts about this?

[Dadudeondacouch]

1. I prefer hardware over virtual machine, I'm using a hp n54l it seems to have really good performance.

 

2. Sometimes you can update sometimes you can't from what I've read. I haven't had to do it yet. How often do you really need to update dsm, features don't change that much.

 

3. You can fire up a vm with the same version dsm that was on your physical machine and connect the physical drives to the vm and get the data off them etc. I have tested that, the setup can easily be changed between vm and physical machine without losing data.

 

YES each hard drive has the dsm installed, it's so if one fails it boots to the other (same as synology)

 

YES I had the same worries but I feel safe with a raid10 and backup the most essential data to an old 2tb drive once a week.

 

YES synology devices cost a fortune and I think they are over-priced considering what you get but still they are so damn sexy.

[intelligence]

Thanks for your reply!

 

The reason why I'm asking about updates is that I have a DS409 running at home now, I've gone from DSM 2.x something to 4 since 2009. In that time, alot of things have happen. But you might say that DSM was in it's infancy back then. Surely DSM will continue to refine, but maybe not as big jumps as there has been. A possible problem I can see is that Synology was quite fast to pick up when Time Machine stopped working with some major OSX update. A problem like that could occur in the future. So if you're not able to update DSM easily, you're stuck with either staying with an old OS for your main rig, or without Time Machine support.

 

The VM thing is a nifty trick, thanks for that, I'll keep that in mind!

 

Ideally I'll offload the most important data via Crashplan so there's a backup of the most important things in the cloud.

 

Anyway, wouldn't it be nice to keep DSM on a USB stick only? Swapping it out and instantly having a new version. But I suppose it's not possible. Are the storage volumes modified in anyway when updating DSM?

[Dadudeondacouch]

The usb thing would be awesome and may one day be possible but I'm guessing its complicated because its a major change to the way dsm operates and every path would need to be changed or patched which would likely cause even more issues with package updates etc.

 

One thing with updating you can always test it with vm's first but even then I will still be worried lol I have enough storage in my server so I will temporarily copy my data off the nas when I update.

[Rand__]

Well i am coming from a 508 and i looked at replacing it with a newer version b/c i was quite happy with it most of the time (until recently when i found out i cant run btsync on it);

but given the price they cost nowadays and the hardware you get for it ... i was to cheap.

 

Naturally if i wanted buy & forget i'd gone with it again, but i dont mind a bit of tinkering - and i am not set on any option yet;

still thinking about ZFS vs XPE vs whatever shows up.

 

I *will* think about (and implement) more backups than i had before but thats a good thing - i've not done enough of that;)

 

I went with a larger build to have flexibility depending on what i really want to run later (ie xeon/esx based); if it had been readily available i might have gone avoton and a physical installation.

 

So

1. Depends on your hardware - VM will offer more safety since its hardware independent especially with rdms

2. Time will tell how XPE behaves with upgrades. One should have backups anyway all the time, even if its difficult with 9 TB - but surly not *all* of that is irreplaceable?

3. Since ur running software raid - i dont think so