Update Risk

[Radakka]

I am building a Xpenology Nas with 10 hard drives, and I intend to use 8tb disks (5 disks initially).

With, at least, 36 tb I will not be able to backup all data everytime I update DSM.

I know.. could loose all data. but what's the real risk to do this without backup? 

Does anyone update it without problems?

[sbv3000]

1 hour ago, Radakka said:

I am building a Xpenology Nas with 10 hard drives, and I intend to use 8tb disks (5 disks initially).

With, at least, 36 tb I will not be able to backup all data everytime I update DSM.

I know.. could loose all data. but what's the real risk to do this without backup? 

Does anyone update it without problems?

It depends what you mean by 'update'. Applying any 'update' could make a change that causes instability - just look at some Windows updates that have 'bricked' machines. However, I think that with XPE/DSM, is you are updating within a version - eg an update pack, that would be low risk, however a version change or loader change would be more more risky as there could be driver/module changes, missing modules or changes to security settings on files.

A good approach would be to always test an update on your hardware first with a spare disk, (disconnecting your raid drives) and checking the forum for members reporting updates and testing on similar hardware.

You could also look at an offsite backup, for example, Amazon drive is unlimited for around £50 a year and you can setup to sync selected folders from DSM6 also encrypted  

[Radakka]

3 hours ago, sbv3000 said:

It depends what you mean by 'update'. Applying any 'update' could make a change that causes instability - just look at some Windows updates that have 'bricked' machines. However, I think that with XPE/DSM, is you are updating within a version - eg an update pack, that would be low risk, however a version change or loader change would be more more risky as there could be driver/module changes, missing modules or changes to security settings on files.

A good approach would be to always test an update on your hardware first with a spare disk, (disconnecting your raid drives) and checking the forum for members reporting updates and testing on similar hardware.

You could also look at an offsite backup, for example, Amazon drive is unlimited for around £50 a year and you can setup to sync selected folders from DSM6 also encrypted  

 

What I try to say is, if I install lastest version available now, I'll want update to 6.2.

Now I have a DS-413J with 4 4TB hard drives (12TB SHR) and no space free. I transfered a few TB to external disks to continue using my Synology.

Because this, I decided build a huge Xpenology Bare Metal, with 40tb for now, and sell DS-413J.

What I understood, one possible problem with the update would be only with the system itself, so, I could leave data intact just by disconnecting my raid disks and connecting a spare disk to test, right?

Tnx

[hotshots]

1. For an update to 6.2 a new loader will be needed. This is a major release and this means high risk.

2. If I was you I would not sell the 413j, but use it as a Backup System for the most important data

3. Built up your new System starting with 4x 8tb in shr-1 or 5 x 8tb in shr-2

4. Setup the new system from scratch

5. Transfer your data from 413j to new built

6. After new built is running use 413j as backup system ...

[IG-88]

10 hours ago, Radakka said:

What I understood, one possible problem with the update would be only with the system itself, so, I could leave data intact just by disconnecting my raid disks and connecting a spare disk to test, right?

 

yes and no, the "system" (dsm) is a 2GB partition on every disk (raid1), when it does not boot up anymore you might use a different usb flash drive and a matching disk with dsm on it (on install dsm writes the actual kernel to the usb flsh drive so if your working solution was updated from 6.1.0 to 6.1.4 your usb drive will be 6.1.4 and if you put in your recovery disk - make sure it does "see" this first - the dsm on the usb and the disk will not match as the old disk is still 6.1.0, no boot)

if doing that way you might loose your actual config of dsm and all the plugins you installed (including config of the plugins) as you your plan is to overwrite the raid1 config of all disks of the production system (making them part of the new raid1 config of you single recovery dsm disk), so you should at least have backups of this to restore it

if planing to do so you should test it at least once before relying on it

 

as dsm is just linux using mdadm and lvm for the raid and volumes you can also use a live linux to get access to the partitions

my personal favorite is a boot disk (not usb) with open media vault, you can boot up use your date over network and at the same time have a look at your not working system partition (like resetting the version numbers in config files to reinstall former working dsm version)

 

also selling the old nas might be to fast, the old system its a easy way of making backup of important data (usually a only 1-4 tb?) over network with a rsync backup job you can easily configure in dsm gui (imho its not so much about speed, what keeps people from doing backup is the fact to do/start it, if done weekly by automatic wake up of old dsm system and scheduled job its more reliable than dong it from time to time manually)

 

[Dfds]

I'd also recommend keeping the 413 as a backup server, you already have it so why not make best use of it.