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Setting up 24 Bay Supermicro


Nightingale

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Hey guys,

 

So I posted on here almost a year ago asking for some build recommendations and now months later I am happy to say that I have found a great deal on a Supermicro 24 Bay rack and have been playing with it for a few weeks. I've got a lot of WD Reds ready to go as well.

 

With that being said, I tried the trial of UnRaid for the past week and although it works, it just feels sloppy to me (previous Synology user) and now I'm having second thoughts about UnRaid vs Xpenology.  My question is, is my system compatible with Xpenology? Can I run it with SHR 2 safely? I don't really care about the latest DSM updates and all, I just want to be able to use a Synology with the ability to have 24 drives and the trust that Synology gives off (If you know what I mean).

 

Supermicro - X8DAH+-F

Intel Xeon L5630

48GB ECC RAM (24GB usable right now as only one CPU is installed)

LSI 9211-8i (Flashed in IT mode)

SAS2 Backplane (I believe it's the BPN-SAS2-846EL1)

 

I know it's kind of a stupid thing to ask about "stability" with basically a "hacked OS" but you guys get what I mean. If I could buy the OS straight from Synology I totally would 110%.

 

Thanks guys!

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I've not had experience of this exact kit list, but looking at the available information online, I'd have thought that most of the mobo components will work with XPE/DSM, but with a lot of testing/configuring to get right, especially the sas/lsi and hdds.

 

If I were in your situation I'd do several test builds and add in components bit by bit to see what results you get. For example, with the onboard sata, lsi and sas that looks like a total of 38 drives, which could show up in various permutations, plus to see more than 12 drives you will need to edit the synoinfo.conf files accordingly.

 

Also, some people have had networking issues with the supermicro ipmi and onboard nics, so so playing around with that to find what works best will be useful.

 

DSM6 drops SHR in favour of raid groups, it can be re-enabled, check the faq, if you want to run shr-2.

 

I always play with new kit using XPE5.2/DSM5.2 as more things seem to work 'out of the box' with that and there is a lot of testing and prep can be done before moving to 6.x, just a personal preference.

 

As an aside too, there are a lot of forum members who use Open Media Vault as a 'second choice' to XPE/DSM. If you are thinking of running a business/production system with 'mission critical' data then maybe look at that. 

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Thanks for the reply man!

 

So I basically pulled an all nighter and got this thing up and running. I used Jun's loader 1.02b (ds3617xs) with the .pat file "DSM_DS3617xs_15217" and after multiple trials and errors (many errors) I think I have a stable setup. I'm running the latest DSM 6.1.4-15217 Update 5 and it's smooth as butter. I edited the config file to allow 24 drives and that shows up. I tested building an SHR2 volume with a bunch of random drives (Reds, Greens, SSDs, Barracudas both 5400 and 7200 RPMs) and it's working great so far.

 

One question I am wondering though is about the Quick Connect and other "customer" features. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to hack it or anything (besides I believe they blocked XPE now anyway), but I am wondering if I'd be able to retire my current 4 drive Synology box and use it's serial number and MAC for my new 24 bay server. Do you feel that's reasonable? Would that even work? If not, that's totally cool, just wanted to put it out there as I am technically a customer ;)

 

If anyone has any questions about my setup let me know!

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13 hours ago, Nightingale said:

Thanks for the reply man!

 

So I basically pulled an all nighter and got this thing up and running. I used Jun's loader 1.02b (ds3617xs) with the .pat file "DSM_DS3617xs_15217" and after multiple trials and errors (many errors) I think I have a stable setup. I'm running the latest DSM 6.1.4-15217 Update 5 and it's smooth as butter. I edited the config file to allow 24 drives and that shows up. I tested building an SHR2 volume with a bunch of random drives (Reds, Greens, SSDs, Barracudas both 5400 and 7200 RPMs) and it's working great so far.

 

One question I am wondering though is about the Quick Connect and other "customer" features. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to hack it or anything (besides I believe they blocked XPE now anyway), but I am wondering if I'd be able to retire my current 4 drive Synology box and use it's serial number and MAC for my new 24 bay server. Do you feel that's reasonable? Would that even work? If not, that's totally cool, just wanted to put it out there as I am technically a customer ;)

 

If anyone has any questions about my setup let me know!

 

In principle that would make Quickconnect and other functions relying on Serial validity work. However, retiring your genuine Synology and using its serial/mac addresses in your XPEnology doesn't make your XPEnology more genuine as you are already in breach of the EULA which clearly states that DSM is only to be run on genuine Synology hardware. In other words it is still wrong using a valid serial on an XPEnology.

 

As an alternative to Quickconnect you can set up a custom DDNS. I made a tutorial on how to do that and the feature is actually already included in DSM. See my signature.

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5 hours ago, Polanskiman said:

As an alternative to Quickconnect you can set up a custom DDNS.

After spending a few hours looking into this, this actually works way better as I have a personal website so in theory I can easily use my domain that I have hosted with GoDaddy and just setup a forward address with masking to my Xpenology.

 

Totally didn't want to seem like I'm going against the grain or anything.

 

Thanks again, your posts are always helpful!

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44 minutes ago, Nightingale said:

After spending a few hours looking into this, this actually works way better as I have a personal website so in theory I can easily use my domain that I have hosted with GoDaddy and just setup a forward address with masking to my Xpenology.

 

Yes it does work better because you are not using some relay controlled by Synology. If you are on a double NAT and are using Quickconnect then you are back to the early 2000' speed wise. It is just so slow. At least that's my experience.

 

Having your own domain is great. Simply configure a custom ddns address on DSM and then create a CNAME record in your hosting account panel:

Screen Shot 2018-01-29 at 5.48.16 PM.jpg

 

You can then access you XPEnology box through your own sub.yourdomain.com

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32 minutes ago, Polanskiman said:

Simply configure a custom ddns address on DSM

 

I found the CNAME options in my domain account but I'm not sure what I put in "Points to" as well as "TTL".  As for the DSM side, I'm also not sure what to put in the Customize DDNS options. It requires a Service Provider (which I assume is really just a name) and a "Query URL" which I don't have anywhere in my domain settings.

 

 

Capture.PNG

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´Points to’ is the custom ddns address you would have created initially. I made a tutorial on how to. See my signature.

 

Hostname is the subdomain address you will use to access your box. There should be a dot at the end of the address when you create the record.

 

TTL you can leave as is. It is the time to live. Google it for detailed explanations.

 

You first need to configure your ddns on dsm. See my tutorial.

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Maybe it's just me but I don't understand how these connect. I've tried to follow the tutorial but it just doesn't make sense for my situation. It just seems like I am missing all the information to add into the custom DSM ddns settings.

 

I have to somehow fill out the URL it needs when I only know (nas.mydomain.com) and (my public IP address). I can't find a token anywhere either.

 

Maybe I'm just not fully grasping the concept here but I'm totally lost.

Capture.PNG

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Did you go to duckdns first to create a custom address? If not do that first. It is explained in the tutorial.

When you are done with the above, go to your DSM > Control Panel > External Access > Customise. A new window opens. In the service provider type DuckDns. In the query URL type the following as is:

http://www.duckdns.org/update?domains=__HOSTNAME__&token=__PASSWORD__&ip=__MYIP__

then click save.

 

Now go to DSM > Control Panel > External Access > Add. A new window opens.

From the Service provider select the one you just created (DuckDns). Now fill in as below:

595b5e6c42b27_ScreenShot2017-07-04at3_58_52PM.jpg.3b33477998ab7f5e38fc92c839b8619b.jpg

Click on Test Connection to verify that it's working. If it is working you should see the word Normal in green next to Status. You can then click Ok. If it is not working then it means you screwed up somewhere.

 

That's all really. Read carefully the tutorial it's all explained in details.

 

When you are done with the above then you can create your record in your domain name hosting account as I explained earlier. It should look something like this:

 

Capture.thumb.PNG.31bfd2f06038e2d600bf04dfd3c704b4.jpg

 

Adding the CNAME record to your domain name hosting account is only required if you really want to use your domaine to access your XPEnology box. If you do not want to use your domain then creating the CNAME record is not required and you can simply access your XPEnology box with the duckdns address you created at duckdns.org.

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On 1/27/2018 at 11:24 PM, Nightingale said:

Hey guys,

 

So I posted on here almost a year ago asking for some build recommendations and now months later I am happy to say that I have found a great deal on a Supermicro 24 Bay rack and have been playing with it for a few weeks. I've got a lot of WD Reds ready to go as well.

 

With that being said, I tried the trial of UnRaid for the past week and although it works, it just feels sloppy to me (previous Synology user) and now I'm having second thoughts about UnRaid vs Xpenology.  My question is, is my system compatible with Xpenology? Can I run it with SHR 2 safely? I don't really care about the latest DSM updates and all, I just want to be able to use a Synology with the ability to have 24 drives and the trust that Synology gives off (If you know what I mean).

 

Supermicro - X8DAH+-F

Intel Xeon L5630

48GB ECC RAM (24GB usable right now as only one CPU is installed)

LSI 9211-8i (Flashed in IT mode)

SAS2 Backplane (I believe it's the BPN-SAS2-846EL1)

 

I know it's kind of a stupid thing to ask about "stability" with basically a "hacked OS" but you guys get what I mean. If I could buy the OS straight from Synology I totally would 110%.

 

Thanks guys!

I could not agree with you more. I would also purchase DSM for my own hardware if I could, I don't think we will ever see that unless more and more people start building there own boxes and in turn hurting Synology deep pockets. I understand why they won't offer it, The support would be a nightmare.....

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14 hours ago, itGeeks said:

I could not agree with you more. I would also purchase DSM for my own hardware if I could, I don't think we will ever see that unless more and more people start building there own boxes and in turn hurting Synology deep pockets. I understand why they won't offer it, The support would be a nightmare.....

 

Not really a matter of support. It's a matter of money. Synology makes money out of the hardware not software. If they were to sell the OS alone it would be the end of Synology.

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  • 2 weeks later...

depends on you point of view, they do not cancel support/updates 1 or 2 years after release, when making business that way you have to take money into account for support and updates, also you can't use to cheap parts when you want the hardware to last longer then 2 years, my old 509+ is still working fine in background doing rsync backups, if i retire it it will be for being to slow from today's point of view

you can find faster hardware for the same money but that one has usually crappy software with far less functionality and nearly no updates

have a look at the smartphone market, its not so different if you want regular security updates you will and up with "overpriced" hardware as you are paying also for the support (and using lineage os on your own is not always easy and fun - same like having your own "customized" linux installed on you computer)

even the "extremely overpriced" apple hardware find a lot of buyers

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running similar setup as yours...

 

#1 main system
X9SRL-F

Xeon E5 CPU

32GB Ram

10G NIC

SAS3 HBA

17x HDD (9x 8 TB, 6x 4 TB HDDs + 2 SSDs)

=> DSM 6.0.2-8451 Update 11, runnig stable

 

all Volumes (Raid Groups) are consisting of max 4 HDDs (in case the system/volume fails in this way i can more easy recover it)

 

Most tricky part was to modify the synoinfo.conf to get all HDDs up and running...

 

#2 backup/toy/whatever system

X8SIL-F

Xeon ? CPU

8GB Ram

10G NIC

SAS2 HBA

=> DSM 6.1.5-15254

12x HDD (mainly 2TB, 3TB and 4 TB HDDs)

 

when you go from scratch (without any data) you can use the latest DSM....it's just tricky too to get the synoinfo.conf correct...

 

 

so, if you start from scratch, you could jump to the latest version, otherwise i also recommend to stick at 5.x or 6.0.2... from my experience

 

 

 

Edited by snoopy78
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