I have a drobo 4 bay Raid storage for some time. Recently I came across a NAS solution called Synology. What attracted me to it is the fact that it can host an array of servers on it including apache tomcat.
After some deliberation, I decided to take the plunge. I ordered a DS 416j (did not want to go for a + for the cost and also the fact that mostly the technology will change by the time I run out of the capability of the 416j anyway)
I had been setting this guy up for some time now. I had decided to reuse the disks I had in drobo and it meant I had to pull out disks off Drobo and add it here. Before that I had to copy some data off the drobo so that I will have enough space to safely pull out a disk. I did it finally. And to Drobo's credit, after a full night of flashing orange lights, it moved back to greens! Phew!
Copying had been a bit slow, but no complains. I had the Drobo connected to the Synology and I kicked off the copying. After two days of continuous copying and shifting of the disks, I have the data mostly copied to the NAS.
The indexing is a long and slow process, and its still going on. But who is in a hurry? With all that heavy lifting happening at the background, I am still able to stream video over WiFi into my iPad2 and play!
The SONOS which was sometimes stuttering when music was being played from Drobo is just playing without no hiccups. And the Audio Player of Synology is able to play the music to SONOS or an airplay device without any issues.
Another plus point of the Synology is that it can be accessed from internet using the QuickConnect. I do not have to worry about the port forwarding and stuffs like that anymore! I have setup some cloud and installed the clients on the iOS devices. Now I guess I can easily copy files around!
There are couple of things I am to try is configuring the asterisk server (Yes, they have that also available on the NAS!) and Node.JS server so that I can control SONOS using the Node.JS Scripts I had located some time back. That will be a boost to the Automation plan I have overall!
Anyway, as it stands, my decision is vindicated!
Notes:
After using Synology for a week plus now, I have just couple of notes. Put this guy on UPS. You do not want him to shut down during a power failure. There are UPSs which are compatible with the Synology that Synology can safely shutdown when your UPS is low. Why I am saying this is because when you have RAID setup, each time a power shut down happens like this, the system will have to check for consistency across the RAID and this is a time consuming process and can reduce the system performance. I could still play video on iPad when this was happening, though.
One of my HDD crashed after shifting to Synology and could not recover still. I will be trying to format it some place outside once and will try to mount once again. Looks like there are quite a few bad sectors on it. Else I will have to replace it with a higher capacity volume.
I haven't setup the Asterisk on the machine yet as most of the terminology on it went right above my head. If someone can point me to some place where I can effectively set this up as a in house extension to start with, it will be great. I would also like to have the mobiles hooked on Bluetooth to Synology so that I can call out and receive.
Surveillance station had challenges in setting up as the Samsung Securecam HD Pro did not connect by default. The camera is listed in the compatible ones but it did not work. So I had to set it up as an OTHER camera and then it worked. But the two way audio is not working here. I am mainly using it to record events.
Media playback is working great. Now since its available all across the devices, it has increased the usability of the media.
Over all still a happy camper!
NB: Recently upgraded to DSM 6.x and noticed that Asterisk is on its way out. Synology note says as the support from open community for askterisk is withdrawn, its no longer being provided in Synology from 6.x or something to that effect. Point being, if you are planning to move beyond 6, plan not having Askterisk.
After some deliberation, I decided to take the plunge. I ordered a DS 416j (did not want to go for a + for the cost and also the fact that mostly the technology will change by the time I run out of the capability of the 416j anyway)
I had been setting this guy up for some time now. I had decided to reuse the disks I had in drobo and it meant I had to pull out disks off Drobo and add it here. Before that I had to copy some data off the drobo so that I will have enough space to safely pull out a disk. I did it finally. And to Drobo's credit, after a full night of flashing orange lights, it moved back to greens! Phew!
Copying had been a bit slow, but no complains. I had the Drobo connected to the Synology and I kicked off the copying. After two days of continuous copying and shifting of the disks, I have the data mostly copied to the NAS.
The indexing is a long and slow process, and its still going on. But who is in a hurry? With all that heavy lifting happening at the background, I am still able to stream video over WiFi into my iPad2 and play!
The SONOS which was sometimes stuttering when music was being played from Drobo is just playing without no hiccups. And the Audio Player of Synology is able to play the music to SONOS or an airplay device without any issues.
Another plus point of the Synology is that it can be accessed from internet using the QuickConnect. I do not have to worry about the port forwarding and stuffs like that anymore! I have setup some cloud and installed the clients on the iOS devices. Now I guess I can easily copy files around!
There are couple of things I am to try is configuring the asterisk server (Yes, they have that also available on the NAS!) and Node.JS server so that I can control SONOS using the Node.JS Scripts I had located some time back. That will be a boost to the Automation plan I have overall!
Anyway, as it stands, my decision is vindicated!
Notes:
After using Synology for a week plus now, I have just couple of notes. Put this guy on UPS. You do not want him to shut down during a power failure. There are UPSs which are compatible with the Synology that Synology can safely shutdown when your UPS is low. Why I am saying this is because when you have RAID setup, each time a power shut down happens like this, the system will have to check for consistency across the RAID and this is a time consuming process and can reduce the system performance. I could still play video on iPad when this was happening, though.
One of my HDD crashed after shifting to Synology and could not recover still. I will be trying to format it some place outside once and will try to mount once again. Looks like there are quite a few bad sectors on it. Else I will have to replace it with a higher capacity volume.
I haven't setup the Asterisk on the machine yet as most of the terminology on it went right above my head. If someone can point me to some place where I can effectively set this up as a in house extension to start with, it will be great. I would also like to have the mobiles hooked on Bluetooth to Synology so that I can call out and receive.
Surveillance station had challenges in setting up as the Samsung Securecam HD Pro did not connect by default. The camera is listed in the compatible ones but it did not work. So I had to set it up as an OTHER camera and then it worked. But the two way audio is not working here. I am mainly using it to record events.
Media playback is working great. Now since its available all across the devices, it has increased the usability of the media.
Over all still a happy camper!
NB: Recently upgraded to DSM 6.x and noticed that Asterisk is on its way out. Synology note says as the support from open community for askterisk is withdrawn, its no longer being provided in Synology from 6.x or something to that effect. Point being, if you are planning to move beyond 6, plan not having Askterisk.
No comments:
Post a Comment