oh NAS gurus...

TdC

Trem's hunky sex love muffin
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I have no idea, we'll see. If it doesn't I'll have a redundant USB3 thingy, but hey ho.
 

Embattle

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Just decided on a new toy, ordered a WD TV live to connect to my NAS.....guess it is time to get dvd ripping.
 

Embattle

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I'm not sure the front USB acts any real different than the rear ones, other than the front gives you an easy method to copy contents of a USB via the C button.
 

TdC

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hmmm it doesn't? bugger, I was expecting it to present itself as a disk, just like my other usb disks and sticks and stuff. I've tempted to say that's extremely gay of them to not add that functionality, but hey it's prolly in the advanced/pro/+/give us your cash version or something.

ethernet it will be then, ho hum.
 

soze

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What about eSATA if the NAS has that I wonder if that would work? My NAS has the Synology RAID set up though so i doubt Windows would even be able to see the disks if my Laptop had eSATA to test it.
 

Embattle

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hmmm it doesn't? bugger, I was expecting it to present itself as a disk, just like my other usb disks and sticks and stuff. I've tempted to say that's extremely gay of them to not add that functionality, but hey it's prolly in the advanced/pro/+/give us your cash version or something.

ethernet it will be then, ho hum.

Technically it is a NAS not a UAS :p
 

TdC

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hmm I read on the synology site that the 212+ is teh one with the eSATA...but the NAS will present itself as a drive over USB. So...we'll see.

the bunch of tards I ordered it from STILL haven't gotten my order complete, so I have no idea when it's coming in :-/
 

TdC

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whee my order is finally complete! now they just have to send it to me :D
 

TdC

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aaaaand I get an email they've sent it! whooo!
 

TdC

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you make it sound so...dirty :(
 

TdC

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it's here! I have pics and all!
just to pop by the media market after workies to pick up an A to A usb cable and all's well.
 

TdC

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OK I has it working now. I did it from Linux and this is what I had to do:


Unbox (duh)
Everything seemed to be complete, including two different sets of screws for 2.5 and 3.5" drives, which is kind of nice I guess. The device itself (I have a DS212) is pretty light and plasticy, but seems solid enough.

Install disks
I have two WD EARX 2TB drives, and there's basically only one way to fit these in to the sleds. Nifty detail is that the screw holes on the sleds for the hdd's have little built in grommets of some rubbery material presumably to dampen noise.

Hook up cables and power
Meh, since I have failed to acquire an A to A USB3 cable, I haven't been able to test if the thing will show itself as a disk over USB3 ho-hum. Anyway, I opted for ethernet and have directly connected the device to my workstation with the ethernet cable they were kind enough to give me. This stuff is pretty much a no-brainer.

Install software
Gosh, I really hate things that come with their own helper software that you -need- to use. Anyway, Synology seems to be Linux friendly enough, with a package included in the install cdrom for that OS. So, I taint my carefully 64bit workstation once again with the 32bit libraries to allow the software to work.

Power on and software on
So I press the button on the front, and start up the helper software. After it doing it's thing, it tells me that there are no Diskstations to be seen. After some thinking I decide that the device is probably waiting for an IP address, which it will never get since it is directly connected to my workstation. So, I install a dhcp server real quick to give it said IP and indeed I see that a lease is given out and presto the software sees a diskstation.

Install
After the faffing about with dhcp servers and stuffs I am happy to see that the software seems to be working. There's more or less only one thing you can do after selecting the DS which is press install. The software now prompts me for presumably the firmware, and I go the easy route and just choose the one on the cd which is 3.2.something. What I'm also happy to see is that the install lets you configure, amongst other things, a static IP address, so I will still be able to see the DS if I ever boot to windows to play some games. Sweet. Installing the firmware takes about 15 minutes with a 10 minute wait while the machine reboots built in so I have time to write this review up to here heh.

Post install
The machine has now installed itself, and when I click log-in it takes me to my default browser and logs me in to a webserver on the diskstation after I fill in my predefined credentials for admin. It logs me in to something that looks like a basic desktop and starts a quick start guide to help me out in case I have no idea what to do. What basically happens after this is that the system holds your hand and helps you create a volume on the disk(s) in the machine. It shows you some pretties, and allows you to choose either " noob" or "just pretend that I know what I'm doing" levels of easiness. I opted to set up a redundant single volume which is more or less a mirror aka RAID 1 and I also told the device to check for bad sectors while it's building the mirror. It always amuses me that mirrors don't care if they're empty so the little thing is chugging away atm mirroring an empty filesystem and presumably checking to see if disk sectors need remapping or something.

Noise
The DS is pretty quiet. I can hear it if I think about it, but it's not a patch on my workstation which is quiet but not silent. The DS is much more quiet than that. There's no vibration or anything through my desk either, which is nice.

Performance
I've disabled some stuff I don't need like the Apple protocol, and the printer thingy. Currently while I wait for the mirror to finish doing it's thing (10% wheee!) I've made a user and am about to faff with jumbo frames at the network level. While this is all going on the resource monitor gizmo seems to have the CPU about 20% active, mirroring and presenting this GUI to me and about 15% memory. All seems fine atm.

Conclusions
Currently I am pleased. This thing seems to be working, and although I will probably have died of old age by the time it's finished syncing it currently seems to be doing it's thing quite happily. The browser based GUI thing seems pretty slick and lets you see all kinds of cool stuff like your disk's temperature or SMART status and things. There seems to be some packages preinstalled like a Media Server and some other gubbins but atm I don't really care about that, I just want the space. Speaking of space, the WD 2TB disks present themselves as 1.82TB according to the DS, so I am about 360GB short in total thanks to disk fabbers doing their thing.

The mirror syncing is seeming to take forever, but I am ofc used to big enterprise kit which tends to be blindingly fast indeed. I mean, my latest toy at work has something like 16TB worth of SSD, 1TB of ram and 64 cores, so who am I kidding really.

I'll post some performance metrics once the thing gets it's shit together re jumbo frames and things, and maybe some pics too.
 

Embattle

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In DSM 4.0 you can uninstall most packages in the newer package layout, it appears to include Media server etc.
 

TdC

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on the other hand I'm supposed to be reading use cases atm so I guess it's for a good cause :)
 

TdC

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yes. here's some numbers from the MTU thingy:

Code:
Test  1               
    mtu    File size  (MB)    Duration (s)    MB/s
    1500    1500    38,5    38,961038961
    2000    1500    31,8    47,1698113208
    3000    1500    30    50
    4000    1500    29,1    51,5463917526
    5000    1500    28,6    52,4475524476
    6000    1500    27,6    54,347826087
    7000    1500    28,5    52,6315789474
               
Test 2               
    mtu    File size  (MB)    Duration (s)    MB/s
    1500    1500    35,2    42,6136363636
    2000    1500    32,8    45,7317073171
    3000    1500    29,7    50,5050505051
    4000    1500    31,4    47,7707006369
    5000    1500    28,2    53,1914893617
    6000    1500    28,7    52,2648083624
    7000    1500    28,8    52,0833333333
               
Test 3               
    mtu    File size  (MB)    Duration (s)    MB/s
    1500    1500    36,5    41,095890411
    2000    1500    33,2    45,1807228916
    3000    1500    31,4    47,7707006369
    4000    1500    30,4    49,3421052632
    5000    1500    29,8    50,3355704698
    6000    1500    28,2    53,1914893617
    7000    1500    29,5    50,8474576271
               
Averages               
    mtu    File size  (MB)    AVG Duration (s)    AVG MB/s
    1500    1500    36,73    40,89
    2000    1500    32,60    46,03
    3000    1500    30,37    49,43
    4000    1500    30,30    49,55
    5000    1500    28,87    51,99
    6000    1500    28,17    53,27
    7000    1500    28,93    51,85

As you can see, the fastest setting currently seems to be 6000. The DS actually has settings for 8000 and 9000, but my workstation's ethernet card won't allow that ioctl so I didn't test them.
 

TdC

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this is over NFS by the way.
 

Embattle

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I tend to keep mine at 1500 due to compatiblity with mobiles devices etc.
 

TdC

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yeah well. that's more or less a non-issue for me since it's connected directly to my workstation.

According to the DS212 datasheet, it will deliver itself as a disk over USB3 (at least how *I* read it) and it will also support wireless dongles. Some of them. They don't say which, helpfully. What they do say is that the device will offer 54.3MB/s write speed, so I'm only an MB off with my average copy which is pleasing.

When I have more time I'll shove my 54Mbit wireless usb dongle in there and see what happens :)
 

Embattle

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There is a list of tested ones on the website for dongles and everything else.
 

TdC

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well with any luck my completely generic 54Mbit one will run :)
 

TdC

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ok, scored a USB3 A to A cable, so I should be able to test it when the cable arrives. We shall see :)
 

Embattle

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Fingers crossed eh.

Got my bits and pieces so time to get Cat cutting and rewiring.
 

smurkin

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well with any luck my completely generic 54Mbit one will run :)

I thought generic too. I have a Hercules. It wouldn't work. Had to get a Dlink one featrured on the compatability list.:cautious:
 

TdC

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well, with the luck I'm having with USB wireless dongles atm there are good odds it won't work :-(
 

TdC

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ok have the cable. linux doesn't even know it's there. we'll see what happens on 'doze.

Linux says:
Code:
usb usb9: No SuperSpeed endpoint companion for config 1  interface 0 altsetting 0 ep 129: using minimum values
 

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