Synology NAS Cache Hi all, Synology do an Add-on card for Cache storage. So, as I’ve noticed recently that machines are hanging when creating new folder on NAs drive i.e. it waits and...

[kev2021]

Hi all,

Synology do an Add-on card for Cache storage.  So, as I’ve noticed recently that machines are hanging when creating new folder on NAs drive i.e. it waits and eventually shows the new folder then I can name it.

If copying a file, it copies but then hangs at 99% for a while before completing, regardless of size of file.

Even opening a file and then saving it can take a while.

So I’m wondering if SSD Cache will help at all? Does anyone know how it works? I get that it places file on the cache for faster access etc but when does it get written back to the drive? i.e.

Client requests File -> NAS loads file on Drive 1 (HDD) into Cache ->

Client receives file, works on file, saves it -> written to/saved in Cache

When does the file get written back to Drive 1 (HDD) ? To avoid potentially loosing data if cache crashed etc?

Don’t want to loose any data if cache crashed, apart from many any data I immediately wrote prior to crash as that’s understandable and cant be helped.

Thanks

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

SSD cache can dramatically boost the data writing and reading speeds of large HDD volumes and is a great idea, but they are not cheap.

Q. has creating folders etc. always been slow ?

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[kev2021]

not always, only since updated to dsm 7….. but they also changed smb etc so could be anything

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

Interesting, is more CPU / RAM being used since DSM 7 upgrade ?

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[kev2021]

When I bought the Synology NAS, I upgraded the ram from the standard to 16GB. At the moment it is using 8% ram and 1% CPU (CPU is a Intel Atom C3538 2.1ghz 4 cores) and its been turned on for almost 20 days straight. Its on pretty much all year round but recently went away so turned it off as wouldn’t need it.

So the ram side shouldn’t be a issue.  On my previous NAS I also upgraded the ram, forget what I upgraded it to and that didn’t have any issues).

Only updated my NAS due to the previous one becoming EOL and was unable to support DSM7 and they were not going to be doing any further updates to DSM 6 so didn’t want to have any security issues etc and having had no real issues with it, apart from a power supply issue that randomly started tripping the power and when reported to synology, they sent me a new PSU under warranty and was really easy to sort and no issues since. Hence decided to get a newer version and I’d pretty much filled my 5 bay nas so went for a 8 bay this time.

Only think I would do differently if I could would of been to either wait for a version that takes NVMe drives or purchased SSDs for it.  As it is its run 3.5″ WD Red SATA drives (not the ones with smr which I believe had a degraded performance).

DMS 7 causes some issues with Plex and was a bit of a pain to migrate over so i left it for a while and eventually took the plunge and got it to work, I’m now dreading a update to it which so far hasn’t been one (not via synology updates anyway) no doubt one if i download it manually but don’t fancy doing that.  In theory a update should be fine but knowing took e a while to get it working, don’t want to mess with it.

Plex is running fine as is so no real need to update it.

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

For my benefit and clarity, was your new Synology NAS also running DSM 6 initially and then you upgraded to DSM7 is when delays started ?

There is this white paper that may help ?

Synology_SSD_Cache_White_Paper.pdf

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[kev2021]

Yes, when i bought the NAS, DSM 6 was the only DSM available and then later on they produces DSM 7 which I upgraded to and had to remove Plex before had due to issues with it under DSM 7 due to them changing accounts/permissions etc.

Had a look at the white paper, Page 7, the diagram implies it writes to cache, send ack to application to confirm its written and then writes to HDD but the text doesn’t say anything about writing to HDD so unclear if it does that immediately or if it does it only at certain times i.e. once every x hours/days or only when the cache is full? I’d of thought immediately as if you had a per failure, you would loose the last writes (updates).

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

Great, I now understand, what model is your Synology NAS and is it on the list of supported devices for DSM 7 ?

 

 

 

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[kev2021]

Hi,

I have a DS1819+ which is now discontinued as there is a newer version out but from my understanding it is still fully supported on DSM 7.x, technical support is limited, I suspect due to them no longer repairing them.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/status?model=DS1819%2B&status=all

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

Does look as though the DS1819+ is supported by Synology DSM 7.1 at least

Q. are you using ExFat ?

 

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[kev2021]

Yes, DSM is notifying me of updates and applying them when I say to do the update.

It is currently running DSM 7.2-64570 Update 1 which is the latest I believe as no new updates are prompting and it says DSM version is uptodate.

Kev

 

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[kev2021]

Nas was expensive to buy, consider no HDDs etc so I don’t plan on replacing it any time soon, whilst its discontinued I suspect it will still be supported for a few years yet.

My previous DS1512+ was supported until I think 2018 or 2019 so a good few years so I’m hoping this one is supported for a few more yet.

Hopefully by the time this one is EOL, the newer versions will have done away with HDDs and moved to NVMe’s and hopefully prices of the drives have come down or even SSDs as a 4TB NAS SSD is still quiet expensive considering how long they been out

I’m tempted to try the cache, buy the card and then buy 2 x 1TB NVMe drives just to increase performance of read/write but can’t find definite info on how it works as I’ve seen reports the the cache crashing etc and people loosing data and I’d have thought that would only be any data just written prior to the crash i.e. not saved back to the HDD but maybe it doesn’t write the data back immediately meaning its saved in the cache but not on the HDD so maybe not worth the cost.

Kev

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[kev2021]

I have 2 volumes on the NAS.

1 is RAID5 ext4 (originally setup- 5 drives), other is a new volume which is RAID 5 btrfs (3 drives).

Mainly did this as there was lots of consensus online that if going over 6 drives or over a certain size in a RAID 5 setup, should move to a different raid (think maybe raid6?) allowing for 2 drive failures so decided to setup a new volume in RAID 5 rather than effectively loose storage capacity.

Lots of mentioning online of potential data loss etc if using large drives as they are generally all purchased at the same time so if 1 fails, possibility other fails during the rebuild of array etc as it does take a good 24hrs or so to rebuild.

By creating 2 volumes, I’ve moved some data off the to the newer volume so each volume is now approx. 50% used so plenty of space on each and also limits the potential of loosing data if worst happened.

I do however back most of the stuff up to a external WD USB drive that plugs into the nas USB port and I have set USB Copy to backup the various folders I want to back up.

Other folders which are not “essential” I’ve ignored as the backup volume isn’t large enough to backup the NAS if the storage space got near capacity so I’ve opted to try and mitigate this by not backup up what isn’t essential so that if the space does grow, the backup will still run.

I’ve got the backup on a timer so it comes on 1 evening per week, the USB copy runs and then it gets turned off by the timer the following morning. All jobs are completing so far and its been running this way for a good year or two now.

Thanks

Kev

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[UK Sentinel]

Leave it with me this week as I have a couple of meetings, so will ask them if they can advise (offline) ;-)

BTW: what Add-on card for Cache storage are you thinking of using ;)

 

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[kev2021]

ah terrific, thanks!

From what I can tell the M2D18 and M2D20 are both compatible with the DS1819+ so either of those.  I was then going to use 2 x WD Red 1TB NVMe card’s to get the read/write cache as the Red drives are mean’s for NAS’s.

Kev

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