Synology Hybrid RAID Expansion Begins…

Synology upgrade begins

This is actually my first go at using this little trick. I only noticed it a few years ago.  i haven’t had a need to use it.  Until now.  i am so delighted that Synology continues to innovate.  Every time i deploy a Synology, it has even more functionality. i am not getting paid for this, honest endorsement.   I only wish they made direct attached storage or SANs.  I do not mean to imply that i have a problem with NAS.

I am not only upgrading the capacity, but the throughput and seek times as well.  With dual drive protection, it will be a few redundancy passes before i see any additional storage and probably even longer before i will see much more performance.  it will be an interesting project. The process so far has been simple. i just deactivated the outgoing drive and replaced it with the new bigger faster drive.  Once that is done, you repair the volume with the new disk and wait.  And wait.  Eventually do it all again. And again.

Status update:

Data Transfer - Home Stretch

After almost 10 days of non-stop transferring, we have finally (almost) reached the bottom.  This makes it almost 16TB transferred.  It is almost time to plug the Drobo into the Synology and start using that 16TB volume as a backup!

Status update:

synology NAS

I have an aged storage array in a critical roll on my network. I have wanted to replace it for years, but the expense and the effort always kept it in the future. Apart from the speed being underwhelming, it has always been reliable and problem free.  My recent backup problems have necessitated a new and much larger backup destination.  This created the perfect storm allowing me to buy a huge new NAS to take over the rolls of my current slowpoke.  Thus freeing my old, slow, but reliable array to act as solely a backup.  This will breath new life and impressive capacity to my infrastructure and finally for the foreseeable future put an end to my local backup capacity issues.

Some of the preparations involve typology changes.  Changing the very roadways and turnpikes of my network. If you are doing a performance upgrade, might as well squeeze out all the juice (link aggregation, etc).  This upgrade is so big it will probably take the entire weekend just to prepare and rest of the month to complete!  what could possibly go wrong?  I prefer to think of all the things that will go right when it’s done.

My favorite products play well together!

DiskStation and Amplifi

Ubiquity’s Amplifi wifi mesh system is awesome and incredibly easy to setup. It also looks great next to Synology’s DiskStation product line.  Together they make the most amazing Time Capsule replacement. The functionality doesn’t stop there.  The DiskStation does so much more then just backup.  As a backup however, it allows you to mirror the disks for extra protection as well as synchronize between other servers, DiskStations, cloud storage, or even AWS S3!  Getting nearly 200Mbit everywhere!  Already backing up three computers.  What other services should I add to the Synology?