![]() ![]() You can create multiple volumes if desired by leaving some free space available. The ext4 filesystem is backward compatible with older Synology NAS units, so that’s really the only compelling reason I can think of sticking with ext4. Unless you’ve got a good reason for choosing ext4, you should stick with Btrfs to allow advanced features like snapshots. There are two filesystem types supported currently – Btrfs and ext4. Btrfs “Better FS” is the best choice unless you need backwards compatibility with an older NAS. You’ll be prompted to select your existing storage pool to create the volume on. This is handy for new users, but since we wanted full control, we already created our pools and will need to use the “Custom” mode. Keep in mind that Synology allows you to use the “Quick” mode to create your pool and volume in one shot. If you’ve already created pools, you’ll need to use the ‘Custom’ option here. You can think of the pools as the underlying drive groupings and RAID configuration and the volumes as the filesystems sitting on top. Now that the pools are created, we need to create volumes. You should let it finish before using the pool or you may see performance degradation. Note: The RAID-5 array will take a long time to build – several hours in my case. I plan to store and run VMs from the SSD array and use the mechanical drive array for static storage, backups and lower performance VMs. These two pools will be used for very different purposes, which their RAID configuration and drive types are suited to. I now have two separate storage pools with two different RAID levels configured. Two separate storage pools but no filesystems yet. This is definitely a good idea as it’ll save you time and trouble later on if one of your disks was bad from the get-go. You’ll be prompted if you want to do disk checks before proceeding. Simply select the disks you want to add to the pool. If they vary in size, consider using SHR. You should always use a RAID level with redundancy (RAID 1, RAID 5 etc) in a production setup – or if your data is at all important to you! Ideally select identical disks for use in the same pool. If a single drive in the pool dies, you’ll lose the entire pool. IMPORTANT: You should never use RAID 0 for a pool/volume with important data on it. I’m using RAID-0 with no redundancy for the SSDs as I want maximum capacity and the highest possible performance and won’t be bothered if I lose the pool. I plan to store backups and important stuff on the mechanical drives so need some redundancy there. I went ahead with the “Better Performance” option and will use RAID 5 for the mechanical drives and RAID 0 for the SSDs. Be sure to understand how RAID works before proceeding. It is great for beginners, but we’ll stick with the classic RAID-levels. Traditional RAID levels can waste a lot of space in this type of situation. SHR makes the creation of a pool easier, but its best feature is the ability to make use of all disk space when disks of different sizes are in the pool. You’ll first be prompted to use classic RAID levels or to use Synology’s Hybrid Raid or SHR. Classic RAID for best performance or SHR for greater flexibility. When clicking the Create button, you’ll be greeted by the storage pool creation wizard. This is where you group disks and apply a RAID level to them. The first thing that needs to be done before you can use the drives is to create one or more storage pools. With all six drive bays populated, we’re ready to begin getting the storage prepared for use on the DS1621+. Four small screws attach to the back of each sled and hold the drives in the correct position. Installing the 2.5-inch drives is an easy job. Don’t forget to properly remove your LUNs/Datastores! 2.5-inch drives look tiny in the DS1621+ drive tray! Although they are getting a bit dated, they are still solid performing SATA SSDs. I’ve got three Crucial MX500 1TB drives that I’ll be removing from my TrueNAS box for testing in the DS1621+. The three donor SSDs coming out of my trusty TrueNAS box. Today, I’ll be doing some of the initial storage configuration in preparation for getting iSCSI configured for use in my vSphere lab.īut first, I’ll need to get some flash storage added to the NAS. In my previous post, I got the hardware all setup on the DS1621+ test unit that Synology was gracious enough to loan me. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |