I was wrong about SSD caching on Synology

[@mrhobs]

Coming back to this 8 months later and I just want to drop a word of encouragement and let you know how helpful and useful this explanation is. Thanks for all your hard work!

[@KarlRock]

Thanks!

[@MarkLevantPhoto]

I just had SSD cache crash and it took my 20TB volume with it. Thankfully Synology support, which is incredible, was able to restore my volume. had 2NVME drives used for caching on a DS1621+ BTW i love your videos!

[@darknez09240]

that's kinda scary tbh, is an ssd cache will for sure destroy the whole volume?

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Too little information. How did it happen? Power outage without ups? SSD disk failing? How was the volume recovered?

[@KamasamaK]

You don't say, but I am assume this was a read-write cache since a read-only cache should not affect data integrity of your volumes and you mention having two NVMe drives which is required for read-write. Even for a read-write cache, this is pretty scary since that should only happen when both NVMe drives fail, which seems pretty unlikely so I'm curious if that's what happened or perhaps there was some implementation bug that caused the data corruption.

[@TheBurzhui]

@@BoraHorzaGobuchul I don't fully know what happened. It was r/w cache, neither drive failed and im using them outside of synology to this day. How it happened? Who knows. One day i came home to an unresponsive DS with all lights lit solid. Let it be for a day, nothing changed. Couldn't ssh to it, couldn't ping it, nothing. Powered down and when i turned it back on the volume was caput. It took a few days for support to get it back up, they told me to not use the drives i was using as they were not on the approved list

[@RJ_Cormac]

Good update on the subject, Synology should have told users in 2018 those models wouldn't be able to utilize NVMe cache to it's potential performance gains until DSM7. They need to make a list of best performance settings for NVMe cache; DSM7 with 2 read/write drives and pin Btrfs metedata to the NVMe cache, and strongly strongly recommend a UPS backup power supply to protect the NVMe cache.

[@TS175]

Hello, I hope all is well. I was attempting to migrate from a 5 to 8 Bay synology and forgot to put my ssd's in the new unit, which led to my pool crashing. I put the ssd's in the new 8 bay and have not been able to reverse the crash thus far. I'm hoping synology experts can help, but it's not looking good. 30 years of data possibly gone... so devastated. Thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

Contact Synology support. It happens fairly often. They will help you recover the pool

[@TS175]

@@SpaceRexWill what shouldn't I do at this point while waiting for assistance? what would make this situation worse?

[@clipperbob960]

His consulting price is $250 per hour. Or 2,080 x $250 = $520,000 a year. He can’t be bought for $10 dollars.

[@TS175]

@@clipperbob960 😄😄😄

[@mik3c]

I was just looking for some info on best practices for setting up an M.2 SSD cache but this was really informative and had a lot of helpful information, cheers!.

[@kirbyallison]

In general, I have found the SSD Caching on Synology to be disappointing in impacting real-world write times. I have a large Synology NAS that we use to store video files. When ingesting the footage straight onto the NAS, our max write speeds are ~200 MB/s (using both CF Express and SSD SATA media via USB 3.2). With SSD Read-Write Caching configured (with 2 TB M.2 SSD's), I've experienced no increase in write performance. I simply wish there was a faster way to get heavy data on to the NAS! Furthermore, I'm perplexed that Synology has begun removing the second USB 3.2 port on the back and instead replacing it with eSATA expansion ports that cannot be used to connect external media - they can only be used for expansion units. So, no, on something like the DS 723+, only one external drive can be ingested at a time... 🤯

[@clipperbob960]

You are making an assertion without any support of your conclusion. Example are your hard drives shingled? Did you install M.2 SSD’s or NVME drives, you wrote SSD? Are your hard drives over 5 years old? When was the last time the RAID was scrubbed? Is the USB cable bad or too long? Etc. The “perplexing” thing is that you bought a Synology solution and expect it to be fast. Synology is well known for using hardware that is several years old. Big question is why are you not using Thunderbolt 4.0 since you are expecting performance?

[@Shanti9]

How can I check my BTRFS Meta Data current footprint?

[@tomdchi12]

Great topic - lots of questions, some you'll likely cover in future videos. Any idea why ssd cache is not claimed to speed up large file (ie video playback) operations? Seems that once the file being edited is in m.2 read cache it would be faster than pulling it from spinning drives... (This is per the synology kb article "Important considerations when creating SSD cache."). This is assuming a connection like 10gbe. Does using nvme drives make a difference in that case compared with a sata drive? (Off topic question you're likely looking at: when you can get a full-speed (sort distance, line of sight) Wifi 6e connection between the base station and the end machine, is Wifi 6e a fast enough (and low enough latency) link back to a properly configured Synology for video editing?)

[@PatentFinance]

Can I use the power loss resistant IronWolf m.2 you showed in combination with the hynix cheaper m.2 to make a read-write cache? I figure the processor will just talk to them at the speed of the slowest of the 2, so it won't be horrible for speed but it Will provide the power loss resistance. I already bought the hynix from your other video before realizing this one is better in case my UPS didn't work somehow during a power outage.

[@mitchellsmith4601]

You didn’t specifically mention this, but when using a r/w cache, the Synology ought to be on a UPS. Also, it should be already 😀

[@SpaceRexWill]

So as long as your SSD’s have power loss protection it does not *have* to be (it really should as you said, but it does not have to be)

[@max0913]

@@SpaceRexWill also for nvme or just for ssd?

[@mrkeeny]

Most servers come with an option for a battery backed write cache for this reason

I got 2 NVMes for read and write on my DS1621+ with a 10GbE card and only noticed difference on my VMs. File transfers saw very VERY little benefits. I would not recommend for file transfers only. Now if you use VMs or Docker, than yeah, this actually makes it better.

[@digitalrumours2782]

Totally agree. Same for me on a DS1821+ and 10GbE. Plus: after writing lots of files to the system DSM7 seems to 'transfer' that very very very slowly to the hdds. The system is active for a very long time with very slow write speeds and you see the 'cache' services working in the task manager. I'll remove them (2 wd black) and put them in an upcomimg gaming machine instead.

[@joshuvaantonio]

Hey could you tell the max speed of wifi transfer from lap/phone to NAS while using SSD ?

@@joshuvaantonio I have an wifi 5 laptop (MacBook Pro 2016), and I get around 130-150MB/s

[@joshuvaantonio]

@ Hey thank you so much for trying to help me out. Is it possible for you to try the same test with a 8GB file or something big. I also get like 150 MB/s but it gets down to 10 MB/s. I know i might be asking much, but it will really help me in troubleshooting and i could return and buy another product before the return window closes

[@kaseyboles30]

@@joshuvaantonio It depends on a lot of factors. It's like how fast your car will be on your local highway with the fuel the local gas station sells without saying where either of them are or what fuel or what kind of car. There are quite a few wifi standards now (a,b,g,n,ac,ae,af, etcetera) It also depends on signal strength and few other things as well. There simply isn't enough info in your question to answer it.

[@zhangyoulv]

Thanks for the video. 5:37 1TB*2 m2 cache sounds like a good size? (got about 30tb disk.) I enabled "pin btrfs betadata" anyway, but I don't know if it will cause problem for me later on.

[@JonDisnard]

It's worth emphasizing the Linux filesystem buffer cache is the ultimate in performance. So in reality using NVMe or SATA cache is just an extension of the FS buffer/cache. Therefore it makes the most sense to maximize system memory to the fullest. Linux will pre-load filesystem block into the memory cache of it believe those files will save effort later on.

[@SpaceRexWill]

While this is completely true, you are just not able to get the same amount of RAM as an NVMe drive. Ram costs ~60x the price per gig of an NVMe drive which means you get 1/60th the data cached dollar for dollar. Then when you add in the latency of accessing files over the network the difference between total access (from a network PC) time of ram vs NVMe is not nearly as significant. Because of that dollar for dollar upgrades for most people should be NVMe first

[@JonDisnard]

@@SpaceRexWill modern DDR4 runs at about 25 GB/s, where NVMe runs about ~ 4GB/s. But of course it's mostly academic, since we are probably limited by the network. That said, with a slow network compared to the speed of DDR4, the memoir can flush and fill tremendously fast, or pacing the NVMe cache by magnitude. But so long as the cache uses direct-io, and sensible read ahead, the memory buffers are still more efficient using NVMe cache.

[@premiumbitter]

My main question: how necessary is it to use enterprise/NAS-specific nvme SSDs? If I'm running them in RAID 1, with a UPS connected to my NAS, is it really necessary to get these more expensive SSDs?

[@SpaceRexWill]

In my experience, no. If you are going to be setting them up as a read write cache you should look into a drive with power loss protection as a just in case measure, but since you have a UPS thats not fully required

[@ThemeParkDelight]

@@SpaceRexWill do the Sylology 400GB NVMe SSD have power loss protection?

@@ThemeParkDelight yes, but most mid-end consumer ssds also have. Still the best practice, specially when using ssd cache, is to have an UPS.

[@ThemeParkDelight]

@ i just checked and the Synology SNV3400 SSD do not have power loss protection.

[@leexgx]

@@ThemeParkDelight most nvme ssds don't have full powerloss protection (if they not enterprise, some enterprise nvme has power loss protection, looking my self for next 3 months when I get newer Synology nas that has m.2 slots) ,, you can easily get enterprise sata ssds that usually do have full power loss protection and don't suffer from the rare nvme hang issue depends on the ssd, enterprise class nvme probably won't have the issue with crashing unless they are at end of life (just set them to 50% but you normally never get to 50% if your using correctly sized cache ssd larger is better here), but help if Synology could support nvme pci-e timeout of 8 seconds if it doesn't respond to commands anymore but don't believe Synology currently line of cpus support pci-e hotplug so if the nvme SSD hangs so does the nas witch in some rare cases can result in rw cache crashing and losing the pool (don't coin flip of the raid1 will save you at power up, most of the time it be ok) ryzen CPU might support it this doesn't happen with sata SSD cache because sata supports hot plug and timeout so if the drive stops responding after 8 seconds the drive will be dropped raid1 ssd cache will drop into safety mode and switch to readonly once all uncommitted writes in the cache has been committed to the pool (after that even the second cache disk can fail and pool won't be affected) the full powerloss protection part is important, crucial muddled things up with power loss protection (PLP) witch actually means it protects the nand from trashing it self on suddon power loss but it doesn't actually protect the data in flight Still better having a ups and a second local nas just for the rare edge case if both caches fail at the same time

[@rcadelina]

What non Synology M.2 NVMe brand would you recommend for cache or storage pool for Synology 923+? The advisory recommended 400 GB... but those it hurt to put 1 or 2 TB?

[@hanswi336]

I've read that a big RAM is much more important than any SSD cache for better performance of a Synology NAS.

[@SpaceRexWill]

That notion really comes from the old SATA ssd cache days. From what I have seen assuming you already have at least 4 gigs of ram, a cheap 250 gig NVMe ssd as a read cache will do tons more than if you spent that money on more ram

[@manu4ever249]

@@SpaceRexWill Thank you so much! I was wondering if I needed to get another 4GB module from synology or add 2 m.2 ssds.

[@leexgx]

Primary reason for not using write cache is if your actually using nvme SSD is there is a risk that if the ssd crashes it will hang the nas and then a small chance it will destroy your pool permanently due to corrupted metadata (don't expect the raid1 nvme to save you here because it hangs the nas and sometimes it can cause the other cache drive to deactivate as well which then destroys your pool), this doesn't happen on sata because after 8 seconds if the sata SSD stops responding it will drop that disk from the pool and then purge all cached writes and drop to readonly cache mode until raid1 is restored Sata SSD is plenty fast enough for read/write cache problem is it uses sata 1 or 2 slots (only going to be random io so you hardly ever see nvme speeds as both sata and nvme are not far off random access speeds) Dsm6 does same thing as dsm7 if you lose a disk (as its raid1) the protection kicks in and read-write is disabled changes to read only and will purge any cache writes to pool immediately (until raid1 is restored) On dsm7 you can turn this protection feature off (the option above metadata pinning I believe) sequential reads and writes won't purge a cache (like running a backup) unless there was lots of small files on there and even then I only ever see it writing 1-2MB/s when caching (doesn't seem very aggressive at writing to the ssd caches )

[@blocktrain849]

Completely false.

[@leexgx]

@@blocktrain849 in what way

[@hartejdhiman4438]

@@blocktrain849 "Completely false"; without any explanation or evidence of why it is false. Nice.

[@walberg61]

Hmm, the specs of the Syno's does not tell us the speed of the m2 slots??? i think its gen 3 x 1 so max about 900Mb but far beneath the specs of the cards themselve, what do you think?

[@danieldesrochers8871]

What is the best RAID to use when configuring NVMe-SSD in a read-write situation with a DS1621+ (in SHR-1) ?

[@SpaceRexWill]

You only have RAID 1, 5, 6 as options, but 99% of people just have 2 slots so you will almost certainly use RAID1 (same as SHR1 when you have 2 drives)

[@danieldesrochers8871]

@@SpaceRexWill Thanks!

[@MattVanSchie]

Thanks for the update. I have a team of 5 video editors working off a ds1821+. Will 2 X NVMe cache drives increase speed when doing 4k video editing directly from the NAS? And should the drives be set to read/write for this use case? We have all the 10gbe network configuration setup already.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Ssd caching is a huge upgrade for you! Definitely get one. If you have a UPS go read/write otherwise read only

[@MattVanSchie]

@@SpaceRexWill awesome, thanks for the tip!

[@cgamiga]

I didn't think SSD caching would help much for large sequential read files like video, as you'd always be exhausting the cache, assuming big 4K files are bigger than your nvme drives..? You can turn on the cache analyzer in DSM7 and it should say something?

[@shadowarez1337]

After watching one of your vids I decided I need to get some cache drives picked up 2 Samsung 970 Pros 1TB for just under $165. And 64GB of Ram. Now I wanna see if the PCIe will read my optane 280GB drive if it does that will become the VM drive.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Nice! You may have to ssh in to create the drive

[@shadowarez1337]

@@SpaceRexWill I'll try that soon as the memory arrives figured I might as well do the ram/SSD upgrade at same time as that. Would be interesting if it works as that's on hell of a Nas.

[@dillansgarage]

I followed the setup for read/write cache and used Samsung 890 Pro but I haven't seen any benefit. File transfer speed is the same and editing photo/video is the same. Any input on what I should check?

[@billycrowe4501]

Any reason why Id be getting 107MB's when I installed the 10GbE port and am also using a 10GbE switch? kinda stumped I did my test with black magic speed test.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Checkout my "15 reasons why your Synology is slow" video. Should go over all of that. Sounds like somehow you are on a 1gbe connection

[@mekko1413]

Love your videos and have been using them to get my family's NAS' setup across multiple sites. ! critique i do have is pay attention to how much you use "the thing is". I could almost play a drinking game with this. Anyhow keep up the good work. Wanted to say thank you and provide some feedback.

[@MauricioBond23]

Hi there! Thanks for all your great videos. Quick question. If I´m using only one NVME SSD and for read only, is it necessary to underfill it to only 70% or is that only suggested for read/write use. Thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

I still would! Most cheaper drives will also have trouble reading fast if they are full. You could probably get away with 80%

[@MauricioBond23]

@@SpaceRexWill Awesome, thanks for your reply. I have a 2TB Ironwolf 525, I will do the 80% as you suggested. Thanks!

[@NoBrassLeftBehind]

Would u recommend getting 2x 500gb SSD for this or 1x 1TB. Wondering what is most optimal and if any benefits to have a ssd in each slot

[@kickstep]

With 2 nvme drives is it possible to set up one as read cache and the other as storage pool?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yes

[@mattc4153]

The Synology NVMe 800GB is expensive compared to others. Amazon recommends MICROFROM 1TB F11N M.2 SSD NVME PCIe SSD Internal for 89.00 vs 300 for the Synology version. Would it work with this?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Pretty much any NVMe M.2 will work for this. The synology ones are wayyy too pricy unless you need their enterprise support

[@konradbak]

Will SSD Read-Wirte cache will reduce HD wakeups (start spinning) - especially I mean HDD wakeups by Synology itself (not with real data access by users)?

[@pedrohermida7080]

Based on Synology’s compatibility list, the Ironwolf you mentioned are not supported. So, shall we use them anyways?

[@SpaceRexWill]

So the drives should not have any issue. However I do recommend larger business users do buy the Synology ones just in case they have to deal with Synology support

[@ighfirlee]

I took a gamble getting cheap Chinese NVMEs and install it on my DS918+. Still works.

[@mistakek]

I just added a NVME read-write cache to my 918+ (yes have a UPS) and testing some stuff and I'm so happy right now. I backup my 918+ to a Truenas, and I have was having slow down issues backing up my Active Backup for Business folder, as I have dedup on that dataset on Truenas, to save space, and it would often slow down a lot, or worse, just stop transferring for a couple mins, then start again. Now with the NVME cache, it's been saturating my 1Gb network, and even when doing a Active backup of a system at the same time, it only slowed down a little. So even on a 1Gb network, it still helps with active backup, hyper backup, and my docker containers are definitely more responsive.

[@SpaceRexWill]

That’s awesome! Yeah I think a ton of the backup tasks to synology end up hammering the random writes which can really slow everything down

[@NoomMy]

Question- I've recently bought DS920+ and 2 Nvme SSD along the way. I wanted to use atleast one of them as storage drive, but DS7 proved me wrong (option only to mount as cache). The thing is - one is 1TB and the other 500gb with simmilar parameters in terms of write/read speeds, but they're from different manufacturers. Does this pose a major threat to data protection? DS7 mounted them both w/o problems with Raid1 configuration. I've also lanuched cache test and its running a week now w/o issues. Thank you for all your hard work with guides and quaility of life tips :D Cheers

[@SpaceRexWill]

So what will happen in this case is ether you choose read write or read only. If you choose read write it will give you 500 gig total (both drives act as 500 gigs) if you choose read only it will create raid 0 with a total of 1000 gig read only (both drives act as 500 gig). The mixed drives are not something I recommend for hard drives due to speed issues. But with NVMe ssd’s its really not a big deal having two different ones as even if they are slightly slower you would never know because they are so fast

[@NoomMy]

@@SpaceRexWill Thank you for replying :) have a great day =)

[@joshuvaantonio]

Hey could you tell the max speed of wifi transfer from lap/phone to NAS while using SSD ?

[@NoomMy]

@@joshuvaantonio sorry, I have no capability to measure lan transfers rn. I'm on-site worker and using server mainly throu vpn.

[@joshuvaantonio]

@@NoomMy ok dude. Thanku for the response

[@mattc4153]

Also, thanks for all your videos. Very very helpfull

[@michaelbauers8800]

How much wear on the SSD cells to work as a cache?

[@thepropolys]

If I have four NVMe cache drives, what would be the best RAID array for a 10Gbe network?

[@notreallyme425]

Is it really necessary to only use the SSDs listed on Synology’s compatibility page? (Home user planning a read cache only on a 920+)

[@SpaceRexWill]

For home users not at all. Though they do have to me NVMe (not sata like some SSD’s are)

[@johnmangino3925]

came for the content. subscribed for the shirts. … …and the content.

[@SpaceRexWill]

10/10

[@unknownKnownunknowns]

So very helpful, Will!! Curious: Would NVME ssd cache help a user send 4k videos over the web with less buffering/ higher quality??

[@SpaceRexWill]

Not appreciably, only if the. NAS was already hit really hard

[@unknownKnownunknowns]

@@SpaceRexWill Thank you, Will.

[@tylerkolisnik5210]

would you recommend two 240gb NVME ssd caches or one 500gb NVME ssd cache? I have a DS1621+ with around 60TB in it.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Technically the first would be faster, but network speed would be the limiting factor. I might go for the second for future upgrades

[@marc9870]

Hi Will I’m using a DS1618+ with four HDDs and two SATA SSDs (DSM 7). Would you recommend setting them up as read only or read/write for best performance? Thanks!

[@SpaceRexWill]

totally depends on your workflow. if they are SATA SSD's then I would do read only probably though

[@droneforfun5384]

Great info. Possible to give us some performance tests maybe with read cache only, vs read and write cache. Random and seq. Read/write tests?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yeah I have been meaning to! I think I am going to try to spin up like 20 VM's and have them all hit the NAS at the same time and see what happens

[@Yama_1291]

I still wouldn't recommend consumer grade NVMe SSDs for use as cache even when you under allocate the size. It will keep them healthy and higher performing for longer, but they just aren't made for this use case.

[@SpaceRexWill]

I am not sure if this is true. I think a cheap 250 gig NVMe SSD is going to do wonders for performance, and be really unlikely to ever burn out for 99% of users. If you are talking about truly enterprise users then maybe they could hit the limits of what consumer SSD’s can do, but that’s something I can’t even hit

Firecuda 520 ssd have a great TBW. That's what I'm using after A LOT of research.

[@Silverwing_99]

I had x2 WD black 750 500gb and one of the ssd failed, both Synology and WD recommend to use NAS specific SSDS. I have jsut purchased two WD S700 500gb ssds. Interestingly, i was able to repair and reformat the ‘died’ WD black ssd, it still wouldn’t work in the synology but i was able to erase and use as a time machine for my laptop - although i use synology as a time machine backups, and back my entire nas to the cloud , i use physical copies on ssds as remote copies

[@williamlau7179]

$25 for a nvme 256g (512g, $$) ssd is nice for a few years good use. Just minus a few beers.

[@marlon32]

If the Diskstation fails you crash your volume. Because you have to eject the rw cache first before you can do a disk migration.

[@joshuvaantonio]

Hey could you tell the max speed of wifi transfer from lap/phone to NAS while using SSD ?

[@attomicchicken]

When you install a os, can you use the SSD as the storage medium?

[@SpaceRexWill]

You cannot use a M.2 drive as storage (on Synology) you can only use it for a SSD cache

[@MarcusNiemi]

The "Skip sequential" checkbox is missing now. Do you know how to enable sequential read/writes?

[@SpaceRexWill]

Looks like its not possible in the menu anymore

[@leexgx]

Not available on dsm7 (really not needed you want sequential read/writes io to hit the disks, also burns out the ssd's significantly faster if you enable sequential io) need more speed have more hdds and ram

[@unknownKnownunknowns]

Anyone know a good price for nvme on sale for the 920+ ?

[@bobr7773]

I have a 1520+. Is it compatible with fast SSD cache?

[@MartinCooney1]

I'll have to disagree here. I find minimal (if any) performance gains using 2x 256G M.2 NVMe SSDs in r/w in my Synology. They might be insanely fast pieces of hardware however I fail to see the benefits. Perhaps Synology needs to rethink how they work. Something is missing. I would like if you could configure them as an actual volume to take advantage of their speed - will that ever happen?

[@SpaceRexWill]

So since making this video there was an update, that did not allow you to put all traffic into the NVMe drives. Where they are useful now is when your os is overloaded. This keeps everything responsive. That and search as the file tree ends up in ssd

[@blocktrain849]

Zero difference after I put in two 2TB Samsung M.2 drives. What a waste of money. Don’t get ssd cache unless you’re building your nas and not buying synology

[@xpyres2130]

Really interesting video, thankyou 😊

[@ajv_2089]

Does this benefit users with only 1gbe?

[@SpaceRexWill]

If you are just looking at transfer speeds no. But if you are running a lot of apps like photos and things like that and notice DSM being slow a cheap NVMe can really do wonders to how snappy things feel

[@TheGregoYatzee]

How many nvme drives? There are 2 slots, do they have to be used in pairs?

[@SpaceRexWill]

1 is completly fine. You just need more than one if you want a read write cache

[@dennisfrancisco5686]

I have a DS920+, what would you recommend? How do I install it? Sorry I am new to this Synology.

[@clipperbob960]

I would recommend a QNAP TVS-H874T or similar product with QuTS Hero. Keep it simple. get two Iron Wolf Pro drives. set up a back up perhaps with a TS-004. only back up important new files. archive off any files over 2 years old onto a cold storage solution.

[@apexstarfly190]

Hi can you explain the "compatibility issues" for the SK Hynix, i am looking to put them in a DS1821+

[@markgutierrez2024]

Why do you say they cause compatibility issues? I just ordered 2 SK Hynix 1 GB.

[@liugeorge4670]

It is good timing to watch this video. I have just bought 2 x Synology snv3500 series 800MB m.2 nvme ssd to put into my Synology DS1621xs with 16GB ram, 10GB converter, I would be much interested to see how does this system turns out.

[@JohnJordache]

Hey Space Rex! Thanks for all your content brother. Quick introduction: just got the 1621+ with the E10M20-T1 CARD - on which I have attached 2 X NVMe M2 ( 2228 ) of 1 TB each ( PCIe Gen 3 ). I stiil have the front NVMe slots available. Question: I’m planning to order another 2 NVMe cards of 1 TB each - this time the 4th PCIe Generation - is it worth it and will make it a difference to the overall performance of the NAS unit ? Additional information: running 32 GB RAM on it with 2 x 12 TB HDD and another 4 x 3 TB HDD - planning to configure it as a RAID 10. Mostly video editing / video content creation & photography to perform & storage on it. Much appreciated! Thank you.

[@SpaceRexWill]

I would say that your upgrade to an even faster NVMe drive is not going to do much. I would save the money and keep the gen 3 drive (pretty sure the 1621+ is gen 3 anyway) and put the money to a different upgrade. Also I would not set your drives up as RAID10. I would just keep with the whole thing on SHR1

[@JohnJordache]

@@SpaceRexWill Awesome and noted! Would only kindly dare to ask further if you have few more minutes to spare : why SHR over RAID 10 in my setup situation ? 🤔 Many thanks once again 🙏🏻😌

[@serge7350]

Again an great instructive video, thanks! I've several drives in hands and hesitate between 2 configurations for my DS920+ (giving the same storage capacity and a more than sufficient cache capacity): 2HDD(SHR)+2SATA-SSD(read/write cache) or 3HDD(SHR)+1SATA-SSD(read cache).Raw performance in MB/s is not actually the primary objective, but I expect the HDDs to have a more levelled load (ie. be a bit more quite and less "stressed"). 2HDD(SHR) is in principle safer, but less agile than 3HDD(SHR), especially if there are 2-3 simultaneous accesses. I expect the cache to "linearize" the random accesses to the HDDs: in that case, I guess that 2HDD(SHR)+2SATA-SSD(read/write cache) could be preferable. I wonder if my thinking is realistic or just wrong.

[@ldm58427]

I'm running VM's on my Synology NAS with a read cache only. Would adding the 2nd ssd for read-write boost VM performance?

[@SpaceRexWill]

The read only will get you 90% of the performance bump for VM’s. The read write cache can help if the VM is writing a ton like during a software update but generally is not nearly as important as the read only cache

[@Furbz]

Hi @Spacerex. I was wondering: I've got the 1621+ and a 10gbe Nic. Big files are rather fast copying from MacOs Finder, but small files (Raw files from camera) al really slow. Would an SSD solve this problem? Love to see a video about different speeds and real world tips for all kinds of usages. Thanks

[@MatrixGaimz]

yea they should over time as frequent files are kept in cache and small files are much faster to transfer from an nvme ssd

[@Furbz]

@@MatrixGaimz thanks for your reply. I've treated myself a NVME ssd just to test it. So far I haven't been able to really notice any difference. But I haven't been testing it intensively: will do soon.

[@Lachesisms]

@@Furbz how did this turn out. I’d like to stuff a 1621 full of SSD and max out memory and cache. Would you do it again?

[@versa319]

Very informative. We’ll done ✅😊

[@SpaceRexWill]

Good to hear from you Walt!

[@Arokhantos]

I got a 1 tb nvme comming tommorow hoping vm's load much faster cos i wanna do a lot of vm stuff

[@SpaceRexWill]

With VM’s NVMe is night and day different

[@joshuvaantonio]

Hey could you tell the max speed of wifi transfer from lap/phone to NAS while using SSD ?

[@FreestylerAlbert]

For me there was not that huge performance increase. I bought 2x480gb IwonWolf 510 SSD. Read + Write cache. And when I made that SSD enable in the Synology it's told me it needs at least 1,7 TB for indexing metadata for exmaple. Sad I wasn't able to make that check earlier, to know how big SSD I need. (I use mainly to SMALL files backup) TONS of small files.

[@tksa497]

An issue I've had with my DS916+ was the slow file transfer speed between my 10Gb-PC and NAS. I just got a DS1621+ with the E10G18-T1 so I hope this will eliminate the slow transfer issue. Now the question is which NVMe configuration should I choose to ensure maximum speed/performance while editing videos/photos located on the NAS? Thanks

[@SpaceRexWill]

I would go read only for sure in your case. You will be having sequential writes to the NAS, but random reads

[@notreallyme425]

Still recommend even on a 1G Ethernet connection? I’ve got a 920+ and I’m a home user.

[@SpaceRexWill]

I would buy a cheap 250 gig single NVMe. It will do a lot for the user interface

[@juliendufour4513]

I though only Synology SSD works with Synology NAS?🤔

[@Muskieangler]

I say this in the most endearing way but, this guy is like a living parody.

[@mrhobs]

I thought NVMe read only was faster, or... better. (Well, I'm mostly just looking at NASes from the perspective of a video editor.) Also, I thought you already had videos about the wonders of NVMe caching... this video makes it sound like you're just now realizing it. Idk, I guess I'm missing something.

[@SpaceRexWill]

SSD caching was always great for video editing, however could actually slow down users who had most sequential reads if they had a SATA SSD. But with NVMe this is no longer the case, it will (almost) never slow anyone down due to its insane speeds. Technically it could slow down purely random workflows, and even then I don't think the slow down would be measurable and no one really has purely random workflows

[@mrhobs]

@@SpaceRexWill Hey that makes sense, thanks. And also thanks for taking so much time to respond to people! Really cool! If I could ask one more thing, how much NVMe cache and memory would you suggest adding to my new DS1621+ for 6k video editing? (10GBe is a given I assume.) Was thinking... start with a 1TB stick and add a second later if I need more. Probably read only unless you think otherwise. And for memory maybe add 16GB (ECC?) to the included 4GB for a total of 20GB to start, and replace the 4GB with another 16GB eventually. Is it easy to add NVMe after setting up a RAID?

[@ChimpRiot]

SSD cache is not the easiest thing to properly benchmark.

[@SpaceRexWill]

Yeah working on figuring it out. I think I am going to spin up a ton of VMs and have them all trigger at the same time

[@FerreiraDMF]

First. Great video 👍

[@DieCastErn]

I was wrong about this video, I expect some testing performed and not just plain talking, what a waste of time

[@clipperbob960]

He gets $250 an hour times 2,080 hours a year = $520,000k and you thing he has time to prove anything. Or use cases that are not bottlenecked by 1gb lan or fact that Synology hardware is 5 years out of date or you still have HHD drives slowing the speed

[@Kfdhjgethfdtgh774rvbjs]

Wish they'd fix the constant write back ticking noise this causes though