Table of Contents
Hardware
There are a lot of Synology NAS models that you can choose from. You can use the button below to find a model that is suitable for you. I decided to buy a two bay Synology DS716+ with a quad core Intel Celeron processor.
In addition to a Synology NAS, I also bought a Synology router, the RT1900rc. I did this based on my positive experiences with the Synology NAS. In the end it was a bit of a disappointment, but that was probably because Synology is a relatively new player in the router market.
Overview
The hardware I use can be found in the table below. In addition to the Synology NAS, the hardware used by the Synology NAS internally such as hard disks and memory is also mentioned, as well as the Synology router, switches, USB hard disk and UPS.
| Category | Brand | Model Number | # | Size | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Router | Synology | RT1900ac | |||
| Switch | Netgear | GE105v2 | |||
| NAS | Synology | DS716+ | |||
| Hard disk | Western Digital | WD40EFRX | 2 | 4 TB | RAID 1 |
| Memory | Crucial | CT102464BF160B | 1 | 8 GB | |
| USB hard disk | Western Digital | WDBAAU0020HBK | 1 | 2 TB | |
| UPS | APC | Back-UPS ES 700VA |
Network
The Synology router together with the Netgear switches are used to tie everything together.
NAS
The Synology NAS has two Western Digital hard disks configured in RAID 1. This increases safety by writing the same data on two drives. This is also called “mirroring”. RAID 1 does not increase performance. However, if one drive fails, the second drive is used, and the failed drive is manually replaced. After replacement, the the contents of the working drive is duplicated onto the new one.
To be on the safe side I replaced the 2 GB with 8 GB of memory. Officially Synology only support Synology memory, but I was confident that Crucial memory would also be a good choice.
Backup
Next to the cloud backup to Synology C2 Storage, I also create a local backup on the external Western Digital USB hard disk. Both backups are created using Synology Hyper Backup.
UPS
Finally, to be sure that everything will keep running in case of a power failure, I have everything hooked up to the UPS. The Uninterruptable Power Supply, or UPS for short, is a device that provides emergency power to the hardware when the main power fails.
History
The Synology DS716+ was not the first Synology NAS that I bought. So if you care a little bit about history please read on…
My first Synology
My first Synology NAS was a Synology DS211. I bought this Synology NAS back in 2011. This model had 2 bays and a single core Marvell Kirkwood processor with 256 MB memory.
Synology DS715
Because this model started to get a bit slow to my taste and the disks had some bad sectors, I then switched to a Synology DS715. This was in 2015. This model had 2 GB memory. Huge compared to the 256 MB memory in the Synology DS211! Again, 2 bays but expandable with 5 bays to a total of 7 bays using a Synology expansion unit (which I never did).
What I didn’t realize at the time, is that this Synology model had a Annapurna Labs Alpine processor. Although this was a quad core processor and quite powerful back in the day I was not able to use Docker on this model. And if I remember correctly, using the Btrfs file system was also not an option.
Synology DS716+
Since I really wanted to use Docker,, I switched to a Synology NAS with an Intel processor shortly afterwards. My eye fell on a Synology DS716+ with a quad core Intel Celeron processor. That is the Synology NAS that I enjoy using to this day. This model also has 2 GB of memory, but I quickly replaced the 2 GB with 8 GB of memory so that at least I have enough memory for Docker and other tasks.