Synology 10GbE Upgrade for the Home Lab

Synology
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One big feature I was looking forward to taking advantage of when I replaced my old Synology DS1815+ with a new Synology DS1621+, was the PCIe expansion slot and support for 10GbE cards. I could now setup a 10GbE network between the NAS, the home lab Dell R720, and my main PC.

My goal was to create a small 10GbE network without spending a ton of money.

In order to achieve this goal I purchased the following items:

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Backup Synology NAS to Amazon Glacier

Synology
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Recently I replaced my Synology DS1815+ with a new Synology DS1621+ NAS.

After migrating all the data from the old to new NAS and re-setting up Backblaze on the new Synology, I wanted to have a second backup of everything… just in case.

If you already have an AWS account and want to know how to backup your Synology NAS to Amazon Glacier then keep reading.

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How to Replace a Failed Hard Drive in a Synology NAS

Synology
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Earlier this week I received a notification from my Synology NAS that a hard drive was failing. Right now in the middle of this COVID-19 pandemic, one thing I don’t need is my NAS down and the kids and wife unable to watch any shows or movies.

Luckily for me Synology has made drive replacement a breeze. Here is how to easily and very quickly replace a failed hard drive in your Synology NAS.

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Upgrade Synology DS1819+ RAM to 32GB

Synology
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Recently got my hands on a Synology DS1819+ which offers a number of great features, one of which is the ability to support 32GB memory! Giving me more than plenty of resources for all kinds of Docker containers, virtual machines, and Synology applications.

In this quick guide I’ll detail how to upgrade your Synology DS1819+ to 32GB of RAM.

Items needed:

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Defrag to improve Synology BTRFS performance

Tools
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My Synology NAS gets a lot of use at home. Not only is the Synology NAS a central point for my VMware home lab, but all my PCs are connected to it for document, photo, and ISO storage.

In order to keep things as optimized as possible I try to defrag the drives every once in a while. Depending on how fragmented the drives are, this could help improve performance in sequential read and random IOPS.

In this post I’ll show how it easy it is to kick off the task. Just keep in mind you will want to do this during low usage as the defrag task will certainly impact performance while it’s running.

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How to create a virtual machine on a Synology NAS

Synology
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A common request I’ve seen among Synology NAS owners, is the ability to run virtual machines directly from their NAS. Recently Synology released a beta version of their new Virtual Machine Manager package that allows users to do exactly that.

Below I’ll detail how to install, configure, and create a Windows 10 virtual machine on my Synology DS1815+.

Before getting started, your Synology NAS not only needs to be compatible but also needs to meet a couple requirements:

You’ll also want to have a couple ISO images downloaded and ready; Windows 10, Synology Guest Tools, and Windows Virtio Drivers.

With that, lets get started!

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How to upgrade Synology DS1815+ to 16GB RAM

Synology
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Synology DS1815+ upgraded to 16GB

Just last week I replaced my Synology DS412+ to with a Synology DS1815+, which has twice the drive bays with the addition of supporting two expansion units, a much more powerful CPU, and 2GB RAM out of the box.

I’ve seen some people mention with very mixed results that both the Synology DS1515+ and Synology DS1815+ can be upgraded to 16GB of RAM, the biggest issue seems to be around what memory modules to use. So I figured I’d document how I upgraded my DS1815+ to 16GB RAM and what memory I used with success.

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Secure Public WiFi using Synology VPN Server

Synology
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Public WiFi is something many of use enjoy while we’re at the coffee shop, hotels, airports, libraries and so on, but one thing everyone should or needs to know is that public WiFi is NOT secure. In fact it’s so easy for people to eavesdrop and hack a public WiFi that even a 7 year old girl can do it, in under 11 minutes!

The solution would be to use a VPN which will encrypt your traffic between you and the VPN server. So even if someone is attempting to hack the public WiFi, your traffic becomes useless to them and thus your emails, chats, web browsing and file transfers are now secure and out of other peoples sight.

There are plenty of VPN services available such as NordVPN (which I also use), but you can also setup your own VPN server on your Synology NAS.

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