Request for Synology 923+ hardware configuration tip for fast NAS response

Roon Software Discussion QNAP/Synology NAS
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Hardware setup:

I have just ordered a Synology DiskStation DS923+ with 2x Seagate Ironwolf Pro 12GB HDD.

This will be set up with RAID1 (mirror) and used as storage for 5TB with *.flac files

ROON is installed on a NUC11TNHI7 / 64GB DDR4 3200 MHz / 1 TB M.2 NVME SSD 7300/6000 MB/s.

Using 1Gb network for now. (NUC is overkill yes, but have longer lifespan)

Question:

I have no experience with NAS units, but is a bit worried for delays when ROON is accessing files on the NAS.

Should I upgrade this NAS with 2x M.2 NVME SSD 7300/6000 MB/s as buffer for faster response / less delay for ROON user experience?

How much RAM should this NAS have?
It comes with 4GB and can be (8, 16, or 32GB)

How can I reduce waiting delay in the ROON when accessing the files?

Thanks

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Warning: this is one man’s opinion, and not everybody here is going to agree.

I think your NAS by itself is all you need.

Here are a few key nice things about the 9xx+ series, and I take advantage of ALL of them in my own implementation:

  1. Run Roon on NAS.

  2. But also install Synology Audio Station so that you have an alternative, very capable and mature alternative playback platform for all of your music (and one that doesn’t require an active Internet connection!!). If your music is well-tagged, it’s a compelling offering. It also allows you to create smart playlists using smart rules in a manner that Roon is not capable of, including by track date. Neat trick: you can export those smart playlists to static playlists, and Roon will synchronize them and show them in its own playlist list. You also then can run DS Audio on your mobile device and get functionality similar to ARC, and it is a more mature and robust remote playback solution.

  3. Fill up all 4 slots with large drives and use SHR2 to allow for two drives’ worth of redundancy in regard to data integrity as well as higher throughput.

  4. Use an external eSATA-connected SSD for the Roon database.

  5. If you have a managed switch, you can link-aggregate the two 1gbps connections for an effective 2gbps worth of network bandwidth to your house and the multiple people who might be listening to music from it.

  6. (edit: addition) Max out the RAM per Synology’s specs.

In your current proposed solution, the network link between the NUC and the NAS will be a big bottleneck. The core scanning music from the NUC across the network connection will be a fraction of the speed of running Roon on the NAS itself, where the bottleneck is the disk-to-RAM interface. You will DEFINITELY want to link aggregate your NUC to the NAS, configuring it on both sides, and using a managed switch to get the most out of the mix of those two.

This is why most people running Roon ROCK have the storage directly attached, and just backup to a NAS. But running backups like that is questionable because, in my working philosophy, your most durable storage — which is your NAS with RAID of some flavor like SHR2 — should be your canonical storage, not merely your backup storage. Unless you like the idea of restoring from backups once in a while…which I have NEVER had to do, in almost 15 years of using a well-set-up NAS…

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If you are purely using your NAS for storage of your audio files, then your NAS is nothing more than a file server. Depending on what other services you have running, it should be more than capable provided that you have a good network connection to the core. Meaning that both should be using wired network and if possible on the same switch.

But I do agree with

provided that you do not have excessive requirements for DSP and zones.
When considering running Roon on NAS, in addition the the recommendation made in the previous post, I would recommend increasing the memory. You don’t necessarily have to stick to 8, 16 or 32. You can also add a module to the existing 4GB you have. In my case I upgrade the memory of my RS1221+ to 20GB by adding a 16GB module to the standard 4GB one.

An additional benefit of the NAS, whether you choose to use the NUC or run Roon on the NAS is that you can use your NAS to run extensions. To do so you can install Container Manager, which is Docker on DSM 7.2. It avoids that you have to add additional devices to your setup in case you want to run extensions.

Finally, you can also run Roon in a Docker container. I’ve been doing this since I started using Roon in May of this year and it’s working really well. But beware that if you choose this path, you will not be able to rely on the official Roon support team for any issue encounter.

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If i am correct then you can use the M2 NVMe slots to create a storage volume in DSM7.2. I would use two NVMe ssd’s and configure them in a RAID 1. You can install Roon on this volume and also put your database on it. That should be more than fast enough.

I would also expand the RAM memory to at least 8 GB. Especially if you will be using the Synology for more than just storage and Roon.

I personally use Roon on a DS918+ with 12GB RAM and a SSD as the drive where Roon is installed and it works great. Please note that i only use Tidal, no DSP is being used and only have two Roon zones.

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Oh yes. I have 8GB installed in my 918+, which is the maximum officially supported on that model. It works quite well. If I felt it wasn’t working, I would try the unofficially supported 12GB.

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Why not wait till it arrives and see if there are problems? The only known issue is that when the Server is running on a separate computer, it might take a while to notice disk updates on the NAS. The Roon chief engineer has fulminated once or twice on this forum about how much he hates having music files on a separate NAS.

How many tracks (FLAC files) do you have?

I second @DDPS’s suggestion: just run the Core (Roon Server) on the NAS, and get rid of the NUC altogether. Lots of us do that.

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@Bill_Janssen Not sure of the exact number of files, but around 130000 I guess.

@SvenM I was planning on adding documents on the NAS as well after ROON is set up and working.

I never thought of the idea that the NAS could run the ROON software as well.
I just bought the NUC after spesifications listed on the ROON list over supported hardware, in case I would need assistance with this. So on first try I think I will try to use the NUC.

So if I get this correctly, the database should be on another SSD than the ROCK, and it’s prefered to have it on the NUC. I believe there is an extra M.2 Card - 2242 (Key B) slot in my NUC, so it would be the better option to add this storage to the NUC then?

There was a lot of information here about network setup that I will need to google as it’s over my head.
With my limited knowledge I though a Gb network had a theoretical transfer rate of 128MB/s, and a flac file of 24/196 is around 170MB. So the bottleneck I though would be the time from the request was sent from ROON to the NAS started the search and replied.

I am not adding files all the time, I usally add a bunch of new files now and then, so if I can tell the NUC to update the database after it’s added, I think that will work for me.

I have up to 5 rooms I would like to play music in, but not at the same time.
Hope that it’s possible to integrate with Denon HEOS.
If I can set up a speaker at work and play from my NUC that would be very nice, but there is a lot of things I will need to learn before that.

Did not know it was possible to use 2 different RAM sizes in the NAS, thanks for that tip.
In the future I would like to run pi-hole and plex on the NAS if this is possible, but for now I need to get the ROON up working.

So if I understand this correctly, at the moment it’s not needed to add more ram or SSD disks to the NAS to reduse access time fro ROON.

It’s better to add an extra SSD to the NUC.

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Yep, that should work.

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I am not sure how it would work with a library your size, but with ~50K tracks I don’t even bother putting Roon onto a separate SSD. I added two M.2 drives for cache of a sufficient size, and the entire Roon database (plus whatever other small things I access on it) are in SSD cache anyway, without having to use a dedicated volume. Works quite well.

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This is nothing more than a file server so nothing much to worry about.

Your network latency can indeed play an important role. You can reduce this as much as possible by keeping the NAS and the NUC on the same switch. Moving them to different switches will add latency. In addition if you woud connect 2 say 8-port switches all devices on 1 switch will need to share the 1Gb connection to device on the second switch. In theory that should still be sufficient, but if you can avoid it I would.

Having a separate SSD with storage on NUC is also a great option. If you choose to go down that route, you can still use the backup purposes.

Be sure to check out the RHEOS extension. You can run it in a Docker container on your NAS.

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Amazed over the feedback on this forum, thank you!

I have enough information to get started when the NAS unit arrives by mail.

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I just want to add something here in regard to my previous comment:

This is why most people running Roon ROCK have the storage directly attached, and just backup to a NAS. But running backups like that is questionable because, in my working philosophy, your most durable storage — which is your NAS with RAID of some flavor like SHR2 — should be your canonical storage, not merely your backup storage. Unless you like the idea of restoring from backups once in a while…which I have NEVER had to do, in almost 15 years of using a well-set-up NAS…

…there are a number of people who have a Roon core with directly attached storage, and who periodically (daily/otherwise) back this up to their NAS.

A potential issue with this is that folks are treating this directly attached storage — rather than the NAS data — as the canonical source for their music, and this storage is not as durable as some of the most valuable forms of storage that a NAS can provide. For instance, on a Synology device you can run Synology Hybrid RAID level 2 (SHR2), which gives you two full drives of redundancy for your files (that is, you can lose two out of four hard drives and still have all of your music). This is equivalent to RAID 6, but is designed for better reliability given Synology’s use of BTRFS, which otherwise has issues with pure RAID 6.

In this scenario, since there are actually multiple copies of each bit of your music collection, the underlying RAID system can be used to periodically “correct” any insidious data corruption via the process of “data scrubbing,” helping ensure the bit perfectness that so many people here otherwise obsess about in the transmission chain. Frankly, I am not as concerned about transmission chain bit perfectness (which is generally transient and infrequent) as I am permanent bit perfectness, which is dubious if data is sitting for decades on a simple single hard drive.

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Hence the notion that running RoonOnNAS — if you can swing it, with a proper level of RAID — as one of the highest forms of ensuring bit-perfectness and long term music collection integrity that should be a priority for almost any audiophile. As I get older, I don’t want to worry about a future where my music slowly starts getting corrupted and I have to re-rip or re-buy my music…

Now, if people chose to use their NAS in this way as a primary source, and copy FROM the NAS to their direct-attached storage, I’d say that’s a sound strategy. But it sure sounds like a pain in the you-know-what to me…

I will add that it is possible to achieve a similar end through the use of Roon Core on a traditional operating system that supports RAID 6 as well. I just don’t see a lot of people doing that around here…

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Having moved my Roon files from a Thunderbolt drive to my Synology NAS, I would jus mention what I think is the best bang for buck overall…

  1. Fill all the drives in that NAS, overall throughput will be faster with 4 vs 2.
  2. get some cheap M.2s for the SSD Cache and pin the BTRFS metadata (you probably won’t need more than 256Gs each)

3.change your MTU size on the NAS and server to 9K
4. i think its more of a good feel mentally, but it doesn’t hurt to add more memory to the NAS. If you don’t run apps, and you don’t have 100 people accessing it, it may never get used…

That’s it for day-to-day listening…

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can you explain this in detail,
tks

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ethernet has a Maximum Transmission Size (size of packets). It defaults to 1500. If you change the size on NAS and other endpoints, it will be able to send fewer packets and “speed” things up.

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Have finally received all the equipment.
The first 2 hdd could not be indentified by the NAS or my computer so had to return them.
Ended up with buying 4 new 12GB hdd that is set up as SHR2 and BTRFS.
Followed the following video for configuration of the NAS:

All music is moved to the NAS and have a ROON install on my main computer to test how it works.

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Only delay is when ROON starts, have not experienced any delays with searching and playing music.

Thinking about the safety of my network so I will try to create a NAS user for the ROON server that will only have access to the music folder on the NAS.

Then I will need to find out how to access the music from work.

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This is a good idea and I consider it a “best practice”. I have a Roon_ROCK user to which I grant Read access to my Music share. I have an additional top-level shared folder called RoonBackups. I grant Roon_ROCK write access to this share and I configure Roon to do its backups there.

If you’re interested in doing offsite backups of anything on your NAS, take a look at the included Hyper Backup app from Synology. I’ve used Hyper Backup to backup to Azure, AWS, and Synology’s own C2. It’s fairly easy to set up and, for me at least, it’s well worth backing up my music, Roon backups, and all of the other stuff I keep on my NAS.

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