Hello I currently run Roon on a 2014 Mac Mini as my core.
I recently picked up a UGREEN NAS, 5 x 20 TB drives in raid 6 (effectively 59 TB). I’ve added 2 x 2TB SSD in raid 1 (mirrored).
Unfortunately I didn’t drill down to the forum but relied on AI to recommend a robust server for Roon and came up with the above. Over the last 3 weeks I’ve been moving my data from the drives attached to the MAC mini to the NAS, and I’m just about ready to install Roon and migrate my old Roon to the NAS.
Now I see that UGReen isn’t really supported here, looks like synolpgy, QNAP, etc, but not UGREEN.
My question is: since I’m in the return window for UGREEn, would it be better to return it and get a synoliogy or QNAP while my current Roon set up is still active on the MAC Mini? Or will I most likely be OK proceeding with Roon installation on the UGREEN NAS.
Please mock me gentley for not staring in the forums, and using AI to make my purchase decisions.
Does the Ugreen support Docker?
You could go down that route, but you wouldn’t get much direct support from Roon. It’s more community support. But many users on the forums here swear that running it in Docker is the only way
Always a mistake. The UGREEN is nice but you’d have to run Roon in Docker or something like that. It works but can be a hassle (depending on your skills) and isn’t an officially supported configuration.
Return it. Roon does not run in any officially supported way on that device. I’m not sure why the focus on a NAS, nor, what the reasons are for wanting to move on from your Mac.
My skills are (obviously) just enough to be dangerous. I’ve read about Docker, but I think it may be time to “cut my losses” on the UGREEN, at this point I’ve just wasted time, and the 5 20gb hard drives / SSD should be useable in the new NAS Box. Painful lesson but not insurmountable.
Well the main reason is to have a better performing Core than my aged Mac Mini, but the NAS was primarily for storage, and to feed my current DAC like the Mac Mini does. When I was planning it out, I was going back and forth between having the NAS simply for storage and build a Rook/ Nuc by a titan or another Mac mini. I was deceived by the promise of all in one and the false promise of AI’s recommendation. BTW; I’ve been off the forum for a while, so my responses may be delayed since they need approval.
get rid of the thing if you dont want to get into geek territory with alternate ways to run Roon. You have 3 other options as to NAS. go with the one that has the most support.
I use a Nucleus Titan with uGreen 4800. Very happy with the performance. You could also use a NUC. All supported by Roon. These perform much better than when I used a mini. Faster and no hiccups.
Fwiw, I have a couple of 5 bay Synology NAS and used one to run ROON Server on it, the other with all the media.
I found it to be a tad glitchy when it came to playing high res (24-bit) files from it, but other 16-bit FLAC and MP3 files were fine. About 5/6 years ago I switched to running ROON ROCK on an Intel NUC while keeping the media files on the Synology. It’s been fantastically stable, both Ethernet and Wifi connectivity through the household.
I do have a Mac Mini and MacBook Pro but preferred going the NUC route since it runs pretty much 24/7 headless after initial setup and don’t have to be inconvenienced with O/S updates and the like.
Many many thanks for all the responses so far! At this point, I’ve got an option to return the UGREEN, and I’m specing out a Synology DS1525+ (Diskless), and I can move over the drives (5 X 20gb) and SSD (2X2TB) from the UGREEN. This seems like a safer approach, but since I’m “transition”, I wonder if just getting one of the recently discounted Titans and keeping the UGREEN might be a better approach. Then I’d just use the MAC Mini for making rips of my vinyl and sending to Roon? Ie; would Titan + Ugreen be better than Synology all in one?
You’ve written a couple of times that you have 5 x 20GB drives. Do you mean 5 x 20TB? And you also have 2 x 2TB SSD drives?
Before you do anything, I suggest you also get some (human) input on your disk configuration. This is very important. If, for example, you intend to use the SSD drives as cache, and not storage, in the Synology, you need to be very, very sure that you have the correct parts.
You should also get some help with your HDDs. In total, your 5 spinning disks give you 100 TB of storage. Even if you run them in a RAID configuration that gives you effectively the usable space of three drives and two for redundancy, you’ll have 60 TB of usable storage. That’s an enormous amount - perhaps you do need it, but perhaps not.
Most importantly, though - figure out what your plan is for how you’re going to set up the drives and the SSD. Roon works best if its database is on SSD. It’s fine if music is on spinning disk. But the sweet spot for Synology, in my experience, is to put everything on spinning disks and run a redundant read/write SSD cache on top of that (and then you tell it to cache BTRFS metadata, which is just a checkbox).
Seriously - please do this. I think you may have followed AI advice on your drives, too, and you may be in for a surprise.
Oh…and @DDPS is your friend when it comes to Synology. He might be able to help with your spec. There’s a chance he’ll recommend a different model, too. The one you’ve chosen is based around a Ryzen V1500B @ 2.2GHz. That processor is getting a little old. There may be models with better alternatives.
Yeah, I use a 1522+ and, arguably, that model has a slightly stronger processor in it for single-core use, which Roon cares about. If you are going to have 50+ TB of music, however, I suspect the 1525+ will be disappointing. I only have 2.8TB of music.