Roon on a UGREEN NAS

Roon Software Discussion QNAP/Synology NAS
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Most of their units are now V1500B, I think.

I’m not sure if @Jefferson_Douglas1 wants advice on this but I have a suspicion that he doesn’t actually need storage for 60 TB of music. He may also not have a plan for how to think about SSD.

If you want to use SSD as cache in a Synology that supports it - and I personally think this is a very good idea - you need to buy compatible SSD with the right features. Specifically, if you want to run your cache as a write-through cache - you want to be sure that the SSD you buy has Power Loss Protection (PLP). Synology might even restrict you to buying their own modules. I can’t recall if they do or not.

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I put an SSD in my fifth slot, which you can read more about in my now infamous megathread:

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Thanks, I do want advice and I’m sorry for misspeaking about my drives. My INTENTION is as follows I want to configure my NAS as a Roon server and storage. My drives are 5x 20 TB (not GB, sorry to misspeak!). Arranged in a RAID-6 (effectively 59TB of storage).

I want to run Roon on the SSDs (2x 2TB in RAID1, Mirrored I believe is the terminology).

I have these SSD currently: WD_Black SN850X 2TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 Internal Gaming SSD Without Heatsink

I was planning on transferring these from the UGREEN to the Synology, but if anyone thinks it’s a bad idea or bigger storage (4TB mirrored vs 2TB mirrored) is needed let me know.

Another wrinkle I don’t think I mentioned is that I currently have an Ayre DAC connected to my Mac mini currently as an endpoint. I hope to connect this to to the synology once Roon is installed (on the SSD section of course)

I am a little nervous about high resolution files “stuttering”. I have a ton of 24-192 rips of my vinyl and tapes that I want to work well.

@DDPS do you have a link for the “more modern” Synology drive? I have no problem “measuring 8 times and cutting once”. I’m just lucky I’m still in the window where I can return / reconfigure stuff.

I’m not sure I want to go the seperate NUC route yet (another box to potentially break), but haven’t completely ruled it out yet.

Again, many thanks for the input and suggestions. Yall are very gracious with your time and knowledge!!

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I do wonder about the 60TB choice. For FLAC storage, that’s enough for about 2,000,000 files. If you have that much data - music, photos, video, etc. then it makes sense. If not, smaller drives with more historic industry-collected data on failure rates might make more sense.

Other things:

  • You can mirror SSDs and use them for storage. You can also use one or more SSDs as cache. I prefer the cache approach because it delivers performance improvements across all workloads, but both approaches work

  • If you’re saying you want to create a mirror using two completely different SSD parts, then you need to research that. You might or might not be able to do this with your parts. It’s probably not a good idea even if you can.

  • I don’t personally use consumer (including gaming) parts in my NAS or server builds. For SSD-based storage, I always use enterprise parts that have Power Loss Prevention (PLP). If you use a part without PLP, power loss can cause not just loss of data that is currently being written but also corruption of the file system. Synology’s own brand of SSDs have this.

  • Synology stopped supporting DACs plugged in via USB in DSM 7, which they shipped in 2020/2021. You won’t be able to connect your DAC as you describe.

I’ve built and used numerous Synology devices over the years but I’m no longer using them (and you don’t want to follow me down the self-built TrueNAS route unless you want to make a hobby out of this stuff :slight_smile: ). The best advice I have for you is to start a thread on the Synology forum describing what you’re trying to accomplish and what you’re considering. Those folks are usually pretty helpful at helping people refine builds.

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If you can tell me how much music you’re actually planning on putting on the thing, I could give you some more informative advice.

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Thanks Gtunes. 2 reasons for the large storage capacity:

  1. My library is currently 20GB (of course that includes a lot of redundancy, ie, filling a 2TB drive then moving it to a 4TB drive which eventually fills up, etc). Having huge storage on the NAS allows me room to sort through this easier and get rid of stuff.

  2. I still have a ■■■■ ton of Vinyl and Tapes to rip. At 24-192, those files stack up quickly.

A Good catch on the enterprise SSD’s. The ones I mentioned are the same (2X2TB). however the caching vs Mirroring is a good call-out. If in a Cache configuration, can you at least “Back up” the Roon OS somewhere else?

re: The Ayre not supported… ARRRGGHHH!!! This pushes me back towards a newer MAC Mini or a Rook / Nuc Build. WHich still adds more boxes

Since I’m planning on keeping the 2014 MAC Mini for executing my rips. I guess in theory I could leave the Ayre connected there and try and use the 2014 MAC MIni > Ayre DAC as an endpoint, but that seems ass-backwards and I’m not even sure that would work.

Upgrading to a newer MAC mini is fine I guess, but then I’m paying for a new box and I still need a NAS for storage.

So In Summary: I should probably upgrade the internal SSD drives to enterprise solutions, and figure out the Ayre issue. Perhaps I could build a basic Roon Rock? NUC? (Im not sure how the jargon works here, whic I assume is for a standalone build with its own ports and Internal SSD (like building a nucleus / titan, right). Oh and one more thing: A Friend of mine told me he uses an external SSD for the Roon core, but his focus is primarily Plex / Movies and Music secondarily.

I’ll also check out the synology forums too, were you indicating synology within the ROON forums? Or on Synologys platform?

Again, many thanks!

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I currently have about 20TB and I still have a ton of vinyl and tapes to rip. However as someone mentioned below, I don’t thing the syology will work to feed my Ayre USB DAC. SO I’m trying to resolve that.

In my response here:

I outlined a little more detail. But If I cant get the Ayre to work on the NAS directly, then i’m leaning towards a basic NUC build and just using the synology as storage.

FWIW, I’m not tyring to reinvent the wheel, and even though I’ve purcahsed some hardware (and some on the way) everything is returnable at this point.

Thanks.

PS I also need to deep-dive your sybology thread. I’ll try to do that ASAP. Thanks!

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You’ve got some choices to make :slight_smile:

My recommendation about the Synology forum was to consider posting about it on the actual Synology forum, which is here: https://community.synology.com/enu

Hope you figure it out. It can be challenging navigating this stuff!

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I’m going to go out on a limb and say: the right Synology NASs for this type of collection are the enterprise series, and Synology absolutely, 100% will not support @Jefferson_Douglas1’s pre-purchased drives in those. I might recommend he look at QNAP.

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Thanks @DDPS; so are you saying my existing drives won’t work at all, or won’t be supported by synology or both.

I have 5 of these drives:

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@DDPS also, the drives are still in the return window as well. I think the bigger issue is the connection to my Ayre DAC. As much as I wanted to avoid it, I think I’ll have to build out a NUC of some sort, and then a more modest NAS for storage.

Also; if the issue with the newer larger drives is potential issue due to being untested, I could probably get by with 40 TB (double my existing data which has a lot of redundancy that can be streamlined).

Thanks so much for the advice, I feel like I’m getting there but my credit card is experiencing a lot of “cycling” :slight_smile:

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It is my understanding that those units will refuse to accept anything other than Synology brand drives.

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Yes, I might agree with that in your case. Or just run Roon on something like DietPi.

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All: Again, Thanks so much for your help through this difficult time:)

I just printed the return labels for ALL the hardware I’ve bought, and will ship them back tomorrow. Back to Square one, but at least I’m not out any $$, just time and Aggravation:)

So at this point, I need to figure out the best path forward. My vintage mac mini and drives still work fine.

Here are my requirements:

  1. Capacity for my 60K Library and 20 TB of data, and room to add about another 10 TB, as I rip more vinyl / tapes.

  2. Integration with my DAC endpoint (Currently a USB Ayre QB9 DSD).

  3. Speed enough to manage my 24-192 / DSD files across my network without stuttering.

  4. Ability to replace / Upgrade Storage capacity down the road in a straightforward manner.

Readaing @DDPS thread on Synology was fascinating, I had no idea about the SHR approach and it seems very flexible in terms of upgrades so I’m fascinated about possibly by using that.

Still it doesn’t address my DAC issue, so that will need to be solved by a seperate box that runs roon and will support the DAC. Possibly an ASUSTOR or custom NUC but need to research a bit more about the best approach.

A Newer MAC Mini might possibly work, but doesn’t solve the storage issue, so thats less likely at this time.

Regardless, I’m grateful for everyone’s help. I’m learning a ton and I appreciate all the feedback from the community.

I’ll keep you posted as I come up with decisions, and run them by you first before pulling any triggers.

Finally, for anyone concerned about AI taking over the world or losing their jobs to it, you’re probably OK in the short term at least. Sometimes its right, sometimes it guesses, sometimes it just makes things up! Synthesizing information with a minor complex problem and it fails fast, at least for me it did :slight_smile:

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