Hi All,

I have a Drobo NAS that's been around since about 2016 which has 5x 4TB WD
Red drives in it. It's been running fine & have had no issues with it.

I've only ever used it as a NAS. Mostly to store media, backups & other digital clutter. While the Drobo can run apps, the CPU in my 5N is too slow to really handle much.

Drobo filed for bankruptcy back in 2023 so any of their remote access features stopped working then, any any support. With the NAS and drives now at about
9 years old, it was time to think about a replacement. I have the array
setup to allow for one drive failure, but if the NAS itself died then I'd be SOL as it's not like I can get a new Drobo.

I was eyeing up the DS1522+ & DS1525+ and decided on the 1522+ (from 2022) as there seems to be less restrictions with the older model (can use unsupported drives with a warning vs being locked out from using them at all).

Ended up filling it with 5 X 8TB WD Red Plus drives (on the Compatibility
List) plus 2 X 500GB M.2 SSDs (Crucial, not on the Compatibility List) for a read/write cache.

After getting it unboxed & setup I was able to mount my Drobo right on the Synology and use its web ui to start moving data over directly from NAS to
NAS. The Drobo only has 1 x 1Gb Ethernet port while the Synology has 4 x 1Gb Ethernet ports as well as an expansion slot for a 10Gb Ethernet adapter. I don't have anything faster than a gigabit switch at the moment, but it's nice to know I can upgrade if I ever switch to something faster.

As I have a managed switch I connected two ports to my switch and setup Link Aggregation. One ports now seems to be strictly for sending & the other for receiving. In a little more than a day I had all of the data moved over to the new NAS, pointed the Plex server at the new IP and we're now in business.

I was also able to plug the USB cable from my UPS directly into the Synology, which recognized it. The Synology will now safely shut itself down if the battery on the UPS is getting low.

I remember Kurt really enjoying the Synology he got (on a much better deal
than I got) a few years back so decided to check out some of the extra features.

I first checked out the mobile apps, so now I have full access to all of the files on my NAS from anywhere on my phone. I also installed the photo backup app so now all of the pictures I take on my phone are automatically backed up to my NAS (as well as iCloud).

While I was at work the next day, I checked out the web ui on my work computer and was able to see everything on my NAS via the browser. If I wanted a Dropbox or OneDrive-like experience I could install the Synology Drive client which would give me access to my files from my work computer. (I won't be installing that on my work computer... ;))

Next I setup a secure connection with the Synology firewall to allow a VPS I have running to automatically back up over the internet to the Synology.

And then yesterday I checked out Synology Backup for Business. A little while ago I went back to the free version of ESXi on my NUC. Turns out the Synology back automatically backup all of the VMs running on ESXi (even the free version), so tried it out and it seems to work quite well.

There's still more I'm going to play with (like running a VM directly on the Synology), but it's a neat piece of tech. Definitely much more capable than the Drobo.


Jay

... I swear honey, it'll pay for itself over time!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Northern Realms (21:3/110)

On 27 Aug 2025, Warpslide said the following...

Hi All,

I have a Drobo NAS that's been around since about 2016 which has 5x 4TB
WD Red drives in it. It's been running fine & have had no issues with
it.

I have been using a Synology DS920+ now since 2020, before that for a couple of years I was using Xpenology (Hacked Synology Software) I have had nothing but good things with the Synology. I have the photo app running with no issues all pics are immediately backed up if I am on my home network (Tailscale gets me on my network at home) I only have 3 8TB drives in it (white label RED WD) I can't complain. Since I have a Unifi network at the house my BBS stuff is on a separate VLAN so I built a 6 bay Terramaster to have Proxmox and a VM of Xpenology where I passthrough 2 8TB white label shucked RED drives to that. If I didn't love Synology so much I would have gone TrueNAS on the Terramaster but Synology just works, I haven't touched my DS920+ in a couple of years. I know after 6 years the HD's are probably getting a little weary but I will wait for the NAS to tell me.

One thing I must warn you about, Active Backup for Business although a great piece of software for Windows, is a bit tough on Linux/Debian/Ubuntu. It took them well over 6 months to get it compatible with Debian 12, and now it doesn't work with Debian 13 I put in a request for support but I know it's going to be many months before they add that support. I am seriously looking at UrBackup. My son who is IT just moved away from ABB on all of his computers at both work and home, and moved to UrBackup. If you run Windows on your stuff then ignore my comment here but if you are on Linux be careful with it...


|11 Bucko |14- |06Wrong Number Family Of BBS' |07- |03www.wrgnbr.com

... Reward for a job well done: More work

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Wrong Number Family Of BBS' - Wrong Number ][ (21:4/131)