NAS or DAS specifically with Hybrid RAID (Synology SHR or Terramaster TRAID) for Mac Studio

[GoGrater]

EDITS: Thanks to your feedback, I have enhanced my requirements list by adding #4+ below (Edits in bold italics).

I have a Mac Pro 5,1 which I am replacing with a Mac Studio Ultra. I've been researching storage options and am looking at NAS/DAS. I miss having all the components built into the desktop and I'm getting a headache trying to learn all these new things... so bear with me.

I like the concept of Synology's SHR1/2 (Hybrid RAID) for flexibility (adding more or bigger drives later). However, I would like to connect the enclosure directly to my Mac Studio instead of going through a switch or router. I saw a video (hopefully is accurate) that the direct connection can be done with NAS using static IP addresses and this would also provide faster speeds than going through the network.

I will be the only person accessing this storage. I do not need to access my storage from the Internet. So it seems I really need DAS instead of NAS, but I can't find DAS that supports a flexible hybrid RAID like SHR. Apparently TerraMaster has TRAID, but it appears to work with NAS.

Does anyone know of DAS that supports a flexible RAID system? Or should I just get a NAS and do the direct connect method? The downside with NAS is the higher cost. (Also, I believe I would use the Ethernet port on the Studio for a direct connection. Edited)

My requirements:

1. Single user accessing RAID from the Mac Studio. Although I could find use for connecting other home devices to a RAID, I won't do it if it increases security risks. Right now I put a small amount of non-essential data on iCloud and it works fine, although a little more inconvenient.
2. Want to connect directly from the Studio to a RAID enclosure; Don't need to access storage from the Internet
3. 3-drives for data and 1-2 drives for parity
4. Ability to add drives in the future or swap out a full or failed drive with a new or larger capacity drive.
5. Built-in or intuitive GUI to configure and manage the RAID. Does not require Linux expertise.
6. Secure setup to protect data from the Internet. How much more risky is a NAS than DAS?
7. Long lifetime of enclosure and software. Willing to pay extra to last for 10+ years rather than upgrading to a new enclosure. I have the same Mac Pro since 2011(with a few internal upgrades) and saved up for this moment.
8. Speed primarily for editing photos and Photoshop large files. (Not anticipating video work).
9. Reliability of the system.
10. I'll need 8TB for the next 3 years and maybe 24+TB forever??? Depends whether I get into astrophotography panoramas and other unforeseen events.
11. Idiot-proof. OK, so there's no such thing, but as good as it gets. The extent of my expertise: OS clean installs, replaced GPU, installed NVME drive and basically my own IT person.

For anyone not familiar with SHR Hybrid RAID, here is the video that got me started down this path. I don't know this guy or I'd be calling on him to help me.

This is all new territory for me so hopefully I'm making sense, and if not, feel to laugh. Although it might help if you are more detailed in your explanation to help me better understand. Cheers!

 

[B.A.T]

Honestly I don't know if this answers your question but try here.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-external-drives

 

[dimme]

While a NAS has it's benefits IMO in your usage a DAS would be the best choice. Are you looking at a RAID for speed or backup, if the latter it may not be the best use case for a RAID.
I have been very happy with the products from OWC.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

My requirements:

1. Single user accessing RAID from the Mac Studio
2. Want to connect directly; Don't need to access storage from the Internet
3. 3-drives for data and 1-2 drives for parity

This is all new territory for me so hopefully I'm making sense, and if not, feel to laugh. Although it might help if you are more detailed in your explanation to help me better understand. Cheers!

I think the ORICO-WS500RU3 is one of the DAS that meets your requirements.

ORICO 5 Bay Hard Drive Enclosure 3.5 inch USB3.0 to SATA with Raid Screw Installation Up to 80 TB with 5 Packs 3.5inch Hard Drive Case

5 bay enclosure 5 bay raid enclosure,raid storage external raid storage 3.5 hdd enclosure ssd enclosure with fan 3.5 drive bay enclosure 5 drive bay drive docking station external enclosure 3.5 external sata bay sata drive enclosure ssd external enclosure

www.amazon.com

 

[bobcomer]

I have a Mac Pro 5,1 which I am replacing with a Mac Studio Ultra. I've been researching storage options and am looking at NAS/DAS. I miss having all the components built into the desktop and I'm getting a headache trying to learn all these new things... so bear with me.

I like the concept of Synology's SHR1/2 (Hybrid RAID) for flexibility (adding more or bigger drives later). However, I would like to connect the enclosure directly to my Mac Studio instead of going through a switch or router. I saw a video (hopefully is accurate) that the direct connection can be done with NAS using static IP addresses and this would also provide faster speeds than going through the network.

I will be the only person accessing this storage. I do not need to access my storage from the Internet. So it seems I really need DAS instead of NAS, but I can't find DAS that supports a flexible hybrid RAID like SHR. Apparently TerraMaster has TRAID, but it appears to work with NAS.

Does anyone know of DAS that supports a flexible RAID system? Or should I just get a NAS and do the direct connect method? The downside with NAS is the higher cost. (Also, I believe I would use the Ethernet port on the Studio for a direct connection. Edited)

My requirements:

1. Single user accessing RAID from the Mac Studio
2. Want to connect directly; Don't need to access storage from the Internet
3. 3-drives for data and 1-2 drives for parity

This is all new territory for me so hopefully I'm making sense, and if not, feel to laugh. Although it might help if you are more detailed in your explanation to help me better understand. Cheers!

I would just get a NAS if I were you. I love Synology's, very robust and reliable. Direct connect via ethernet is okay, but there are updates for the NAS software that you might have to deal with separately.

If cost is an issue, Synology's are quit common on ebay and you can get some very good buys.

 

[GoGrater]

Thanks everyone for your replies. As with most things (at least in my life), the answer is not straightforward. I'll give OWC a call and see what they have to offer and also look at the Orico product.

That's a good point, bobcomer that there are NAS software updates that I'll need to deal with. I'll need to figure out how to do that with a direct connect.

One significant thing I neglected to add to my requirements list is #4 flexibility of changing drives in the future. With Synology's SHR Hybrid RAID, you can mix and max drive capacities and later add drives on the fly. What SHR does is logically break up the drives up into smaller chunks so that the RAID is more modular than classic RAID. The benefit is greater flexibility when making drive changes in the future. e.g. when you need more space, you don't need to rebuild the entire RAID. I hope I got that correct, but here is a link to anyone interested in their explanation:

What is Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR)? - Synology Knowledge Center

Synology Knowledge Center offers comprehensive support, providing answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting steps, software tutorials, and all the technical documentation you may need.

kb.synology.com

BTW, I don't have any vested interest in Synology. I'd consider another product with a similar Hybrid RAID. Their's is just the first one I found. Thanks again for your help!

 

[GoGrater]

While a NAS has it's benefits IMO in your usage a DAS would be the best choice. Are you looking at a RAID for speed or backup, if the latter it may not be the best use case for a RAID.
I have been very happy with the products from OWC.

I'm looking at a RAID as my primary storage with protection against a single drive failure. I plan to copy all my data from 3 HDD on my Mac Pro 5,1 to the RAID. Back then, I didn't understand RAID and bought the MP with 2 drives that I've keep separate, adding a 3rd later when I ran out of space. Of course speed is a plus, but my most demanding work is with Photoshop, not video so if anything, I'm more RAM constrained.

I agree DAS is what I need, but I am not currently aware of any DAS with a hybrid RAID that offers the flexibility I'm looking for. NAS comes with some additional maintenance (updates) and sharing that I don't need. If Synology or another company had SHR/Hybrid RAID on DAS, I'd buy it.

 

[Chancha]

I often advise folks that NAS is a natural evolution for when you grow out of DAS usage. Despite you clearly don't need the network aspects of a NAS, what you described actually falls a bit short if you use a DAS; namely the failure prevention in RAID, and then the disk flexibility in SHR. If you use DAS, you either will need a hardware RAID controller in the enclosure, which is rare and often with consumer stuff not the best quality compared to enterprise grade solutions, or use software RAID like macOS Disk Utility which is pretty barebones. The thing with a NAS like Synology is that it is a self-maintaining standalone machine, with its own set of (Linux) tools that dumbs these down to a GUI that average people can understand. As a bonus you also get suites of packages surrounding backups, and also sharing even just for yourself inside the LAN among multiple machines, including your phone.

The SHR hybrid RAID is indeed a great feature. In my small business / studio, originally we deployed a DS1618+ 6 bays with various sizes of 3-4TB disks, just as a test when we switch away from too many DAS boxes. After the team became familiar with using a SMB server instead of mounting a Thunderbolt drive each and every time, we upgraded the whole thing to a DS1812+ with all 8 bays of 12TB disks. Even though all disks are of the same capacity I still started with an SHR pool, just to leave the door of upgrading disk open in the future.

For single user, single machine connection, you can get a 10GbE copper card inside, not necessarily Synology's branded card (which is just a Mellanox ConnectX OEM). Something like any of the Intel cards can suffice. Then on the Mac Studio, you arrange the network interfaces in a way such that the (10G) Ethernet is used exclusively as the sole connection to the NAS, where these 2 machines share the same independent subnet. Then you offload all the internet traffic on the Mac Studio to its WiFi interface, so the 10G ethernet is exclusively used for talking to the NAS. With 8 disks or even an NVMe SSD cache, just an SMB connection like this can almost saturate a 10G pipe. Then, depending on your requirements and if your software needs it, you can setup iSCSI LUN which kind of pretends the network share as a directly attached / mounted volume for your Mac, for all intends and purposes this just behaves like a DAS on a logical level.

Hope this helps.

 

[ColdCase]

I'm looking at a RAID as my primary storage with protection against a single drive failure. I plan to copy all my data from 3 HDD on my Mac Pro 5,1 to the RAID. Back then, I didn't understand RAID and bought the MP with 2 drives that I've keep separate, adding a 3rd later when I ran out of space. Of course speed is a plus, but my most demanding work is with Photoshop, not video so if anything, I'm more RAM constrained.

I agree DAS is what I need, but I am not currently aware of any DAS with a hybrid RAID that offers the flexibility I'm looking for. NAS comes with some additional maintenance (updates) and sharing that I don't need. If Synology or another company had SHR/Hybrid RAID on DAS, I'd buy it.

If you want to go there, there are a couple software packages that provide more extensive features than Disk Utility, including the same/similar function as what you describe as SHR. If I recall correct, softraid does that, I haven't played with it. I'm a mirror or RAID 10 type of guy for drive failure protection. There are others. You won't be tied to proprietary hardware and can used JBOD enclosures.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I'm looking at a RAID as my primary storage with protection against a single drive failure. I plan to copy all my data from 3 HDD on my Mac Pro 5,1 to the RAID. Back then, I didn't understand RAID and bought the MP with 2 drives that I've keep separate, adding a 3rd later when I ran out of space. Of course speed is a plus, but my most demanding work is with Photoshop, not video so if anything, I'm more RAM constrained.

I agree DAS is what I need, but I am not currently aware of any DAS with a hybrid RAID that offers the flexibility I'm looking for. NAS comes with some additional maintenance (updates) and sharing that I don't need. If Synology or another company had SHR/Hybrid RAID on DAS, I'd buy it.

In theory, your Mac Pro 5,1 can be converted and re-purposed as a NAS with NAS OS re-installed like True NAS Core, OMV, etc. or even Xpenology (a hacked version of Sysnology OS), but as the hardware has aged, its stability might be an issue.

 

[Chancha]

If you want to go there, there are a couple software packages that provide more extensive features than Disk Utility, including the same/similar function as what you describe as SHR. If I recall correct, softraid does that, I haven't played with it. I'm a mirror or RAID 10 type of guy for drive failure protection. There are others. You won't be tied to proprietary hardware and can used JBOD enclosures.

SHR is just a tweak over LVM and MDRAID. There are other (GUI) tools out there that also dumbs it down for average users but none of them are as mainstream as Synology I guess, since they sell hardware and software at the same time. As such, even for enclosure failure, you can still bring the disks to a Linux box and can in theory mount the RAID up without using anything Synology.

On a semi-related note, on a Synology it is recommended to use BTRFS instead of ext4 which is probably better than most of what is supported on a DAS mounting to macOS. All in all it simply takes more work for a DAS to Mac setup to reach feature and reliability parity against a NAS at this point.

 

[Chancha]

In theory, your Mac Pro 5,1 can be converted and re-purposed as a NAS with NAS OS re-installed like True NAS Core, OMV, etc. or even Xpenology (a hacked version of Sysnology OS), but as the hardware has aged, its stability might be an issue.

The bigger problem will be power consumption to be honest. A Xeon machine has no place being a single user simple file server, especially one that's a decade old. That said, I myself had done that on a MacPro1,1 in the past, but it ran on a base Woodcrest with much less Wattage consumption than whatever else that came later. Also I wanted to run Snow Leopard Server on it.

 

[ColdCase]

..... All in all it simply takes more work for a DAS to Mac setup to reach feature and reliability parity against a NAS at this point.

As a novice I always found Synology NAS cumbersome to set up, like a foreign language, but then I don't spend a lot of time with Linux. Once set up they have been reliable/durable for me. I found performance issues when using them for other than basic NAS type functions, and its big bucks to resolve that, so I've been shying away from them. But then the OP seems to just want massive amounts of storage in a single device/package, not so much performance. I worry about the long rebuild times using that approach, but thats just me. I tend to use DAS connected to repurposed minis as a NAS.

 

[Chancha]

As a novice I always found Synology NAS cumbersome to set up, like a foreign language, but then I don't spend a lot of time with Linux. Once set up they have been reliable/durable for me. I found performance issues when using them for other than basic NAS type functions, and its big bucks to resolve that, so I've been shying away from them. But then the OP seems to just want massive amounts of storage in a single device/package, not so much performance. I worry about the long rebuild times using that approach, but thats just me. I tend to use DAS connected to repurposed minis as a NAS.

Well I get your thinking, I mean of course a vanilla DAS is as simple as it gets, which is probably a large reason why many people still incline on using it for various tasks. My above comment was positioning in a reverse angle, that if someone wants a DAS to behave with some features that's default on a NAS, it will take time to config since a lot of it is not available out of the box on macOS.

The OP's situation is that he already wants some advance storage features, through his research he found the Synology solution seemingly fitting the bill. Unlike that MacPro he owned, without SATA bays on the Mac Studio, a DAS with RAID solution is limited to enclosures that don't cost much less than a NAS while offering very little in terms of features; ie, he will needs to invest time and perhaps money in software. In the long run I think a NAS is a sound investment anyway, and it is a good timing for him to start switching to it along with the Studio purchase.

 

[bradl]

I'm actually using a Synology DS213j with my M1 MBP now. In fact, I have been using it since it came out 9 years ago, along with my mid-2011 MBA. I have it connected via my router, but explicitly do not have it exposed to the internet, nor will it ever be exposed.

From how it is set up (with a short bit of configuration (check a box or two, depending on which account you're going to use) ), you can connect to it over SMB/CIFS or Appleshare. With that, you treat it like any other share. Alternatively, you can turn on CloudStation, have it set up a folder on your Mac, and anything you put into that folder will automatically be copied to the NAS.

SHR works perfectly on this; I have had the same 3TB SATA HDDs in it since I bought them, and in RAID1 at that. Should I upgrade those drives I can pop one out, drop a new one in, let the data migrate over with the additional space free. Then pull out the other one, put in a new drive, and let the RAID rebuild itself. Alternatively, I take a backup of the NAS (HyperBackup on the NAS works just like Time Machine), pull both drives, drop in new, set up as new, restore the backup, and I'm back in business.

When I bought this it was just to simply hold all of the data I had on my Linux box, as I was moving away from that and back to Apple in general (I used Macs in college, but last had an Apple IIe when I was 8). I didn't expect it to be as rock solid as it has been for 9 years. It's definitely worth it, especially with what the OP is doing.

The only thing I would suggest is to consider what it will be used for. If storing data, then you're set; just be sure to have a way to back up the Mac Studio. If you're going to store your data plus backups on it, just make sure that you have enough space to cover all of it on the NAS. But should you go Synology, it will last you for a LONG time.

BL.

 

[ColdCase]

The OP's situation is that he already wants some advance storage features, through his research he found the Synology solution seemingly fitting the bill.

I understand but I was just saying that buying full featured raid software and a DAS will provide a richer feature set than a synology at half the price and without exposing your data to the interweb (last I checked a year ago, dunno what inflation has done to that). Not sure where you are getting NAS vs DAS numbers, but they are not consistent with what I found. Anyway thats certainly an option to dedicated hardware thats easy to set up.

Synology makes decent and durable products in most cases, especially if all you are doing is storing files. My Synology box has been running for a decade, through two drive sets and one power supply, and without issues once I removed the fluff around the simple NAS. There are other vendors that perform as well. Their marketing is slick, they cost a lot of dollars to outfit a NAS that performs as well as their marketing implies.

BTW, one should never put your working data on drives in the same enclosure as your backup, unless it a JBOD enclosure and your RAID software is doing the heavy lifting.

Now if you are looking for max throughput for video editing, that a different bucket of worms.

Oh... another BTW... I see Softraid and I think MacOS now supports the SMS type function where you want to migrate to larger drives. More or less plug in the new drive(s) and click a check mark. I think Softraid has provided that feature for years but with different GUI.

 

[bradl]

BTW, one should never put your working data on drives in the same enclosure as your backup, unless it a JBOD enclosure and your RAID software is doing the heavy lifting.

To a degree. If one looks at something 4-bay or more (DS418, DS420j, DS420+), one could use two different sets of RAID1 there, with one for backups, and the other for working data. Essentially it would be a JBOD enclosure as you're saying, but having the different sets of RAID on there will help with the redundancy. That would only leave the enclosure itself to be the single point of failure, so as long as the user has a big enough external disk to back up the RAIDs, they would be okay.

Otherwise I would agree. no working data on the NAS if it can be helped. Keep those local to the machine and back up the machine. If both are using ethernet, I'd even go as far as back up the Mac to the NAS, then back up the entire NAS. That way you're doubly secured.

BL.

 

[tdar]

Let me offer a different opinion. The first thing to consider is that the storage is completely different in an Apple Silicone computer than in a x86 computer. There is a reason why Apple offers such large storage in these machines. Because the storage performance goes up dramatically it your storage is on board. And it goes up even more the larger that storage is. So my first piece of advice, is to buy the biggest internal storage you can afford.
But you also should have an external storage system as well. NAS is great. Use it for backpacking up and storage of things that you are not working on at this time.
i know that it’s to different from how we have always done this in the past. But it’s like all of these new Apple systems. They really do change the game.

 

[smithdr]

Hi ColdCase:

Thank you for this information on potential for changing drive size using MacMini/SoftRAID/DAS. I need to investigate further as I am beginning to outgrow my 12TB RAID5.

BTW. Based on your recommendation I went with MacMini/SofRAID/ThunderBay 4 drive enclosure early 2019--I am even considering purchasing another ThunderBay 4 enclosure for a total of 8 drives. Could not be happier with the performance. All very easy to maintain and relatively fast.

Don

 

[OldITGeek]

I use a QNAP TR-004 USB3 DAS, works great.

 

[GoGrater]

Honestly I don't know if this answers your question but try here.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-external-drives

Thanks. I've heard good things about them and am looking at products on your link.

 

[GoGrater]

While a NAS has it's benefits IMO in your usage a DAS would be the best choice. Are you looking at a RAID for speed or backup, if the latter it may not be the best use case for a RAID.
I have been very happy with the products from OWC.

If you're asking why I am looking at RAID as opposed to a single drive, it's because I want to store TBs of data on multiple HDDs with the ability to add more disks later as I take more photos. It's difficult to know how much space I'll need in the future. I'd like this RAID enclosure to last for a long while. I don't like to go though upgrades often due to the high overhead and I kept my Mac Pro for 10 years. Also, I'm looking for data protection offered by RAID with parity drives.

I'll backup to separate external drives for offsite storage.

While speed is important, it is not critical since I don't do gaming or plan to edit videos, at least at the moment. I believe Ethernet and Thunderbolt will be plenty fast compared to my current setup with internal HDDs.

Hope I answered your questions. Thanks.

 

[GoGrater]

I would just get a NAS if I were you. I love Synology's, very robust and reliable. Direct connect via ethernet is okay, but there are updates for the NAS software that you might have to deal with separately.

If cost is an issue, Synology's are quit common on ebay and you can get some very good buys.

The reason I'd like a direct connect is to reduce risk from the Internet, plus it'll be a single-user RAID.

You bring up a good point about updates to the NAS software. I'll have to find out how to do that with a direct connect. Things get more complicated when veering away from normal processes.

 

[GoGrater]

I often advise folks that NAS is a natural evolution for when you grow out of DAS usage. Despite you clearly don't need the network aspects of a NAS, what you described actually falls a bit short if you use a DAS; namely the failure prevention in RAID, and then the disk flexibility in SHR. If you use DAS, you either will need a hardware RAID controller in the enclosure, which is rare and often with consumer stuff not the best quality compared to enterprise grade solutions, or use software RAID like macOS Disk Utility which is pretty barebones. The thing with a NAS like Synology is that it is a self-maintaining standalone machine, with its own set of (Linux) tools that dumbs these down to a GUI that average people can understand. As a bonus you also get suites of packages surrounding backups, and also sharing even just for yourself inside the LAN among multiple machines, including your phone.

The SHR hybrid RAID is indeed a great feature. In my small business / studio, originally we deployed a DS1618+ 6 bays with various sizes of 3-4TB disks, just as a test when we switch away from too many DAS boxes. After the team became familiar with using a SMB server instead of mounting a Thunderbolt drive each and every time, we upgraded the whole thing to a DS1812+ with all 8 bays of 12TB disks. Even though all disks are of the same capacity I still started with an SHR pool, just to leave the door of upgrading disk open in the future.

For single user, single machine connection, you can get a 10GbE copper card inside, not necessarily Synology's branded card (which is just a Mellanox ConnectX OEM). Something like any of the Intel cards can suffice. Then on the Mac Studio, you arrange the network interfaces in a way such that the (10G) Ethernet is used exclusively as the sole connection to the NAS, where these 2 machines share the same independent subnet. Then you offload all the internet traffic on the Mac Studio to its WiFi interface, so the 10G ethernet is exclusively used for talking to the NAS. With 8 disks or even an NVMe SSD cache, just an SMB connection like this can almost saturate a 10G pipe. Then, depending on your requirements and if your software needs it, you can setup iSCSI LUN which kind of pretends the network share as a directly attached / mounted volume for your Mac, for all intends and purposes this just behaves like a DAS on a logical level.

Hope this helps.

You have experience with Synology's SHR and offer useful information on how to set up with a direct connection. Unfortunately, some of the details in the last paragraph go way above my head and I will do more homework to understand the terminology.

For now, what do you think is the risk from bad actors in the Internet if I connect via a switch or router? Security is my main reason for the direct connect instead of connecting to the network.

Will it be cumbersome to run updates to the RAID (controller?) with a direct connect? Or will I have to temporarily connect to the network and perform the updates? Thanks

 

[GoGrater]

If you want to go there, there are a couple software packages that provide more extensive features than Disk Utility, including the same/similar function as what you describe as SHR. If I recall correct, softraid does that, I haven't played with it. I'm a mirror or RAID 10 type of guy for drive failure protection. There are others. You won't be tied to proprietary hardware and can used JBOD enclosures.

Thanks for mentioning Softraid. I will take a look at that. Gosh, I'm such a newbie at this RAID stuff.