Synology DiskStation

My Synology wakes on LAN using the router supplied by my ISP. I don’t know if it’s true Wake on LAN or if the LAN is always active, but for sure the disks spin down when it’s not in use and it takes many seconds for the drives to spin up and make itself available.

Having the disks spin down is the default state. That's different from WoL. You can tell if it's wake on LAN by looking and seeing if the whole box powers up and down.

Right now, I have my router configured to forward ports 80, 443, 5000, and 5001 to the Synology. I’m not sure if I need so many opened. I’ll do some experimenting at some point.

80 is for the web server over http:, 443 web server over https:, 5000 is for external access to DSM as an admin or user through http: while 5001 is the same for access over https:

If you do not need to access DSM from the Internet you should close both 5000 and 5001 ports. If you do need access, only open 5001 and install a certificate from Let's Encrypt so the traffic is encrypted, otherwise someone might intercept your password and other trtaffic.

Do you know what port it is using?

dprevived.com/t/synology-diskstation/2524/post/24805/

;-)

So Cloudstation is what is used for quick connect, and it doesn't require an incoming port?

No, my bad. 6690 is used for CloudStation (Synology Drive) if you want to access it directly on the NAS through the router using port forwarding.

As Alan said, if you use QuickConnect you access the services on your Synology (like DSM, FileStation and Synology Drive (CloudStation)) via the Synology website without opening ports on your router using the Synology Relay Server. You need to install QuickConnect on your NAS and on every computer you want to have participating. You have to create a Synology account and pair QuickConnect to it. They say that if you want higher performance you should open ports for the desired services and access them directly, something I do not do.

see kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/help/DSM/AdminCenter/connection_quickconnect?version=7 for DSM 7.

If the NAS box is behind NAT (like 99% of boxes out there), QuickConnect first tries using hole punching to directly establish connection between the client and the box. If it somehow doesn't work, then as people mentioned above it will use relay service.

It doesn't require opening a hole in your firewall, yet it also depends on an external service (i.e. QuickConnect) to work. I have some reservations about this (there are some other better methods), but it's surely better than poking-a-hole-in-your-firewall option.

I've been running my Synology for about a year now, and I've learned a lot:
First, deactivate the Admin account. Open Control Panel -> User & Group. Then, create an Admin account with a new name, such as JackAdmin, and assign this user to the Administrators group. Now, select the 'admin' account and Deactivate it. You might want to assign an ultra-ultra-complex password to admin, then deactivate it. This is extremely important.
Second, add yourself as a User. Create a user account such as Jack. You will use Jack for backups and standard file access, and JackAdmin only to administer your Synology. Jack will belong to the group 'users' and not to "administrators'.
Third, there's a YouTube channel called SpaceRex which has tremendous, easy to understand Synology tutorials.

Synology presents administrators with a folder called 'homes' and another called 'home'. This is confusing terminology. The 'homes' is visible only to administrators, and contains all of the user directories, and the 'home' folder is a link to your personal home folder. If you login as a standard user and not as an Admin, you will see only your ‘home’ folder.

I used to keep my ports 5000 and 5001 open on my router for remote access, but I get constantly hit with login attempts; about one every three minutes. These are all attempts to login to the admin account, which is disabled. After three failed login attempts, an IP address is blocked. My Synology has now blocked many dozens of IP addresses from all around the world.

I've switched to the QuickConnect method, so that none of my router ports are open.

I've done a few other things suggested by SpaceRex: I bought an external backup drive, which backs up my Synology daily. I installed a UPS, which will trigger my Synology to gracefully shut itself down in case of an extended power outage. My Mac backs itself up to the Synology via Time Machine every day. However, my photos are separate. They are too large to be stored on my computer's 512 GB internal SSD, so I bought a 4 TB Thunderbolt SSD. This stores all of my photos in a directory structure identical to the structure used on my Synology. When I shoot, I copy the photoshoot to the external SSD, and do all of my edits. After the editing session, I copy the directory containing the RAW images and the edited JPEG exports to the Synology. That may not the the ideal way, but it's my way.

What I've come to understand is that the Synology has enormous speed limits, and once you understand them, you can make the most of the platform. Trying to browse RAW photos or edit RAW photos from a Synology is sheer foolishness. Perhaps with a faster model and 10 Gb/s Ethernet, it's practical, but with the 1 Gb/s Ethernet which I have, it is not practical. As a backup device, it is excellent. As a remote access device, it is excellent. For hosting large files which colleagues can access or download, it is... fair, because it is limited to the speed of my Internet upload. Google Drive is far faster. But I've had several cases where I needed to host tens of gigabytes of videos or binary images, and Synology was great for that. The read/write speed of my internal SSD measures 4.2/5.0 GB/s my external SSD is 2.7/2.5 GB/s, and the Synology is 80/80 MB/s.

My next phase will be to buy another, faster Synology. I'll use this at my home, and I'll relocate my existing Synology to a relative's home, out of state, and perform encrypted backup from my home to my old Synology.

I'm just curious - How large are your RAW files? What software do you use for browsing and editing? Ideally, you would only need to access the NAS for initially loading the files and exporting edited versions and sidecars. And how did you arrive at those transfer rates for the SSDs? They're far faster than mine.

I think my drive benchmarks are about what you should expect, although benchmark tests aren’t the same as file copy speed.

I most often shoot musicians. I shoot in bursts and often have around 1,000-1,500 photos. Once I filled a 128 GB card, but I switched to cRAW after that, so usually I have around 60 GB or so. I have the Canon R5, which produces 45mp cRAW images, which are around 35 megabytes each. The RAW files are bigger, around 50-60MB each.

Most times, I’ll copy the card to my internal drive, because it’s fastest. I recently bought an OWC Thunderbolt CFExpresss card reader and it is fantastic! Copy speeds are extremely fast; under 60 seconds to copy the photos from the camera. Then I open DxO PhotoLab to cull through the images. Sometimes I break the files into folders for faster culling, but I increased the RAM allocation in PhotoLab and it’s usually ok. After I’m done editing I move it all to the external SSD and manually back that up to the NAS.