Synology DS720+ NAS - NVMe Caching Read Write Test

— JUNE 2020 UPDATE – THE REVIEWS ARE IN!

I am pleased to confirm that the hardware and software reviews on the brand new Synology DS920+, DS220+, DS420+ and DS720+ NAS Drive are in. If you are thinking about choosing one of them for your new/first NAS Drive purchase, why not check out the reviews below:

Chances are that even if you have the most tangential interest in the world of storage, servers, NAS and data in general, you will have heard of Synology and their disk station series. Currently considered by many to be the biggest company in the field of network-attached storage, Synology and their Diskstation hardware and software are a company that is not quick to release new hardware – preferring to make the most of their existing hardware portfolio and then releasing software updates and improvement to their award-winning platform with regularity. However, their existing range of Synology 2-Bay and 4Bay NAS just got a massive shake-up for 2020 with the leak of 4 brand new NAS drives for release later this year. Great news for those of us who have been keeping our eyes peeled for news on the newest generation of Synology NAS, with a leak on the data sheets on the 2020 gen NAS – the DS920+, the DS220+, DS720+ and DS420 NAS. These new 2 and 4 Bay range devices are ones that many of us have been keeping a watchful eye out for, as well as the import/export documents that were leaked last week here on NASCompares, and although this is by no means an official or orthodox announcement, they look genuine and seem to indicate the release of the brand new range of Diskstation NAS for summer 2020. et’s take a good look at each NAS and everything we have learnt.

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[JustJoshTech]

I am a little confused about why everyone wants fast Synology NAS speeds in these specific NASs when they only come with 1g ethernet with no option for 2.5, 10, or Thunderbolt. How do you make use of the speed?

[Matt.Schofield]

Why is each archive 59.78Gb in the first test, and 49.41Gb in the second test?

[rickvestuto]

this one really is the best option for most people IMO
I am a photographer and videographer and I have a huge library of Home videos that I converted years ago
I have been using the DS716+ FOR YEARS and have had huge luck with my HGST 3TBs in raid 1
but to have a quad core with two Cashe drives is awesome
Thanks for this review
Regards, Rick

[NicDiChiara]

Thank you for this video but this is not really a test of what caching is. The point of having ssd cache is to improve access times for frequently accessed files when serving. Zipping or copying files is a direct read and write from one address to another address by the processor.

[tamasterjek]

Thanks for your time to do this test. That being said, i think the test is invalid. You are copying the same data 3 times (basically never happens in real life). If you have cache, that can have some impact but not much. You should have copied 3 separate sets of data at least. Most likely cache would have done nothing then.
In my opinion, in a small NAS like this (2-4-6-8 bays) i think there is no benefit of cache at all. Cache only works if same file accessed more than once or simultaneously. And this only happens if you have a lot of users, but then you don't buy a small NAS like i mentioned before. Single or small number of users benefit much more of 2, 5, 5 or 10 GbE and basically nothing from cache. This was a bad decision from Synology. QNAP was smarter it seems.

[SleekSky]

can you do another test with 2gb of memory vs 6gb of memory doing this test with ssd caching?

[timotmon]

Does the capacity of the NVME drive make a big difference or should I just get the cheapest NAS nvme that I can find?

[BikeHelmetMk]

You do realize that your first zips were 59GB and your final ones were 49GB? That mostly explains the time difference...

[LapinFou]

Greetings from France! I really do like yours videos. Well done with a perfect British accent. 👍🤩
In order to do the comparison, I do scale the minutes to a base 10.
→ 55mins = 0.917h, 42mins = 0.7h, 1h34 = 1.57h, 1h23 = 1.38h
Off course it also work if everything is in minutes.
→ 55mins, 42mins, 1h34 = 94mins, 1h23 = 83mins
So, the first test gives you a 24% improvement and 12% improvement for the ZIP archives generation.
I think the 2nd test is impacted by the CPU horsepower. 😊 After all, it is a NAS CPU, not a desktop/server CPU.
Probably the results would have been much different if the archives were created on a big PC through a Samba share.

[nmocruz]

I wondering if this will also make the server less noisy. I'm planning to build home server, that will be in the leaving room close to the tv, (is has just one fan for the cpu), but the disk sponning also makes some, does the nvme cache reduces the constant hhd noise?

[SleekSky]

I bought this as my first NAS and waiting for it to arrive. I also bought 2 4TB hard drives and going to be using raid 1. I also bought 4GB of official synology RAM. I am planning to make a plex server and I want it to be able to run 1080p and not have any hiccups. I was wondering if you think I should buy an nvme ssd and if so what size? I heard you say get 10% of your hard drives. So I was thinking 400gb ssd? Should I be getting two ssds with 400gb each in a raid 1? Please let me know you’re the expert I’d appreciate it!

[joostme]

When I am thinking of benifits for caching on a NAS, I am thinking of repetitive small file access that stays inside the NAS. like you will see in a Virtual Machine.
How big is the speed difference when installing some cache on a NAS that runs one or multiple VM.

[leexgx]

Archiving on an atom CPU is realistically limited by the CPU

If you did the copy test again there should be a large hit rate from the ssds

[apainter]

Is this something that you would recommend, i.e. a read/write cache on the Synology NAS unit? Given previous horror stories of a read/write NVMe cache dying and taking the HDD volume with it?

I use a single NVMe 256GB Sabrent rocket as a read only cache, but would like to enable R/W cache, just would not like the volume to die.

[tzeF]

Is it possible to use the NVMe SSDs for Storage directly or can they only be used as SSD Cache on the NAS?

[miles]

Gave up on a DS1020+. Grabbed a DS1019+. Will use single 256GB NVMe for read caching. Don’t need write. Prob don’t need read either. Have a free NVMe lying around.

[muvidz]

How about random access performance with SSD cache?

[patricktorrie]

Great vid, thanks! Are you planning on doing a comparison on SSD caching when running VMs?

[TS]

I'm downloading content to my Synology NAS and it's using up space on my cache. What happens when my ssd cache runs out of space on my synology nas? thx

[KelvinKMS]

Very good test !!! It is much better just open box video or just talking about NAS stats without any test !!!