Protect Your Synology with a UPS! - 4K Tutorial

Synology's are servers, which can make them susceptible to data loss if there is an unexpected powerless. Because of this it is highly recommended to have a smart UPS which will make sure that in the event of power failure your NAS keeps running safely and can safely shutdown.

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[gasmy]

I learned it the hard way… I live in Thailand where electricity shuts down quite often. 3 of the 4 drives in my NAS are now unusable. I lost the data, but it was mostly movies. Mostly I lost about 1000 USD of hard drives so before replacing them I'm purchasing a UPS..

[TiGGer]

Thanks a lot, excellent video. Especially about the automatic restart and also using the UPS to power the wifi until it runs out of juice. 10/10

[BSDjunkie]

Thank you for the clear explanation. Especially regarding the use of a UPS server. I had the displeasure of having one of my two NVME drives taken out due to power spikes. Now it is protected and running regular data scrubbing.

[Miisile]

Nicely explained. You hit several topics others missed and kept it very succinct. Good job!

[Yama_]

Spending a fraction of the overall cost of your NAS to not only protect your data, but the hardware as well in case of power failure or surge is really a no-brainer!

[AmericaAndAllies]

Will, I have been studying these consumer-grade UPS units and how Synology is designed and have found something that is a bit troubling. While the Synology units have a NUT server installed and it does put the unit into safe mode as advertised, and it does tell NUT clients to shut down correctly, the Synology itself does not completely shut down. This was by design so that if the power loss was momentary, Synology would detect this and go through a power cycle to recover. That whole mechanism works just fine. Now for the ugly. Firstly, because the Synology does not actually go all the way to shutdown, it becomes a parasitic draw. As you mentioned, you have other ancillary devices like Wifi connected to your setup (so do I). Between the Synology and other parasitic draws, during an extended utility power fail (say at a remote location), the battery will eventually deplete until the UPS shuts itself off. When the utility power does return, many of the consumer-grade models out there, including most APC and some Cyberpower units, will autostart on utility power return. Great right? Not really. When it returns is does so with depleted batteries. If the Synology is set to restore on utility power return, it is doing so while the UPS is depleted. If you get another power fail, during boot (3-4 mins), you have a perilous situation where another power fail could yank the power on the Synology, potentially during a write to the RAID if it is doing so during boot, or shortly there after. While I do not have any data on how fast the NUT server starts during the boot, I suspect it is several minutes, after their custom Linux OS boots completely. If the Synology is designed correctly, when the NUT does start up and it sees the depleted battery, it should go to back to standby immediately. Only an experiment would reveal the timing of this scenario and I am not willing to take the chance on it. I can only imagine the expense of sending off RAID drives for repair if the built-in utilities are unable to repair the RAID. In any event, this is a serious problem for these Synology units and their power-handling with consumer-grade UPS units. Higher-end UPS units (business grade) have reserve battery settings to ensure this scenario does not play out. Users of consumer-grade UPS units for use with Synology units should be aware of the potential hazard and not walk into that potential quicksand.

[brettthomas]

Just rewatched the set-up part of your video to set up my new APC UPS - easy to follow and gave me confidence. Thanks again!

[brettthomas]

Bravo for being clear, concise and professional in your presentation. Very Helpful vs average youtuber!

[jimholloway]

I liked the video, I was able to hook up a USB 2.0 Printer Type Cable - A-Male to B-Male and it worked perfect. It took more time to find the cable in my box of cables and to move the rack a bit to find the connection on my UPS. I followed all your instructions and it worked great. One slight item is you might want to add on your next video is to show the USB type A cable that is hardly used anymore except for some old printers and UPS's. I will have to think about more items for you to do reviews on, but I am really enjoying your YouTube Channel.

[paulbudd]

Good Job. Easy to miss the 'restart option'. If i'm out of town I want it restarted automatically so the cameras can start recording again.

[vonrollveeg]

Thanks. This was "on point" and helped me a lot. The "restart option" was unknown to me! So important.

[rtmjacobs]

Thanks. Easy to follow UPS installation instructions. I am grateful for your efforts.

[MikeS]

Just installed mine today! Thanks again for a great channel.

[jonnymac]

Thanks for putting all these videos together. They have helped me alot.

[davidputt]

It would be nice to have information on if it matters to have a pure-sign wave UPS or if it's ok to have a cheap modified sign wave UPS.

[AndreasBodin]

Great walkthrough!

How much does your network equipment consume in watts?
I myself use a USG-Pro and a USW 16 PoE 150W.

[mencken]

It’s surprising to me that nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st century, the need for a UPS still needs to be brought home to people. I have been using an UPS for over 20 years- and no data problems. I use a Cyber Power 685 to back up the Synology 718+, router, switch, and several small hubs. This is well within the capacity of the UPS, and interface with the Synology for auto safe shutdown works fine. As n the video, I use a 5 minute timer. The Cyber Power UPS is not particularly expensive, certainly for the protection it provides.

[ArlisaSThomas]

Thank you for this easy-to-follow tutorial!

[superbaggio]

Always top notch videos and information keep up

[jmalmsten]

That list on Synology's website really is woefully hard to use, in my opinion. It is just a long list of model names. No mention of capacity, features, estimated prices, estimated battery runtime for what watt-load... nothing. And they seem to mix both full UPS-devices and network cards for UPS-devices... And I think they have multiple region versions of UPS-devices in it as well, further cluttering things up.

Ok, so I can google each and every one of them, but man... trying to get to a decision is proving to be very slow and frustrating. And if I try to go the other way around... I try to look up what local vendors have in store. I have no idea what I should be looking for in the technical specs, other than trying to match the model number to that giant list.