Synology NAS920+ A great device for the computing community

 Remember - digital data can both last forever and be gone in a milli-second. The difference is backups and reliable storage devices.

This is a great NAS from Synology,  a company with a solid reputation and great support organisation.

Storage devices are as important as the main PC in any computing environment that has grown to more than a couple of PCs and devices. Ease of use and reliability are key for on-going satisfaction.

You can move data four main ways between a Mac and the device :

• Up/down load using the File Station software accessed via a web browser,
• Mount a shared folder and use the finder,
• Mount a shared folder and use the command line in terminal.
• Use Time Machine for backups.

Some things I found out along the set up journey:

Use SMB and not AFP for modern Macs.

TimeMachine the mainstay of Mac based backups can be used with with NAS. Shared folders must have the "discoverable by Bonjour" over SMB set on for the shared folder.

When first setting up using bfs be sure to a put in all the drives that will be used.  I started with two drives then added two more but it took the device about 12 hours each to weave the later drives into the existing configuration. This is a result of having to redo the on-disk data redundancy layout for the added drives. 

Use the same size drives if possible - I have 4 * 7TB drives that because of the redundancy scheme this provides 21 TB of storage and 1 drive failure redundancy.  Use proper NAS drives available from WD or Toshiba for best longevity.

Adding 2 * 1TB cache M1 ssd sticks helps performance when the load ramps up but I do suspect that write through to disk happens. Use at least gigabit wired networking, not wifi, for moving larger amounts of data. I was getting reliably about 100Mbytes/second writing from a MacBook Pro with ssd drive over a wired connection.  TimeMachine is a bit slower but not by much. For best performance and ease of use, when copying large quantities of small files, bundle your data into large chunks using disk images made by Disk Manager application. 

I was stuck for a while getting "Not enough space to copy file." messages on both Mac systems that were using the device. After a very pleasant interaction with Synology technical support they found a quota setting on the user name was being correctly enforced. I had forgotten that I had put this user storage quota on early in the testing process.  The support case opened and closed in the same day.

The disk manager software on the NAS has many options and can be extended with extra software. The fine grained controls over users and data access are great. This model has a Celeron processor and I suspect that the virtual machine experience may not be great. However for long term NAS usage lower power consumption is preferred.  Best of all the device and software are activity supported by a mature company with a long track record.

Let's talk about the noise.  In a silent office you can hear the device but it's not unpleasant. Being quieter than a coffee machine or someone tapping on a mobile phone. I imagine the NAS as a holding place for data chipmunks so the gentle activity noise is reassuring.  Some extra sound dampening would be good though esp. when the drives are spinning up. The device drive activity is not predictable when using Time Machine or multiple shared folders. 

I get the feeling that I have only scratched the surface of the features of this device but I have been very impressed so far. Overall a great device with the reassurance of an active support organisation, a very  worthwhile addition to my computer community.

Battery power in case of mains failure can be added with a UPS. When the UPS has a USB connection the Synology device can be configured with the control Panel -> Hardware -> UPS to shutdown automatically when the battery gets low.

See the range of Synology NAS devices here.

Comparative review with other NAS devices here.

I like this box.

Garage project 2021 Pictures

Before and After 

Original shared driveway behind old garage.

This project was only possible with cooperation and agreement with the neighbours to the south. The old garage ( ------ outline on plan) forces the access route behind the garage, both properties sharing the driveway. The new garage is positioned further back allowing for a direct access at the front. This arrangement allowed for a larger garage and direct access rather than shared driveways to both properties. Some small land slices were legally swapped giving the neighbours a direct road frontage and new right of way. The legal process of swapping two small slices of land actually took longer than the whole garage build.

 

Over door roof support beam

The roof was built using upside down V rather than A frame rafters to create more interior space.

 Just in case a four poster lift is needed at any time in the future.

SuperToy has come home

LaTex the machine code of publication

 

IMHO:

LaTex was machine code of publication - the world moved on to wysiwyg only about 30 years ago. Any publisher that only takes submissions in that archaic language is being rather stoneage. Camera / publication ready copy can be created in so many easy to use tools that to insist on using an ancient relic just places unnecessary barriers to entry.

If that same publisher does not provide article templates just vaguely worded "guidelines" then you know you are dealing with a publishing dinosaur or paper generating mill that provides no value add - look elsewhere.

Sure LaTex was a good and relatively bug free system, used by many, but pushing authors to be typographical mark up compilers is like asking painters to be chemists and make their own colours.

More on corporate (and country scale) fraud

 Following on from an earlier review of two corporate fraud books this holiday season fraud reviews were taken to a higher level..... 

 

Listing gives : 

"A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND FORTUNE MAGAZINE.

The epic story of how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest financial heists in history.

In 2015, rumours began circulating that billions of dollars had been stolen from a Malaysian investment fund. The mastermind of the heist was twenty-seven-year-old Jho Low, a serial fabulist from an upper-middle-class Malaysian family, who had carefully built his reputation as a member of the jet-setting elite by arranging and financing elaborate parties for Wall Street bankers, celebrities, and even royalty.

With the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, Low stole billions of dollars, right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. He used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and bankroll Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. 

Billion Dollar Whale reveals how this silver-tongued con man, a ‘modern Gatsby’, emerged from obscurity to pull off one of the most audacious financial heists the world has ever seen, and how the financial industry let him. It is a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world."

As of 2021 Jho Low is still on the run but the net tightens after his rather nice ship was impounded.

The Equanimity, a luxury yacht belonging to fugitive Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, was seized and brought to Malaysia in August 2018. It was later auctioned off [Lai Seng Sin/Reuters]