Introduction

We just upgraded our Synology NAS units from Synology’s prior model, DS1817+ to their latest model, DS1819+. In my previous article, I reviewed not just the DS1817+ chassis but also the M2D17 M.2 SATA SSD expansion card. I also covered software features including downloadable Synology and third-party applications, the file system, file sharing, synchronization & backup, and security.

I’ll preface this article by confirming that the two models are very similar. However, if you own a Synology DS1817+ NAS, it makes sense to upgrade to the DS1819+ model due to:

1. the residual value of your DS1817+ (i.e. the resale value of a used DS1817+ is only about $100 less than a new  DS1819+ on eBay),
2. the ease of migrating your disks from your DS1817+ to the DS1819+,
3. the faster throughput of the DS1819+, and
4. the new 2 year warranty for your DS1819+ NAS units.

What’s New with the DS1819+?

Like the DS1817+, the DS1819+ is an eight drive bay, RAID 5-class NAS. As described here, the DS1817+ has the Intel “Avoton” Atom C2538 while the DS1819+ has the Intel “Denverton” Atom C3538 CPU. Both are 64-bit, quad-core CPUs with a hardware encryption engine (AES-NI). Although the DS1819+ is nominally slower in terms of gigahertz, 2.1Ghz, vs the 2017’s 2.4Ghz CPU, the DS1819+’s CPU actually is rated higher. Comparing the CPUs in the two models, the DS1819+ is faster both in terms of single thread rating (558 v 831) and CPU Mark (2085 vs 2455).

In terms of hard drive connectivity: DS1819+ supports SATA III (6Gpbs) while the DS1817+ only supports SATA II (3Gpbs). Additionally, the DS1819+ supports PCIe v3 (with a a peak speed of 16Gbps) while the DS1817+ only supports PCIe v2 (with a peak speed of 8Gbps).

The 1817+ has 2GB or 8GB DDR3. In contrast, the DS1819+ has DDR4-2133 Non-ECC SO-DIMM 4GB. Although the speed of the DS1819+’s RAM is faster, the DS1819+’s quantity of RAM is a step down from our 1817+, which has 8GB of RAM. However, the DS1819+ can support 32GB of RAM unlike the DS1817+, which supported only 16GB of RAM. And one RAM slot remains free.

In another notable bump: the 1817+ has 1,179 MB/s sequential reading whereas the DS1819+ has 2,045 MB/s sequential reading and 656 MB/s writing.

What Remains the Same

Both the DS1817+ and the DS1819+ support 8 internal drive bays and 18 total drive bays including expansion units. This translates to up to 112 TB (14 TB drive x 8) internal or 252 TB (112 TB + 14 TB drive x 10) total drive capacity. That said, there is a huge gulf between 6TB hard drives and larger capacity drives. 6TB hard disk drive pricing is sub $200 while larger quantities (10, 12, 14GB) start at $300 and cost in excess of $400 per drive. Prices also vary depending on the speed and rated reliability of the hard drive model. Bear in mind that you need to purchase the same minimum capacity hard drive for each slot in your NAS.

For our family, it is both more cost effective and more CPU-efficient to maintain two Synology DS1819+ NAS units with 6TB drives (down from three Synology DS1815+ units). Perhaps in the long term, we can consolidate to a single Synology NAS. However, this will require significant cost declines in hard drives. Further, even in a SHR with 2 disk fault tolerance configuration, today only half our data is potentially exposed to catastrophic loss given two NAS units.

I am always conscious about disaster recovery. So far, we have lost 4 Western Digital Gold drives within their first year of use. Ironically, these are Western Digital’s “datacenter”-grade drives, designed for 24x7x365 reliability at workloads up to 550TB per year. Supposedly, they have a level of reliability with up to 2.5 million hours MTBF. Thankfully, they also have a five year warranty!

The DS1819+ boasts 4x RJ-45 1GbE LAN ports with link aggregation and failover support. It also includes 4x USB 3.0 ports and 2x eSATA ports.

Migrating from the DS1817+ to the DS1819+

I have used several different manufacturer’s NAS units. In my experience, only Synology makes it so easy (and worry-free) to upgrade. We transfer the eight existing drives from the DS1817+ to the DS1819+ chassis. Note: we can do a disk migration because we are upgrading from a Plus chassis to a chassis with an equivalent number of hard drives. (Migration from other models may require a data, rather than disk, migration, as described here).

Synology has a step-by-step explanation here. In short:

1. Ensure that your DSM operating system is up to date.
2. Because we installed the M2D17 M.2 SSD adapter card, we needed to first remove (in software) the SSD cache that we created on the DS1817+. This will transfer all data from the SSD cache to the hard drives.
3. Next, backup your configuration, license keys, and PhotoStation files to your Mac or PC.
4. Transfer your hard drives, one by one in the same order, from the DS1817+ to the DS1819+ chassis.
5. Then, install the M2D18 expansion card.
6. Connect power and Ethernet cables. Boot up your new DS1819+ unit.
7. Go to http://find.synology.com in your web browser1 or download Synology Assistant to locate your new DS1819+. Because we are doing a disk transfer, select Migration.
8. Restore your configuration.2
9. Finally, recreate the software SSD cache on the DS1819+

Differences in the M.2 SATA SSD Expansion Card

If I have one complaint about my upgrade, it is the inability of the DS1819+ to recognize the M2D17 M.2 SATA SSD expansion card that I used with my DS1817+. Buying a DS1819+ means that you also need to buy a M2D18 M.2 SATA SSD expansion card. Ignore all the retailers and reviewers that say you can use a M2D17 expansion card with the DS1819+; they are wrong. Fortunately, I was at least able to migrate my 275GB Crucial M.2 SSD cards from the M2D17 to the M2D18 expansion cards. One benefit of the M2D18 card is that is supports both SSD (32 queue depths) and NVMe standards (64,000 queue depths). But there is really no technical reason for the DS1819+ to not recognize the M2D17. And, it was truly disappointing to spend an additional $320 just to reinstall my SSD cache.

Configuration

Like with DS1817+, we have configured each DS1819+ unit in a 2x bonded GigE connection (a/k/a link aggregation). With our Ubiquiti Unifi network switches, that means that each NAS unit can supply a theoretical 2 Gbps to devices on our home network. It is possible to configure each DS1819+ unit in a 4x bonded GigE connection though we don’t envision needing that much concurrent bandwidth in our home network in the near future. No additional configuration was required to migrate from my DS1817+ with link aggregation to my DS1817+ with link aggregation. However, until migration was complete, I used an additional Ethernet cable (connected to Ethernet port 4) to connect the NAS to our network.

Upgrading the Hard Drives in the DS1819+

After moving the hard drives from the DS1817+ to the DS1819+ chassis, we determined that we needed more storage. Fortunately, expanding the size of your volume on your Synology NAS is incredibly easy. All you need to do is swap an existing hard drive with a larger hard drive. For example, we had 6TB HDDs that we upgraded to 10TB HDDs. After the first four HDD swaps, the size the Synology volume started to increase.3

Updated on February 5th, 2019