TOP 6 Synology MISTAKES New Users Make

all right how's it going y'all so today we're going to be going over the top mistakes that new users make when they're setting up a Nas these are things that some of them I even made when I was starting out and they're easy to make and these are going to be things to just avoid when you're setting up your Nas for the very first time this is really going to be focused on brand new users who are just using their Nas for the first time and are kind of getting used to this and we're really going to focus on you've already got the Nas and you're already set up though I'm am going to start off with number six being you bought two small of drives or you bought a 2bay unit because you really want to make sure that if you're somebody who's going to expand out your data buy a 4bay unit and stick two 8 tab drives in it rather than buying a 4bay unit and sticking four 4 terab drives in it the thing is if you're using any raid on anology other than raid zero or RAID 10 you can add drives later on and that means that if you need more space as long as you're adding a drive the same size or larger as your smallest or largest Drive depending on the raid type you're using you can add it and it will increase the pool size automatically and so if you're somebody who really does not know how much data you're going to need definitely start off with filling your Synology halfway full with hard drives because you can expand later on and it can just save you a ton of money I actually did this when I started out my first Nas was a 2bay unit which I stuck two 4 T hard drives in it and that ran me out of space within a year and I had to upgrade great so it's absolutely something that happens really I love starting off with a 4bay if you're one of those people who's going to get a lot of data just because it can increase your longevity so much more by the way if you'd like to hire me I do Consulting there's a link for that down the description below check that out all right so now these are going to be all things that you've already purchased the Nas and these are just configuration things that you messed up and the very first one is you got really excited about my DSM 7.2 video and decided to implement immutable snapshot and or worm when you weren't ready to them so immutable snapshots are snapshots that cannot be removed and so that is a great thing for businesses who want to make sure that they are super protected from rant somewhere because that means that even if somebody with admin credentials goes in they will not be able to delete those files for a set number of days and worm Works similar worm is write once read many and so worm allows you to actually create folders that cannot have files deleted protect this shared folder with right once these are both features that are phenomenal for businesses I have yet to see a real use case for home users wanting to use a worm folder because it's honestly Overkill you're not worried about employees accidentally messing something up if you're worried about those kinds of things that's where snapshots come in and so I really very rarely ever recommend people a set of a worm folder unless you know exactly you need a worm folder before ever hearing about it and you're like yes sonology finally has worm I've been waiting on that forever now onto the thing that people will actually use and home users actually can use and should use in some circumstances and that is immutable snapshots so both worm and immutable snapshots are immutable that means that even admins are not able to remove them depending on the circumstances so immutable snap shs have a real use case say You're really worried about ransomware and you know you're Nas you're really well set up and you want to make sure that if your admin credentials get leaked that they can't delete your files for a certain number of days well that's where coming into snapshot replication settings and enabling a schedule with immutable snapshots can be great because that means that you cannot delete that folder or any of the files within it for 14 days you can delete the files but they're going to be recoverable for at least 14 days and this maintains true to do anything you can't reset your volume you can't delete all your data you can't delete the shared folder you can't do anything unless you physically reset the nas so it takes a physical touch to be able to do it and it's a full reset to be able to remove that immutable snapshot and that's great but don't do this until you are all set up and ready to go don't do this while you're testing and kind of getting everything figured out out because immutable snapshots are that they are immutable so I've got these immutable snapshots going and say I realized man I wish this wasn't management I wish this was something else let me delete it there's no data really in there yet let me just clean this up and I want to kind of redo it boom we're logged in as admin we are unable to do it because it's immutable you can't do anything we can't come into our storage manager and delete our volume because there are mutable folders in there so this is one of those things that don't set up a mutable snapshots until you are ready because it limits you from doing pretty much anything if you want to change stuff later on and I've actually had this on multiple Consulting sessions where I've had to say hey sorry we can't meet for another week because you've got a mutable snapshot and we want to reset up your volume so until you really know what you're doing hold off on setting up those immutable snapshots because they are that immutable and so you can't really reset them yourself unless you're okay waiting that time period out and that actually leads us into our very next point and that is definitely set up two things when you're setting up your Nas zero question about it set up the volume as btrfs this is actually trickling down to pretty much all NASA units at this point all new ones have btrfs as an option rack mounted units actually no longer have ext4 as an option definitely definitely definitely set up btrfs on your volume it is well worth it it unlocks so many features and there's very few reasons not to except for very specific edge cases so that is a huge one set up btrfs and then set up snapshots you don't have to set up a mutable snapshot but set up snapshots snapshots are your ransomware protection they are your oops I made a mistake let's undo that really quick protection there's so many things that snapshots protect you from you should definitely set them up and just forget about them for home users and just general users what I will do is I will shift select everything except for a security camera footage or time machine backup or active backup for business those are the three exceptions that I normally move and I'll just select everything but those folders go into settings and I'll normally say from 8: a.m. to 8:00 p.m. take a snapshot every two hours or every one hour depending on it and then retention an easy one is all snapshots for 14 days and daily for 30 days another common thing that people think this is doing is this is going to be duplicating files like crazy it's not think of this like a recycling vent essentially when you said these snapshots it's essentially like you've got a recycling Vin that's automatically going to empty after 30 days so if I don't delete any files snapshots take up zero space but let's say today I delete a 1 tby file we are going to be able to recover that file for 30 days but it's still going to take up that one terabyte for another 30 days so if I delete a file that's one terabyte I will not get my space back for another 30 days I'm not going to go into it super in depth here but just know it's a great feature it allows you to undo anything that happened to your Nas even things like corruption deletes modifications all that stuff it makes it super easy to undo and I will absolutely leave a link down description below to setting this up it is the very first thing I set up every single time I hop on a session with a client because it also protects me if I accidentally delete the wrong thing we can undo it and that is just really good Peace of Mind absolutely something set up if you get one thing from this video it's to go down and set up snapshots on your Nas right now all right so now on to number three it's a security one and once again back when I was in Middle School figuring out how Nas's worked I made this exact mistake don't open up ports to the internet until you understand port forwarding I'm going to be really quick here for saying what ports I'm going to whitel list for sonology Nas for hey as you're learning these are ones that are okay you should still think about them and understand them better but the okay ports to start with is going to be 50001 that's the DSM web interface next one is Port 6690 that is the port used by enology Drive share sync hyper backup which is port 6281 and whatever Port you may assign to an openvpn or other VPN server so those are going to be the four ports until you really understand what you're doing unless it's one of those four ports do not open up to the Internet and by the way when I'm saying that that is the local Port so obviously if you change it in DSM that applies there and that is really what is important to do until you understand Port foring do not just open up random things to the internet because they all have security implications to them and while it can be secure as you open up certain ports to the internet it could also be very insecure and it's all about what that Port does and so it's a very common thing that people will do is open up way too many ports trying to be able to get external access and that is how people legitimately do get hacked the times that I've actually seen ransomware occur on a sonology have been people opening up the SMB port to the internet which is a big old no no so until you understand port forwarding and really security if it's not one of those ports don't open it up because you could be opening up a can of worms that you might not yet understand now on to number two and this is one I see all the time and that is you're using this homes folder right over here and you're sticking data in this folder you don't want to be sticking data in the home folder until you understand how it works I see all the time where the first folder that's installed a lot of time is the home and homes folder and people don't quite understand how it works and so what they end up doing is they're like hey I'm going to give everybody admin access and then I'm just going to upload all my folders here and stick all my data in this homes folder it's a really common thing that I see and it's a huge pain it makes it really hard to use the Nas and it is not how the Nas is designed to be used so really don't use the homes folder as that repository instead only ever use the home folder and for most people until you really understand the home folder I would just stick to storing files on shared folders as it makes it much much easier to use that and another thing the home folder has some kind of special characteristics to it so definitely hold off on using that until you really understand how it works all right so now on to the final one and that is raid is not a backup snapshots are not a backup none of what I've gone over today is a backup a backup is a backup you want to make sure you are backing up your Nas or at least the critical files now obviously if your nasu is just a backup so you use sonology drive to backup certain folders on your computer that's fine you don't have to back up your backup but as soon as you start storing files that are important to you that the Nas is the only copy of them definitely definitely make sure you've got a backup running the easiest place place to start is with Hyper backup buy an external hard drive that's like 8 tbytes leave it plugged in the as 24/7 instead of a hyper backup job to every night back up your important folders to that drive I set this up all the time and it's a cheap and easy way to get a real backup after that you can look at getting another Nas uploading to a cloud there's tons of stuff you can do but make sure you have a backup of your data for any files that you cannot live without sonies have a lot of features such as raid snapshots check sums a whole bunch of things like that that can help protect your data but none of those are a backup because it's all stored on the same drives if the volume crashes it's crashed on all the drives at the exact same time so make sure that you actually have a real backup of your data all right so now I want to run through the lightning round of just other tidbits that people will often do that I want to clarify first off off this total capacity right here is actually an unit called a tib bite so whenever you're actually looking at it you're used to seeing terabytes so all you have to do is multiply this number by 1.1 to get the actual value it's the actual size that you're used to it's just this is a Tite versus a terabyte so this right here is 21.8 tites so in terabytes the unit you're used to that is 21.8 * 1.1 24 terabytes so that's a really common thing people get messed up on they get confused by that I certainly got confused by it at first it's just a different unit that's all another thing people forget to turn on a task to empty the recycling bin so make sure that if you've got a recycling bin enabled on any shared folders and honestly I would do this no matter what make sure you've got an empty bin schedule in the scheduler another thing make sure you've got no ifications turned on really useful thing to have just in case anything goes wrong also if you have a read write SSD cache do not just unplug it instead you have to remove it from your volume before actually removing it physically because it does have data on there that is stored nowhere else on the nas another one this probably actually should have made the main list because I see it actually fairly often and that is when you encrypt data make sure no matter what happens you have that decryption key because if you don't there's nothing you can do to recover your data encryption is really good and so you have to have the decryption key so if you ever enable encryption one know that you need to do it and know that you're somebody who has the ability to store that file and you can guarantee in 5 years you're going to still have that decryption key because otherwise you could lose all of your data because you just say oh yeah it works it autom mounts on boot and and then one day you do an update or something that requires that key definitely definitely definitely make sure if you encrypt your backup your folders your volume whatever that that key that's downloaded and that password you put in make sure you can guarantee to have those for another 10 years because if you can't guarantee you're going to have them for another 10 years you probably do not need to be encrypting that data all right I've got one last one to end on and this is one I see all the time do not use your Nas like this this is not how you should be uploading files to your Nas unless you're outside the local network 99% of the time you're accessing Nas on the same local network as the nas you should be using Windows File Explorer or Mac OS finder you can either use sonology drive or SMB either one of those but you very rarely should ever just be uploading files to here because it's a huge pain all right well that's going to be it for this video go and leave any other questions for me down in the comments below if you want to hire me there a link for that down description below all right have a good one [Music] bye

Channel: SpaceRex

Views: 35,479

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Id: eq_T075hImk

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024