While I am a huge fan and a happy user of vSAN in my homelab environment, it can sometimes be challenging when you only have a single node (yes, this is not a best practice nor recommended). For example, I have not been able to upgrade to the latest vSAN Disk Group version because my vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is also running on top of vSAN which prevents the upgrade operation from completing as changes to the vSAN Disk Group is required.
I honestly have been putting this maintenance off for quite some time but right before VMware Explore, I got an opportunity from Synology to check out one of their storage offerings, the DS723+. While I have never worked with a Synology product before, I know many in the VMware Community use their DiskStation NAS for a number of use cases from VM/Application backup, file sharing, and certainly external storage for ESXi. I also found it interesting that you can also run certain types of applications directly on the NAS, which certainly pique my interest 🙂
With VMware Explore US now behind us, I finally got a chance to play with the DS723+ which has the following configuration:
- DS723+
- HAT3300-4T - 2 x 4TB SATA Disks
- SNV3410-400G - 2 x 400GB M.2 SSD Disks
- D4ES02-4G - 6GB DDR4 ECC memory (1 x 4GB DDR4 module + included 2GB DDR4 module)
- E10G22-T1-Mini - 10GbE network module
Note: For those interested, there is also DS723+ bundle (includes 2 x 4TB SATA disk) on Amazon
