The Synology DS620Slim Volume configuration is a simple process usually associated as a follow up step about configuring the Storage Pool. Volumes are a logical or software constructs the Synology uses to define the “physical” space that can be allocated for iSCSI LUNs or other File Systems like SMB shares. In this instance the Synology DS620Slim Volume will be created to support physical LUNs where VMware vSphere can connect and create iSCSI Datastores. The size of the volumes can be changed at any time based on requirement even though it is always a good idea to plan for required space for the foreseeable future and eventually expand when required.
Synology DS620Slim Volume setup
This article is part of a series dedicated to the Synology DS620Slim and assumes a Storage Pool is already created. The Synology DS620 Volume creation is available through the Storage Manager > Volume > Create. In this case only the Custom option is available as all the installed drives are already part of the Storage Pool with an existing RAID. The default can be selected with unused drives.
As per previous description next step is to choose an existing Storage Pool.
The main details for the selected Storage Pool appear and if valid it is just a matter to proceed with the next screen.
At this point it possible to provide a description for the Synology DS620Slim Volume including the size. The value is expressed in GiB. From here the option to use a part of the available space in the Storage Pool and then edit / increase this value later. Just using half of the space allows for the creation of another volume allocated for other purposes. For example SMB or NFS storage. This deployment will use the max space available in the Pool. 1853 GiB which are roughly 2 TB minus the space of the initial RAID setup.
Another important setting is the File System to format the Synology DS620Slim Volume. At the time of writing the options are Btrfs and ext4. Whilst the latter is a robust file system widely used especially for Linux systems, the former allows for very interesting options at the storage level like snapshots, replication and a lot more.
At this point a final screen to review and confirm settings.
The creation of the new Synology DS620Slim Volume is very fast and takes only few moments to go online. At this point it is possible to start creating the iSCSI LUN Targets to host the VMware Datastores.
In case it is required to change the selected values for the Storage Volume it is just a matter of editing the settings in the Action menu. For example the allocated size and the Record file access frequency. By default is set to Daily. It allows also options like Monthly and Never. These might be used when increasing Storage Replication performances for busy or large volumes.
Another interesting option for Storage Volumes sitting on SSD Storage Pools is the SSD TRIM. This routine can be scheduled and improves the Read/Writes and the SSD lifetime making access to the drive more efficient. There are certain scenario where the SSD TRIM cannot be enabled. This includes block level iSCSI LUNs.
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