In the quest of expanding the storage for the homelab the choice went for the Synology DS620Slim. As a happy Synology customer the new NAS will be serving content exclusively for the VMware based homelab. Great news is, this one will leverage the SSD storage and essentially a complementary extension for existing DS916 NAS. So the storage for the “Tier-1” apps is getting more space. And also very fast! In reality there are already other projects this new NAS will be serving as well. One of them is a nested VMware vSAN. The Synology DS620Slim ships with 6 Bays and supports all common RAID setup plus the proprietary ones (SHR – Synology Hybrid RAID). More on this later with dedicated articles.
This article is starting the familiar “series” approach touching on different areas:
- Adding RAM Memory and Disk Storage (this article)
- First time install
- Network setup
- Storage Pool creation
- How to create a Volume
- Defining iSCSI targets
- more..
This list will get updated with new articles available.
Upgrade Synology DS620Slim Memory and Storage
The Synology DS620Slim is a very compact and versatile NAS. It offers the latest features by mean of the DSM (built-in Desktop Manager) and power consumption is pretty low. especially when used in conjunction with SSD disk instead of the mechanical ones. A very good advantage together with the reduced noise levels from HDD drives.
The front shows 6 bays to quickly mount new or replace disk drives. In addition, also the important LEDs about power, status, alert and LAN interfaces. The LEDs are also configurable through the builtin app. The most common file systems and RAID are supported depending on number of available disks:
- Synology Hybrid RAID
- Basic
- JBOD
- RAID 0
- RAID 1
- RAID 5
- RAID 6
- RAID 10
From the back a single Fan 80mm which could be easily replaced, a Kensington lock, 2 USB 3.0 connections and 2 network interfaces. The interesting part is the built-in software allows to use NIC teaming/bonding and LAGs configurations. Very useful for redundancy and connecting to different switches.
At the bottom is possible to spot the console connection under the rubber cover and also the screws to open the panel at the bottom. This one gives access to the RAM Memory modules.
Once opened the panel at the bottom, it is possible to access the slots for the RAM modules. The Synology DS620Slim ships with 2 GB RAM and officially supports up to 6 GB of RAM. The suggested RAM is DDR3L 1866 1.35v. There is a Synology RAM module available for expansion. In reality any other RAM module with the same features will work. And on the internet is possible to find cheaper ones with exactly the same specs.
In this instance the Synology DS620Slim is mounting an additional 4GB RAM module by Crucial. An affordable one is available at amazon. With the same features it is also possible to upgrade the RAM Memory up to 16GB (2x8GB) even if not officially supported.
Next step is to start adding the Disk Storage. The operation couldn’t be any easier. It is just a matter of popping the Disk holder out from the bay and fix the drives using the screws included in the Synology DS620Slim package.
Generally speaking the large majority of Disk drives should be supported. For more information, it is possible to look at the official compatibility list directly from the Synology website.
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