Synology Home NAS

Virtual Networked NAS

Everything Configured from My Desktop PC running Windows 10; Color-Coded based on Trust, where Green is obviously the most trusted.

Purchase and Put Together:

• Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218j (Diskless) - $175.84
• https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ
• Seagate IronWolf 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive (x2) - $210.58
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H289S79

Total: $386.42

Both Seagate IronWolf 4TB Drives Installed in Synology DS218j

Software Configuration:

• Install Hyper-V on Windows 10: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/quick-start/enable-hyper-v
• Download Ubuntu ISO: http://releases.ubuntu.com/18.04/ubuntu-18.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso

Create Virtual Switch for Desktop NIC:

1. From Hyper-V Manager, Click "Virtual Switch Manager" on the Left-Hand "Action" Panel
2. Select "External" for Create Virtual Switch Type
3. Set Name as value that will be intuitive for your Desktop NIC. e.g. 'Wired External Switch"
4. Choose the Ethernet Device Connected Directly to Synology NAS Device

Creating an External Switch in Hyper-V
Think of this as a 'physical' switch between your CPU and Network Card, with only 1 port (Your NIC!)

Create Virtual Machine and Install using ISO

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/quick-start/quick-create-virtual-machine

Don't forget to add a second virtual NIC to the VM and attach it to the previously created external switch.

Creating "Dual-Homed" VM w/ 2 Virtual NICs
One for Synology, One for Internet(NAT)

Static IP for "Wired External Switch"

You've now got everything connected.  When you boot ubuntu you'll see 1 NIC has an IP (dhcp) from Hyper-V and provides Internet Connectivity.  The second is not enabled at all.  You'll need to enable this by editing /etc/network/interfaces as follows:

Configure Ubuntu to have a Static-IP.  This is normal for Servers that provide DHCP
Ensure 'eth0' or 'eth1' corresponds with the External Switch chosen above.

'sudo ifup eth0' will bring your NIC online after editing the interfaces file

DHCP Configuration (This part can be tricky)

Follow the instructions here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/isc-dhcp-server

I've used the 192.168.10.0/32 network in this example to match up with the information provided in the link above.  Make sure to check your syntax after editing the file.  `ps -ef | grep dhcpd` should show the server is running.  If there are errors, use `journalctl` to view any errors, fix them, and use `sudo systemctl restart isc-dhcp-server.service`.  Once DHCP is running and everything is connected, you should see a Lease for the Synology using `cat /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd.leases'.

Make sure to enable 'authoritative' DHCP, since this DHCP server is the only one on this External Switch.

Set up your Synology, Download the OS with VM

When the Synology gets an IP, it should get the first IP in your DHCP range. For me this was 192.168.10.10.  Inside your VM, open a browser and go to http://192.168.10.10 

You will be redirected to set up the device.  Your device wont have an internet connection because we did not configure the VM to act as a gateway/router.  So you'll need to click the link provided in the Synology setup, and Download the OS software to the VMs Downloads folder.  Once complete, verify the checksum `md5sum ~/Downloads/DSM_DS218j_24922.pat`.  This ensure you are getting the right software and no corruption occured during download.  Then switch back to the Synology configuration Tab, and Choose "Select a File/Browse", navigate to the Downloads folder, and 'upload' the .PAT file to the Synology via the web interface.  Finish the configuration and make sure to remember your NAS does NOT HAVE INTERNET CONNECTIVITY.  This is so that you can ensure it is secure and not downloading software you do not explicitly provide.

Once configured using Defaults, you should have 2 drives providing redundant storage with 3.6TB of Storage

What Next?

Now that everything is connected you'll want to think about how you want to access your synology from other devices.  You could simply connect the Synology to your Wifi Router now and access it via wifi.  However, this would expose it to the internet, so make sure you want to do that.

Another option would be to configure the Virtual Machine as a "Reverse-Proxy" for HTTP/HTTPS or set up the routing tables to forward specific ports and provide NATing back to the requester.  There are several possibilities at this point and I hope you have found this tutorial useful and informative.

Read more on how I configure SMB w/ SCP between the Host OS, VM and Synology devices in the next post, https://championofcyrodiil.blogspot.com/2020/02/synology-follow-up.html

Openstack DHCP Lease renewing every minute on all VMs?!

Been having performance issues w/ the Openstack cluster. User's have mentioned that occasionally VMs are unresponsive.

I came across this article describing some of the common issues w/ DHCP, Improving DHCP Performance in OpenStack.

The article explains that the default lease duration is 120 seconds. In order to ensure dhcp clients (VMs) don't lose their IP, the client daemon attempts a renewal halfway through the lease duration. Which is approximately +/-60 seconds.

 In my case, I have about 20 virtual machines hitting a single DHCP agent every 60 seconds.

VMs on an Openstack network (private) will not be accessible (from public) during this time, causing periods of 'lock up' for users.

The fix is to simply increase DHCP lease duration to something a bit more sane for your platforms.
In my case, I chose 600 seconds, thus givng a nice 5 minute window between lease renewals.

However, if running Juno with HA, pacemaker will maintain a running dhcp agent on any host in your cluster.  This can be confusing since you will see the agent running on a node, even though the service is 'stopped'.

The fix is just to update the config on your nodes, and then disable/enable the resource via pacemaker.


# For each node in your cluster, from a controller as root run:

[root@node-54 ~]# ssh node-46 -C "echo dhcp_lease_duration = 600 >> /etc/neutron/dhcp_agent.ini"
[root@node-54 ~]# ssh node-47 -C "echo dhcp_lease_duration = 600 >> /etc/neutron/dhcp_agent.ini"
[root@node-54 ~]# ssh node-50 -C "echo dhcp_lease_duration = 600 >> /etc/neutron/dhcp_agent.ini"
[root@node-54 ~]# ssh node-51 -C "echo dhcp_lease_duration = 600 >> /etc/neutron/dhcp_agent.ini"
[root@node-54 ~]# ssh node-52 -C "echo dhcp_lease_duration = 600 >> /etc/neutron/dhcp_agent.ini"
[root@node-54 ~]# ssh node-53 -C "echo dhcp_lease_duration = 600 >> /etc/neutron/dhcp_agent.ini"
[root@node-54 ~]# ssh node-54 -C "echo dhcp_lease_duration = 600 >> /etc/neutron/dhcp_agent.ini"

Next, disable and then enable the service:

[root@node-54 ~]# pcs resource disable p_neutron-dhcp-agent

[root@node-54 ~]# pcs resource enable p_neutron-dhcp-agent

[root@node-54 ~]# neutron agent-list

+--------------------------------------+--------------------+------------------+-------+----------------+---------------------------+

| id                                   | agent_type         | host             | alive | admin_state_up | binary                    |

+--------------------------------------+--------------------+------------------+-------+----------------+---------------------------+

| 11a5d775-7f10-4856-b905-a6176e9cb689 | Open vSwitch agent | node-46.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-openvswitch-agent |

| 14b47084-d1f5-428c-8fed-746a5d5e743f | Metadata agent     | node-54.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-metadata-agent    |

| 311fe911-503d-498f-a027-72414c6c8664 | DHCP agent         | node-46.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-dhcp-agent        |

| 326c7dcc-03b0-4830-8a4e-6b58f3af2445 | Open vSwitch agent | node-51.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-openvswitch-agent |

| 3867b579-1bc2-4aee-b9b6-5bc21f61f514 | Open vSwitch agent | node-54.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-openvswitch-agent |

| 3de48cde-8dba-4042-9a04-baa9f3d411f9 | Open vSwitch agent | node-50.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-openvswitch-agent |

| 5b85f41e-2671-4bf6-8dc5-243a0ecb55b3 | L3 agent           | node-50.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-l3-agent          |

| 61b3c026-99e0-4c50-a440-339b7085d428 | L3 agent           | node-46.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-l3-agent          |

| 6e9b071d-5417-45a2-abf6-72b2691fd464 | Open vSwitch agent | node-47.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-openvswitch-agent |

| 91e124a6-6594-4fb4-b48c-06b697cbf437 | L3 agent           | node-54.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-l3-agent          |

| 9881ddce-f177-4120-9019-1fc26eee19ca | Open vSwitch agent | node-52.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-openvswitch-agent |

| 9e259924-80ce-44c8-9704-8cb8ed35d751 | Metadata agent     | node-50.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-metadata-agent    |

| c5b75fd5-f83b-4afb-a4ff-271c92d61695 | Open vSwitch agent | node-53.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-openvswitch-agent |

| cd99597e-ead6-4eb3-a729-4bc609955ee6 | Metadata agent     | node-46.example.com | :-)   | True           | neutron-metadata-agent    |

+--------------------------------------+--------------------+------------------+-------+----------------+---------------------------+

[root@node-54 ~]# neutron agent-show  311fe911-503d-498f-a027-72414c6c8664

+---------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+

| Field               | Value                                                   |

+---------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+

| admin_state_up      | True                                                    |

| agent_type          | DHCP agent                                              |

| alive               | True                                                    |

| binary              | neutron-dhcp-agent                                      |

| configurations      | {                                                       |

|                     |      "subnets": 5,                                      |

|                     |      "use_namespaces": true,                            |

|                     |      "dhcp_lease_duration": 600,                        |

|                     |      "dhcp_driver": "neutron.agent.linux.dhcp.Dnsmasq", |

|                     |      "networks": 5,                                     |

|                     |      "ports": 39                                        |

|                     | }                                                       |

| created_at          | 2015-06-04 17:35:57                                     |

| description         |                                                         |

| heartbeat_timestamp | 2015-06-04 17:36:46                                     |

| host                | node-46.ccri.com                                        |

| id                  | 311fe911-503d-498f-a027-72414c6c8664                    |

| started_at          | 2015-06-04 17:35:57                                     |

| topic               | dhcp_agent                                              |

+---------------------+---------------------------------------------------------+

The result is that the client will repeat DHCPREQUEST until the service is back up, and start using the new lease time,

root@hannibal:~# tail -f /var/log/syslog
Jun  4 17:35:02 hannibal dhclient: DHCPACK of 192.168.111.95 from 192.168.111.2
Jun  4 17:35:02 hannibal dhclient: bound to 192.168.111.95 -- renewal in 51 seconds.
Jun  4 17:35:53 hannibal dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.111.95 on eth0 to 192.168.111.2 port 67 (xid=0x50f4018e)
Jun  4 17:36:35 hannibal dhclient: message repeated 6 times: [ DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.111.95 on eth0 to 192.168.111.2 port 67 (xid=0x50f4018e)]
Jun  4 17:36:37 hannibal dhclient: DHCPNAK from 192.168.111.2 (xid=0x50f4018e)
Jun  4 17:36:37 hannibal dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3 (xid=0x75f1e5db)
Jun  4 17:36:37 hannibal dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.111.95 on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 (xid=0x75f1e5db)
Jun  4 17:36:37 hannibal dhclient: DHCPOFFER of 192.168.111.95 from 192.168.111.2
Jun  4 17:36:37 hannibal dhclient: DHCPACK of 192.168.111.95 from 192.168.111.2
Jun  4 17:36:37 hannibal dhclient: bound to 192.168.111.95 -- renewal in 255 seconds.
Jun  4 17:40:52 hannibal dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.111.95 on eth0 to 192.168.111.2 port 67 (xid=0x75f1e5db)
Jun  4 17:40:52 hannibal dhclient: DHCPACK of 192.168.111.95 from 192.168.111.2
Jun  4 17:40:52 hannibal dhclient: bound to 192.168.111.95 -- renewal in 211 seconds.
Jun  4 17:44:23 hannibal dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.111.95 on eth0 to 192.168.111.2 port 67 (xid=0x75f1e5db)
Jun  4 17:44:23 hannibal dhclient: DHCPACK of 192.168.111.95 from 192.168.111.2
Jun  4 17:44:23 hannibal dhclient: bound to 192.168.111.95 -- renewal in 262 seconds.
Jun  4 17:45:01 hannibal CRON[4249]: (root) CMD (command -v debian-sa1 > /dev/null && debian-sa1 1 1)
Jun  4 17:48:45 hannibal dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.111.95 on eth0 to 192.168.111.2 port 67 (xid=0x75f1e5db)
Jun  4 17:48:45 hannibal dhclient: DHCPACK of 192.168.111.95 from 192.168.111.2
Jun  4 17:48:45 hannibal dhclient: bound to 192.168.111.95 -- renewal in 249 seconds.

IMPORTANT!!!
"Attempting to work around these performance problems by significantly increasing IP lease time will cause a huge problem with respect to the release of IP addresses by neutron if your cloud loads dynamically change. By default, neutron will allocate an IP address to a VM for 24 hours, independent of the actual lease time. Also, by default, neutron will not release an IP address until 24 hours after an instance has been terminated."


       - https://www.mirantis.com/blog/improving-dhcp-performance-openstack/