Hi folks
TLDR: Any idea how to provide a search index of Synology NAS content to Windows machines - maybe by routing the SMB share through a Windows file server?
Here I am with a question on how to setup fast file access (not transfer speed) on a NAS joined to Windows domain. The goal to document some best practices to achive this.
@Will has a nice guide for the related DSM settings but I want to focus more on the external factors
Synology Settings for MAX SPEED - Get more performance out of your Synology NAS
My understanding is that at the current state the search index of Synology Universal Search can be access by MacOS Finder which makes for a really fast file retrival.
Contrary to this, the Windows Search Service on a Windows machine can not use the Synology Universal Search Index. Therefore when Windows plattforms need to open files they need to perform a search on the NAS for these files. The NVMe cache is of little impact when a files is only opened once (which is the case for my particular use case)
My use case:
Use case is are companies that do a lot of CNC machining. These companyies run design/manufacturing josbs with SolidWorks, Catja or similar CAD software. Output files are so-called G-code files (very small text files, mostly only some few kb) that contain the cutting path information for the CNC controllers.
A typcial customer a a DS1522+ with Raid5 of 3x 1TB SSD, 2x 1TB NVME Cache, 10GB backbone.
This box hosts the file server with a data volume arounf 1TB with 5Mio files.
When you are on the shop floor the CNC machine has an interface toads a specific G-code file from the NAS to its local disc. The retrival of the G-code files is done by the manufacturing job ID + part ID which are part of the file name. The path is defines by customer ID\job ID.
Both information is stated on the CAD drawing.
Retrival can be done by
- manually browsing to final location \customer\job\part → very labour intensice becaue the number of folders is huge and the touch screens are often only 640x480
- using windows search (most CNC machines run WindowsCE which is a special type of WindowsXP) → search goes through the whole folder structure and is slow
The CNC machines use Windows Index Service. This service is used for local indexing but can also use an index provided by a Windows File Server. Therefore for my use case the search of content on Windows files servers works amazingly fast.
I can not install indexing tools such as FileLocator Pro on the machines but need to stick to onboard windows tools.
Any idea how to provide a search index of Synology NAS content to Windows machines?