--- title: "Homelab Storage Upgrade: Synology DS918 for VMware & NFS" description: "My homelab storage upgrade — adding a Synology DS918+ with SSDs, presenting it to VMware over NFS 4.1, and testing VAAI and NFS multipathing." date: 2019-02-10T23:59:20+00:00 modified: 2026-06-05T19:12:06+00:00 author: James Kilby categories: - Homelab - Ansible - Automation - Networking - Storage - TrueNAS Scale - VMware - Mikrotik - Artificial Intelligence tags: - #Homelab - #Storage - #Synology url: https://jameskilby.co.uk/2019/02/lab-storage-2/ image: https://jameskilby.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/81-ZoEW24UL._SL1500_.jpg --- ![](https://jameskilby.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/81-ZoEW24UL._SL1500_.jpg) [Homelab](https://jameskilby.co.uk/category/homelab/) # Homelab Storage Upgrade: Synology DS918 for VMware & NFS By[James](https://jameskilby.co.uk) February 10, 2019 · Updated June 5, 2026 • 📖1 min read(224 words) 📅**Published:** February 10, 2019•**Updated:** June 05, 2026 ## Homelab Storage Upgrade This post covers my homelab storage upgrade. Since starting my new role with Xtravirt my Homelab has gone through several fairly significant changes. At the moment it’s very much focused on the VMware stack and one of the things I needed was some more storage and especially some more storage performance. With that in mind, I purchased a new [Synology DS918](https://www.synology.com)… ![Lab Storage](https://jameskilby.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/iu-768x432-1.jpg) It’s a very compact unit with a quad-core Intel Celeron & I have left the RAM at 4 GB for now. I have added some of the existing SSDs I had, giving me about 3TB of usable flash. I am presenting this back to my VMware hosts using NFS 4.1. I must have missed the announcement as this is now built into the Synology GUI (it used to be a command-line-only option). I have verified the VAAI works as expected in this configuration. At present I am using this with a single network connection however I will be testing NFS Multipathing shortly. The performance improvement has been noticeable and I have now removed all non-Synology systems from primary storage. This has left me with the DS918+ detailed here and a DS216+ with 2TB of Raid1 WD Reds. I am using this for ISOs and some general file storage. I later expanded the lab further with [new homelab nodes](https://jameskilby.co.uk/2024/07/new-nodes/). ## 📚 Related Posts * [Can you really squeeze 96TB in 1U ?](https://jameskilby.co.uk/2024/09/can-you-really-squeeze-96tb-in-1u/) * [Homelab SSD Failure: How Synology RAID Saved My Data](https://jameskilby.co.uk/2022/11/homelab-bad-days-almost/) * [My First Homelab Storage Setup: HP Gen8 & Xpenology](https://jameskilby.co.uk/2018/01/lab-storage/) ## Similar Posts * [ ![vSphere Power Management Ansible Playbooks with Semaphore](https://jameskilby.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/vsphere-power-management-ansible-768x403.png) ](https://jameskilby.co.uk/2026/04/vsphere-power-management-driven-by-ansible/) [Ansible](https://jameskilby.co.uk/category/ansible/) | [Automation](https://jameskilby.co.uk/category/automation/) ### [Automating vSphere Power Management driven by Ansible and SemaphoreUI](https://jameskilby.co.uk/2026/04/vsphere-power-management-driven-by-ansible/) By[James](https://jameskilby.co.uk) April 15, 2026 · Updated June 1, 2026 In this post I’ll walk through how I use vSphere Power Management driven by Ansible and SemaphoreUI to automatically reduce ESXi host electricity consumption — saving real money on my Octopus Agile tariff by toggling hosts between Low Power and Balanced policies. 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