Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Troubleshooting a Synology DS1511j with BBOD and migrating data to another Synology NAS

Let's face it- IT disasters happen when you least expect them. I guess that's what all the planning is for, right?

Anyways, last week one of our Synology Disk Station 1511j NAS's failed to power back up after a DSM update. Thankfully we backup everything twice daily to a larger NAS and had a cold spare on the shelf. What caused this? I'm not sure- the upgrade from 4.3 to 5.0 went normally and the unit power cycled. When the IP did not respond after the allotted time period and the Synology assistant could not find any Disk Stations on our network- that's when I panicked (I kid). A trip to the server room later revealed the unit showed no sign of life outside of a blinking blue power button. (No LAN, hard drive, or status lights.)

After quite a bit of research,  I found this is commonly referred to as the Blue Blink of Death.  Everything I could find online (including a version of the instructions below) failed. I found this artical and easily migrated the disks/data to the cold spare. (You will need a spare equal number Disk Station and spare drive to instal DSM to- YMMV). With the data sorted, I reached out to Synology's online support who sent me the following.

[quote]


Thank you for contacting Synology Support,

Ill need you to do this trouble shooting test,

Conducting the Power Button LED Light Test

Statically discharge yourself
1.) Remove all peripherals connected to the Synology device (USB, eSATA, Ethernet). Please also remove any RAM you may have added if using a model that has RAM expansion capabilities.
2.) Remove the power cord to the Synology device.
3.) Remove the Cover to the Synology device.
4.) Remove the power cords to the HDD, from the motherboard – or remove the HDD from the Synology system
5.) Connect the power cord to the Synology System
6.) Power up the Synology system and wait five minutes.
7.) What is the status of the power button LED light? Blinking or Solid? ( The power button LED light will be blue on blue on most models, and green on some Rackstation models)


[/quote]

This sadly provided no change and the unit is being RMA'd. I'm still happy with the devices over all and the level of service they have provided, but if we did not have that cold spare on hand, this would have been a nightmare.

*UPDATE*
It's just not my week. My personal DS209 decided to "loose it's configuration" after a power outtage. I now get the pleasure of recovering the data using this guide found on their website. Ironically, my HP Microserver/Solaris ZFS based NAS is still just humming along with no issues.

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