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The Synology End Game

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Re: The Synology End Game

#121

Post by martijn_himself »

Paul_S wrote: post #107

I ran my own NAS for over two decades in some old 4U I got for cheap, using whatever discarded consumer HW I got for free and I never got the point of Synology. Colleague who has one said it's compact. Well, this year I bought one of those gaming cube cases (with space for 10 drives, what do people do with them in gaming pcs? OK, only 8 spaces are actually drawers with grommets but physically you can fit 10) and reti…

I'm interested in starting out like this, I have a bunch of 2.5" SSD's I'm not using- do you have any tips on what cube to get? Are you concerned about power usage at all especially if this is always on?

Re: The Synology End Game

#122

Post by TheDong »

iamshs wrote: post #69
M95D wrote: post #50

But self-building a NAS is still a problem, and I'm also talking about this [1] article from the same blog: There are NO low power NAS boards. I'm talking about something with an ARM CPU, no video, no audio, lots of memory (or SODIMM slot) and 10+ SATA ports. Sure, anyone can buy a self-powered USB3 hub and add 7 external HDDs to a raspbery, but that level of performance is really really low, not to mention the USB r…

Low power and reliability is why I want to just use my Mac Mini M4 + DAS as storage solution among 15 people. I am not sold on it because Mac Mini has lots of life in it to be solely devoted to this use case.

I wouldn't be sold on it because macOS is a terrible server OS.

If it can't run linux, it's not going to make a good storage server on the software side of things.

Re: The Synology End Game

#123

Post by lostlogin »

makeitdouble wrote: post #63
DocTomoe wrote: post #2

Semi-OT: I currently have a QNAP TS-451D2. I use it mainly with a MacBook Pro. Something in QNAPs Samba implementation makes it glacially slow in that configuration. While it still does AFP (and then becomes somewhat decent to use), it's only a question of time for apple to chop that protocol. With QNAP having proven to be substandard and Synology going evil, what other options for a mid-range, local NAS for the tech…

Would NFS be faster ? It was years ago but for whatever reason SMB was slow on my Mac even when connecting to Linux boxes. I mapped my user ID to the Synology user and switched to straight NFS instead, per wise it was night and day.

It’s baffling how messed up it is on the Mac.

I get more reliable speeds and connections from an Ubuntu VM that’s running on the same Mac than I do from the Mac. How can this happen?

Re: The Synology End Game

#124

Post by cyberpunk »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #99

I'm currently on the market for a NAS. Main use would be simple RAID storage for personal stuff: photos, etc. Also local backup. I'd been considering the Synology SS425+. I was aware of the restrictions on disk support. Comments in this thread are making me think twice. So what's good? Ugreen? I'd appreciate recommendations.

I’ve been looking at a minisforum n5 pro for a while, but it’s got a lot of horsepower and wouldn’t just be a nas.

10g ports, latest amd, hopefully freebsd works okay on it…

Re: The Synology End Game

#125

Post by Hamuko »

lostlogin wrote: post #116
Hamuko wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everything on my Synology DS920+ is running inside Docker. I think the only exception is Plex, which I've installed natively on the device – but even Plex needs to be downloaded directly from Plex because the one in the package center is outdated. When I outgrow my DS920+, I'm probably gonna build a custom Unraid machine to replace it. Most of my needs from Synology are being able to run Docker containers…

I graduated from Synology docker, to Docker compose and my world got better. The weird quirks of Synology Docker are painful. Eg containers that won’t stop, or won’t start. It’s not easy to get into the containers (docker exec), recreating is tricky compared to copying and pasting docker-compose.yml.

Synology Docker aka Container Manager has support for Docker Compose under "Projects". It even explicitly gives you the option or either uploading a ready-made docker-compose.yml or to create a new one.

Personally, I mainly use the CLI to manage my Compose files even on Synology DSM.

Re: The Synology End Game

#126

Post by plqbfbv »

I have used Synology NASes for a good 15y now, and the one I'm on will likely be my last (DS920).

I have watched the software evolve from "quite good" to "very good" to "lets reimplement everything ourselves and close it off as much as possible".

It's sad because back in the day, at least for me, the brand was the perfect UX in many regards: small form factor and low power, price-accessible 4/5 bay NASes, a couple CPU tiers, upgradable hardware, regular software updates and a huge collection of software features.

For me they were the go-to choice for NAS because of the good web UI, the ease of setup and reliable operation that covered 99% of the prosumer usecases. They would just chug along forever, auto-updating themselves, never skipping a beat. Whenever I wanted to do special things with it via SSH I could, but the environment has become increasingly hostile to the point where I need to spend hours wondering how the heck the thing operates without bursting on fire.

I'm hoping that by the time I need to change my DS920 another good company like they were will have emerged, because building your own solution comes with operational maintenance and I want the thing to Just Work®.

Re: The Synology End Game

#127

Post by Paul_S »

martijn_himself wrote: post #121
Paul_S wrote: post #107

I ran my own NAS for over two decades in some old 4U I got for cheap, using whatever discarded consumer HW I got for free and I never got the point of Synology. Colleague who has one said it's compact. Well, this year I bought one of those gaming cube cases (with space for 10 drives, what do people do with them in gaming pcs? OK, only 8 spaces are actually drawers with grommets but physically you can fit 10) and reti…

I'm interested in starting out like this, I have a bunch of 2.5" SSD's I'm not using- do you have any tips on what cube to get? Are you concerned about power usage at all especially if this is always on?

Any of those cube gaming ones I think are great. I got a dual chamber one which makes shuffling drives and cabling easy. Can't remember the name but it was 90 pounds, way more than I paid for the old 4U, although inflation from the 90s probably means it was more expensive in real terms. Most of the power is used to spin rust so not sure it's worth worrying about the HW power use, just use whatever old pc you can get for free, ask colleagues and family, people throw out working PCs all the time, it's a NAS, not a rendering farm, if it boots it's good enough IMHO.

Re: The Synology End Game

#128

Post by bloggie »

mbirth wrote: post #58
theshrike79 wrote: post #15

I had a 918+ that just... died. It started and then stopped, didn't POST. Panicked, built a full-ass Fractal 804 case + Unraid setup to replace it. Was looking around for That Guy who mails around a Synology box so I could get my data out and stumbled on a forum post(!) that said the external PSU just fails subtly sometimes. It gives enough power to start booting and then fails. Bought a 3rd party PSU from Amazon and…

My 415+ had the famous C2000 issue where the timing signal wouldn’t be sufficiently pulled down/up. This lead to freezes and ultimately to a non-booting device. And that happened like 3 months out of warranty. The only “support” Synology offered was in helping me selecting a new device to buy. And they clearly knew how to fix it at this point as the support in other countries DID fix people’s devices. Luckily, the In…

Fyi it's not a missing resistor but a silicon defect in the Intel chip where a low-side mosfet on a clock line wears out after a certain number of boot cycles, causing the system to fail POST.

It is an easy fix (I had to do it too) but I agree Synology's poor support makes this the last of their products I'll use.

Re: The Synology End Game

#129

Post by numpad0 »

codeflo wrote: post #12

The year is 2025. Delivering a good product is not considered profitable enough anymore. If a company or product is beloved by customers then that means it doesn't squeeze them to the max. This is clearly money left on the table that someone will sooner or later extract. High-end brands are not exempt from this.

> Delivering a good product is not considered profitable enough

Leaving products and commerce coupled is not considered good practice anymore. It's recommended in some places that you outsource so extremely to the point that your outsourced labor render services to receiving outsourced labor. And that's not considered insane.

Re: The Synology End Game

#130

Post by wulfstan »

wulfstan wrote: post #97

Stupid question, but has anyone hacked/replaced the vanilla firmware on Synology boxes and got it running something more flexible? This is kind of a lazyweb request, but I have an old Synology box that I wouldn't mind resurrecting.

Answering my own question:

If you've got a QNAP, you can install Debian 10 on some of them https://www.cyrius.com/debian/>

If you've got a Synology, it has been done on some older devices as well https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Synology>

So all is not necessarily lost, and I have one of each so will need to do some experiments!

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