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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#171

Post by rwmj »

fennecbutt wrote: post #42

I have a ds920 4 bay from synology. It's a pretty decent product, their browser OS for it is incredibly good and useful, the performance is pretty good and I've stuck extra ram in it, ssd for caching reads/writes (altho I have it disabled for writes). But after what they've done recently I don't know if I'd use em again. I know everyone jusy says "build your own!!!11" I used to be like that too I love tech. But somet…

UGREEN isn't really build your own. The hardware is similar to Synology (but I think slightly better made, and definitely with much higher specs). But unlike Synology it's easy to install your own OS. I used Fedora, but a lot of people are using TrueNAS which is almost as turn-key as the Synology software.

For reference I own 2 x Synology, 1 x UGREEN and 1 x QNAP; and will likely replace the other machines with more UGREEN in future as long as they don't do anything stupid.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#172

Post by mlrtime »

Shank wrote: post #157
NikolaNovak wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of tasks? I am not necessarily disagreeing with you but context is important. I've had 918+ and 923+ and the cpu has idled through all my years of NAS-oriented usage. Originally I planned to also run light containers and servers on it, and for that I can see how one could run out of juice quickly. For that reason I changed my plan and offloaded compute to something better suited. But for NAS usage itself th…

A significant part of the prosumer NAS market isn’t running these for storage exclusively. They usually want a media server like Plex or Enby or Jellyfin at minimum and maybe a handful of other apps. It would be better to articulate this market demand as for low power application servers, not strictly storage appliances.

I used to like synology for that, but now I just want a NAS with NAS things on it that supports the latest technology.

As soon as my Synology dies I'm replacing it with Unifi. I don't want all that extra software with constant CVEs to patch.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#174

Post by lupusreal »

rickdeckard wrote: post #85
osivertsson wrote: post #51

When leadership makes decisions that are so out of touch with their customers it also severely impacts internal morale. Yeah, so they reversed eventually. But the technical and support people at Synology probably tried to fight this and lost. That feeling of being ignored despite having given this company your everything for many years. I bet many woke up feeling that the magic that made Synology a good place to work…

While I see where you're coming from, in my experience ESPECIALLY Customer-Support is usually happy to have a clear-cut criteria to reject support-requests as "officially out-of-scope". I wouldn't be surprised if the decision was made BECAUSE Customer Support highlighted the support-effort to debug all these unique customer-setups within warranty, and then someone stepped in and proposed to kill two birds with one st…

Customer support who are happy to leave customers high and dry and rinse their hands of the problem are basically soulless already; they care more about their own immediate convienence (while still on the clock!) than they do about the human being on the other end of the phone line.

Now, it's probably inevitable that many of them will be this way, but what I'm saying is keeping these customer service reps satisfied with easy dismissals isn't actually the lifeblood of the company. Happy engineers who derive satisfaction from the quality of their work on the other hand are extremely important to the long term viability of the company. If you tell the engineers that you're compromising the utility of the product they worked so hard on, to screw over paying customers, for the convienence of the soulless customer service reps who just want to play solitaire on their computers instead of helping people, the company has a real problem.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#175

Post by layer8 »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #162

The decision to restrict 3rd party harddrives may be part of the reason why sales (allegedly) plummet, but i'm guessing lack of innovation also plays a big part. Synology has been resting on the laurels for years. They had a "hit" with DSM 6, then did mostly nothing for a decade, released DSM 7, and again, nothing but minor things since. On the hardware side of things, they're mostly still using decade old hardware,…

Exactly that. Their hardware and software hardly improved over a decade, instead they dropped features. The whole HDD ordeal and researching alternatives also made me realize that I’d rather have ZFS (even at the price of less flexibility with mixing drive sizes). Synology reversing course on the proprietary HDDs therefore won’t win me back.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#176

Post by sersi »

zeroflow wrote: post #72
aborsy wrote: post #7

But their hardware is also terrible. Their disk stations for consumers had 1G NICs until recently, and still underpowered CPUs. The sales had to decline for them to be convinced to upgrade to 2.5G in 2025. But then they removed an optional slot for 10G in 923+ model (they still would have made money from it, as it costs +$150), so when the industry moves to 10G, you can’t upgrade the component and should buy the whol…

I totally agree with you. The appeal for me was the "it just works" factor. It's a compact unit and setup was easy. Every self-built solution would either be rather large (factor for me) and more difficult to set up. And I think, that's what has kept Synology alive for so long. It allows entry level users to get into the selfhosting game with the bare minimum you need, especially if transcoding (Plex/Jellyfin) is men…

I sold my synology for an AOOStar WTR Max. It arrived with an issue (usb4 port didn't work) but replacement was quick and easy. So far, I'm rather happy. Really hesitated with Minisforum.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#177

Post by 7bit »

hsjsjdnbdbdb wrote: post #117
anal_reactor wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've realized that at my current workplace it's a recurring theme that I suggest a solution, it gets rejected, we circle around for a year, finally we go back to my solution. It is indeed extremely demotivating, because it gives me an impression that I'm working with stupid people. I don't want to leave the company, but I'll try to switch teams next year.

Sounds like you don't argue hard enough

It's not his position to argue hard. That's what the product owner or manager is paid for.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#178

Post by eecc »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #162

The decision to restrict 3rd party harddrives may be part of the reason why sales (allegedly) plummet, but i'm guessing lack of innovation also plays a big part. Synology has been resting on the laurels for years. They had a "hit" with DSM 6, then did mostly nothing for a decade, released DSM 7, and again, nothing but minor things since. On the hardware side of things, they're mostly still using decade old hardware,…

Oh nice, thanks for mentioning UGREEN. I had a quick look at the website and it looks fairly cheap. I wouldn't trust their software but the base system comes on an MMC, does it mean I can flash it with TrueNAS or Unraid?

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#179

Post by jacquesm »

osivertsson wrote: post #51

When leadership makes decisions that are so out of touch with their customers it also severely impacts internal morale. Yeah, so they reversed eventually. But the technical and support people at Synology probably tried to fight this and lost. That feeling of being ignored despite having given this company your everything for many years. I bet many woke up feeling that the magic that made Synology a good place to work…

What is interesting here is that Synology leadership is quite technical and there was no acquisition or other big event that I am aware of that resulted in this strategy. It was a complete own goal and as predictable as could be. Synology apparently wasn't aware of what their brand values were as perceived by their loyal customers and that's the kind of move you make at your peril. I'll be surprised if they survive this in the longer term, regardless of the reversal they've shown they do not have their customers interests at heart at all. It's dumber that it even seems: they were raking in a substantial amount of money precisely because of this one factor, and they pretty much shot the goose that was laying the golden eggs.

I've been a loyal customers of theirs and wasn't even looking at other options but there won't be another cent of mine going to Synology. I was already miffed at their mark-up for a little bit of memory before this happened. It is a matter of time before they crash and I don't want to end up with an unsupported piece of hardware. Trust is everything in the storage business.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#180

Post by eecc »

hsjsjdnbdbdb wrote: post #117
anal_reactor wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've realized that at my current workplace it's a recurring theme that I suggest a solution, it gets rejected, we circle around for a year, finally we go back to my solution. It is indeed extremely demotivating, because it gives me an impression that I'm working with stupid people. I don't want to leave the company, but I'll try to switch teams next year.

Sounds like you don't argue hard enough

Hey, in my case I've been kicked out a couple times already... it doesn't always pay
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