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The Synology End Game

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Re: The Synology End Game

#271

Post by doublerabbit »

exmadscientist wrote: post #98

A big part of the appeal of Synology was that you could just forget about it . I have a little one in the corner that's just been sitting there serving files out over SMB for years now. It doesn't need to do anything more and I don't need to think about it. A lot of the alternatives being proposed are not so easy to maintain. A full general purpose OS install doesn't really take care of itself. And I don't have (and…

UnRaid. I'm currently evaluating it on my old 2014 motherboard.

The WebUI is responsive, it can be a bit brickish around the edges requiring you dive in to the logs if something doesn't work; turned out to be bad ram on my host refusing KVM to boot. Once it's up and working it sails.

GPU-PassThru in a Windows VM is proving incredibly smooth especially with using Moonshine on FreeBSD.

The docker ecosystem is a nice addition and the community seems fair. I can too throw all my old SSD drives without limitation (granted the basic licenses only allows six) is nifty in saving dust.

It being based off Slackware is pleasing. It is closed source but so is Synology and for $100 for a fully unlocked feature-rich NAS/OS - totally.

https://unraid.net/community/apps

Re: The Synology End Game

#272

Post by MangoCoffee »

joshstrange wrote: post #106
exmadscientist wrote: post #98

A big part of the appeal of Synology was that you could just forget about it . I have a little one in the corner that's just been sitting there serving files out over SMB for years now. It doesn't need to do anything more and I don't need to think about it. A lot of the alternatives being proposed are not so easy to maintain. A full general purpose OS install doesn't really take care of itself. And I don't have (and…

This. I came to Synology after years of managing regular Linux (Debian) servers, then Unraid, and then Synology. Synology was the most expensive thing I’ve used but I also _never_ think about it. The same could not be said for previous setups. I want a stupid-easy NAS, plug-and-play, hotswapable bays. I’m not interested in having to shut down a tower and open it up to swap/add drives. I have 2x12-bay Synology’s and I…

agree. i have two synology NAS. i just set them up and forget it since i don't open for outside access.

its a great backup for all your important files.

Re: The Synology End Game

#273

Post by mihaaly »

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.

Our organization joined this trend some years ago. The original founders (did ca. 30-35 years ago) passed 60 and cashing out. Sold the company to an investor. Small fish, <100 employee, but in a niche of engineering app development with long time clients, very long time clients. Since then, we are a self declared sales oriented organization, company meetings are about success stories of billing more for the same service, monthly cash-flow analysis (target vs. actual), new marketing materials disseminated broadly, sales campaign, organizational culture, teamwork, HR. Every other has a technical development footnote, all AI (fits right in like designer bags at a pig farm). No QA, none.

Re: The Synology End Game

#274

Post by nine_k »

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…

Second-hand Supermicro boards with 6, 8, even 12 SATA ports, 8-16 GB of ECC RAM, a preinstalled CPU, and often a passive radiator are pretty accessible or eBay or suchlike. Of course they are old, but if they did not break after 5-7 years in a server rack, most likely they're not going to break for 10 more years in a less demanding environment at home.

Re: The Synology End Game

#275

Post by cyberax »

tecleandor wrote: post #237
cyberax wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can move out the key from the device using KMIP. I have an implementation that uses a Go-based service to store it in Nitrohsm. I'll clean it up and post a release announcement on Reddit...

That'd be great, as the PyKMIP implementation wasn't very intuitive... (Nor Synology docs...)

Synology actually uses PyKMIP under the hood. They basically use it as a key-value storage for the encryption key, nothing advanced.

I went down the rabbit hole and implemented the KMIP client and server, that pass the tests from OASIS.

Sidenote: please, somebody nuke the OASIS from orbit. To be sure.

Re: The Synology End Game

#276

Post by joshstrange »

nine_k wrote: post #269
joshstrange wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I came to Synology after years of managing regular Linux (Debian) servers, then Unraid, and then Synology. Synology was the most expensive thing I’ve used but I also _never_ think about it. The same could not be said for previous setups. I want a stupid-easy NAS, plug-and-play, hotswapable bays. I’m not interested in having to shut down a tower and open it up to swap/add drives. I have 2x12-bay Synology’s and I…

> I’m not interested in having to shut down a tower and open it up to swap/add drives. How often do you actually do this? In 15 years of running my own NAS boxes, I so far had to do it once. I, of course, choose slow, middle of the range disks.

I never went more than 1, maybe 2, years without needing to open it up. To be fair, I was adding drives over time as I could afford them and I had a large range of drives of various ages that slowly died out or needed to be replaced with larger capacity drives.

It’s partly the annoyance of being in a cramped space filled with drives but also the downtime. Family and friends use self-hosted software than runs on my main server and uses the NAS(es). Shutting down a NAS means shutting down the software. Yes, I can let them know ahead of time and “schedule downtime” but I dislike needing to do that unless I have to. It just makes the system feel less stable for them and I want to provide a great experience.

With hotswap bays externally accessible I don’t have to stop anything. I’d actually be fine with UnRaid (I still run it as my “app” server) if there was a case with 12 or more 3.5” hotswap bays.

I looked into large JBOD servers but between fan noise and rack mounted servers often being in a whole other class (one I have much less experience in compared to desktop tower builds) I’ve never been able to convince myself to get one.

My Synology 12-bays are quiet and easy to work with so even at ~$1.5K they were a steal in terms of maintenance and upkeep (for me).

Re: The Synology End Game

#277

Post by nine_k »

M95D wrote: post #104
justincormack wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you want? The N100 is 6W in theory not sure if you can downclock it or how good the power control is. Problem below that is that is mostly mobile phone type CPUs and they dont have much IO. Drives in a NAS are going to consume a bit of power too so its not really clear how low you can go.

I want less power and more storage. I want less than 10W idle for the whole system, maybe except HDDs, but even those will be in sleep much of the time. x86 boards are mostly ATX-powered and I don't think any ATX power source can go that low and still be efficient (not draw 20W while powering a 10W system). And yes, mobile phone CPUs are good enough. I'm using a Turris Omnia now and Marvell 385 is OK, except I have t…

OK, let's assume we're in California and electricity is like $0.50 / kWh.

An extra 10W being consumed around the clock would cost 24 h/d * 365.25 d * 0.50 $/kWh 0.01 kW = $43.83. Indeed, saving 10W would save enough in 10 years to buy a whole new NAS! (Sans the disks.)

Re: The Synology End Game

#278

Post by M95D »

SirMaster wrote: post #265
M95D wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is power management for HDDs, you know... For my typical usage, the hard drives are probably more than 80% in sleep mode. If I had more SATA ports, I could probably add a frequent-access cache on a SSD and then they would be 99% sleeping. The drives I have, ST2000DL003, consume 0.5W in sleep, according to the spec sheet. So all 8 of them would consume ~4W.

If you care that much about power why are you using 8 tiny 2TB HDDs instead of 1 or 2 big HDDs? You don't need a NAS for 16TB, you just need a RasPi with a 16TB USB HDD connected to it and a second one for backups that you keep mostly offline.

Because TCO is less with these cheap old drives and I can have RAID5 instead of just RAID1 or no RAID at all.

But you're right. In a few years it will become advantageous to switch to a couple of larger HDDs. I could probably do it right now, but I don't yet trust these new drives as much as I trust the old ones, especially since the refurbished scandal.

Re: The Synology End Game

#279

Post by _zoltan_ »

hiq wrote: post #227
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to understand that you are a very unusual case. Most people can't get 25 Gbps for a connection, it's 1 Gpbs at best . Most people, even most technical people, are not running a 25 Gbps home network. You have specific needs for speed and that's fine, but they are not commonplace and most people will be served just fine with SATA drives.

I agree with you, but we're talking about a device that I'd consider keeping for 10+ years. Actually I have some Synology NAS lost somewhere that I occasionally use, and while I don't trust exposing it to the internet (never have), it still serves files fine. With this expectation it's not absurd to get a NAS that still handles a bit more than the current speeds. Just to add a datapoint: I could also get a 25Gpbs con…

I'm also with Init7 :)

Re: The Synology End Game

#280

Post by nine_k »

SirMaster wrote: post #265
M95D wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is power management for HDDs, you know... For my typical usage, the hard drives are probably more than 80% in sleep mode. If I had more SATA ports, I could probably add a frequent-access cache on a SSD and then they would be 99% sleeping. The drives I have, ST2000DL003, consume 0.5W in sleep, according to the spec sheet. So all 8 of them would consume ~4W.

If you care that much about power why are you using 8 tiny 2TB HDDs instead of 1 or 2 big HDDs? You don't need a NAS for 16TB, you just need a RasPi with a 16TB USB HDD connected to it and a second one for backups that you keep mostly offline.

In a RAID6 with 8 drives, you can allow one disk to go offline and remain able to write, or two disks offline and remain able to still read 100% of data. You lose 2 of 8 = 25% capacity on redundancy.

With a mirror of 2 disks, if one disk dies, you can still read; if two disks die, you're toast. And you lose 1 of 2 = 50% of capacity on redundancy.

A quite different balance.

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