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The Synology End Game

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Re: The Synology End Game

#301

Post by JonChesterfield »

plqbfbv wrote: post #217
fooqux wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. Even a custom Arch install with samba, zfs, NFS, etc would be a "single setup, works forever" deal. It's not like what you configure is going to magically break if you don't look at it. And security could be an issue, but it's not like Synology is any better there with their old as dirt dependencies. Snark aside, TrueNas is probably your best bet. Maybe Unraid? Still, with all of these, it'…

A custom Arch install is what I have on my router. There's no real auto-update for Arch, and it wasn't designed for it (IIRC according to their forums/wiki), so I have to login every now and then and run pacman (I'll admit I haven't invested more than a couple hours searching). The `kea` package (DHCP server) got updates this summer, 3 weeks apart, that both broke configuration file parsing, and I had to discover the…

Turns out building zfs into the kernel is very easy, if you happen to be building the kernel for some other reason already.

Re: The Synology End Game

#302

Post by VTimofeenko »

amiga386 wrote: post #19

On that very topic, do HNers have any case and/or motherboard recommendations for a homebrew NAS? I have my NAS on a shelf in a mini-ITX case, but it only fits two 3.5" HDDs internally (as well as an SSD, but full-size HDDs are what matter for bulk data storage, the more the better) Also, it takes a normal full-size ATX PSU because I was fed up a previous case that only had room for its own custom PSU, which kept fai…

Jonsbo N4 works really well for me. One downside is that the space for PCI cards provides only about half a standard height, so GPU choice is very limited. Low profile Arc A310 fits like a glove but is pretty hard to find these days

Re: The Synology End Game

#303

Post by _def »

atlasduo wrote: post #30
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.

Easily explained: when times are tough, delivering growth naturally is hard. Squeezing the customer is the lowest hanging fruit. Sure, long term reputation is severely damaged, but why would decision makers care? Product owners interests are not aligned with interests of the company itself. Squeeze the customer, get your miniscule growth, call it "unlocking value", get your bonus, slap it onto your resume and move on…

This is depressing, but feels accurate. How do we collectively get out of this mess?

Re: The Synology End Game

#304

Post by Marsymars »

benoau wrote: post #300
Marsymars wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, but for media serving and transcoding you ideally want Intel Quick Sync, and it's simpler to have separate systems for your Quick Sync system and your "many cores" system.

Both of the CPUs you mention are low-power I don't think this a problem for slightly meatier processors unless you need the GPU or Quick Sync for multiple purposes?

Sure, you can get a meaty recent-gen Intel processor and get Quick Sync and plenty of cores, it just gives you awkward dependencies - you then a) can't get a non-Intel-based system without losing Quick Sync even if they're better value/performance/performance-per-watt and b) you can't upgrade your transcoding CPU without doing a whole new build of your meaty system, which is high-cost if you've got an especially meaty system.

(You might want to upgrade your transcoding box to a newer generation processor that supports, say, AV1 encoding.)

And FWIW my Ryzen Embedded system isn't especially low-power by design, it was just the most accessible way of getting ECC memory for me.

Re: The Synology End Game

#305

Post by edem »

Marsymars wrote: post #263
benoau wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but these days you can easily have one system with 10 - 20 cores so you should be able to handle both workloads very well.

You can, but for media serving and transcoding you ideally want Intel Quick Sync, and it's simpler to have separate systems for your Quick Sync system and your "many cores" system.

What does Quick Sync do? I'm new to this.

Re: The Synology End Game

#306

Post by itsrobreally »

edem wrote: post #235
plqbfbv wrote: post #126

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 CP…

What are the current options? I've been looking but I haven't found any. I have a DS923+ and it works fine, but I can already see what you are talking about.

I just got a Ugreen 2800 to replace a homemade NAS, I had a Synology for a few years but it got slower and slower as the software changed so I ditched it maybe 10 years ago?

One of the things that sold me on the Ugreen was that it is basically just a garden-variety N100 box, upgradeable RAM, supports SATA and M.2, etc.

According to this installing your own OS doesn't invalidate the warranty so if I decide their software is lousy I can install Debian https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Ugreen

Re: The Synology End Game

#307

Post by Mars008 »

edem wrote: post #234
tecleandor wrote: post #48

Not only that, but their security situation is terrible. Their OS is full of EOL'ed stuff. On products you can buy TODAY, you find: - Their Btrfs filesystem is a fork of a very old branch and doesn't have modern patches - A custom, non standard, self built, ACL system for the filesystem - Kernel 4.4 - PHP 7.4 (requirement for their Hyperbackup app) - smbd 4.15 - PostgreSQL 11.11 - smbd 8.2p1 - Redis 6.2.8 - ... They…

I have a DS 923+. These extremely old softwares you mentioned were always weird to me but everything worked fine so far. What I'm not happy about is the vendor lock in, and the abysmal virtualization / transcoding performance. I want a NAS that comes with a similar ease of use as the DSM, but can double down as a __very lightweight__ virtualization platform for my local test deployments and as a media PC that I can r…

How about miniPC + USB x bay enclosure? I'm thinking about it. Have 4 Synology NAS mostly as long offline storage. No problems with them in this role so far.

Re: The Synology End Game

#309

Post by import »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #204
tetris11 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are guides on how to mainline Synology NAS's to run up-to-date debian on them https://forum.doozan.com/list.php

People seem very attracted to Synology because it requires very little thought & effort. FWIW the new Ugreen NAS run Debian. I don't know a ton about it, but it's be great if they could stay a little more up to date. This Synology story with ancient forks & weird encryption sounds truly bogus.

I have a Ugreen, just got the latest update runs on kernel 6.12

Re: The Synology End Game

#310

Post by Marsymars »

edem wrote: post #305
Marsymars wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, but for media serving and transcoding you ideally want Intel Quick Sync, and it's simpler to have separate systems for your Quick Sync system and your "many cores" system.

What does Quick Sync do? I'm new to this.

It decodes and encodes video streams with very low power draw and CPU load, so you can transcode media in realtime if your player device doesn't support the media format in question or you have bandwidth limits out-of-home.

Can do the same with various GPUs, but Quick Sync tends to be the lowest-power and most well-supported at the software level.

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