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The Synology End Game

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Re: The Synology End Game

#41

Post by dvdkon »

ramon156 wrote: post #20
bayindirh wrote: post #11

I'm looking for a NAS for a very long time (budget, size, network, etc.), but when I was ready to pull the trigger on a Synology, they did this, and I dodged a bullet. Long story short, I'll be buying an ASUSTOR AS6804T, and if I don't like the software, I'll just install TrueNAS on it. It's not only officially supported , they have a full length video showing the process. They don't provide tech support, but eh. Ici…

Does just getting an intel NUQ not suffice? i bought one for 180 and it works great. runnint ~16 apps + an MC server and no issues

That's not really comparable hardware. The AS6804T has four 3.5" HDD bays, Synology hardware generally offers two to eight bays. They're NASes, the NUC is just a mini computer with little to no built-in storage capacity. It's not about the apps here.

Re: The Synology End Game

#42

Post by bartread »

deadbabe wrote: post #27
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.

It’s not a lot of money left on the table though, the lion’s share of it has already been taken.

Yes, but that doesn’t stop companies from putting a disproportionate amount of effort into squeezing it out, instead of directing that effort towards developing better products.

Re: The Synology End Game

#44

Post by bayindirh »

dvdkon wrote: post #41
ramon156 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does just getting an intel NUQ not suffice? i bought one for 180 and it works great. runnint ~16 apps + an MC server and no issues

That's not really comparable hardware. The AS6804T has four 3.5" HDD bays, Synology hardware generally offers two to eight bays. They're NASes, the NUC is just a mini computer with little to no built-in storage capacity. It's not about the apps here.

Plus, 4 SSD slots and 16GB ECC RAM which is upgradeable to 64GB. That thing is a sleeper.

Re: The Synology End Game

#45

Post by brnt »

gbtw wrote: post #4
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…

Truenas (linux) has been like that for me. Repurposed my last pc, added a pci-e sas/sata card, add 8 hdd's. Installed it 2 years ago and its been auto updating and i have been hardly having to deal with it, at most an hour a month to check the status and maybe add or remove some docker container stuff thats running on there.

Did something similar, but just used Debian stable and Samba. Rock stable without intervention other than an occasional login to update. My fileshare needs are simple (single user), so that might be a reason to not choose this. The nice thing is that since it's Debian you _can_ do more if you wish, at any time.

Re: The Synology End Game

#46

Post by fer »

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…

If you're fine losing the NVMe slots to NVMe-SATA, I recently found this: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1737570-thinknas-6x-hdd-nas...

Requires a bit of tinkering but the idea of plugging a 1L-format computer to turn it into a multi-disk NAS is quite attractive.

Re: The Synology End Game

#47

Post by mbirth »

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…

I have the Jonsbo N1 on my Amazon “DIY NAS” list.

However, once my DS415+ dies, I’m currently more inclined to go with a TerraMaster F4-423 NAS and replace their OS with something else. I’ve read that this TerraMaster model is basically an Intel NUC with a SATA card. And their OS is on a flash drive plugged into an internal USB port - so, very easy to change/replace.

I’ve also read that UGREEN devices should be easy to replace the OS on. So, that’s another option I keep in mind.

Re: The Synology End Game

#48

Post by tecleandor »

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 claim it's OK because they've backported all security fixes to their versions. I don't believe them. The (theoretical) huge effort needed for doing that would allow them to grow a way better product.

And it's not only about security, but about features (well, some are security features too). We're missing new kernel features (network hardware offload, security, wireguard...), filesystem (btrfs features, performance and error patches...), file servers (new features and compatibility, as Parallel NFS or Multichannel CIFS/SMB), and so on...

I think they got stuck on 4.4 because of their btrfs fork, and now they're too deep on their own hole.

Also, their backend is a mess. A bunch of different apps developed on different ways that mostly don't talk to each other. They sometimes overlap with each other and have very essential features that don't work and don't plan to fix. Meanwhile, they're busy releasing AI stuff features for the "Office" app.

Edit note: For myself and some business stuff, I have a bunch of TrueNAS deployments, from a small Jonsbo box for my home, to a +16 disk rack server. This was for a client that wanted to migrate from another Synology they had on loan, and I didn't want to push a server on them, as they're a bit far away from me, and I wanted it to be serviceable by anyone. I regret it.

Re: The Synology End Game

#49

Post by gsa »

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…

I wanted a small form factor for my homebrew NAS and Jonsbo N3 is the case I ended up with a couple of years ago. I couldn't find anything smaller that would let me have at least 6 disks. The Asus ITX motherboard I bought second hand had only 4 SATA ports and I bought a m.2 sata adapter to get an additional 4 ports.

Re: The Synology End Game

#50

Post by M95D »

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 random disconnects. And no, port replicators aren't much better.

[1] https://lowendbox.com/blog/are-you-recyling-old-hardware-for...

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