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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#401

Post by Eric_WVGG »

Last summer a friend needed help building a huge home backup system, and though I had no real experience with Synology, it was the only brand I was familiar with and some Googling indicated that no other commercial product seems close. A DIY box — TrueNAS or whatever — is out of the question, this friend isn't technical.

I had heard about the Synology HD policy thing, but had forgotten when I ordered the drives. By the time they arrived, the need was pressing and I had no window to exchange the drives, so I had to just hack the damn system.

Now I have to go out of town to unhack the damn thing so I can be sure nothing I did interferes with future updates.

This is the polar opposite of the experience I was expecting. This foolishness cost me a lot of time and is about to cost more.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#402

Post by jdhawk »

pabs3 wrote: post #311
cm2187 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if their brand is that great. I have been using synology NAS for about 15 years. It is very solid and easy to use, but the hardware is expensive, non customizable, the underlying OS is based on an ancient linux kernel. I have now run into the volume size limits (200TB) and disk sizes keep increasing exponentially. And they don’t support enterprise SSDs (SAS/U.2). So in my mind I was already thinking of m…

Can you run a standard Linux distro on them? Is their OS custom or based on OpenWRT or something else?

You cannot run a standard distro (easily) - their software (DSM) is linux based and they expose most of the stock services like Docker and libvirt

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#403

Post by lpcvoid »

fortran77 wrote: post #339
mapontosevenths wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My story is similar. I've been using them for a decade, and was shopping for an upgrade when they made the proprietary drive announcmement. It was the impetus I needed to realize that it only takes an hour to build my own, better, NAS out of junk I mostly already owned and save a ton of money. I won't be going back.

You can build a little hot-swappable NAS with nice trays to slide disks in and out, an easy web GUI, front panel status lights, support for applications like surveillance cameras, etc, with junk you mostly already owned?

Sure. You buy a chinese case with 6-8 bays off Aliexpress, throw some board with ECC RAM support into it and a few disks. You install TrueNAS Scale on it, setup a OpenZFS pool. Front panel lights are controllable via Kernel [0], it even offers a ready-made disk-activity module if you want to hack. Surveillance cameras are handled by Frigate, an open source NVR Software which works really well.

Especially when you want to build and learn, there's next to no reason to buy a Synology.

[0] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.3/leds/leds-class.html

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#404

Post by stonemetal12 »

Aurornis wrote: post #371
jacquesm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> What is interesting here is that Synology leadership is quite technical Vagueposting out of necessity: I worked at a different company that made popular consumer products and had leadership with technical backgrounds. That company also went through a period of trying to lock down the platform for profits, which everyone hated. The root cause was that the technical leadership had started to think two things: That th…

> a period of trying to lock down the platform for profits, .... their customers were so loyal to the brand that they wouldn’t leave

Isn't that a contradictory position? Locking in raises the cost of disloyalty, loyal customers (by definition) don't need to be locked in.

You only need to lock in loyal customers if you are planning on turning customer hostile.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#405

Post by perlgeek »

bapak wrote: post #82
jeffparsons wrote: post #21

Don't get confused here: they didn't decide that their policy change was wrong — they just didn't expect quite as much backlash. Make your purchasing decisions accordingly.

[flagged]

Companies should create value, and capture a fraction of that value.

What Synology did was trying to significantly increase the fraction of value they captured, at the cost of their customers, who would have to pay that, and without providing extra value for their customers.

This is not only a a bad deal for customers, it also triggers our sense of injustice.

The best companies create value, and capture only a part of it, and leave other parts of the value for both customers and partners/suppliers.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#406

Post by jdhawk »

TechSquidTV wrote: post #397

While we are on this subject, has anyone found good DIY solutions for similar hardware? I haven't looked recently, but I have always struggled to be able to put together anything that would be remotely similar in size to a small 4-bay NAS. My "NAS" is a 4U short network racked unit. Pretty large by comparison, but its also mostly empty space.

https://www.servethehome.com/minisforum-n5-pro-review-an-awe...

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#407

Post by jasonlotito »

I was literally reaching out to friends yesterday to ask about NAS options and Synology wasn't even discussed, where it would have been before this mess.

Even now, after the reversal, it's really not an option. I mean, I have no assurance it won't get reversed again, and I don't want to invest into something that won't necessarily work long term.

Basically, I want to be sure I can access my data and get updates, and right now, Synology is not that from what I see. I'm just looking at this as a home user, but unless there is some guarantee, Synology just seems to be waiting to pull the rug out from you regarding your data.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#408

Post by jlarocco »

CryptoBanker wrote: post #395
potato3732842 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it speaks volumes about the work ethic (or less charitably, moral character) of the HN comment section that so many people are bewildered as to why support would prefer to troubleshoot questionable hardware than tell people "fuck off and come back with supported hardware" all day. Unless you're a real POS doing that sort of work sucks way worse than actually working to solve people's problems even if the latt…

Open source alternatives such as OpenMediaVault are able to support virtually any hardware. That's no excuse for a company like Synology

It helps that they can tell people to debug the problem themselves.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#409

Post by aftbit »

leokennis wrote: post #290
cm2187 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if their brand is that great. I have been using synology NAS for about 15 years. It is very solid and easy to use, but the hardware is expensive, non customizable, the underlying OS is based on an ancient linux kernel. I have now run into the volume size limits (200TB) and disk sizes keep increasing exponentially. And they don’t support enterprise SSDs (SAS/U.2). So in my mind I was already thinking of m…

I find Synology NAS's to be at the sweet spot between "too simple for anything except accessing some files remotely via the vendors app" (like WD) and "another tech babysitting project". DSM is rock solid in my opinion, and gives enough freedom to tinker for those that want to. The QuickConnect feature makes it easy to connect to the NAS without being locked in to one specific app.

I find that Linux NAS and router project require essentially no babysitting. You do have to do some initial setup work, but once it's done, there's no maintenance (other than replacing failed hardware) for years and years.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#410

Post by volkl48 »

fortran77 wrote: post #339
mapontosevenths wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My story is similar. I've been using them for a decade, and was shopping for an upgrade when they made the proprietary drive announcmement. It was the impetus I needed to realize that it only takes an hour to build my own, better, NAS out of junk I mostly already owned and save a ton of money. I won't be going back.

You can build a little hot-swappable NAS with nice trays to slide disks in and out, an easy web GUI, front panel status lights, support for applications like surveillance cameras, etc, with junk you mostly already owned?

I don't think most people consider easy hot-swaps + front panel status lights particularly key features in their home NAS.

I don't swap drives unless something is failing or I'm upgrading - both of which are a once every few years or longer thing, and 15min of planned downtime to swap doesn't really matter for most Home or even SMB usage.

-----

As for the rest, TrueNAS gets me ZFS, a decent GUI for the basics, the ability to add in most other things I'd want to do with it without a ton of hassle, and will generally run on whatever I've got lying around for PC hardware from the past 5-10 years.

It's hard to directly compare non-identical products.

For me and my personal basic usage - yes, it really was pretty much as easy as a Synology to set up.

It's entirely possible that whatever you want to do with it is a lot of work on something like TrueNAS vs easy on a Synology, I'm not going to say that's the case for everything.

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