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Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

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Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#491

Post by wnevets »

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…

> “Can you believe that? They’ll buy anything we tell them to.” was the paraphrased statement I remember.

Apple is only company that is allowed to get away with that.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#492

Post by Tuna-Fish »

seanalltogether wrote: post #376
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…

They've also been pretty hostile around video transcoding which seems like a baffling position to take given their audience. I still have an older tv that can't deal with h.265 and I'm refusing to upgrade to the latest version of synology OS because they remove the transcoders.

You have to pay for the licenses if you intend to ship those, they have decided they'd rather not.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#493

Post by crazygringo »

phoenix3200 wrote: post #475

Six years ago my box shit the fan. Synology could have recovered it for me, but they insisted I "upgraded" to their newest box. That was when I realized that I would never buy from them again. Thank goodness their hybrid raid is at least MDRAID. https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/d3cmq2/ds1512_tha... Honestly, old server equipment is more powerful than most of these RAID boxes. The only caveat there is that o…

I don't understand. Recovered how? As far as I know, like many electronics companies, they don't do repairs period. If an enclosure fails under warranty, they replace it. They don't repair it.

So if your NAS motherboard died out of warranty and they no longer sold that model, it's not surprising they recommended you buy the current version of that model.

So I don't know what you were expecting? Hardware dies. What did you want them to do?

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#494

Post by cm2187 »

volkl48 wrote: post #410
fortran77 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

In fact I find the synology disk trays to be very fragile. Out of the 48 trays I have, I think a good 6 or 7 do not close anymore unless you lock them with a key. A common problem apparently.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#495

Post by jacquesm »

dymk wrote: post #488
delecti wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the GP comment doesn't seem to be their target market. You nailed the appeal though. Non-customizable? That's the point. Ancient Linux kernel? I can't imagine why I'd care for such a device.

As for the ancient Linux kernel, I want the device I’m using for backups to be secure. I’m not saying I need to be using the kernel on ~main, but there are important security fixes merged in the last 5 years.

I'd be far more weary of the application level services provided by Synology than of the kernel in this context, as long as the vendor backports the various fixes and you update the kernel you should in theory be fine. But the applications get far less scrutiny.

What you really never ever should do is expose your NAS to the internet, even if vendors seem to push for this. Of course you'd still be vulnerable to a local compromised application on another machine that is on the same network as the NAS. It's all trade-offs. My own solution to all this was quite simple but highly dependent on how I use the NAS: when not in use it is off and it is only connected to my own machine running linux, not to the wifi or the house network.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#496

Post by CamperBob2 »

lpcvoid wrote: post #403
fortran77 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wan…

Very valid advice, but you don't do all that in "an hour," of course. Synology's purpose in life is to provide a solution to users who are more interested in the verbs than the nouns.

They are the Apple of the NAS industry, a role that has worked out really well for Apple as well as for most of their users. The difference is, for all their rent-seeking walled-garden paternalism, Apple doesn't try to lock people out of installing their own hard drives.

Kudos to Synology for walking back a seriously-stupid move.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#497

Post by jacquesm »

CharlesW wrote: post #420
sixothree wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to find any other products that compare to DSM. It really is something special. It's worth a small premium in hardware costs. But I share a lot of the concerns as everyone else here and will be considering other options.

> It's hard to find any other products that compare to DSM. A friend has a Synology NAS and I have a QNAP NAS. In my experience, QNAP's QTS (QuTS Hero if you want ZFS) is directly comparable.

QNAP has more or less caught up with Synology, but for a very long time Synology had a substantial edge.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#498

Post by jacquesm »

volkl48 wrote: post #410
fortran77 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

Hot swap for drives is a must on a NAS. If you have to power it down to swap out a drive there is a chance that your small problem becomes a larger one. Better to replace the drive immediately and have the NAS do the rebuild without a powercycle.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#499

Post by Arainach »

reactordev wrote: post #323
nottorp wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one rPIs are severely i/o limited still. May be fine with one ssd. For two, if you like power adapters going into boxes out of which usb cables to go more external hard drives, a Pi may be fine. If you want one neat box to tuck somewhere and forget about it, they aren't. But then people buy Intel "NUCs" where the power adapter is larger than the computer box... And three, the latest Pis have started to require ac…

My point is there are alternatives, like you said.

The alternative to a Synology NAS isn't RPi. There are plenty of alternatives - QNAP, UGreen, a tower running TrueNAS - but a messy pile of overpriced unreliable SoCs attached to SATA hats isn't an alternative for a single device with multiple hard drive bays, consistent power and cooling, and easy management.

Re: Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs

#500

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #412
Aurornis wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Do you think more employee ownership and control, a "seat at the table," would've prevented technically competent leadership from testing customer hostile business decisions? > Regarding employee morale: It was very depressing for me during this period to open Hacker News and see threads complaining about my employer. I can confirm that it spurred a job search for me. Indeed. I believe that if you're a shareholder em…

> "Do you think more employee ownership and control, a "seat at the table," would've prevented technically competent leadership from testing customer hostile business decisions?"

Employee control doesn't reduce investor pressure for increased profitability. Employee ownership just means that the employees are now the ones exerting the investor pressure and if anyone thinks employees will be willing to take less total compensation (why? "Loyalty to the company"? "Solidarity"?) instead of hopping to a new job, well, good luck with that.

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