Synology’s telegraphed moves toward a contained ecosystem and seemingly vertical integration are certain to rankle some of its biggest fans, who likely enjoy doing their own system building, shopping, and assembly for the perfect amount of storage. “Pro-sumers,” homelab enthusiasts, and those with just a lot of stuff to store at home, or in a small business, previously had a good reason to buy one Synology device every so many years, then stick into them whatever drives they happened to have or acquired at their desired prices. Synology’s stated needs for efficient support of drive arrays may be more defensible at the enterprise level, but as it gets closer to the home level, it suggests a different kind of optimization.
i was considering these devices for my home media set up, now im just building my own NAS with some old parts i had laying around and using open source software.
fuck this shit.
Remember, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with buying a used 7th gen Intel PC and filling that with [insert drive of choice]. An i7-7700T is still more powerful than even the newer Synology units.
Actually perfect timing (for me, it’s all in all terrible)… I was about to buy myself a NAS and struggled to figure out which to get, and this removes at least one option.
As I read this, I am just transfering over to TrueNas on totally open hardware (from Synology). After 1 week, I am loving it. A bit of a learning curve, but TrueNas seems really nice and solid.
Honestly if you’re comfortable with Linux I just built my own at this point, but if you’re not then obviously don’t take my advice
Yeah, I daily Linux, so I wouldn’t mind. It’s just that I want a decently sleek system with less risk of making a mistake when it comes to what I’d want to store. (I follow the 3-2-1 on important files anyway thought)
I’m not saying that they won’t do this, but so far their actual actions have ended up pretty decent. I’ve had 3 Synology devices over the last 12(?) years, and while they are not perfect, they have been very good at delivering what they promised over the long haul. All of them still work fine. Even the old guy delivers.
I was looking at simple 2 bay home NAS and Synology was - quite logically - one of the contenders. Now I’m glad I ordered differently. Went with Asustor AS5402, which might be not as polished package as a Synology option, but they’re very open about it and say it’s just regular PC so you can instal e.g. TrueNAS if you want. This openness convinced me.
Such a silly move. Like shooting yourself in the foot to sell more bullets
That’s a massive shot in the foot.
As a Synology owner, I already had enough - they have arbitrarily cut customer support to sanctioned jurisdictions, leaving me without the support they promised and I expected when paying for a device.
Next one will definitely be built from the ground up.
They are probably betting they will make more money from businesses. I.e., actual pros, vs prosumer.
I do like my Synology NAS I bought 10 yrs ago, but these days there are more and better alternatives for people who dont really need to pay for the support and stability.
I have a synology I bought 3rd party ram (not synology) and it works fine. Same with drives just bought some seagate drives. Probably going to upgrade from a 4 bay to a 12 and I don’t see compatibility of ram being an issue. I just don’t feel like building a whole racked system I just want to plug and play and forget. As of now tho only thing I lose is warranty cause I’m using not “certified” ram and drives.
Plllbbbbbb @ Synology - I just got one of these and added 2x 4TB ssds this week. I’ll eventually add 2x more but for now I’m set: https://www.gmktec.com/products/intel-twin-lake-n150-dual-system-4-bay-nas-mini-pc-nucbox-g9
Fingers crossed that it doesn’t blow up or crap out.
Jeff Geerling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Ft8OAPQ3g
Tldw: get some thin heat syncs 75-80c temps on the ssds
Cut some holes in the plate covering them
Absolutely wild timing on this video. I built mine on Wednesday. I installed OpenMediaVault on mine. The one I bought was $30 cheaper to not have that Win 11 1TB drive. I would have wiped that anyway, and have no use for a 1TB drive.
I started mine off with heatsinks on my SSDs. Those are running at 53 C since being powered up on Wednesday after work. I didn’t go crazy with the heatsinks that pop out of the bottom or anything though, his were pretty funny to see.
I had been considering upgrading, my current 4 bay Synology is physically full and running out of storage space. Moving that to a larger Synology box and adding drives would be easiest, basically plug and play.
But now instead I’ll probably just switch to a more traditional NAS instead. Run TrueNAS, or maybe give HexOS a look. If I’m going to have to convert from my current proprietary Synology filesystem anyway I might as well rebuild from scratch. As it is I’ve shifted all the services off the Synology and Docker to a dedicated Proxmox box.
Grab one of the 8 bays now, this won’t affect anything currently released. I don’t see me having to retire my 1813+ or 1819+ (both 8bay) anytime soon and both are 4+ years old without a hiccup.
Why bother with that? That’s gonna be $1000 just for the box alone, and still lock me into the Synology ecosystem.
I can build a NAS with more capability for less than that. Like taking a Jonsbo NAS case and have the freedom to do whatever I want with it, with plenty of space to move everything else I’m running over to that as well. Even their N5 would likely be less expensive, and I’d have room for 12 HDDs and 4 SSDs then.
While I agree with the doing whatever you want on a custom build I very much doubt the reliability as per my comment here.
https://lemmy.world/comment/16523392
Personally I’ll be moving to rack units when these finally kick the bucket.
Once my DS415+ (with the C2000 fix) finally dies, I’ll most probably go with a Terramaster F4-423. They have an internal USB-port with their OS which you can replace and install a custom OS to it. And it’s basically just an Intel NUC with a storage controller in a nice package. So, pretty much compatible with the usual OSes and NAS softwares.
Is the main appeal of prebuilt NAS cases the aesthetics and the reduction of DIY concerns?
Because they seem to me like overpriced and underpowered computers. Most tech-oriented folks I know have more powerful PCs in a closet somewhere that they could easily convert into a NAS
Edit: some very thoughtful responses thanks y’all! I definitely see the appeal for people who just need something that doesn’t need tinkering or care significantly about power draw and noise.
I think the biggest draw to Synology now is the ultra low power consumption. Yeah, you could totally repurpose an old PC, but it’s crazy to run 500W perpetually. The reason they use old Celeron processors is the low power draw. In time, hopefully, RISC V can produce some low cost systems that would slot in well for this use case.
Obviously everything depends on use case. I definitely am a tinkerer and prefer options. I’d never run a jellyfin server off a synology NAS cause… Well cause it can’t transcode very well. So efficiency is less of a concern than processing power.
I get now that my questions was a bit moot, obviously some people will pay a premium for a narrow use case if it brings reliability and ease of use.
1U form factor, 4 disks, using 7w whilst idle, decent enough CPU to run 1 Linux VM
I bought an RS822+ for as a veeam Linux repo.
I can’t make that myself, or I don’t know how.
It was stupid expensive and if it wasn’t the business paying I would have probably put a bunch of disks into an HP elite desk.
You are paying for reasonably well polished software, which for non technical people makes them a very good choice.
They have one click module installs for a lot of the things that self hosted people would want to run. If you want Plex, a onedrive clone, photo sync on your phone, etc just click a button and they handle installing and most of the maintenance of running that software for you. Obviously these are available on other open source NAS appliances now too so this isn’t much of a differnentiator for them anymore, but they were one of the first to do this.
I use them for their NVR which there are open source alternatives for but they aren’t nearly as polished, user friendly, or feature rich.
Their backup solution is also reasonably good for some home labs and small business use cases. If you have a VMware lab at home for instance it can connect to your vCenter and it do incremental backups of your VMs. There is an agent for Windows machines as well so you can keep laptops/desktops backed up.
For businesses there are backup options for Office365/Google Workspace where it can keep backups of your email/calendar/onedrive/SharePoint/etc. So there are a lot of capabilities there that aren’t really well covered with open source tools right now.
I run my own built NAS for mass storage because anything over two drives is way too expensive from Synology and I specifically wanted ZFS, but the two drive units were priced low enough to buy just for the software. If you want a set and forget NAS they were a pretty good solution.
If their drives are reasonably priced maybe they will still be an okay choice for some people, but we all know the point of this is for them to make more money so that is unlikely. There are alternatives like Qnap, but unless you specifically need one of their software components either build it yourself or grab one of the open source NAS distros.
I see! Thanks so much for the thoughtful response definitely seems like there’s a use case for people who might be more creatives with a need for storage rather than self-hosting enthusiasts who want to mess around in a homelab.
The prices are still a bit eye watering but you pay for software support for sure.
I am a tech oriented person, I work in IT, and a Syno ticks the boxes in many respects.
-
Low power draw. Power efficiency is very important to me, especially for something that runs 24/7. I don’t know how efficient self-build options are these days, but 10 years ago I couldn’t get close to the efficiency of a good NAS.
-
Set and forget. I maintain enough systems at work so I don’t really want to spend all of my free time maintaining my own. A Syno “just works”, it can run for months or years without a reboot (and when it does need one, it does it by itself overnight), and I can easily upgrade or swap a dead drive in a couple of minutes. When the entire NAS dies I can stick the drives in a new one and be up and running almost instantly.
-
Size and noise. I don’t have a massive house, so I need something that can sit on a shelf and be unobtrusive. In our last house it was literally sat in the living room, spinning drives constantly, and nobody was bothered by it.
The Syno I have is plenty good enough to run a bunch of Docker containers and a few VMs for all of my self hosted stuff, and it just does the job efficiently, quietly, and without complaining or needing constant maintenance.
I don’t like this creep towards requiring branded drives and memory, though I’m pretty sure it’s not legal in the EU. Regardless there are ways around it.
Yeah I agree, I set up a synology as a little summer project and I didn’t want to go out and source parts and put a nas Linux distro to do everything myself. Synology is newbie friendly and kind of holds your hand to do everything even dynamic dns. However, if I were to get another nas, I would be more comfortable setting it up myself.
One question in regards to your noise comment: What drives are you running? I have a synology with 2 toshiba mg08 16tb drives and those things are unbearably loud when reading or writing. A lot of that obviously comes down to the drives themselves but I also kind of blame the plastic chassis for probably resonating with the noise and not being better at soundproofing.
It’s an 8 bay unit with six drives that are a mix of WD Red and Seagate Ironwolf, all NAS grade drives, basically. The other two slots have SSDs for hosting the aforementioned containers and VMs.
The largest drives I have are 4TB though, so maybe the larger capacity ones are louder? I also ran the fan profile in whatever the quietest setting is.
We use DS223j’s at work for our clients as backup targets.
Fast to set up and configure from a total beginner up to experienced IT personal.
And I set up NFS, Samba and ACLs in my own Debian NAS.
It aint so sleek and braindead-simple like a Syno does it.
-
Reliability. We’ve put them in small businesses and they do their job very well VS a frankenpc NAS.
I have 2 8-Bay devices at home and they are so good for what they are. Silent, low power, bit of fancy utility for those that like it but reliable and quality. They age very well.
I also use the surveillance station with my cameras which all connected ootb fine. (mix of brands)
They should be careful, they’re just selling small form factor computers with removable drive bays. Standing up and unraid or a true Naz isn’t all that difficult. And then there’s plenty of competition out there ready and willing to eat their lunch.
Just lol at Synology trying to do an Nvidia
Synology is like Ubiquity in the self-hosted community: sure it’s self-hosted, but it’s definitely not yours. End of the day you get to deal with their decisions.
Terramaster lets you run your own OS on their machine. That’s basically what a homelabber wants: a good chassis and components. I couldn’t see a reason to buy a Synology after Terramaster and Ugreen started ramping out their product lines which let you run whatever OS you wanted. Synology at this point is for people who either don’t know what they’re doing or want to remain hands-off with storage management (which is valid; you don’t want to do more work when you get home for work). Unfortunately, such customers are now out in the lurch, so TrueNAS or trust some other company to hold your data safe.
Lol! Not like uGreen put any roadblocks to running your own OS (like disabling the watch dog feature in the BIOS and some other setting to enable custom boot).
And you don’t have any fan control on their NAS. Either you estimate and configure correcrly or you need to schedule downtime.
Actual servers let you live tune (some of) the power settings. Synology supports changing the fan profile in the live OS.Damn I was really happy for ugreen, terrormaster it is then.
It’s not like you can’t do it (I did save the original SSD and replaced it with a new one and installed TrueNas Scale). It’s just not intended to do from uGreens perspective.
Edit: I think I used either of these guides I used on how to open and how to install the new OS:
https://youtu.be/BWNH_JzMNPc
https://youtu.be/R8t-Wqx_E3U
https://youtu.be/yh8Ao5ryOeEOh yeah. The HDD indicator bays are partly non-functional as well.
But you can restore some functionality with scripts you run periodically with cron. Juat search “ugreen dxp4800plus led cli github” to find it.Edit2:
And I only chose a uGreen NAS due to the Kickstarter price. Because that was a 40% price reduction.
At least I got a solid Model that is really nice. It also has a magnetic metal dust cover Ican easily remove if needed (even easier than the one on my pc case front panel which is a Fractal Design North)
Synology is made for the tech literate tech idiot.
They solve one problem and create a dozen more. That problem not only doesn’t need a physical solution, it doesn’t need to be a standalone device. It doesn’t need its own shitty proprietary operating system.
Anyways. Fuck them.
Would love to hear why the problem doesn’t need a physical solution, if you want total control
Synology runs a proprietary OS OOTB that’s had multiple sloppy vulns exposing full remote access to users’ files. Putting your data in the hands of fuckups who have and will continue to leak it is the opposite of total control.
It’s completely trivial to store any data you want to in a cloud provider 100% securely just by piping it through openssl before uploading.
if you want total control
You literally just moved the goalposts.
But, sure, ok… your NAS can be simply 1 16TB HDD in a server that does a dozen other things already, assuming its generally always available on your network. That’s roughly what I do (with redundancy).
Hi. I’d like the word “pro-sumer” banned. In perpetuity.
Why?
