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I think that people underestimate the important of ease of use as you get older, when time becomes more valuable than money and tinkering.
All these people talking about Unraid setups, custom boxes that use a ton of power, loud fans in a big chassis, etc. just doesn't really appeal to me. This stuff needs to pass the WAF.
I work on enterprise IT architecture every day. I definitely have the skills to do this and have in the past. But I have a wife and kids and a home to maintain, and honestly, Synology does it well, and I don't want to waste my time.
You can go a lot cheaper if you remove the need for hot swap drives, which realistically anyone buying one of these simple NAS systems does not need.
The example uses a slower, older CPU that has no QuickSync even. it's pretty dated, and doesn't even ship with an OS. It's a 100% roll your own solution.
Need is a strong word, but having zero downtime to replace a drive is fantastic. If your solution can't compete, that's OK; we can move on from it.
The simple answer is there's nothing in this price category that includes the specs I've provided. Synology (and QNAP, and a few others) have a fairly innovative product here:
1. Super easy to set up if you're a bit technical, with OS included and ready to go
2. Cheap, or, at least, not terribly expensive
3. Dead silent
4. Super low power
5. Warrantied and professionally supported (3 years! Can be 5 for just a few bucks!)
6. Hot swap (with the + models) for no downtime, easy fixing dead drives
7. Fantastic GUI (at least for Synology)
Thanks for your input, I think I am going to go for the 220+. Aside, I see there is the IronWolf NAS 14tb for $179 each, whats your thought on that drive? If I get 2 it'll bring me to $600 for 220+ and 14tb, I think that'd be plenty for me for a while.
The Ironwolf NAS is a perfectly fine drive that's suitable for any kind of backup needs you might require. It will also allow you to install and run Synology and Docker apps on it, and will do a great job with that too.
Beware - you cannot backup your Synology system, only the data. If a drive tanks, then you're starting from scratch. I learned this the hard way, you've been warned. I would fire my IT guy if he got us on a platform that wasn't possible to backup. If you like reconfiguring Plex and Couch Potato from scratch when (not if) your drive goes down, have at it.
Beware - you cannot backup your Synology system, only the data. If a drive tanks, then you're starting from scratch. I learned this the hard way, you've been warned. I would fire my IT guy if he got us on a platform that wasn't possible to backup. If you like reconfiguring Plex and Couch Potato from scratch when (not if) your drive goes down, have at it.
Check the forums on servethehome.com, serverbuilds.net, and unraid's own forums for builds that fit your need/budget. They can be super simple like repurposing a $100 Facebook HP desktop or beasts capable of holding 30 drives and simultaneously encoding 10x 4k videos. That's the beauty of those solutions in that you really can do whatever you want beyond simple NAS purposes.
It's only worth it if you have cheap electricity, every 50w in idle I save is $300 saved per year on electricity.
The example uses a slower, older CPU that has no QuickSync even. it's pretty dated, and doesn't even ship with an OS. It's a 100% roll your own solution.
Need is a strong word, but having zero downtime to replace a drive is fantastic. If your solution can't compete, that's OK; we can move on from it.
The simple answer is there's nothing in this price category that includes the specs I've provided. Synology (and QNAP, and a few others) have a fairly innovative product here:
1. Super easy to set up if you're a bit technical, with OS included and ready to go
2. Cheap, or, at least, not terribly expensive
3. Dead silent
4. Super low power
5. Warrantied and professionally supported (3 years! Can be 5 for just a few bucks!)
6. Hot swap (with the + models) for no downtime, easy fixing dead drives
7. Fantastic GUI (at least for Synology)
Unraid on a refurbished Dell Precision 5820 has all this for a fraction of the price. You just need to encode using an Nvidia card bundled in the workstation. The 5820 has 4 hotswap bays.
Short answer is no. You would have to use a 3rd party solution like FileCloud or NextCloud. You still have to figure out on your own the security part of it and how to make those services available to the internet in a secure way on your own. Is not as easy as using QuickConnect and File Station or Synology Drive. FileCloud has a free and a paid version. NextCloud is free and I think open source.
Those 2 alternatives are not hard to setup but to be honest they are not as easy or convenient as Synology's solution. If you are already running a Synology and money is not a concern I would say stay with that solution, ie get another Synology NAS. If something breaks you can just call Synology support and they will fix it. For NextCloud and FileCloud free versions you are on your own if something breaks. Also, if there is a security vulnerability that impacts your business Synology might be liable and you could get some money through a legal process if you are willing to go that route. With NextCloud and FileCloud free versions you are liable if there is a vulnerability that gets exploited as those free softwares are provided "as is" without any warranties.
In summary, as everything in life there are tradeoffs to consider. All 3 solutions are good but you have to decide which one is more convenient for you.
Do you know how open vulnerable you are using QuickConnect? Good luck to you and your data.
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It's trivial to backup $APPDATA$ for your docker containers to anywhere you want (for Plex, Couchpotato, etc.).
With Hyperbackup and replication there are many ways to backup file-level or OS-level stuff on Synology.
Active Backup will do a full DSM backup.
Please can you explain a bit what you are talking about?
I don't mean the OS config, I mean the apps. Has Synology OS converted to a pure Docker format for apps installed? Traditionally Active Backup only did data, not the OS/config too. This may have changed since my last run with them, and if so I can be corrected.
The example uses a slower, older CPU that has no QuickSync even. it's pretty dated, and doesn't even ship with an OS. It's a 100% roll your own solution.
Need is a strong word, but having zero downtime to replace a drive is fantastic. If your solution can't compete, that's OK; we can move on from it.
The simple answer is there's nothing in this price category that includes the specs I've provided. Synology (and QNAP, and a few others) have a fairly innovative product here:
1. Super easy to set up if you're a bit technical, with OS included and ready to go
2. Cheap, or, at least, not terribly expensive
3. Dead silent
4. Super low power
5. Warrantied and professionally supported (3 years! Can be 5 for just a few bucks!)
6. Hot swap (with the + models) for no downtime, easy fixing dead drives
7. Fantastic GUI (at least for Synology)
There's N100/200/305 and Pentium Gold 8505 boxes all over Amazon and Ali that will run circles around the entire line of Synology hardware when it comes to raw CPU performance.
All can be had for under $300 with most hovering around the $200 range and feature multiple 2.5Gb LAN ports (some even have 10Gb SFP+ ports) so that you can actually utilize all this storage bandwidth. They also have QuickSync.
You can connect these right up to an eSATA or LAN based hot swap chassis and have a significantly better NAS with most of the benefits you've outlined within the price range of Synology.
It may not sound easy, but it's about as complicated as if you were trying to explain Synology to someone who just bought an external hard drive for their backup needs.
I have an old WD Live Duo working as RAID 1. Can I move one of the drives to this enclosure (DS220+), setup Synology with only one drive, copy the contents from the remaining single drive on WD Live Duo to the formatted drive on Synology, then move the remaining drive from WD to Synology and turn on RAID 1? Thanks
Unraid on a refurbished Dell Precision 5820 has all this for a fraction of the price. You just need to encode using an Nvidia card bundled in the workstation. The 5820 has 4 hotswap bays.
Unraid has a cost.
The Dell WS has a cost.
It's loud. Hot. Uses far more power than the Synology.
Requires a nVidia card, uses even more power.
No 3 year warranty, nor professional support.
It's not like the list I provided at all!
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All these people talking about Unraid setups, custom boxes that use a ton of power, loud fans in a big chassis, etc. just doesn't really appeal to me. This stuff needs to pass the WAF.
I work on enterprise IT architecture every day. I definitely have the skills to do this and have in the past. But I have a wife and kids and a home to maintain, and honestly, Synology does it well, and I don't want to waste my time.
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Just an example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/26632480...3e02
You can go a lot cheaper if you remove the need for hot swap drives, which realistically anyone buying one of these simple NAS systems does not need.
Need is a strong word, but having zero downtime to replace a drive is fantastic. If your solution can't compete, that's OK; we can move on from it.
The simple answer is there's nothing in this price category that includes the specs I've provided. Synology (and QNAP, and a few others) have a fairly innovative product here:
1. Super easy to set up if you're a bit technical, with OS included and ready to go
2. Cheap, or, at least, not terribly expensive
3. Dead silent
4. Super low power
5. Warrantied and professionally supported (3 years! Can be 5 for just a few bucks!)
6. Hot swap (with the + models) for no downtime, easy fixing dead drives
7. Fantastic GUI (at least for Synology)
It's trivial to backup $APPDATA$ for your docker containers to anywhere you want (for Plex, Couchpotato, etc.).
With Hyperbackup and replication there are many ways to backup file-level or OS-level stuff on Synology.
Active Backup will do a full DSM backup.
Please can you explain a bit what you are talking about?
Need is a strong word, but having zero downtime to replace a drive is fantastic. If your solution can't compete, that's OK; we can move on from it.
The simple answer is there's nothing in this price category that includes the specs I've provided. Synology (and QNAP, and a few others) have a fairly innovative product here:
1. Super easy to set up if you're a bit technical, with OS included and ready to go
2. Cheap, or, at least, not terribly expensive
3. Dead silent
4. Super low power
5. Warrantied and professionally supported (3 years! Can be 5 for just a few bucks!)
6. Hot swap (with the + models) for no downtime, easy fixing dead drives
7. Fantastic GUI (at least for Synology)
Those 2 alternatives are not hard to setup but to be honest they are not as easy or convenient as Synology's solution. If you are already running a Synology and money is not a concern I would say stay with that solution, ie get another Synology NAS. If something breaks you can just call Synology support and they will fix it. For NextCloud and FileCloud free versions you are on your own if something breaks. Also, if there is a security vulnerability that impacts your business Synology might be liable and you could get some money through a legal process if you are willing to go that route. With NextCloud and FileCloud free versions you are liable if there is a vulnerability that gets exploited as those free softwares are provided "as is" without any warranties.
In summary, as everything in life there are tradeoffs to consider. All 3 solutions are good but you have to decide which one is more convenient for you.
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For local content, you should be able to just stream it native. At that point, the network should be the only bottleneck.
It's trivial to backup $APPDATA$ for your docker containers to anywhere you want (for Plex, Couchpotato, etc.).
With Hyperbackup and replication there are many ways to backup file-level or OS-level stuff on Synology.
Active Backup will do a full DSM backup.
Please can you explain a bit what you are talking about?
Need is a strong word, but having zero downtime to replace a drive is fantastic. If your solution can't compete, that's OK; we can move on from it.
The simple answer is there's nothing in this price category that includes the specs I've provided. Synology (and QNAP, and a few others) have a fairly innovative product here:
1. Super easy to set up if you're a bit technical, with OS included and ready to go
2. Cheap, or, at least, not terribly expensive
3. Dead silent
4. Super low power
5. Warrantied and professionally supported (3 years! Can be 5 for just a few bucks!)
6. Hot swap (with the + models) for no downtime, easy fixing dead drives
7. Fantastic GUI (at least for Synology)
All can be had for under $300 with most hovering around the $200 range and feature multiple 2.5Gb LAN ports (some even have 10Gb SFP+ ports) so that you can actually utilize all this storage bandwidth. They also have QuickSync.
You can connect these right up to an eSATA or LAN based hot swap chassis and have a significantly better NAS with most of the benefits you've outlined within the price range of Synology.
It may not sound easy, but it's about as complicated as if you were trying to explain Synology to someone who just bought an external hard drive for their backup needs.
DS923+ - $479.99
DS1522+ - $559.99
The 4-core CPU would have been nice on the DS224+ model, but $60 saved is still an ok trade-off.
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The Dell WS has a cost.
It's loud. Hot. Uses far more power than the Synology.
Requires a nVidia card, uses even more power.
No 3 year warranty, nor professional support.
It's not like the list I provided at all!
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