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.
Well, I had been considering one, but I guess not
I own a Synology NAS. It’ll be the first and last one I buy. When I need an upgrade I’ll go back to building my own again.
I was thinking of buying a Synology system. I was actually looking at prices this past week.
That being said, I’ve got an old 2019 desktop running Windows that is coming to the end of its support, that I was considering making a Linux machine.
How complex is making a roll-your-own NAS?
Really depends on what you want out of the system, what you can spend and how much time you want to spend on it.
My old z390 itx system has a 16x PCIE to 4x m.2 card - leveraging an m.2 to 5x SATA adaptor with the built in SATA adaptors has given it plenty of space.
Considering I can grab m.2 to 6 SATA adaptors and fill the remainder of the slots that’s a decent chunk of drives from a single PCIE x16 slot.
Software is another kettle of fish and a good way to timesink, I’d rather not give too much of my personal experience as there are so many ways to skin that cat.
I have mini-ITX board in a mini case. 4 bays, 16 GB RAM of DDR3-L and a slow but very low TDP CPU. This thing is very low power but it’s on 24/7.
Runs home assistant with zigbee, rtl433 and whatever it detects over the network. A few older game servers (minecraft, minetest/luanti, quake 2), miniDLNA, … Arch Linux, so rolling release and always up to date with the latest versions.
Served me greatly and I haven’t upgraded because it still does what I want and I can’t find any modern CPU with a TDP this low.
How complex is making a roll-your-own NAS?
It really depends on what you want out of it. I personally installed ProxMox on an old gaming machine (DDR3 RAM old lol) and have an Open Media Vault virtual machine running on it with access to my ZFS mirrored pair of storage drives.
Enabling Samba support in Open Media Vault gives you a nice little NAS. I believe it’s okay to install bare metal if you really want to also.
It also has a nice Docker interface, so although I should probably not bundle services together so tightly, it runs things like Jellyfin for media, Paperless NGX for document storage, and NextCloud AIO for a convenient (if slightly resource-hungry) interface.
ProxMox lets me do fun things though, like back up the VMs, spin up virtual machines for PiHole ad blocking and Klipper for controlling my 3D printer.
My most important data gets synced to a subscription to a service called iDrive as my offsite. Pretty affordable for 5TB and my own encryption keys. :)
I want to stress that I’m not an IT professional or anything either. If you’re reasonably comfortable with Linux and understand some basic networking, I’d say at least getting Proxmox and/or Open Media Vault up and running so you can access it on your home network isn’t too hard.
Outside of that, and if you want HTTPS and stuff? There’s lots of guides but I would recommend using TailScale instead of opening any ports to the web.
Sorry if this post was meandering but hope it gave you a little bit to go on! :)
It’s not too complicated but you don’t get some things for free like with Synology. It require work to setup scripts for offsite backup for example whereas Synology has a backup app with a UI.
For storage, I used to run ZFS in a raidZ2 configuration. If you do this then I suggest having a cron job running a script that can alert you if the pool is unhealthy. This is again something that Synology does for free.
You could also look up trueNAS core and see if that’s something that fits for you.
I’ve heard good things about Qnap
but I also heard good things about Synology…
Also on my first and last I think.
Hi. I’d like the word “pro-sumer” banned. In perpetuity.
Why?
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 ome 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)
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.
It’s like they don’t understand their demographic.
They absolutely do. But it’s a symptom of capitalism. They must seek higher and higher profits each year. And this is one of their ideas to seek higher profits…
The worst is that it will probably increase profit or a quarter or too while running the brand to the ground.
Growth imperative. Greed will never be satiated.
Yeah, I think their CEO might have QNAP stock or something.
It’s hilarious how dumb this is.
Hilarious and pathetic.
Like Brexit.
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.
That would be my exit sign
Mine too. Already priced a new build half the price just the data migration I’m not looking forward too.
Can you migrate Synology data? I haven’t ever found a way.
Rsync or SCP?
Aren’t those for syncing data, not migrating data?
Same thing, no?
No, where am I supposed to sync the data to?
To the new system you’re migrating to
Another drive.
Edit: it’s the first line of the manpage: rsync – a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying tool.
I get why they do this sort of thing but it didn’t stop us re-adding video station and h265 support back into our Synos.
Someone already made a script to overwrite the existing compatible drive checker so someone will write a new script to fix the new one.
Oh, snap, bringing me the magic I need, but didn’t know to look for.
I’ve been refusing to update because of video station. Looks like I’m saving your comment for later.
The real shame is they didn’t open source the app on decom.
Guess I am going to be taking my “pro-sumer” dollars elsewhere.
Why would anyone even use Synology?
Just buy a pc with big hard drives
Without technical know-how or experience in general using NAS, Synology is a good first-time option. All apps are ready for immediate use. And don’t forget the majority of computer users don’t even know what a NAS is and they simply want to store files for remote access.
My personal reasons for buying a synology were ease of use, reliability and power usage.
I had previously played around with TrueNAS in a VM using an external USB HDD Enclosure for storage and I just wanted something reliable. With TrueNAS I often ran into issues with user permissions one way or another and the Synology software is incredibly easy to use and foolproof.
The enshittification/rent seeking continues. Nothing is sacred.
If I had known how bad it’d get I would’ve chosen a different field to work in. Sure, I can avoid it in my private life but on the job it’s like I’m in some kind of hostage situation.
“Oh hi there customer! You know our product your users are accustomed to will only come as a subscription from now on and it’ll also be really bad and force full screen ads. We’ll push two updates per day because our unpaid interns are so agile. Bugs? Oh, no, we call those ‘micro disruptions’. They’re a feature but don’t cost extra! How much the license costs? Well, how much do you have? Yes, it’ll be that much.”
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
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.
These posts are absolutely perfect timing for me. I’m looking to start replacing an old Synology Diskstation I bought back in 2016 that has worked for me flawlessly. I really appreciate everyone sharing their details and experiences here.
Tldw: get some thin heat syncs 75-80c temps on the ssds
Cut some holes in the plate covering them
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.
This is why I chose an ASUS nuc + external bay-storage for my home networking needs, felt like synology NAS would be a limiting factor.
So you built your own NAS, then. NAS is just an acronym, “Network Attached Storage”. Not a singular line of products.
That said - I also feel the same way about Synology and the other “all-in-one NAS” brands. Expensive for what they are, which is essentially an incredibly cheap PC with a built in toaster. I built my NAS out of a 2014 Mac Mini (running OMV) and a Sabrent USB-C 4-bay drive dock, and even full of WD Reds, that entire rig is literally half the price of a DS920+. And more powerful.
