If we add that DSM 7.0 is a HUGE improvement (it'll be out soon), and that QNAP and ASUSTOR are still using old underpowered Celeron CPUs for their latest Home-Pro announcements... I'd say that this would be the 1st time in ages that Synology has the upper hand on the HW part (generally it's only had it in the SW part). This will kick QNAP and ASUSTOR in the nuts if it's priced as any other DS__20+/19+/etc. Hopefully Synology does their whole DS__21+ lineup with Ryzen. Personally can't wait for the "DS621Slim" to fill it up with the cheapest high capacity SSD drives I can find.

I've been looking to replace my DS1513+ for a bit now - this might be the one. Kind of curious why they didn't go with an APU though, having the decode capabilities for Plex would have been nice, although I guess it would have been a lot of work to support it.

Denial:

I've been looking to replace my DS1513+ for a bit now - this might be the one. Kind of curious why they didn't go with an APU though, having the decode capabilities for Plex would have been nice, although I guess it would have been a lot of work to support it.

Personally, I believe that whoever has money for a decent NAS like this one already has something at home that can reproduce videos, be it nVidia Shield, Chromecast, a small PC, a console, or the TV's own apps (my smartTV is fairly old and it has the Plex app, the Emby app... heck, it can probably be used with Kodi). I'm fine with no APU taking into consideration that it brings double the CPU power (both on single and multi-core performance) and 2 to 4 times the maximum RAM capacity compared to the typical Celeron CPUs that these NAS bring on this price range. This is not just the typical 1.1x-1.3x improvement compared to previous generations: it's actually a 1.5x to 4x on both CPU and RAM. Quite impressive, Synology.

Denial:

I've been looking to replace my DS1513+ for a bit now - this might be the one. Kind of curious why they didn't go with an APU though, having the decode capabilities for Plex would have been nice, although I guess it would have been a lot of work to support it.

Why not build your own? It's cheaper and completely under your control. I personally have an ARM-based server which didn't cost much at all, while being passively cooled and small enough to sit in plain sight without anyone really noticing it. As pointed out by heffeque, the remote devices connected to it are able to handle the transcoding, so that saves on processing power and expense for the server. I run Nextcloud, which I've been a pretty big fan of so far. It's surprisingly powerful, though annoyingly, getting Collabora Office to work on ARM is a royal PITA at the moment. I've been slowly trying to find as many web-based programs I can punt to that server to replace with locally installed applications, since that allows me to handle my workflow from any PC or from anywhere, with all my files on the same system.

schmidtbag:

Why not build your own? It's cheaper and completely under your control. I personally have an ARM-based server which didn't cost much at all, while being passively cooled and small enough to sit in plain sight without anyone really noticing it. As pointed out by heffeque, the remote devices connected to it are able to handle the transcoding, so that saves on processing power and expense for the server. I run Nextcloud, which I've been a pretty big fan of so far. It's surprisingly powerful, though annoyingly, getting Collabora Office to work on ARM is a royal PITA at the moment. I've been slowly trying to find as many web-based programs I can punt to that server to replace with locally installed applications, since that allows me to handle my workflow from any PC or from anywhere, with all my files on the same system.

Because it's significantly more work.

Reardan:

Because it's significantly more work.

If you're starting fresh new a new cloud server or starting fresh creating your own, the difference in additional work is very minimal (at least if you know what you're doing). Seeing as this is a forum with enthusiasts, I would think more work for more personalization and more features would be seen as appealing.

schmidtbag:

If you're starting fresh new a new cloud server or starting fresh creating your own, the difference in additional work is very minimal (at least if you know what you're doing). Seeing as this is a forum with enthusiasts, I would think more work for more personalization and more features would be seen as appealing.

The difference is absolutely not "minimal" Step one: Build the device. Your example, I have to put together this machine. Synology, I don't. Step two: OS. Your example, I have to install and/or buy an OS. Synology, I don't. Step three: Configure RAID. On a workstation you have like ten different options you need to choose from. Using on-board raid? Pretty poor performance depending on your platform, and your recovery process is shit if the board dies, especially if you're using old parts. Need drivers for the OS too, most likely. Ok well what about using a software raid solution. What OS did you decide? Windows? Storage spaces will work, but it won't cache like the synology you have to tier for that, even though that's not exactly the same thing it'll work for you... Your OS drive also isn't RAIDed now... Oh you're in powershell now because you can't tier via GUI on Windows 10 Pro? Or did you use Windows Server, which cost you 500 dollars because you definitely didn't just pirate it, which was also additional work. Or maybe you went with something like Ubuntu oh cool it supports ZFS in the installer, sweet, that solves a lot of problems. Wait what? It's "experimental"? Synology process: Step one: Take it out of the box Step two: Slide the hard drives into the hard drive caddies Step three: Turn it on Step four: Answer questions in a wizard to set up RAID and NVME caching EDIT: And if you're in the cloud, it's going to end up being significantly more expensive over the life of the machine.

Reardan:

The difference is absolutely not "minimal"

As someone who has put together both, yes actually, it is minimal.

Step one: Build the device. Your example, I have to put together this machine. Synology, I don't.

You still have some assembly involved. Seeing as I chose an ARM platform, it took about as much time to physically set up my server as it would a Synology box. Or if you're really that lazy, just buy a pre-made desktop PC and slap some drives in. Really no different.

Step two: OS. Your example, I have to install and/or buy an OS. Synology, I don't.

Right, because it's included in the fee. You're a big boy and can handle the installation process of an OS, right? That's 1 step that adds minimal time.

Step three: Configure RAID. On a workstation you have like ten different options you need to choose from. Using on-board raid? Pretty poor performance depending on your platform, and your recovery process is crap if the board dies, especially if you're using old parts. Need drivers for the OS too, most likely.

Like I said, if you know what you're doing, this is fast and easy. You are severely over-complicating this. I've got firmware RAID10 setups working in less than a minute of my intervention. So basically, about the same amount of time it'd take to set up RAID in a Synology box. Software RAID does take longer, but, there are OSes out there that can take out a lot of the hard work for you. What do you suppose is the protocol when your Synology box fails? I don't suspect replacing that is a whole lot simpler than a failed on-board controller. Drivers are a non-issue in today's systems. So really, none of this step is adding any time.

What OS did you decide? Windows? Storage spaces will work, but it won't cache like the synology you have to tier for that, even though that's not exactly the same thing it'll work for you... Your OS drive also isn't RAIDed now... Oh you're in powershell now because you can't tier via GUI on Windows 10 Pro? Or did you use Windows Server, which cost you 500 dollars because you definitely didn't just pirate it, which was also additional work. Or maybe you went with something like Ubuntu oh cool it supports ZFS in the installer, sweet, that solves a lot of problems. Wait what? It's "experimental"?

Good question: Windows? Why would you choose that for a NAS? Not even Synology runs on Windows. Spare yourself half of these ridiculous headaches and use an OS like FreeBSD or Linux. Speaking of which... why ZFS? Why are you jumping to the most absurd conclusions? This really isn't that complicated. As I said before, if you know what you're doing, none of this crap you mentioned is going to slow you down. I understand most people (presumably yourself) don't know how to use a *nix OS, so yeah, this route is going to slow you down. I didn't say it was the right choice for everyone. But Denial is one of the most competent people in these forums and I figure could handle something like this, hence my suggestion.

That post makes my point way better than it makes yours.

Reardan:

That post makes my point way better than it makes yours.

No, it doesn't. You missed the point from the very beginning and you still do. EDIT: Your step 2 is the only one that adds a significant amount of time, and it's a pretty easy step that doesn't involve much user interaction.

In Synology you get BTRFS + SHR... which can be done with open source OS too, but sincerely, doing a SHR equivalent with mdadm seems like a huuuge hassle, and seems like something I can mess up (and I don't want to mess that kind of thing up, especially when there's important data at risk). As Reardan, I personally am all for the "Apple" way on these kind of things. I prefer to pay a bit more and live hassle free. I have time to build and tweak my PC, but I prefer the NAS to work for me and not the other way around.

heffeque:

In Synology you get BTRFS + SHR... which can be done with open source OS too, but sincerely, doing a SHR equivalent with mdadm seems like a huuuge hassle, and seems like something I can mess up (and I don't want to mess that kind of thing up, especially when there's important data at risk). As Reardan, I personally am all for the "Apple" way on these kind of things. I prefer to pay a bit more and live hassle free. I have time to build and tweak my PC, but I prefer the NAS to work for me and not the other way around.

It's one of those things you can set once and never bother with again, so long as your upgrade path doesn't have any major breakages. That being said, yeah, mdadm can be a hassle, but once you have your config, it's fairly portable. To my understanding, some distros like FreeNAS or Unraid take care of these things in a user-friendly manner, but I don't bother with them because I'm more of a minimalist. I think it's fine to take the "Apple" way if you prefer, and I don't have a problem with Synology either. But the reason I posted what I did is because Synology doesn't have something for everyone. If you have specific needs, it's not that hard or time consuming to do it yourself.