8mo ago

Synology/QNAP/Asustor

Hello, not sure how on-topic is this, but I'll ask anyway. Since I'm wrapping my head around this topic for long time to no avail.

I'm planning to buy NAS mostly to store my music, pictures and documents on my place. At the beginning I'd like to keep it simple so I don't plan to install billion things on it. I would definitely want to install adblocker like PiHole/AdGuard. I'm also eye-ing Tailscale for remote access (no public IP) and Jellyfin/Emby for music streaming at home. So apart from usual NFS/SMB file shares, let's say there are these three apps I'd like it to run at the beginning.

The NAS has to be as quiet as possible, so even thought it's more expensive, I'll have to go with SSD drives. Looking at prices two 2 TB (in mirror RAID) should be doable and should be enough space for me, at least for now. I'm no hoarder.

I have few other "must-haves":

decently working companion app that automatically backups pictures from at least 2 android phones (my wife needs to deal with it and she's not really friends with tech stuff)
possibility to upgrade storage other than just replacing drives for bigger ones
simple, easy to use (both setup and "rescue") scheduled backups to external USB drive
I knew I had something else but it completely slipped out of my head

That brings me to what's available. I almost pulled the trigger on Synology DS423+. It looks reasonable powerful, I can put 4 SATA SSDs and 2 M.2... that's what I thought. But it turned out it's not possible to use M.2 as storage with anything but Synology's own overpriced drives that aren't even available in my country. So, it's just four SATA drives, which is... "not great, not terrible" as some would say. What seems to be a big plus is the DSM. Everyone I know really praises it. Plus it seems to have very good reputation in terms of longevity of devices.

Then there is QNAP. Apparently their system QTS is not as polished as DSM, but everything needed should still be there. There's similarly priced, similarly equipped TS-462. It's just dual-core CPU, but has more RAM (not upgradeable though) and it seems it can accept M.2 as storage at least. As per internet research, the build quality is just as good as Synology.

And then there's Asustor, which I heard about years ago and then completely forgot they exist. Last week my friend mentioned this name, so I checked their offering too. Well, Nimbustor AS5402T looks absolutely the best on paper! Well, it only has two regular drives, because it's got FOUR M.2 slots! I assume it's because SATA is on decline, but M.2 SSDs are cheaper than SATA nowadays so it's actually better for me to have the numbers reversed. And it's cheapest on top of it. So where's the catch? I presume the ADM system is piece of shit. Right? Or is it build quality that's bad? Reliability? IDK.

Which of these three do you think would be the best for my needs? I'm more than open to other offerings and suggestions too! Thank you very much!

21 comments

I can only be another "everyone" and say go for a Synology. If you wanna run services on your NAS then the DSM is a godsend. The 423+ sounds like a good fit, might wanna grab a RAM upgrade for it though.
edit: As you mentioned Jellyfin - if you wanna stream video you definitely want the 423+ and not the 923+ as the AMD Ryzen R1600 lacks GPU to transcode video streams.
- Thanks for the reply. For now, I only intend to stream music if anything at all.
  And as for the services, the main gripe now is adblock, honestly. There's also cheap N100 mini pc burried in my drawer that I intended to run Proxmox on and play with it. But that's reserved for "when I have time" winter evenings or so.
  
  Synology has Container Manager, which is their GUI frontend for Docker, so if it'll run in Docker it'll run on a Syno NAS. I'm running Pihole on mine just fine.
  As for the M.2 drives, you can use non-Synology ones as storage. Don't quote me on it but I've a feeling it "just works" in the EU where they're not allowed to force you to use specific brands, but if it doesn't then there's a script that removes the restriction: https://github.com/007revad/Synology_enable_M2_volume
  You should check their repo as they have other useful scripts. I'm using the one that enables dedupe on non-SSD volumes myself.

You might want to look at Terramaster NASes. E.g. their F4-423 is basically an Intel NUC married to a SATA controller. They have an internal USB port where you can pull the OEM flash drive and insert your own, then install e.g. UnRAID or OpenMediaVault on it.
That will be my next device if my Synology DS415+ finally dies.
- Thank you for suggestion. I stumbled upon this brand last week, it looks promising. Sadly they don't have presence in my country. Sure there's ebay, international sellers and possibly other ways, but I don't want to buy such a thing with non-local warranty.

Then there is QNAP. Apparently their system QTS is not as polished as DSM, but everything needed should still be there. There's similarly priced, similarly equipped TS-462. It's just dual-core CPU, but has more RAM (not upgradeable though) and it seems it can accept M.2 as storage at least. As per internet research, the build quality is just as good as Synology.
I have the QNAP TS-462. It’s my first and only NAS so I don’t have any points of comparison for you. Feel free to ask any questions you have and I can try and answer for you.
I do want to point out that the RAM is upgradable, but, unintuitively, only on the smaller 4GB RAM SKU; the 8GB RAM SKU has the memory soldered on.
I learned this the hard way and had to return the first one that arrived, but I currently have the memory maxed out at 16GB.

I can't speak to NAS, I've always "rolled my own" because no one makes what I want, let alone in a price point I can manage (I like to use 2.5" drives with a moderately powerful system as a media center/home server, etc, for compactness). My current box is an old small-form-factor desktop that maxes out at 3 drives, though I have 5 shoved into it.
For photos I use Syncthing (specifically Syncthing-Fork as it has more flexibility) on my phones to sync the DCIM folder to an always-on machine at home.
My DCIM folder syncs to a folder in my user profile on the server, other people sync to their respective folders. I permit this sync job to run in any network, with any power (AC or battery), so I never lose pictures I take.
This has a benefit of enabling me to manage photos from a pc, and those changes sync back to my phone (I generally move the photos out of the synced folder to somewhere else, this has the effect of removing them from the phone). Just don't use the built-in photo backup sync job, which only syncs photos from phone to PC.
Nice thing about Syncthing is you can sync anything anywhere however you want. Windows, Linux, Max, iOS (using Möbius).
I currently sync hundreds of gigs between several phones and several PCs. I have about a dozen sync jobs (folders in SyncThing terms). I also sync other folders from phones, to enable file management from a PC, since changes will be synced back with two-way sync jobs.
- I used to use syncthing few years back. I don't remember much about it and I can't even remember why I ditched it. It probably wasn't any disasterous situation - I'd remember that, but there still had to be reason I did it.
  What I remember I specifically used one way sync of photos. I don't do picture editing at all and I tend to sort pictures on drive differently than one huge pile on phone, so this was what allowed me to do my shit easily.
  Different people, different tastes.

Why do you need m.2 storage?
- I don't need it. But since I can't use spinning drives due to noise reasons, there are only SATA SSD and M.2 SSD options. And while SATA speed is definitely enough for me, M.2 drives are actually cheaper for whatever reason. That way I could even go with things like Flashstor that only has M.2 slots.

I actually bought a ausustor NAS with the intention of flashing it with trueNAS or run headless. But tbh the OS does what I need rn with reasonable effort and I actually stuck the the stock OS. The backup options are not that great to use and with one press backup you can only save a single share at a time. So I am using syncthing for that.
- Yeah, once you wrote this I saw a video where it's explained Asustor is basically "unlocked" just like regular PC, unlike Synology and Qnap who are hard-set on their offerings. This is quite a big plus IMO. Some people criticize Asustor that it relies on third party solutions like Virtualbox. Not really concern to me as I'd definitely not run a whole virtualized system. And for Docker it has Portainer if I looked right? Isn't this considered a go-to solution with self built systems running docker? How could this be bad?
  Although I have to add that from what I saw both Syno and Qnap have their own systems more polished as a whole than ADM is.

What do you mean by "possibility to upgrade storage other than just replacing drives with bigger ones"
That's pretty much all you can do with a fixed number of drive slots.
Today's NAS's use some form of ZFS/BTRFS, so they're really good at handling new drives. Though I think dynamic expansion is just coming on line in the latest versions, and may not be in production just yet
- QNAP sells extensions unit https://www.qnap.com/en/product/tr-004
  They usually connect with USB (at least for home grade devices), but my understanding is that they are not seen as block devices so the nas has access to all the single drives like they were internal.
  
  Oh, cool, that's slick. I didn't know this existed!
- I meant I probably should not buy 2-bay NAS with just USB2, if that still exists. There'd be not much to expand to once I put those two starting drives in. So preferably more bays/slots to put another drive there once the need arises. Or use expansion units like all of these offer (Synology is eSATA I believe, others have USB).
  
  Ah, OK.
  Yea, not sure if these units can yet support expansion of a data set.
  BTRFS and ZFS technically have the capability (from what I recall) in the latest versions, the question is does the device you're looking at support the capability? I haven't looked into enough of them to know for sure.
  That said, my ancient Drobo can do this, but... It will only see the new size once you upgrade all the drives. It will resilver with a new larger drive but until all drives are upgraded it won't use the extra drive space of an added larger drive.
  (And yes, Drobo is garbage, this one was free, I had some spare drives and I use it as a third local storage device, kind of a spare I don't really trust).

That brings me to what's available. I almost pulled the trigger on Synology DS423+. It looks reasonable powerful, I can put 4 SATA SSDs and 2 M.2... that's what I thought. But it turned out it's not possible to use M.2 as storage with anything but Synology's own overpriced drives that aren't even available in my country.
You can use a script to make them available. Still a pain.
Since you only need 2 TB, why do you even bother with the m.2 slots?
Why do you think that you need the m.2 in the first place? I guess you are hang up on "sata bad cause m.2 new" (thats btw only the connector not the interface, there are sata m.2 as well)
sata can handle 6 Gbps. That's 6 times more than most home network connections can even handle. Since you have not mentioned once how many Ethernet ports the systems have and how fast they are, i figure you only have a 1 Gbps LAN.
Yes NVMe SSDs are somewhat cheaper these days, but not that much that i would bother with it. We are only talking about 2 times 2 tb.
- As I wrote above. It's not about speed, it's about price and mostly availability. When I look at 2,5" at my country's biggest retailer, there's not really much to chose from and the number of available offerings are more or less shrinking. That's not really the case with M.2 which seems to be "new shit" everyone wants so there's plenty of options. And even if I stayed with "trusty WD Red" it'd still cost less to buy M.2...
  Another benefit (for me) is its form factor. I don't have a lot of space. Classic 2-bay NAS size is "perfect" for me, apart from its bay limitation. That's what's so tempting on Asustor. Either Nimbustor with 4xM.2 or even Flashstor with just 6xM.2 are quite a small devices (compared to what regular 6-bay would be) which is a big plus for me.

21 comments