So, I am thinking about getting myself a NAS to host mainly Immich and Plex. Got a couple of questions for the experienced folk;

  • Is Synology the best/easiest way to start? If not, what are the closest alternatives?
  • What OS should i go for? OMV, Synology’s OS, or UNRAID?
  • Mainly gonna host Plex/Jellyfin, and Synology Photos/Immich - not decided quite what solutions to go for.

Appricate any tips :sparkles:

  • jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    Synology is generally a great option if you can afford the premium.

    Unraid is a good alternative for the poor man. Check this list of cases to build in. I personally have a Fractal R5 which can support up to 13 HDD slots.

    Unraid is generally a better bang for your buck imo. It’s got great support from the community.

  • rentar42@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Just throwing out an option, not saying it’s the best:

    If you are comfortable with Linux (or you want to be come intimately familiar with it), then you can just run your favorite distribution. Running a couple of docker containers can be done on anything easily.

    What you’re losing is usually the simple configuration GUI and some built-in features such as automatic backups. What you gain is absolute control over everything. That tradeoff is definitely not for everyone, but it’s what I picked and I’m quite happy with it.

    • Fjor@lemm.eeOP
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      10 months ago

      Yeah already quite familiar, already got a server but looking for something more premium, but essentially deliver the most easy platforms for the rest of the family to use.

  • pascal@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    The most common software choices are TrueNAS and UNRAID.

    Depending on your use-case, one is better than the other:

    TrueNAS uses ZFS, which is great if you want to be absolutely sure the unreplaceable data on your disks is 100% safe, like your personal photos. UNRAID has a more flexible expansion and more power efficient, but doesn’t prevent any bit flip, which is not really an issue if you only store multimedia for streaming.

    If you prefer a hardware solution ready to use, Synology and QNAP are great choices so long you remember to use ZFS (QNAP) or BTRFS (Synology) as filesystem.

    • Fjor@lemm.eeOP
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      10 months ago

      Do either of them matter in terms of life of the hardisks? My server just had one of its HDDs reach EoL :| Kind of want to buy something that will last a very long time. Also, not familiar with ZFS, but read that Synology uses Butterfs - which always sounds good in my ears, been having a taste of the filesystem with Garuda on my desktop.

      • Kelsenellenelvial@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        Something kind of unique about UnRaid is the JBOD plus parity array. With this you can keep most disks spun down while only the actively read/written disks need to be spun up. Combine with an SSD cache for your dockers/databases/recent data and UnRaid will put a lot less hours(heat, vibration) on your disks than any raid equivalent system that requires the whole array to be spun up for any disk activity. Performance won’t be as high as comparably sized RAID type arrays, but as bulk network storage for backups, media libraries, etc. it’s still plenty fast enough.

      • pascal@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        Yes, ZFS is commonly known for heavy disk I/O and also huge RAM usage, the rule used to be “1GB of RAM for every TB of disk” but that’s not compulsory.

        Meanwhile, about BTRFS, keep in mind that Synology uses a mixed recipe because the RAID code of BTRFS is still green and it’s not considered production ready. Here’s an interesting read about how Synology filled the gaps: https://daltondur.st/syno_btrfs_1/

  • hassanmckusick@lemmy.discothe.quest
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    9 months ago

    I’m a big fan of unraid but I will admit it’s overkill for a simple media server.

    A synology NAS should be plenty powerful enough for most streaming needs so long as you’re willing to let your media transcode first and you’re not streaming to too many devices at once.

    I use my unraid NAS to run sonar/radarr/readarr/prowlarr, stable diffusion, myjdownloader, a few vms and at one point even my lemmy instance. But honestly aside from stable diffusion and the VMs a synology NAS should have enough power to run a handful of other apps in addition to plex/jellyfin