Network Attached System's ... looking to buy and set one up, recommendations? Must have features?

Leaning towards the Synergy 218+......but figured I'd see what people here might be using.

How do I plan on using it?
- desktop/laptop back-up
- photo's and vid's
- perhaps movies and give that PLEX a try...

 

I use an older six disc qnap. It’s powerful enough to be a Plex server with lo-res movies but can’t push any 4K or 1080 P. So I recently purchased Nvidia shield to do the heavy lifting of transcoding movies and just stream using DLNA services on the qnap over wireless. It works great 30tb storage and movie music server

 

Plex is getting worse and worse. Check out Emby instead. Everything is much faster, and they actually respect your privacy...

 

What's the budget and ability? Drive redundancy? Additional backup?

Running a HP Microserver with Debian server. Streams blu-ray quality vid to the RPi Openelec no issue. The Microservers aren't cheap, but after setting up a synology for someone and messing with a Qnaps, setting up the micro felt a bit easier. Also seemed to run faster, which it should.

 

As you probably know, QNAP and Synology are the two big brands in "consumer", "soup to nuts" NAS appliances. There are a million ways to roll your own and perhaps get better results (or at least more personalized results).

I looked at both and ended up with a QNAP. It provided a good balance (for me) of techie, hobbyist, "I can see what it's doing" and enough ease of use to not make it a full-time hobby. The "internet wisdom" on Synology is that it is a bit easier to use. I'm pretty sure I'd have been happy with one of those too.

My biggest recommendation is to get extra drive bays (you don't have to fill them all initially). I never thought I'd fill up the space I had with two bays, but went ahead and got 4 bays as it wasn't that much more expensive. Now filling them in the future is not such an inconceivable as I thought.

As I recall, mine is a QNAP 451+. It has some video acceleration hardware that the appropriate client can take advantage of. I've been very happy with it.

It does make a bit of noise. Not bad, but I wouldn't want it in the living room. Plan to have a network drop somewhere that allows it to be kept away from where the media is being played.

 

NAS = Network Attached Storage (not System)

Whatever you get, make certain the management interface is not exposed to an untrusted network (e.g. the interwebs, guest networks, etc.). All (yes, all) of the consumer/pro-sumer NASs have significant vulnerabilities in their web admin interfaces, some latent and some well known with no available patches from the vendor.

Carry on...

 

I bought a Synology. Worked ok for a cpl months until lightning hit the tree next door. Now it's a paperweight.

 

surge protector didn't help?

 

In other words...not worth owning...

Carry on...

 

https://freenas.org/

 

Fair enough. That said, I don't think they are no where near the most poorly secured devices out there. Provided you take some precautions they are at least as secure as the PCs on most home networks and many "home brewed" solutions. I think the trade off in what they can do for you is worth it.

 

I don't deploy things that will be sold and then completely forgotten about by a vendor. That covers just about everything in consumer NAS land. They all suck. I'm not offering input on a solution because my preferred solutions are all not average consumer friendly solutions.

 

Good on closed (firewalled) network

 

Ehh...how many consumers are running a well defined zoned firewall solution? I have a pretty good idea. Not many.

 

Drobo if I don't want to babysit. OmniOS on hardware of my choosing if I do.

 

blew all the light bulbs out, smoked the TV's, all gfci's, big boom, total darkness, and house alarm siren went off because it was backed up off battery. All at the same time. I thought it was the end of the world there for a second.

 

Surge protectors work for that lighting strike 6 blocks away. If it hits close enough the best surge protector on the planet is useless.

 

Plus just consider who they have to deal with when they have a problem.

 

If you put good hardware under Freenas it is a solid solution. Not exactly what I would consider a consumer friendly interface but very powerful and very flexible solution that remains under active development and support. I use it a lot for dropping in iSCSI storage.

 

My house has been hit indirectly 3 times and you never know what will be ruined and what will survive. I lost 2 microwaves, several TVs, a number of circuit breakers, a well pump and all related switches, the surge protectors, and a few other things, but I had a washer and dryer survive even though there was a burn mark several inches wide on the side of each where they touched.
Each time the strike was near the well and it followed the well line into the house.
There was a really large pine tree near the well that for some reason attracted lightning.