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.
That’s why I don’t tie myself to a specific company. DIY NASers, unite!
It’s like they don’t understand their demographic.
Yeah, I think their CEO might have QNAP stock or something.
It’s hilarious how dumb this is.
Hilarious and pathetic.
Like Brexit.
That would be my exit sign
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.
The enshittification/rent seeking continues. Nothing is sacred.
I remember arguing with some nerd that this overpriced shit was not fucking worth it and my build based on old server parts I got from a local computer recycler was infinitely superior in every way
I wish I saved that post so I could reply with this link. I feel so validated. Never trust companies. It’s why I say you should never fuck with plex, even if it is a bit easier to deploy than Jellyfin.
Yeah… Never had a specific “server” certified hardware and always repurpose my hold hardware stuff. Never failed me !!
However, there are some functions specific to NAS’ like low power and other stuff people mention but I already forgot.
IMO all this NAS and certified server stuff is good for Enterprise shit and the like… But for homelabbing it’s probably overkill and way to much overpriced for the little gain…
Except maybe for the ease of use and plug and play function? Each one it’s own I guess !
There’s plenty of N100/N350 motherboards with 6 SATA ports on AliExpress, grab them while you can
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.
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.
Is the main appeal of prebuilt NAS cases the aesthetics and the reduction of DIY concerns?
Because they seem to me like overpriced and underpowered computers. Most tech-oriented folks I know have more powerful PCs in a closet somewhere that they could easily convert into a NAS
Edit: some very thoughtful responses thanks y’all! I definitely see the appeal for people who just need something that doesn’t need tinkering or care significantly about power draw and noise.
Yeah I expected that this would happen. They already did this with RAM. They just rebrand RAM, sell it for a way higher price and add a check. When they brought their own branded HDDs, I knew they will pull of the same scam.
Building an own server isn’t that more expensive and you don’t have to deal with the whole lockout with Synology. For example I had quite the issue to access hardware. I wasn’t able to get Home Assistant running on my NAS. The issue was my Zigbee USB Stick. I got it running to the point where I was able to send commands (e.g. turn on or off lights) but the status didn’t came back. I threw it on my Pi3 (now Pi5) and zero issues.
The next NAS is self build. Probably Proxmox as base, with truenas or so as main server and the rest depends on what I might need.
