Synology/QNAP NAS or upgrade my server?

Hardware Build a PC
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$130

but were getting off topic here

Take it from me. I have an m.2 960 evo in my gaming machine. I cant even use it to its fullest. its a waste. A normal SSD makes way more sense.

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Honestly, you could run the OS on a thumb drive if you wanted to.

A middle-of-the-road SSD would be a good choice for OS and/or cache and VM storage. I like Evos because of the 5 year warranty.

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I’m actually really liking @DeusQain’s XPEnology + DSM suggestion.
This is merely because Synology has really well documented recovery processes and I really like how Synology’s hybrid raid works.

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I am using Newegg for this just as a reminder.

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Does Newegg preclude The XPEnology +DSM option?

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XPEnology is just to allow for DSM to run on custom hardware.

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also the DSM with XPEnology is out of date usually.

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Heres a general build I just kinda threw together. It could be tweaked a million different ways. If you went the ZFS route you would maybe want to go with ECC but thats a hot debate these days. If you didnt go ZFS you wouldnt really need so much ram.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6R2jGG

Thats not necessarily a bad thing. Being bleeding edge with DSM has caused some minor annoyances for me though usually not. Its actually very secure as far as I can tell and as long as you arent exposing it on the internet or turning on SSH access I dont think youll have an issue.

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I do have a case I have wanted to use. It is a Bitfenix Prodigy mITX case. I would also migrate my new Seasonic FOCUS Gold Fully Modular 550W PSU from my old server to the new server.

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Here is the modified version of your list:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7wG2kd

I already have a Ryzen 5 2400G, Bitfenix Prodigy, and Seasonic FOCUS Gold 550W PSU.

Wouldn’t Intel be a better option due to compatibility? Last I checked, Ryzen APUs are not very compatible with Linux. At least GPU wise.

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How many drives do you have?

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AFAIK as long as your kernel is somewhat up to date its not an issue. The bigger issue could be CPU support for the board.

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4 mechanical according to the op

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4 4TB drives in RAID5?

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DSM moved to btrfs in newer hardware over synology hybrid RAID. I do really like their software in general.

If you’re spending all this money on space so your family can store their photos, are they aware that Google Photos offers free unlimited storage for all photos up to 16megapixels, which is 4920x3264 resolution, and all videos up to 1080p? Really unless your uncle thinks he’s a pro photographer and shoots in RAW, google photos will do the deal.

Problem with AMD CPUs is they don’t support quicksync. You use Emby not Plex so that may not matter for you, but it is a big deal for Plex.

Depends if you see it as a fun project or something you actually need to work. I would still go with a DS418j and a cheapo NUC. Everything’s compact, quiet, supported, and “just works”.

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Nope. No RAID. It is LVM2 and EXT4.
It’s like a 5TB, a 6TB and a couple of 2TBs. It’s segmented into volume groups.

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Are you wanting to re-use those in your new system, and if so how do you imagine they’ll be configured?

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Either the same way or in a RAID. Perhaps an LVM RAID. Ideally good perf combined with failover

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2 things:

  1. If you put those drives in a RAID, they will all be treated as 2TB drives. So in RAID5 or RAIDZ, you will get ~6TB of useable space. It’s also not advisable to mix drive models in general.

  2. How do you plan to migrate the data between your current system to your new one?

Edit

I guess you could run them as 2 mirrors and you’d only lose 1TB off the 6TB drive.

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Synology’s hybrid RAID wouldn’t waste quite that much storage, rather than looking at each drive it divides them into blocks and then uses that to calculate redundancy and parity. It’s a pretty neat solution really.

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