DIY NAS versus Synology DS1817+

[Joseph_87]

Hi all,

I need some advice here because I'm kind of torn at the moment. I need a NAS with a bit of extra salt. I obviously need a NAS with something like ZFS (these are just movies no sensitive data there), need a radius server, VPN server and if we can have some kind of torrent client running on the nas that would be awesome. 8 drives (playing long term here).
I'm torn between two routes at the moment. Either DIY more on specs later, or a Synology DS1817+ with a RAM upgrade.

With the synology (2gb unit + 16gb gskill upgrade) route in my country I'm looking at 1038eur for the unit 108eur for the ram with a total of 1140eur with shipment based on today exchange rates.

With the diy route:
AMD Ryzen5 2400g (155eur)
ASUS TUF B350M-PLUS GAMING (100eur)
SAMSUNG 250GB 960EVO as boot drive (120eur)
SASONIC Prime Ultra Gold 550W PSU (120eur)
CRUCIAL 16GB 2666MHz CL19 ECC (200eur)
Supermicro AOC-SGP-I2 (100eur)
Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 (135eur)
Fractal Design Node 804 (115eur)
With a grand total of: 1050eur with shipping.

The DIY option has obviously more performance to it with the AMD APU while the Synology has the Atom but with a considerable amount of setup. I don't plan on using unraid and freenas, rather something like Ubuntu LTS 18.04 for all tasks (that's free). I'm leaning towards synology because it'd be quick to setup even with radius / vpn, but hesitant just because the atom cpu. I have 4K HEVC library with a pretty strong PC at my desk running plex.
Would it worth it to go with the more complex diy solution or synology with a 16gig ram upgrade could serve my needs?

 

[jaslion]

Hi all,

I need some advice here because I'm kind of torn at the moment. I need a NAS with a bit of extra salt. I obviously need a NAS with something like ZFS (these are just movies no sensitive data there), need a radius server, VPN server and if we can have some kind of torrent client running on the nas that would be awesome. 8 drives (playing long term here).
I'm torn between two routes at the moment. Either DIY more on specs later, or a Synology DS1817+ with a RAM upgrade.

With the synology (2gb unit + 16gb gskill upgrade) route in my country I'm looking at 1038eur for the unit 108eur for the ram with a total of 1140eur with shipment based on today exchange rates.

With the diy route:
AMD Ryzen5 2400g (155eur)
ASUS TUF B350M-PLUS GAMING (100eur)
SAMSUNG 250GB 960EVO as boot drive (120eur)
SASONIC Prime Ultra Gold 550W PSU (120eur)
CRUCIAL 16GB 2666MHz CL19 ECC (200eur)
Supermicro AOC-SGP-I2 (100eur)
Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 (135eur)
Fractal Design Node 804 (115eur)
With a grand total of: 1050eur with shipping.

The DIY option has obviously more performance to it with the AMD APU while the Synology has the Atom but with a considerable amount of setup. I don't plan on using unraid and freenas, rather something like Ubuntu LTS 18.04 for all tasks (that's free). I'm leaning towards synology because it'd be quick to setup even with radius / vpn, but hesitant just because the atom cpu. I have 4K HEVC library with a pretty strong PC at my desk running plex.
Would it worth it to go with the more complex diy solution or synology with a 16gig ram upgrade could serve my needs?

The main problem I have with synology is that when they break you have to get the exact same nas again just to get your data back and this is why I tend to advice against them. The ubuntu machine will take more setup but will have a lot more options compared to the synology once setup.

May I ask why the network and sata card?
If you want to do zfs I don't recommend doing it over 2 separate sata devices (motherboard and card).

 

[Joseph_87]

These were the cheapest options I found. I couldn't find any mATX board that cames with 2 ethernet ports, and I already am using my PC with link aggregation (802.3ad). I want to upgrade later to 10gbe but for saving price I picked that NIC instead. The raid controller, well it supports JBOD and yet again, couldn't find any reasonable maxt ryzen2 boards that come with min 8 ports. With that I can hook up 8HDD to the raid controller and still has option to use the on board sata connectors if I reach that point. For now a couple years I'd use only the supermicro card for the ZFS pool.

 

[USAFRet]

The main problem I have with synology is that when they break you have to get the exact same nas again just to get your data back and this is why I tend to advice against them. The ubuntu machine will take more setup but will have a lot more options compared to the synology once setup.

That "problem" is easily circumvented with an actual backup. My Qnap does a full backup weekly. If it ever dies, that data is there, ready to go into any other system.

 

[Joseph_87]

These things are movies. I just don't need a UHD BD player to play them from discs for 3 televisions. Instead I rip them to HDD and access from a PC. If something goes bad then yeah... I'll just rip them again. However I will not be backing up movies, I need all space capacity there is. My sensitive data is on google drive / microsoft cloud / pendrive whatever accessible from my desktop powerhouse. My "problem" with synology qnap etc is that, I feel them "limited". Either a pay a huge premium for a core-i3 model with 8bays, or get something like a celeron/atom. And those might just be enough I have no clue. As I mentioned, this NAS should be able to run a radius server, a VPN server, and windows shares for a single machine running plex that does the heavy work. I have 8TB WD red drives. If I can run qbittorrent that would be awesome.
DIY NAS checks everything but I don't really like linux even tho at work I'm using RHEL7 daily.
With prebuild NAS it's simple I don't know know maybe 15minutes to set up? However:
- If anything goes wrong, the service time in my country is around 2months.
- Hardware is either pretty low or the premium is too high, I'm not paying 2000eur for an 5bay nas with an i5, for 1500 I can toss in a xeon (e3) based nas.

@Update Xeon based NAS same price:
Intel Xeon E3-1230v6 @3.5GHz
ASUS P10S-M WS
ML240R-RGB (Why not?!)
SAMSUNG 970EVO 250GB
Everything else is the same as above.

Price is within margin of errors. While the xeon does not have a builtin GPU the board comes with an integrated GPU so win-win. It has 8 SATA ports and Dual 1G NIC so no need for the two extra add-in cards there. Passmark score for the xeon is slightly above of the 2400G. Also as I just read ECC might not work on the 2400G, tho I'm not sure because you can find people who claim it works and others who swear it does not.
If I take a noctua air cooler this becomes cheaper than the AMD based system.