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The Synology End Game

(lowendbox.com)
452 points amacbride | 6 comments | 29 Aug 25 06:37 UTC | HN request time: 1.114s | source | bottom
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tecleandor ◴[29 Aug 25 08:44 UTC] No.45061701[source]▶
Not only that, but their security situation is terrible. Their OS is full of EOL'ed stuff.

On products you can buy TODAY, you find:

  - Their Btrfs filesystem is a fork of a very old branch and doesn't have modern patches
  - A custom, non standard, self built, ACL system for the filesystem
  - Kernel 4.4
  - PHP 7.4 (requirement for their Hyperbackup app)
  - smbd 4.15
  - PostgreSQL 11.11
  - smbd 8.2p1
  - Redis 6.2.8
  - ...
They claim it's OK because they've backported all security fixes to their versions. I don't believe them. The (theoretical) huge effort needed for doing that would allow them to grow a way better product.

And it's not only about security, but about features (well, some are security features too). We're missing new kernel features (network hardware offload, security, wireguard...), filesystem (btrfs features, performance and error patches...), file servers (new features and compatibility, as Parallel NFS or Multichannel CIFS/SMB), and so on...

I think they got stuck on 4.4 because of their btrfs fork, and now they're too deep on their own hole.

Also, their backend is a mess. A bunch of different apps developed on different ways that mostly don't talk to each other. They sometimes overlap with each other and have very essential features that don't work and don't plan to fix. Meanwhile, they're busy releasing AI stuff features for the "Office" app.

Edit note: For myself and some business stuff, I have a bunch of TrueNAS deployments, from a small Jonsbo box for my home, to a +16 disk rack server. This was for a client that wanted to migrate from another Synology they had on loan, and I didn't want to push a server on them, as they're a bit far away from me, and I wanted it to be serviceable by anyone. I regret it.

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edem ◴[29 Aug 25 18:26 UTC] No.45067692[source]▶
I have a DS 923+. These extremely old softwares you mentioned were always weird to me but everything worked fine so far. What I'm not happy about is the vendor lock in, and the abysmal virtualization / transcoding performance. I want a NAS that comes with a similar ease of use as the DSM, but can double down as a __very lightweight__ virtualization platform for my local test deployments and as a media PC that I can rely on. What would you suggest?
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Marsymars ◴[29 Aug 25 19:09 UTC] No.45068146[source]▶
I'd suggest separate systems for NAS and media serving.

I've a Ryzen Embedded system with lost of RAM as my NAS box and a small Intel N-series based system as my Plex server that pulls media off the NAS box.

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1. benoau ◴[29 Aug 25 19:34 UTC] No.45068410[source]▶
Yeah but these days you can easily have one system with 10 - 20 cores so you should be able to handle both workloads very well.
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2. Marsymars ◴[29 Aug 25 19:37 UTC] No.45068446[source]▶
You can, but for media serving and transcoding you ideally want Intel Quick Sync, and it's simpler to have separate systems for your Quick Sync system and your "many cores" system.
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3. benoau ◴[29 Aug 25 21:57 UTC] No.45069902[source]▶
Both of the CPUs you mention are low-power I don't think this a problem for slightly meatier processors unless you need the GPU or Quick Sync for multiple purposes?
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4. Marsymars ◴[29 Aug 25 22:34 UTC] No.45070177{3}[source]▶
Sure, you can get a meaty recent-gen Intel processor and get Quick Sync and plenty of cores, it just gives you awkward dependencies - you then a) can't get a non-Intel-based system without losing Quick Sync even if they're better value/performance/performance-per-watt and b) you can't upgrade your transcoding CPU without doing a whole new build of your meaty system, which is high-cost if you've got an especially meaty system.

(You might want to upgrade your transcoding box to a newer generation processor that supports, say, AV1 encoding.)

And FWIW my Ryzen Embedded system isn't especially low-power by design, it was just the most accessible way of getting ECC memory for me.

5. edem ◴[29 Aug 25 22:39 UTC] No.45070210[source]▶
What does Quick Sync do? I'm new to this.
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6. Marsymars ◴[29 Aug 25 23:03 UTC] No.45070392{3}[source]▶
It decodes and encodes video streams with very low power draw and CPU load, so you can transcode media in realtime if your player device doesn't support the media format in question or you have bandwidth limits out-of-home.

Can do the same with various GPUs, but Quick Sync tends to be the lowest-power and most well-supported at the software level.