G+_Korey Brown Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I am new to this community and I'm looking to get a NAS. I hear all over the twit network that Synology is the way to go. However, looking online and youtube, Qnap is the way to go. I want a NAS for leaning about VM's, containers, and would like it to run my VPN and a media/Plex server. Can anyone point me in the right direction with pros and cons of both? I feel like all the videos I've watched on YouTube are Qnap biased and I haven't heard anything on Twit about any other NAS other than the Synology. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Terry McCully Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I was originally under the same impression. I ended up going with Qnap based on the sample UIs, price and reviews. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Nikolaos Selimis Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 So I went through the same dilemma as you did and here is my opinion. Synology makes an easy to use product that is very stable and predictable, cost is OK but hardware is anemic if you plan to do anything other then storage. QNAP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jason Perry Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I am a Synology person, but from everything I have read you won't hear me knocking Qnap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Dan Hockey Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Some Intel based Synology's can run docker vm's So look carefully at the specs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_MicroHex Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Keep in mind that you can run VMs easily enough on your own desktop or laptop, if you just want to play around with them. Virtual Box is free and open source software that allows you to create and run Virtual Machines on x86/x86_64 platforms (keep in mind that doesn't include the install disk image, or license keys or anything, so you'll have to provide those yourself) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Benjamin Webb Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I run Freenas. It is not simple but you can pick your hardware and it is more powerful than all of these. I think the main downside is lack of hardware acceleration for Plex but has never been a problem for me as even a Haswell Pentium can transcode 1080P blu ray to 720P fine. Latest release has support for Docker built in. I run VPN on my home built router but imagine that would not be a problem in a Docker container. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Reese Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I think if you're wanting to play with virtualization and/or containers, it makes more sense to either do that on a separate machine and leave the NAS a NAS or build your own like Benjamin Webb? recommended. I believe Synology has support for iSCSI and I believe Qnap does too. That will play nicely with hosting your VMs on a separate machine with VMware or VirtualBox (downside is the network limitation which probably isn't as bad as it would seem). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Rud Dog Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 All these buzz words. Call out no wait Begs the question when will we see more in depth show on each subject. Google is OK for finding videos and tutorials but it can take forever to zero in on your target. Opportunity is knocking just check your Ring Door Bell. PS For those of you thinking create the content yourself and I say wish I had the voice and presentation skills to do so but alas I do not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Benjamin Webb Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Ben Reese I can verify that even over gigabit I can run 2-3 fairly high IO servers no problem with the worst problem being the boot time and that is over windows file sharing so iSCSI would be better. Have since moved them local to the windows server as needed 10 of them and ran them with 3 m.2 drives in raid 5. If you think you can exceed 2 aggregated gigabit links it is time to look into solid state drives as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Benjamin Webb Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Rud Dog If you need to build something just start a thread. Plenty of people to help you out here. I know it is easier to just follow a tutorial or a video but they can never cover everything. It can also be irritating that there are so many good answers to any one question. I usually go with all the flexibility with the downside of making the set up painful but a plug and play may be the way to go if you can accept the limitations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Korey Brown Posted March 21, 2017 Author Share Posted March 21, 2017 Benjamin Webb I have an old mid 2009 MacPro with duel 2.66 Xeon Nahalems that is just sitting, cause Apple doesn't support it anymore. Would that work with Freenas? Would this be a better route to go? The Mac is extremely power hungry so running it all day would be an expensive electric bill. Are the NAS boxes just as power hungry? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ronald Stepp Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 I got a Synology 5 bay NAS and got a little bit disenchanted with it when I added a 4th drive and it just sat there for days and did nothing, and there was no obvious way to force it to initialize the drive. Sort of like how Google Drive won't let you force resyncing of your folders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Benjamin Webb Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Korey Brown Found an old thread looks like they were able to jump out boot camp with a windows 7 disk but the guy was left with only three drive bays. This was with a 2008 Mac Pro. forums.freenas.org - SOLVED - Installing FreeNAS 9.3 to Mac Pro (intel) Since it is unsupported you probably have nothing to loose but keep in mind this is not exactly a default setup so you may find some bugs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Korey Brown Posted March 21, 2017 Author Share Posted March 21, 2017 Benjamin Webb Thanks I will look into this route as well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Benjamin Webb Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Korey Brown Make sure you have the 8 gig minimum for ZFS. I run 16 on mine. Are other file systems if you don't have the ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Benjamin Webb Posted March 21, 2017 Share Posted March 21, 2017 Korey Brown Nevermind they removed UFS support. 8 gig ram or bust. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Gros Posted March 22, 2017 Share Posted March 22, 2017 I'm in the Synology camp as well. My own experience is that it is a solid machine, but configuration can be difficult. Particularly, I ran into issues creating my git server. The number of Linux commands (SSH access) they have installed is small, and there is no package installer. I eventually figured out a way but it was a struggle. The DSM kept fighting with changes i made via the command line. Synology support is excellent though! :) Can any Qnap users comment on Linux support? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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