I'm on week 2 and struggling to make a decision

[FunkyZero]

I've been going back and forth between brands and models trying to not make a dumb mistake but I'm at saturation levels now, so I signed up here to ask for some advice from those who have actually used this stuff and not gotten a free sample to give a raving review on youtube or Newegg.
I have a vmware lab at home, 2 hosts in a cluster and I'm looking for an iSCSI storage solution to replace the obnoxious 60TB Dell r710 with an external SAS chassis. It's loud and costing me a fortune in BTU's and annoyance, and way too many moving pieces for a home rig, it's gotta go before my wife starts sticking metal objects into the power supply fans.
I was originally looking at the QNAP TS-1635AX-8G and was going to start with 8X16TB XOS Seagate, 4 SSD's for cache and use the 10GE ports on my Cisco switches for connectivity.
I saw a lot of warnings about poor performance with the Marvell processors and decided to move toward the Synology DS1821+ (8 bay Ryzen), and plan for expansion later with the 5 slot chassis. I'll be setup @ RAID6.
Now I'm reading a lot about Synology starting to turn the screws on proprietary modules, memory, SSD's, etc. Now I'm back to square one again not quite knowing which direction to go. I get a bit chaffed with vendors locking down my hardware and I don't want to be painted into a corner and held hostage with this rather large investment.
I need something that is a long term solution as I store copies of all our DVD's and digital media for Plex, as well as a 12 camera security system and storage for that, file shares, standard stuff.
For obvious reasons I'm trying to keep the costs down, so enterprise level stuff isn't an option here. I just don't know where to turn at this point and I've completely overloaded myself with information and concern. Can anyone point me in a better direction or relieve my concerns about getting locked into Synology proprietary gear?

 

[Rusty]

it's gotta go before my wife starts sticking metal objects into the power supply fans.

Welcome to the forum.

Can anyone point me in a better direction or relieve my concerns about getting locked into Synology proprietary gear?

Regarding your needs, you are looking at a '+' model. Any x21+ model (or newer) will fall under the new HDD policy. This means that if you are using officially "unsupported" drives (depending on the nas model), you will get in trouble. By trouble I mean OS not working with those drives and 0 support from Syno support in case you need it.

Saying all this, you do not have to use only Syno drives, but best to stick to only listed drives for the target NAS to avoid any problems described above.

This vendor locking (on the HDD segment) started in January, so it's still a bit fresh, but long term we might be looking at an almost 100% syno drive requirement. No official info on this, but Syno is working on increasing the number of HDD/SSD models so it might happen. This will not affect all the models in their lineup, but with + models and XS+ models it might happen.

DS1821+ will be a great purchase for sure. Atm, there is no new 8bay model announced so no fear of buying an "older" model.

 

[jeyare]

your consideration:
iSCSI storage node, based on native block FS support and IOPS booster
more power for CPU
independent from used drive e.g. Exos X range (Syno 16TB is level down)
4x SSD for a cache
storage for multimedia described

My point:
you need forget for Syno, custom built TrueNAS Core will save your time and cost:
ZFS on RAIDZ2 for large files handling
more Vdevs on ZFS will help your random IOPS running for VMs
also you need more RAM for the parallel block handling, otherwise you can’t boost them by cache only. And more branded Syno RAM is a trap.

more information about the Vdevs pool setup:

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Don’t do that with TrueNAS Scale, it’s in development stage now.

 

[FunkyZero]

your consideration:
iSCSI storage node, based on native block FS support and IOPS booster
more power for CPU
independent from used drive e.g. Exos X range (Syno 16TB is level down)
4x SSD for a cache
storage for multimedia described

My point:
you need forget for Syno, custom built TrueNAS Core will save your time and cost:
ZFS on RAIDZ2 for large files handling
more Vdevs on ZFS will help your random IOPS running for VMs
also you need more RAM for the parallel block handling, otherwise you can’t boost them by cache only. And more branded Syno RAM is a trap.

more information about the Vdevs pool setup:
Don’t do that with TrueNAS Scale, it’s in development stage now.

I have to be frank, even though the advice sounds solid, this is the last thing I really wanted to hear.

After watching a couple of the videos, FreeNAS looks a lot more friendly than last time I fooled with it (maybe 10 years ago or so?), but I was so hoping to eliminate the loud and power hungry server hardware as much as I can. I keep telling myself to go with retail stuff so I can get support, but it appears that the various vendors all have terrible support, I can't even get QNAP to answer me and their tech line is not working, the ASUS guys had no idea what I was even asking of them.

There is so much conflicting information out there that it's difficult for me to sort through it all and retain it, that's how I got to this burnout point. I am willing to drop 3-4 grand in this as long as it's right when I'm finished and can use general retail components, and I don't have to be an expert level troubleshooter with Linux or BSD to keep this thing stable or fix it if something goes wrong. I'm not really that guy, I'm used to just spending 500K on Compellent or EMC and letting them deal with the details... in other words, I'm not an expert nor do I want to be, especially for a home rig.

Performance is a secondary consideration for me as long as it's tolerable, I just need rock solid and stable, and to reduce the noise and heat. When people make statements such as "the processor isn't up to the task", it's hard for me to imagine a real world experience or how badly that would affect my personal use... so I get nervous and afraid to commit.

There are some that allow you to run Plex locally, but I don't think I'm interested in running VM's or other applications on the appliance serving my storage, I don't need a buggy video application crashing my storage appliance, I don't need to deal with that.

Anyway, I know I'm all over the place here, but please forgive me because I've gotten myself overloaded with information at this point. I am wondering if I am thinking about and researching this TOO much? It's a bad habit of mine... being in IT for so many years, I've been taken by the best of the best and been disappointed a lot.

If not FreeNAS, where would you go next?

 

[Rusty]

I am wondering if I am thinking about and researching this TOO much?

You are not but the fact is that is you want a turn key solution with support you will have to bend a bit. If you want freedom, you will have to deal with solutions that you don’t want atm but will give you more features and flexibility.

In the end it will be your call but no matter what you choose you might not get all your check boxes checked by the looks of it.

 

[FunkyZero]

You are not but the fact is that is you want a turn key solution with support you will have to bend a bit. If you want freedom, you will have to deal with solutions that you don’t want atm but will give you more features and flexibility.

In the end it will be your call but no matter what you choose you might not get all your check boxes checked by the looks of it.

Yea, I suppose I was hoping there was something out there that I just hadn't found yet.
There's so much of it, it's a lot to go through. 90% of it is unknown brand X that won't be there next year, so I rule them out right away.
The FreeNAS option is very tempting, but that sort of thinking is what got me in the position I'm in now with a Starwind license that is now wasted, along with all the SAS hardware and drives (along with my wife complaining about the heat and noise constantly).
I really appreciate the input from you guys. At this point I guess I'm going to just have to take a step forward and rely on 30 day return policies if something turns out to be unacceptable.
Thanks again, I really do appreciate the feedback.

 

[jeyare]

I just need rock solid and stable, and to reduce the noise and heat.

noise and heat is something common for NASes, especially with enterprise drives inside (7k rpm).
in addition, you have to take into account that the CPU in Syno has a passive cooler, so it needs more airflow = more noise
Some people, incl. me, replaced Syno original noisy fans to pro grade level silent version from diff vendor. What is easy.

Rock solid and Stable:
if you expect to use only Synology drives that are step down and significantly more expensive than your Exos X range defined target, then you will get stable drives for more cost and less performance/lifespan.

Synology support is all but rock solid. I’m power user, used several Syno NASes more than 10y.
In the final, it's your choice.

 

[fredbert]

Good points already. While I'm not experienced with this level of kit, my method of focusing on how well options stack against my needs is to use a simple three response method for each feature: must have; nice to have; not important. A bit of maths weighting will show if anything comes close to what you need... even it's not the one you'd prefer.

I noticed this hasn't been commented on...

I saw a lot of warnings about poor performance with the Marvell processors and decided to move toward the Synology DS1821+ (8 bay Ryzen), and plan for expansion later with the 5 slot chassis. I'll be setup @ RAID6.

The DX517 uses a single eSata cable to link its storage to the host NAS. The received wisdom is "don't span Storage Pools (RAID arrays) across units". A spanned pool will be reliant on two chassis, two power supplies, one eSata cable, etc. Instead keep a pool's drives on one unit and create multiple pools when you have a NAS + expansion unit/s.