Synology Lack of Hardware Innovation and Software Hostility Will Be It's Demise

[zombiephysicist]

Synology has lock in with its software superiority, but that's being close to eclipsed by enormous advances in hardware that it is ignoring and denying its customers because of greed.

/Circuitous route begin
So one of the things that keeps me on Synology is SHR. The ability to kind of upgrade storage pools without doing painful backup/restores is great.

For example, I have 2 storage pools. One main one, and a second one that backs up the main pool. I keep snapshots on the main pool, and the backups on the same machine is a bit of belt and suspenders. For example, when you need to change the format on the primary pool, synology makes you obliterate the pool and start over, so it's good to have a backup as well (e.g., moving to btrfs, or with 7.2 the ability to encrypt your entire drive, etc.). I used to have a 1 drive backup pool, but when that drive died, I painfully had to rebuild all the settings and now moved to a 2 drive SHR backup pool. It serves 2 functions, if it starts to die, you just yank the bad drive, and rebuild. Second, it lets me increase the size of the backup pool over time. Basically apple no longer lets you copy your time machine local backup to a bigger drive, but if i put my time machine backup on the synology and it keeps growing over the years, it will never run out of room because I can SHR that pool.

So SHR has been amazing and while Terra Master finally has something like it, Qnap and other bigger independent solutions do not. And Terra Master is at the lower end of things and frankly, their hardware is no better than Synology and their app market is mature.
/end circuitous route

But tech has changed so much that value of SHR while still awesome, is now something I can live without. Synology is morbidly and stupidly stuck on ancient slow and unreliable SATA tech, and completely ignoring U.2, U.3 and EDSFF tech like E3.S drives.

Our entire dataset can basically fit inside of 60TB today, it basically takes 5 sata drives to do that on our current system. Nicely SHR will allow that to grow.

However, today, you can buy a Solidigm 61TB SSD (~$7000) that by itself is faster than all 5 SATA drives raided in both reads and writes. Get say 3 of those for RAID 5, and by the time SHR would have helped to grow them, all new tech will be around.

Qnap has been selling U.2 based NAS for a while:

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-h1290fx

In a RAID it will do 14GB/sec download sand 8.5GB/sec uploads. And this is old 2022 tech, not including PCIe5 tech which will double this. And this is 'only' with 100GBe fiber card, when 400Gbe cards are now out. Which means this type of machine could be used to get you 50Gbe/sec throughput to your machine.

In essence, it could work at local hard drive speeds on your LAN. 15TB (~1300), 30TB (~3300) U.2 drives are not too poorly priced considering the performance; 61TB drives have been out for years, and 120TB drives recently announce and will be available soon.

That Synology has no such solution, and frankly their user hostile "you cant use our software the way you'd like" stance (eg, SHR not being 'allowed' to work on anything higher than their + series, no SHR for you xs and higher users) means there really is no software 'penalty' (at least with regard to SHR) in leaving Synology to go to QNAP if you want this far higher degree of performance.

I'm frankly tired tired tired of things on the Synology taking DAYS to scan or rebuild or move because it's stuck on this ancient SATA joke level of tech. And tired of their bulls*** "you cant use your hardware/software the way you'd like to" ethos; here are just a few of their sins in that regard:

1. Synology completely absent and missed the boat on SSD U.2/EDSFF tech.
2. Synology is too lazy to offer meaningful updates in processor hardware and keep their hardware mindlessly underpowered (e.g. see 1815+ to 1817+, and now 1821+ to 1825+ will be similar after 4 freakin years of do-nothing'ness)
3. To pour salt to the above wound, their non-update to hardware having basically the same CPU as the last model , but as a bonus, they wont provide software support for that same CPU model out of petty spite (IMO) (eg, 1815+ and 1817+ are basically identical but 1815 not allowed to upgrade to 7.2 while 1817 is)
4. no SHR on higher end servers
5. insane hostile proprietary hard drive support (more insulting in that they just use toshiba drives slapping on a new label but wont let you use the actual same toshiba drive made by toshiba). Limiting full support of NVMe sticks to their woefully out of date and under capacity garbage 800GB sticks, that as a bonus, are stupidly over-priced. But then again, slapping that label on the toshiba drives lets them stupidly over price those to.
6. lazy do nothing update schedule on both hardware and software, etc etc.
7. Router hardware that is generations behind
8. As a bonus, if you have their latest router 6600, you can enjoy crap stability and lack of care and low updates on SRM 1.3.x that is a serious downgrade in stability from their even more ancient 2600 1.2.x based platform
9. General hostility to the enthusiast/SOHO base that made them a success. They basically seem to despise their user base and appear to not be able to wait to kick their user base to the curb cozying up to 'enterprise' and no doubt salivating to start evil subscription based access to your own server/NAS.
10. 7.2.2 user hostile removal of basic software and codecs
11. etc.

I'm not sure Qnap is necessarily the way to go, maybe a DIY option. But 7.2.2 is a bit of putting me over the edge enough to get me to surmount my inertia-laziness to change.

TLDR Synology may finally have fallen so far behind in hardware tech that their software edge is no longer the eco-system lock-in it used to be.

Curious if others are feeling similarly.

 

[tekguru]

Agreed, but...... what about solutions such as the Web Station, do other NAS support such things?

 

[Rusty]

Synology may finally have fallen so far behind in hardware tech that their software edge is no longer the eco-system lock-in it used to be.

All valid points. The fact is that Synology is moving away from what it was 5-10-15y ago and into what they think is best for them, not the customers, as most companies are.

From a user perspective its either adapt or move to a different platform. By adapt it will probably mean more money from customers, for as your said dated hw, and a more limiting sw, but again, luckily there are many alternatives here and now.

How this will reflect on the customer base, remains to be seen. Major problems will start to happen when (and if) subscriptions will start to hit more and more apps inside DSM. This is unlikely to happen for the most apps, but again, they will do what they think is best for them, whether we like it or not.

 

[Linux]

All valid points.

All valid?... SHR is really nothing to write home about unless you're scraping together old HDDs in a low-performance device and the consumer market for U.2 is virtually non-existent despite it's presence in the enterprise space for quite some time.

This seems more like an spiteful rant and a misunderstanding of a brand that's basically always been 'conservative' when it comes to hardware.. In recent years, they were slow to adopt USB3 and NVMe. But even before that, they took more time than others moving from SATA2 to SATA3.

While I think it's entirely valid to criticize their decisions not to push the latest tech over the years, there's hardly evidence for the notions that they hold any "hostility" toward users or that they "seem to despise their user base".

 

[Rusty]

Ok, most are valid . Let’s say it that way. While I agree more with your post tbh, people have right to express their point of view, because Synology will still do what they want and not what users demand.

The topic here is to write an opinion. Do I think they are going off a cliff? No. Will moving forward cost more and do less (for some)? Sure it will.

 

[Birdy]

Qnap has been selling U.2 based NAS for a while

The grass is always greener at the neighbors

 

[EAZ1964]

Nice to see how different the opinions are!

my 10cents
I think we can agree on the Synology strategy to focus on proven, reliable hardware, always one or two generations behind.
We probably can also agree on software security, stability, long term support, and a core of applications that just works.

People like me are happy with the above. I am with the >95% of SoHo people where the wife will not approve the budget for 10GBE, and the family does not care for the half a second longer loading times. Clearly there are SoHo/Business users that would like to see things differently.

On the software side, Synology has taken several attempts to piss off users. like the transition from the old backup software to HB; lost all my older versions as file format was no longer compatible. The transitions from Photo(?) via moments to photos, high impact, low ROI. Loss of SMART data view. You can probably mention several more.

What kept me going that the software is "free", usually decent and, i have to give them credit for it, Synology tries to keep pace with the outside world developments regarding mobile and now video. You cannot maintain old software at the cost of new developments. The sudden package death remains really annoying.

 

[zombiephysicist]

All valid?... SHR is really nothing to write home about unless you're scraping together old HDDs in a low-performance device and the consumer market for U.2 is virtually non-existent despite it's presence in the enterprise space for quite some time.

This seems more like an spiteful rant and a misunderstanding of a brand that's basically always been 'conservative' when it comes to hardware.. In recent years, they were slow to adopt USB3 and NVMe. But even before that, they took more time than others moving from SATA2 to SATA3.

While I think it's entirely valid to criticize their decisions not to push the latest tech over the years, there's hardly evidence for the notions that they hold any "hostility" toward users or that they "seem to despise their user base".

That you feel that way about u.2 and better drives speaks volumes about your non-existent knowledge base. I’ve been using them in my Mac since 2019. Moving 15tb of data takes hours, not days or weeks like with Sata.They are far from non-existent and anyone looking for the biggest drives ignores SATA at this point. Sata still enjoys best $/TB pricing for now, but throughput is a joke and wear is worse, and even the $/tb proposition is fast being eroded.

That u.2/esdff are replacing Sata is a fact. It’s not a question of will it, but when. That Synology has absolutely NOTHING even on the high end in this regard is beyond sad to the point of mismanagement of the company.

Sites that are below have constant articles about them and sites like serverthehome are not about “exotic enterprise”, but are, wait for it, about using servers in places like your home:

The Samsung BM1743 is a 61.44TB SSD Today with a 122.88TB Drive Possible

The Samsung BM1743 is a 61.44TB NVMe SSD today, with a future 122.88TB drive apparently on the way joining the industry trend of large SSDs

www.servethehome.com

ServeTheHome Server Storage and Networking Reviews

ServeTheHome, founded in 2009, is the place to learn more about servers, storage, and networking gear

www.servethehome.com

Solving Steam Deck Shader Storage with a 61.44TB SSD

The toys in the StorageReview lab are extensive. In this piece, we look at…

www.storagereview.com

Home

StorageReview.com is a world leading independent storage authority. While storage reviews is in the name, we look at the entire IT stack.

www.storagereview.com

Even Linus has done a bunch of videos on them

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oiIMUrbilw

 

[Jan Janowski]

Like All Broadcasters (where I retired from), my other comments were not threats to buy something else. Like Broadcaster's, my hardware runs until it dies! Until It stops making money, or it doesn’t cost any more to keep operational, after first purchase. I bought it “full up”, and plan on No expense whatsoever until it cannot boot any more.
If I could get a straight answer on exactly what will remain operational, and what won’t after an “Upgrade”, I could make an educated decision.
That’s the problem: not all the “What Will” and “What Won’t” answers are not fully understood.

This is Not like 7, where delay was probably warranted because it’s a new Package.
This is an intentional Downgrade, and complete understanding is not completely understood!

Look at the Many, Many posts about this from multiple ”Informed” people! It appears they, too, along with end user-me— are determining that all is not as simple as first presented!

Like I did with 7, but for a different reason, I’m staying put at 7.2.1-5.. it’s not prompting, yet anyway, and on 718+ I hear it never will indicate 7.2.2 will be available. My 718+ is doing more work than my 720+’s are. The 718+ is showing no slowdown or sluggish-ness. It could easily do more work than it does now. I’ve seen a slowdown on my 215J with 6.2.. had to eliminate cameras to get it to work at speeds 6.1 had. My 718+ is flying through work so why not?? Just add it to the list, I guess.

 

[zombiephysicist]

Man Synology is on a hot streak of doing nothing. On fire!

 

[Rusty]

It will be so for at least one more quarter.

 

[007revad]

to pour salt to the above wound, their non-update to hardware having basically the same CPU as the last model , but as a bonus, they wont provide software support for that same CPU model out of petty spite (IMO) (eg, 1815+ and 1817+ are basically identical but 1815 not allowed to upgrade to 7.2 while 1817 is)

I'm still annoyed that the DS1813+ got DSM 7, 7.1 and 7.1.1 while my 99.9% identical DS1812+ is stuck on DSM 6.

no SHR on higher end servers

You can use SHR on Synology's high end servers.

GitHub - 007revad/Synology_SHR_switch: Easily switch between SHR and RAID Groups, or enable RAID F1

Easily switch between SHR and RAID Groups, or enable RAID F1 - 007revad/Synology_SHR_switch

github.com

insane hostile proprietary hard drive support (more insulting in that they just use toshiba drives slapping on a new label but wont let you use the actual same toshiba drive made by toshiba). Limiting full support of NVMe sticks to their woefully out of date and under capacity garbage 800GB sticks, that as a bonus, are stupidly over-priced. But then again, slapping that label on the toshiba drives lets them stupidly over price those to.

You can create volumes on any brand NVMe drive, and use Toshiba drives in high end servers.

GitHub - 007revad/Synology_HDD_db: Add your HDD, SSD and NVMe drives to your Synology's compatible drive database and a lot more

Add your HDD, SSD and NVMe drives to your Synology's compatible drive database and a lot more - 007revad/Synology_HDD_db

github.com

One thing that annoyed me was the lack of support for E10M20-T1, M2D20 and M2D18 for DS1821+ and DS1621+ so I made DSM let me use them.

GitHub - 007revad/Synology_enable_M2_card: Enable M.2 PCIe cards in Synology NAS that don't officially support them

Enable M.2 PCIe cards in Synology NAS that don't officially support them - 007revad/Synology_enable_M2_card

github.com

I was also annoyed that RX418 and DX517 aren't interchangeable between DS and RS model NAS. And that older expansion units aren't supported. So I made DSM let me

GitHub - 007revad/Synology_enable_eunit: Enable an unsupported Expansion Unit

Enable an unsupported Expansion Unit. Contribute to 007revad/Synology_enable_eunit development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Basically I like to remove the artificial restrictions Synology imposes.

 

[zombiephysicist]

I'm still annoyed that the DS1813+ got DSM 7, 7.1 and 7.1.1 while my 99.9% identical DS1812+ is stuck on DSM 6.



You can use SHR on Synology's high end servers.

GitHub - 007revad/Synology_SHR_switch: Easily switch between SHR and RAID Groups, or enable RAID F1

Easily switch between SHR and RAID Groups, or enable RAID F1 - 007revad/Synology_SHR_switch

github.com

You can create volumes on any brand NVMe drive, and use Toshiba drives in high end servers.

GitHub - 007revad/Synology_HDD_db: Add your HDD, SSD and NVMe drives to your Synology's compatible drive database and a lot more

Add your HDD, SSD and NVMe drives to your Synology's compatible drive database and a lot more - 007revad/Synology_HDD_db

github.com

One thing that annoyed me was the lack of support for E10M20-T1, M2D20 and M2D18 for DS1821+ and DS1621+ so I made DSM let me use them.

GitHub - 007revad/Synology_enable_M2_card: Enable M.2 PCIe cards in Synology NAS that don't officially support them

Enable M.2 PCIe cards in Synology NAS that don't officially support them - 007revad/Synology_enable_M2_card

github.com

I was also annoyed that RX418 and DX517 aren't interchangeable between DS and RS model NAS. And that older expansion units aren't supported. So I made DSM let me

GitHub - 007revad/Synology_enable_eunit: Enable an unsupported Expansion Unit

Enable an unsupported Expansion Unit. Contribute to 007revad/Synology_enable_eunit development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Basically I like to remove the artificial restrictions Synology imposes.

I applaud your can-do MacGyver level dedication!

 

[jeyare]

I think @Rusty is right.
There are only three options:

• try other platforms and personally make sure which one is more suitable or not at all. It takes courage and time;
• or continue with Synology only, then it is your decision, and you can only blame yourself for that;
• or create hybrid (more than a single NAS sys) solutions, each of which will be suitable for your custom requirements. Will it require two consoles? Do you use the same shoes for dancing and skiing? It takes experience and time.

@007revad - I am glad that someone has already automated some of my extensive investigations from three years ago regarding "unsupported" drives. Of course, this carries the risk that you will not get support during the warranty. But from an experience point of view, most of us want quality drives because we know why we do not need to deal with the NAS warranty support, the quality of which is at the level of "Did you lose your password?". Not to mention that quality drives will always survive the NAS warranty support period.

Re: the Ubiquiti NAS attempt.
How to put it politely - it is just a beginner's box.
I pioneered using Ubiquiti (networks and NVRs) on Synoforum, which I have been using reliably on all sites to this day. However, this is a long way for Ubiquiti to take a slice of the NAS market pie. The question is, which market? HomeWorkshop or SoHo or SME? I'll keep an eye on it, but more seriously, at the end of 2025.
I believe (hope) that there is a clear roadmap behind it. Even though my experience with such a large project as TrueNAS Scale was undermined right from the start by the very amateur approach of the creators. Today, it is something completely different. However, it took 3 years.

If your specific need is to use e.g. esdff, then don't use HW and SW on a "non-enterprise" level NAS. Not to mention the lack of "enterprise" level support from Synology.
Feel free to build a TrueNAS Scale and custom HW and use such a custom platform there. It works great.

 

[Jan Janowski]

I think there are two camps in this same area:
Camp one: Keeping up with the Jones’s: latest hardware support. It would appear that Synology is taking the approach of: ‘Buy New’, instead of bringing out hardware additions, and intentionally locking out 3rd parties who try. Ethernet Additions, Ram, Drives, cameras, and what else? Problem is: ‘Buy New’ does not mean the newest hardware, which does nothing but feeds Camp 1’s main complaints.

And Camp #2: Folks who are frustrated with losing features we paid for when we purchased the device in the first place. Multiple Software packages, features, and H265 come to mind. Nor has new features arrived.

“Holier than Thou” attitude is not the way to go, but it is the easiest one to take, as it assumes that - that approach is right…. And Lord knows-Synology believes it is right!

I’m more in camp 2, but I would have purchased multiple faster Ethernet/USB upgrades if they were available, which is another profit center they lost!
I’m not in a position to go elsewhere… I’m just hoping Synology doesn’t remove any other features that I’m presently using!

 

[jeyare]

Perfection is an illusion; all we have are countless imperfections

 

[Coop777]

Cost becomes a factor in this discussion as well....Sata spindle drives still have the cost advantage of cheaper cost per TB. My only real criticism at this point is the trend towards restricting "compatibile" drives to their rebranded.

 

[zombiephysicist]

Perfection is an illusion; all we have are countless imperfections

Yea but some imperfections are larger than others.

 

[jeyare]

The question is still the same:
Why use non-enterprise HW and SW for the enterprise requirements?
w/o SLA based second level support?

I was one of the big critics of Synology's direction since 2021. Either you change or you have to wait for a miracle.

 

[zombiephysicist]

The question is still the same:
Why use non-enterprise HW and SW for the enterprise requirements?
w/o SLA based second level support?

I was one of the big critics of Synology's direction since 2021. Either you change or you have to wait for a miracle.

Agreed. And I am slowly investigating what is the path of least pain.

One thing I keep looking for and there seems to be no clear answer is for things like TrueNas Scale and Unraid if there is some kind of SHR alternative. It's very fuzzy. They claim to have something akin to it, but it's so not clear as to be painful. That said, with SSDs now selling that are around 128TB in size, just setting up a few of those should last me long enough that by the time I need more space, I could just copy/paste data over into new storage pools that are bigger and it will be fine. So the actual "need" for SHR like things with EDSFF and U.2 drives (not to mention huge speed of data migration on those drives) makes things like SHR less a need and more of a want.

Also per your very good advice/comments, I think 'hybrid' or even running things in parallel for a while may be the way to go. Where you start migrating some of the basic elements over and learning at your own pace, and eventually decommissioning the Synology stuff as it proves unecessary.

I also am coming to the same conclusions as you on the mix of hardware. I'm interested in the Ubiquity stuff as a network foundation layer, and then maybe using trueNas on some custom hardware or maybe even starting with QNAP U.2 based hardware as an intermediary.

I've been too lazy to really get to the bottom of the QNAP U.2 based stuff versus the TrueNas Scale level hardware/software question yet.

One of my few needs is a Synology Drive like product, and that is yet another entire rabbit hole of research to see what options are there with the same robustness and integration on Macs exist.

It's all doable if you set aside enough time. But in the past I would have looked at this as all a fun pastime/hobby like 'fun' thing to do, I view it now as a chore I barely want to deal with, and so the decision to move on it lingers, with sporadic annoyances from Synology sucking that make me grumble, but not quite enough of an agitator to actually get off my ass and 'just do it' with regard to migration.