Info Synology's "Incompatibility" List ... Yikes!

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Info Synology's "Incompatibility" List ... Yikes!

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Synology has gone and done it. They have added an "incompatibility" feature to their Compatibility list.

For hard drives, this seems a bit over the top when Exos, Red Pros, Golds, Ultrastars... are now "incompatible". So perhaps we are all now noncompliant.

Here is just a small sampling for a random NAS model...

C5Zr4xo.png




[moderator action: added a link to compatibility list]
 
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I understand why an accounting department might want to control all facets of manufacturing of a product that they see as ‘theirs’, but seeing that ram and drive manufacturers are far bigger, and have been around far longer, methinks the Synology hardware folks need to regain control of the company from the accountants.

This could end with drive & ram mfg companies not honoring warranties in things installed in Synology products.

EDIT: actually I did meet with some resistance with a WD RED CMR Warranty claim. Eventually honored.

Mr T. Was that overall, or just for V7 ??
 
More worrying is this:

Synology will not provide technical support if your device is not on the Synology Products Compatibility List.

Still, a lot of "NAS" class drives are supported and made the cut, so no reason to worry. It's good that they listed the officially incompatible drives nevertheless
 
Random thought, you buy compatible drives but 6 months later they get removed and labelled as incompatible, what then. I suppose carry on and hope nothing happens to your NAS or buy new drives.

Not looking good for the future if this continues. I went for Synology as a lot of things worked out of the box with little setup.
 
It's good that they listed the officially incompatible drives
The challenge is that drive models and their firmware are ever-changing. If I order a new drive, it may, or may not, have been through the Synology "criteria" for "compatibility". So while I'm comfortable that it will perform technically, I'm less sure that the model number and firmware will ever see the compatibility list.

A recent forum thread showed that a drive model number differing only by manufacturing site location, from the "compatible" model, was determined to be "incompatible" by Synology. That's like needing service on your new Honda Accord, only to find that the local dealership would not cover the costs under warranty because the car was assembled at Plant XYZ and not Plant ABC.

Synology seems either disingenuous with their "compatibility" list, or completely clueless. I'd love to hear a reasonable explanation of seemingly odd decisions regarding the pass/fail difference between similar (near-identical) drives. For that matter an honest reply to RAM alternatives would be good to hear as well.

Imagine the furor if PC manufacturers dictated the suitable HDD/SSD models for their devices.
 
Semi-related, I've read too many articles lately of manufacturers and companies creating monopolies of product lock-in. It looks like Synology are going down that route step by step.

What happens if they have a falling out with Western Digital for example, will they remove them as being compatible.
 
Well since their brand of drives started showing up they stepped back a bit with enforcing those specific drives to all their nas models.

Guessing that will still remain.

This incompatible model move, will eliminate some drives but not all of them from the supported list and there are still plenty of specific models that will work.

Not sure there will be any problems as for example 6 or 8y old drives (both ENT and NAS class) that I use, are not on the incompatible list. So to expect them pulling the trigger later on at some point on a model that they said can be used, probably won’t happen.

Still it will be interesting to see how this will pan out. A little over a year since their 1st brand hdd came out, and now that they have the whole lineup ready, it might get interesting.

Thinking that their drives might start to sell at a lower prices then usual but that probably won’t happen for a number of reason, so all we can do is wait and see.

Guessing some users will jump ship just because of this shift but in the end it might be nothing to worry about. If they leave a clear line and room for non Syno drives, we can carry on as usual.

This needs a bit more time imho.

I do agree that they are not in the ent market but maybe there are new products and ideas on the horizon.

We might see a few more HW releases by the end of the year, maybe those will have more answers or something to be excited about.
 
Maybe HDD manufacturers (Seagate, WD, Toshiba....) itself will test drives up on release and "certify" them for usage in Synology NAS, they really need users to use them in NAS since they named/made them for NAS usage anyway so who knows.
 
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I have to agree with Mr. T on the Drive firmware comment... Seagate ST31000340AS 1TB drives were famous for instantly dying all over the place years ago... Seagate Released SD1A firmware to the public... Un-heard of action at the time.... I installed it on 4x drives 10 or more years ago. It was a Night vs. Day change. ALL 4 Drives are still alive, 2 of which are still in use as a Raid 0 pair for 'temporairy' fast storage of video for editing...

The difference was the firmware.... Made Chicken Salad out of Chicken Do-Do!

The question then becomes.... Since Synology is probably NOT manufacturing, but having drives made to 'their specs' by other MFG's....
IF A FIRMWARE ISSUE THEN DEVELOPS.....
Will Synology be able to have the resources to fix the firmware, Like a Drive MFG would? Has their prior software been solid?

Does anyone remember SGI & Discreet Logic? They had 'custom' firmware on their 'specified' raid drives... And they had a bug.... Damn near killed the company until it was fixed... because you couldn't use off shelf drives... even if you found the same model drives! Once fixed, their main hardware design engineers left to form NVIDIA, the company didn't last long afterward....
This logic is fraught with issues that could cause problems 'down the road'...
 
Synology does not have:
- products for the enterprise segment,
- support for the enterprise segment,
- sales/implementation networks for the enterprise segment.

Synology is a powerful player for home and SMB (mass market). Therefore, the best-selling HW from Synology is the desktop NAS with 4-5 bay configuration. And this segment is currently being tested to see if it remains loyal. And since people are irrational, they will buy those boxes with Syno branded disks as well.

This has nothing to do with entering the enterprise segment. Instead, they are testing how much people are willing to pay. Standard business tactics in the mass market = brand monetization.

And that's all about it.
 
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I was eyeing a future 6-8 drive machine. But with these antics and the DSM7 downgrade, I may opt for a NUC with an attached disk array if I can't get support because my HDD has the incorrect firmware build or manufacturing site, or my RAM has the incorrect sticker.

It's also peculiar how Synology turned against Ironwolf after adding their health checks to DSM. Now we find Ironwolf models among the "incompatible".

Just FYI... but this thread has gained considerable traction over on Reddit.
 
The way how to do it is easy:
- first, you need create VM
- then you need install your first TrueNAS
- then you need discover new environment Pros/Cons
- then you need decide if the TrueNAS Core or Scale version (BSD or Debian).
- Scale is new one in Beta, but great to see all of the features now
Then you need purchase your new NAS case and you will get:
- your own airflow ideas
- your own CPU, motherboard and chipset definition
- your own RAM or Disk setup
- NVMe RAID1 option or separate single NVMe for read and another for a write cache
- incl. free of charge support for home users or 3 levels of Paid SLA for the enterprise
- ....
It’s about your time and your own decision.
Nothing is for free (time consumption) Nothing is perfect. You need just evaluate if this is the right way for you.
OFC this is not right way for some with single button for everything attitude.
 
Joining late here... my DS218+'s WD 'old' Red CMRs (EFRX) have become incompatible where before they were compatible. Hmm!! That seems to be dubious since the list does not include any reference to Synology software versions, only the Synology hardware model.
 
The way how to do it is easy:
- first, you need create VM
- then you need install your first TrueNAS
- then you need discover new environment Pros/Cons
- then you need decide if the TrueNAS Core or Scale version (BSD or Debian).
- Scale is new one in Beta, but great to see all of the features now
Then you need purchase your new NAS case and you will get:
- your own airflow ideas
- your own CPU, motherboard and chipset definition
- your own RAM or Disk setup
- NVMe RAID1 option or separate single NVMe for read and another for a write cache
- incl. free of charge support for home users or 3 levels of Paid SLA for the enterprise

Piece of cake :)
 
I think they are still working on those lists heavily.

I checked RS2421+ on the list and there is only 1 Seagate HDD compatible according to that list, Seagate exos 4TB drive. That surely can't be the case for brand new RS unit...... That would be insanely stupid of them to do that for IronWolf/IronWolf PRO which they so much encouraged during these years and even added special features in DSM which require/encourages usage of Iron Wolf drives.

See the Seagate list for RS2421+
 
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Joining late here... my DS218+'s WD 'old' Red CMRs (EFRX) have become incompatible where before they were compatible. Hmm!! That seems to be dubious since the list does not include any reference to Synology software versions, only the Synology hardware model.

You can offer your home CFO a new flowerpot mat.
-- post merged: --

I think they are still working on those lists heavily.

I checked RS2421+ on the list and there is only 1 Seagate HDD compatible according to that list, Seagate exos 4TB drive. That surely can't be the case for brand new RS unit...... That would be insanely stupid of them to do that for IronWolf/IronWolf PRO which they so much encouraged during these years and even added special features in DSM which require/encourages usage of Iron Wolf drives.

See the Seagate list for RS2421+

there is a single SATA specification for entire market
I would understand if it was the implementation of Host managed SRM technology for specific types of HDDs into Syno DSM core.
But it can easily be related to the problem they encountered in the case of hybrid BTRFS RAID management, where the native BTRFS raid is not used, but LVM. Therefore, they must receive modified firmware in "their" branded disks. And since Syno lags far behind current versions of stable Linux kernels, there is room for conspiracies.
 
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Piece of cake :)

Challenge accepted

12bay 2U rackmount NAS for data science or 8k video editing - Simple comparison:
4x drives in RAID0, 1x RAID1 for system, 1xRAID5(4xdrives) , 1x spare for RAID1 + 1x Spare for RAID5 = 12 bay config

Syno SA3600:

- grandpa Intel® Xeon® D-1567 12-core 2.1/2.7GHz (support for max. DDR4-2133)
- 16 GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM
- max. RAM 128 GB (32 GB x 4)
- 2x 1G NIC + 2x 10G NIC
- 2x free expansion slots PCIe 3.0 8 lanes
- Redundant Power Supply
Base cost: 7,000.49 Eur (incl. VAT and shipping) + 3x16GB RAM upgrade = 3x416Eur = 1.248Eur (incl. VAT and shipping) + 175Eur M2D20 NVMe addapter
Total cost: 8,423.49 Eur (incl. VAT and shipping)

Note:
-2y of WP
- support from Syno is limited - only when I will use their HDD/SSD and RAM


vs. Custom build HW and TrueNAS sys:
- 12C/24t 3.5/4.6GHz i9-10920X
- MoBo Gigabyte X299-WU8 (server line) X299 chipset, 4x PCIe 4.0 16 lines or 1x PCIe 4.0 16 lines + 6x PCIe 4.0 8 lines, 8x SATA3, 1x M.2 NVMe 2280, max. RAM 256 GB, 2x1G NIC
- 4x16GB DDR4 3200 MHz ECC, Kingston KSM32RS4/16HDR
- 2x NIC Intel X540-BT2, 2x10G Base-T RJ45 PCIe x8
- 2x AMPCOM M.2 NVME to PCIe 4.0 Adapter (NVMe RAID)
- 1x additional LSI SAS 9361 SATAcontroller, PCI-E 3.0 12Gb/s, SATA/SAS 1GBcache, RAID0,1,10,5 ,6 for rest of the 4 bay
- CPU water cooling, Corsair H-115i
- 2U 12Bay NAS rackmount chassis, incl. Redundant power supply

Total cost: 3,087.30 Eur (incl. VAT and shipping) + a half-day for assembling (internal cost)
Note:
- 3x free expansion slots PCIe 4.0 8 lanes
- upgradeable to SAS by 12G SGPIO SA backplane (+250Eur)
- 2y of WP (excl. the chassis, there is just 1y)
- freely upgradable
- without limitation of used HW elements (HDD/SSD, RAM, expansion cards)
- one free and 3 levels of paid SLA support from TrueNAS

Conclusion:
Syno is the perfect brand for the mass market. No doubt. They have done an amazing job over the years.
Syno in performance-driven operation is really costly. And their HW can't compete with others in this area.
The example I gave is real because:
- this is not a comparison based on deliberately degraded Syno HW . Both contain server line elements.
- on the contrary, in comparison I emphasized to be one level higher than SA3600 (PCIe 4 vs 3), two independent controllers (I can easily put 3 here), RAM (3200 vs 2133), CPU (3.5 / 4.6 vs 2.1 / 2.7), two independent ports for NVMe cache (1x write, 1xread) vs common write / read cache in Syno.
- I know the possibilities of Syno very well (for home and for business operation, more than 10y) and I have been running my first TrueNAS for half a year.

And OFC, this NAS HW isn't created for the home Plex server. Reason for the purpose mentioned above.

So I will gradually replace the company's Syno devices with TrueNAS. Don't take it as anger, it's pure pragmatic science.

My notes:

1630239907298.png


Edit:
in the custom build is necessary to add the cost of Redundant PSU upgrade + 375Eur incl VAT
still the Total cost is about 3,463.00 Eur incl VAT. Great
 

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