Hi, I'm curious to hear from the group who have upgraded their NAS!
What did you have and what were the reasons for the upgrade?
And what is the life of a NAS? and how much surplus storage do you have?
It's like a car, we want everything, but what is the true sweet spot for features and storage versus lifecycle before having to upgrade again?
Asymmetric Storage System hey? Niiiice!
Too much of an open-ended question. All that depends on your usage of NAS. Is it purely for archival storage? Is it a media server for Plex? Is it used to run Docker and other applications? Is it a seedbox? Is it an automated backup machine? Single local access or cloud network? What RAID array are you using? How much storage do you need? etc…
Could be anything from an off the shelf Synology to HP Microserver with bits added to complete custom setup.
Agree, but its meant to be open ended so users can share their upgrade stories.
Im plan on getting a NAS for my Christmas break project.
The NAS would be predominantly to back up all the devices and photos of a family of 6.
2 bays is probably enough, but 4bays i know i wont get 2bay remorse.
Sounds like you don't really need a Synology type NAS but maybe just a WD Cloud unit. Considered those?
https://www.amazon.com.au/WD-Cloud-Personal-Centralised-Stor…
I havent, although I have a WD media switch (might be a product related to the WDTV Live Media player) that allows us to plug in a USB and access something like WD Cloud. I have it around somewhere.
That might satisfy my appetite for a NY project.
surplus storage
No such a thing could ever exist…
Used to have a NAS for umm files but these days I just stream everything, and use cloud storage for storing documents and photos.
From pi3 to pi4
Been running a Synology DS214Play 24/7 for 7 years
I went from a Synology DS1515+ to a Synology FS1018, mainly for the 12 drive capacity but also to move away from spinning disks to SSDs. Upgraded the RAM, changed to quieter fans, couldn't be happier.
thanks for sharing your upgrade path and reason.
Im torn between the DS420+ and DS920+ both 4bays.
For me the upgrade is to decouple its functionalities so that my NAS only serve as storage server and make it really good it.
which functionalities?
I used to run plex on NAS, this now get outsourced to nvidia shield. I used to run dockers on the NAS, now docker runs on photonOS on esx servers along a bunch of other VMs. The esx server has its own storage and also use NAS as storage backend over iscsi when the data is important.
Still using my qnap ts451 from 5.5 years ago. Using it predominantly as a file server and occasional media server.
The CPU cannot cope live transcoding 1080HD or higher video to stream through Plex server without buffering. I'll upgrade when I need to frequently stream from my Nas again.
Plex sounds like a great nice to have, but like others that have replied, most content is streamed now days.
I went from
Ds211J to
Ds411j as needed more bays to
Ds415play as above got too slow to
Ds920 as above couldn't support 8tb hard drives and was starting to get slow but still not annoying.
I've stuck with Synology as I value my time too much
I started with an HP Gen7 Microserver running Xpenology. Changed the software a few times, Freenas, rolled my own ubuntu NAS, settled on Unraid.
Then moved the disks into other hardware when Microserver got too slow, (running some extra VM's)
HP ML3XX (cant remember the exact model).
Old i7 first gen I found at the recycling centre for free.
Dell Precision T1650 Xeon
About to move it into a Ryzen 3600 based system.
I just pull out the USB flash drive that unraid is on, move the drives and everything keeps on working.
Upgraded from Synology to an Unraid DIY NAS. Then discovered VMs, now there's no going back!
Would love more of an explanation of this if you have time?
yup - used to have Synlogy 4 bay one, ran dockers on it and stuff - but it was woefully underpowered for VMs. Built an ITX NAS with UNRAID, now running multiple VMs along with a RAID array thats not tied to Raid 0/1/5.
started with a n36l microserver, 5xtb drives on a ubuntu base with MDADM/ some *arr's.
to gen8 microserver 1265lv2/16gb/SSD + 48tb drives on a ubuntu base with hardware raid, VM's on virtual box + some arr's and plex.
to a custom build;
x10-sdvTLNF4 xeon 1540, 128gb ram, 58tb, 1tb nvme, jammed in a node 304 case running UnRAID, ~15 dockers, 6-10 vms for dev/work.
It was an expensive box to build but its a tiny all in one thats quiet and does everything IT related for the apartment. Will upgrade to a new SOC mainboard when something newer with the right bits comes out, currently they all seem to miss my feature wishlist currently.
I started out with an N36L and N54L with a P410 hardware RAID controller, but the CPU was woeful in both of them.
Now I'm using a QNAP TS-670. It originally came with an i3-3220 but I've swapped it out for a Xeon E3-1265Lv2 and bumped the RAM to 16GB. Used to play with Docker and VMs but these days I just stick with Plex, Deluge, Sonarr, and the like. 6x8TB in RAID6 gives me about 24TB of usable storage.
Yes upgraded my NAS to ASS