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Full Version: Is DS1621+ Still Relevant Today?
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Hello,

I stumbled upon the NASCompares videos back in the spring when I started looking at home NAS solutions. At first I wanted the ds920+,I had it in my head that Synology NAS were the most secure and &quot;the best&quot;. When the 920+ went on sale, I started watching NASCompares to learn more, but the ds1522+ had just come out and I couldn't decide. To my surprise, wife gave approval to get the DS1522+, and I decided to sleep on it, and by morning was out of stock. Then I mulled over getting the 920+ anyways because it had the Celeron... but then the 920+ went out of stock too. In any case since I couldn't decide which NAS I wanted, and now having consumed an unhealthy amount of NASCompares videos... I still can't decide. In the meantime I instead decided to collect drives on sale so I'd have something to start with if/when I decided. I currently have 3 WD Red Plus 10TBs I picked up on sale, thinking RAID5 would give me 1 drive failure of headroom. << by the way... THANK YOU FOR HAMMERING HOME THAT THE NVMe's ARE FOR CACHING ONLY... I was so excited to think I could slap in a couple sticks and have crazy fast storage.

There's a lot of fluff below, but here's my [current] intended use for a NAS:
1) Consolidating & deduplicating ~20 years of &quot;backups&quot; stored on piles of USBs, old 2.5&quot; laptop drives, externals, etc.*
2) Have somewhere to store uncompressed disk images of our various laptops/desktop (so I have somewhere to compress them)
2.5) ie Original disk images of our machines, as well as images of my grandparents' laptops
2.5.5) Restoring dd images of windows installs seems hit or miss, whereas ddrescue images work every time, but can't be compressed until the data is &quot;rescued&quot;.
3) I'd like to be able to tinker around with VMs and have a device to teach myself Docker.
4) Eventually replace my Arlo security cams with POE cams, (so store rolling days||months of video)**
4.5) I'm not sure if I'd purchase Synology licenses to run their cam solution (esp if the embedded Ryzens don't have integrated graphics), currently leaning towards maybe a future Blue Iris nuc.
5) I DO NOT plan on running Plex, however with our first child on the way I'm sure we'll start accumulating baby vids/pics.
6) Future upgrades, disappointed the 1621 only comes with 4GB RAM, assume that will be the earliest upgrade. At some point I'd also want to drop in the NVMe's to benefit from r/w caching... but again will have to save my pennies.

* I'd love to be able to afford to back up the NAS with cloud backup... with so many TBs it's unaffordable, but I think could be deduplicated to a more manageable size.
** this project is even further out because I have zero ethernet cable run in the house (currently operating on TP-Link Deco x20 mesh), I also have no switching equipment, so it'll be a while before I can even take advantage of link aggregation. See also, $$$$.

Fluff:
Subsequently I watched a bunch of videos, including the lack of integrated GPU, transcoding head-to-head 920+ vs 1522+, and it made me start doubting the 1522 has enough horsepower. I wanted it because on paper, it appears to have a teeny bit more hp than the 920+, but when you consider onboard graphics then it goes out the window. I also liked that it came with 8GB of ram and was more upgradeable, but 2c/4t processor for $699 seems pretty underwhelming. I started looking at the ds1621+ instead, since it has the Ryzen V1500B with 4c/8t cpu. Which would give me more power for tinkering around with VMs and/or Docker (but again... lacks onboard gfx for VMs).

The 1621+ is way more than I was originally willing to spend at a msrp of $900. So I started looking at hardware to build my own. I started with what was supposed to be a &quot;budget&quot; build and realized it was way more powerful than any of the NAS I was considering (and then black friday/cyber monday sales dropped the price even more), currently ~$710:
https://newegg.io/44d51ef
So I did a budget one, currently ~$650:
https://newegg.io/aee9937

^could get a lot more HP, but then I realized that's a lot of hardware for running TrueNAS, and if TrueNAS was the OS then I wouldn't be able to run Blue Iris on it. >>> &quot;maybe I should start with a NAS, and then can get a windows NUC to do Blue Iris at some point, and refocus on finding a NAS&quot;

As of this post, at least in the US, newegg has the DS1621+ on sale for $899.99 + $180 off coupon code, bringing it to the lowest ever price (after checking price history here) of $719.99 before tax. So I ordered it, not wanting to miss another sale, and figuring if a new NAS sale popped up, I have &quot;holiday returns protection&quot; until Jan to return it. I'm still not sure if I want to build my own box or stick with [what I believe to be] the Cadillac of NAS with Synology.

Lastly, I had planned on using the 3 disks I have so far for RAID5, but only recently started seeing the (quite old) posts about how RAID5 is dead... and RAID6 should be too. Like anything the answer is &quot;it depends&quot;. I was trying to research RAID penalties, understanding that RAID5/6 have write penalties, but was more interested in how they stack up against each other for reads. That's where I started reading &quot;no one should be using RAID5 and 6 anymore&quot;.

Point is, given the above, will the ds1621+ I ordered give me years of great performance? Will Synology continue providing updates and support for this 2 year old device? Should I build my own?

Thanks!!!
All plus series models can cope with videos up tp 1080p. The problem is with 4k. But you can use NUC PC or Nvidia shield TV as an accessory to a NAS to deal with that media.
DS920+ by sound of it is not for you. If you like docker and VMs then ds923+ / ds1621+ , ds1522+ is a better choices. There is more power in those.
Building your own NAS takes patience. Updates, fixes, workaround etc. And the warranty is not simple.
Ryzen and Atom CPU are not too bad. As long as you don't need it for multimedia (at least anything above 1080p).
The real life lifecycle of a plus series NAS is 10years. So 2 years is nothing.

I hope this helps.