Hi! I have watched several of your videos and really appreciate all that you do. We currently have a 3-host (with failover) ESXI 6.5 setup (with vsphere 6.5) with about 25 VMs running on it. Only a few of the VMs are high volume traffic of large case files of a small department and the rest are smaller duty microsoft sql servers along with our organization-wide windows file server. Some of these VMs are very high priority for public safety functions so we are quite uptime-dependent. We have been running our vsphere environment via iscsi into our Infortrend DS1016 SAN unit. This unit has been OKAY for the five years we have had it deployed but it has lost two controllers in the time being. Being that it has been done under service contract, we never know what the exact cause of the failures are. We have been thoroughly unimpressed by the units' inability to truly be a high-availability system it is advertised to be, controller replacements have now twice required the whole SAN to be shut down in order to match up firmwares of the two controllers, etc.

We are really hoping that a Qnap ES 1686DC unit can hold out and be a better solution that a typical SAN that normally comes with extremely expensive service contracts and warranties. The included software licenses, functionalities, warranty, etc of a QNAP system is very enticing.

We would love to hear from the experienced just how enterprise these enterprise qnap systems really are and if the iscsi latency of these units is feasible for a well working VM server environment.

We do plan on utilizing our 10gig core switch to pair the hosts and QNAP together via teaming or bonding if need be. We are also interested in running SSD cache on the QNAP itself. What we do not know is if a cache drive failure can take down the storage volume or not, I would figure that it being dual controller, if one of the SSDs fail in a controller, operations continue as normal.

Any input we can obtain about the enterprise qnap products used mostly as an ISCSI datastore for a VMware environment would be so helpful. Thank you.

Discuss: NAS History - Synology USB Station 2 from 2010

Which is better?
1. A HTC (Home Theater Computer) running as a PLEX server and player, mainly for digitizing music CD collection to playback through home network, adding a few available 1TB drives

2. A new 4 bay NAS central PLEX and data server for a number of household computers.

I have gigabit fibre internet using my boradband providers supplied wireless router. I have started streaming movies and TV stored on my Samsung Tab S6 to my Samsung Q7 series tv in my lounge. I have an older Samsung Tv in my bedroom and would like to find a way to stream content to this TV UA46ES62000 in addition to the one in the lounge. The bedroom TV wont hook up to the S6 Tab. I currenlty use an android tv box to stream Netflix to this tv.

I also use microsoft onedrive to store work documents and access these documents from both Tab S6, iphone XS, iPad Pro and macbook pro. If I could use a NAS solution to store everything, stream content to tv's in the house and remotely over the internet and access documents from any device anywhere also, that would be great. I am considering buyung a S20 samsung smart phone immenently.

Happy to upgrade router in addition to spend on purchase of NAS too.

Would appreciate some set up and purchasing advice

Synology Official Product Pages for the Brand New DS920+, DS220+, DS720+ and DS420+ NAS are up
Good news for those of you who are wondering about the release of the recently revealed diskstation 20+

Discuss: A Guide to Asustor NAS Sync with OneDrive Cloud

Hello,

I hope you are safe and well at this time.

I have been reading your site with great interest.....but have probably confused myself even more!

I am very new to the whole NAS thing so could really do with your help in picking the right NAS. Although I am looking at budget NAS's it will still be a big investment for me so need to know I am making the right decision!

So here are my requirements/wants

We will use mainly Chromebooks / Android phones and Android TV/Chromecast for viewing for access but also have a Windows desktop
I would like something that can stream Plex to different TV's in at least 1080p
I would like to be able to use torrent sites with it.

Please can you help me with what NAS would suit, I have been looking at the WD My Cloud home as it looks like it works well with PLEX but I don't think it is compatible with my Chromebooks/Android? Another NAS I have looked at is the ASUSTOR AS3102T at it lists that its compatible with Chromecast but its quite expensive.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks
Paul.

Hello,
First of all, I want to say: Such a great web! It has been a long time I have been looking for NAS, here and there, and you have all in one single spot, with videos and a lot of infos! Thanks!
I want to buy my first NAS. And I don't know where nor which to buy?
My first idea is a first DS218+ with 3Tb+3Tb WDred discs. Later on, I would like to buy another identical NAS to locate it in a different place (f.e. parents house) and do mirroring.

I'm a consultant for NGOs. I travel a lot into complex countries to evaluate projects. When I'm in Europe, I do websites and fundraising campaigns for NGOs.
I need a NAS to:+ Backup 2 Android device and 1 iOs device
+ Make copies of a Mac (TimeMachine, 300GB) and a PC (1Tb and growing)
+ Recover files from any other device
+ Share files Divide the space into 3 independent sections, where one user cannot access the other
+ Store the backup copies of the websites I design.

I wonder where I can obtain a preset packet.

In the Spanish shops I cannot find all models nor setup service. And the only places where I find NAS are extreamly overpriced.
Thanks for your counsel!

Hi Robbie,

I have watched the majority of your NAS videos and first of all I want to thank you for that. I know how it is, due i have a travel blog so it has a really hard work on the background.

Ok, let’s do this. Maybe I’m like the majority of your writes that ask you for advises in order to select the right NAS for them, yes it's my case.

First of all, I will tell you my necessities and my expectations after that I’m going to tell you the NASes I have seen which I liked the most, or think are for me.

• Having a travel blog, means i have thousands of photos/videos which are consuming my space with a very good quality resolution and always working with very heavy archives.

• I want to learn/practice more with VMs environments and discover new IT app which I can develop myself

• I have my website in another place, and I really want to manage my WordPress. One day I want to migrate to my own cloud space without paying to someone else (in the future)

• I’m thinking to rent a very secure space (storage) in the cloud to friends or coworkers. (in the future). That’s why not choosing a 2 bay NAS.

• I’m always traveling because of my travelblog, so this, I need an always access to my information with a good/fast environment.

• Due I’m a mac user, usually work with Time Machine backups (if it’s possible to add a snapshots app would be nice too)

• Want to have transcoding 1080p its ok, don’t really need 4K

• Want to perform a Raid5 environment.

I was thinking in these options, please tell me which one you think is the more suitable for me (I’m thinking in a 3/4 bays NAS):

QNAP TS-351 (upgraded with 8G RAM)

My problem with this TS-351 is that I really don’t know how fast this can go with read/written information only with HDD knowing that 2 bays are 3Gb and 1 is 6Gb SATA without adding SSD cache/M2 slots. 500Mb? 100Mb?
*Another doubt I have with this, is it possible to add 2 slots with DDR3? i think this one works with DDR3L(I have an 2 slots of RAM DDR3 1600 that I’ve changed on my macbook pro 13’’ mid 2012).

QNAP TS-332X (upgraded with 8G RAM)
I have same doubts as with 351. However, I know this one does not have transcoding, so…  and CPU is worst.

TerraMaster F4-221 (upgraded with 8G RAM)
To tell you the truth, I really like this one because I think it has everything I want. Nevertheless, I really don’t trust in its system TOS. Besides, I don’t know how fast with read/written it can go. Adding that maybe does not works well with VMs. I really would like to think this is a great company and the best NAS, but I have my own doubts What do you think?

Synology DS418 (Only 2GB RAM  )
This one I think it’s a really good option, however with all the things I want, don’t know if that CPU/RAM will work as good as I expected.

So, what do you think about all these NASes I have thought for me? Which one is more suitable for my needs?

Thank you very much for taking the time to reading my email and answering my questions.

Cheers
Carlos Medina.
PD: My travelblog is https://losviajesdelchino.com if you want to check it out.

Hi I have a DS418 and want to got to an 8 bay or larger . Synology are dragging the chain with no m.2 and gbe . I can get a as6510t which covers all the basis. The only thing is that I like the synology software. SHR is easy for me to understand and expand.
Would I be making a mistake changing ? I have a 10GBE network which i use from home to write software.
I enjoy watching your videos,

Thanks
Terence