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Hey, author here! I agree that objectively, it’s not much work to maintain the Synology NAS once everything is correctly set up. But I personally just got tire

Hey, author here! I agree that objectively, it’s not much work to maintain the Synology NAS once everything is correctly set up. But I personally just got tired after attempting to configure the network access alone for the nth time. My goal was to make the NAS accessible remotely (i.e. from outside my home network) and I felt like that was already a big task (comparing different DynDNS providers, port forwarding, asking my internet provider for a static IP address). And the recurring tasks (mostly renewing certificates for the , as far as I remember) would annoy me every year or so. And I agree with the advantages you listed about a NAS setup! That’s why I tried one out, after all. I did run into some scary security situations (once the DynDNS was set up, someone was immediately trying to log in via brute force), but nothing too major, fortunately. And I never got the network setup right (e.g. to use the local network speed when I’m home and still access my files the same way when I’m away via the internet). So, these were only theoretical advantages that I could never really get to myself (I’m sure other people figured it out, but I didn’t exactly find good documentation on these things online either). And regarding your last point, I also generally agree! Although it feels silly to me to have a NAS at home and then still do regular backups via another storage/backup service elsewhere. I wouldn’t want to back up 1+ TB of files every day or even week, although there might be diffing solutions for that. Anyway, I hope this answer makes it clearer why I decided against a (Synology) NAS in the end. I’m sure other peeps figured it out and are happy with their Synology setup, but for my purposes I’ve never really gotten there.

clnq 4y ago
Thanks for the additional comment. > I personally just got tired Its true that a Synology NAS takes some effort to set up initially and a little bit of maintenance work every now and then. But I don't think about my NAS most months. And on the months I need to, it's usually a short task that I do along with other house chores. > I did run into some scary security situations (once the DynDNS was set up, someone was immediately trying to log in via brute force) Yes. Unfortunately, that's pretty common on the internet. You can auto-blacklist IPs after a few incorrect login attempts, and firewall-blacklist IPs out of your country in general. These two measures should almost eliminate the brute force spam, and you should be able to verify that they are effective in Log Center. However, you also have other options because you own the firewall if what I suggested doesn't make sense (like if you are traveling a lot). > Although it feels silly to me to have a NAS at home and then still do regular backups via another storage/backup service elsewhere. My backups are be automated with a Synology app (like Hyper Backup). It uploads only changed files. The cloud storage on Backblaze is pretty cheap - I think I pay under $2 per month. But this gives me peace of mind for the "NAS destroyed in a tornado or something" scenario. On the other hand, keeping files in a NAS gives me peace of mind that I own what I have - no cloud storage provider can take it away from me. All in all, I'm happy you found something that works for you. I think you value simplicity and time more, and I value control over my data more. So our choices differ. In any case, I just wanted to offer context from a NAS user.
xoa 4y ago
Thanks for writing this all up! FWIW, I have gone that NAS route in general though with TrueNAS (formerly FreeNAS), I didn't like Synology myself after trying it. I think remote access works better if you just do it via modern VPN. Wireguard has been incredible for me, and there are options like ZeroTier and Nebula for more advanced automated meshing and so on. For me at least I've found it better to have less vs more in a given component, so the NAS is focused pretty purely on storing and making available data and that's it, network services are all done elsewhere (in OPNsense for me), same with VMs. That keeps things much simpler (admittedly for HN-values of "simple"), the NAS and various other services can simply act purely as "LAN". Also makes it easier IMO to keep things better isolated and secured by avoiding any public WAN exposure except for VPN ports (and even that can be further offloaded with a cloud-based bastion or the like). I also just made my own internal CA, which means I'm free to set certificate lifetimes for 10-20 years if I want. Linux/BSDs of course are straight forward to add your own CAs too, and least with Apple devices as well it's super, super easy and free to make up a mobileconfig profile containing all CAs/certs and various other configs, then install is just a few clicks that even non-technical users can follow. Let's Encrypt is certainly cool and easy to setup in OPNsense but I don't think it's necessarily ideal for purely internal services with nothing public facing. 100% agree however that documentation is often lacking, though the OPNsense and FreeNAS docs remain pretty good. >And regarding your last point, I also generally agree! Although it feels silly to me to have a NAS at home and then still do regular backups via another storage/backup service elsewhere. I wouldn’t want to back up 1+ TB of files every day or even week, although there might be diffing solutions for that. Every backup solution I know off only syncs diffs, that's pretty table stakes for precisely that reason. For units that support snapshots, there are also plenty of controls for dealing with snapshot lifetimes and pruning. All of that certainly still is more upfront to setup however! I think the big reasons for the expense and effort of a NAS though are mostly down to if you can/will make use of the speed and scale advantages. The security aspect might be a bit of a wash, one can do E2EE anyway with a typical cloud provider, and while they're more publicly exposed they've got much more serious effort behind them too. At 1TB it's probably not worth the effort. But other options definitely get more expensive as one gets into 10-20+ TB, and the value of more serious data integrity and snapshotting and so on too. 10 gigabit and even more is also getting quite reasonable to do on LAN, it's easy to saturate these days, and particularly for those of us living in rural areas with mediocre uplinks that can be genuinely handy. I feel fortunate to though to live in a time when we all have so many options to meet our exact needs. Possible for a home or small business to put together options now that would have been top end enterprise stuff not that long ago.
kelnos 4y ago
> Although it feels silly to me to have a NAS at home and then still do regular backups via another storage/backup service elsewhere. I do exactly this; a nightly backup to S3/Glacier. I use duplicity, so it only uploads diffs from the previous night. My NAS is a 4-drive RAID5 setup (RAID is not a backup!), but if I lost more than one drive -- and that has very nearly happened once -- all that data would be gone, forever. It only costs me a few bucks a month for that added peace of mind.

clnq 4y ago

Thanks for the additional comment. > I personally just got tired Its true that a Synology NAS takes some effort to set up initially and a little bit of maintenance work every now and then. But I don't think about my NAS most months. And on the months I need to, it's usually a short task that I do along with other house chores. > I did run into some scary security situations (once the DynDNS was set up, someone was immediately trying to log in via brute force) Yes. Unfortunately, that's pretty common on the internet. You can auto-blacklist IPs after a few incorrect login attempts, and firewall-blacklist IPs out of your country in general. These two measures should almost eliminate the brute force spam, and you should be able to verify that they are effective in Log Center. However, you also have other options because you own the firewall if what I suggested doesn't make sense (like if you are traveling a lot). > Although it feels silly to me to have a NAS at home and then still do regular backups via another storage/backup service elsewhere. My backups are be automated with a Synology app (like Hyper Backup). It uploads only changed files. The cloud storage on Backblaze is pretty cheap - I think I pay under $2 per month. But this gives me peace of mind for the "NAS destroyed in a tornado or something" scenario. On the other hand, keeping files in a NAS gives me peace of mind that I own what I have - no cloud storage provider can take it away from me. All in all, I'm happy you found something that works for you. I think you value simplicity and time more, and I value control over my data more. So our choices differ. In any case, I just wanted to offer context from a NAS user.

xoa 4y ago

Thanks for writing this all up! FWIW, I have gone that NAS route in general though with TrueNAS (formerly FreeNAS), I didn't like Synology myself after trying it. I think remote access works better if you just do it via modern VPN. Wireguard has been incredible for me, and there are options like ZeroTier and Nebula for more advanced automated meshing and so on. For me at least I've found it better to have less vs more in a given component, so the NAS is focused pretty purely on storing and making available data and that's it, network services are all done elsewhere (in OPNsense for me), same with VMs. That keeps things much simpler (admittedly for HN-values of "simple"), the NAS and various other services can simply act purely as "LAN". Also makes it easier IMO to keep things better isolated and secured by avoiding any public WAN exposure except for VPN ports (and even that can be further offloaded with a cloud-based bastion or the like). I also just made my own internal CA, which means I'm free to set certificate lifetimes for 10-20 years if I want. Linux/BSDs of course are straight forward to add your own CAs too, and least with Apple devices as well it's super, super easy and free to make up a mobileconfig profile containing all CAs/certs and various other configs, then install is just a few clicks that even non-technical users can follow. Let's Encrypt is certainly cool and easy to setup in OPNsense but I don't think it's necessarily ideal for purely internal services with nothing public facing. 100% agree however that documentation is often lacking, though the OPNsense and FreeNAS docs remain pretty good. >And regarding your last point, I also generally agree! Although it feels silly to me to have a NAS at home and then still do regular backups via another storage/backup service elsewhere. I wouldn’t want to back up 1+ TB of files every day or even week, although there might be diffing solutions for that. Every backup solution I know off only syncs diffs, that's pretty table stakes for precisely that reason. For units that support snapshots, there are also plenty of controls for dealing with snapshot lifetimes and pruning. All of that certainly still is more upfront to setup however! I think the big reasons for the expense and effort of a NAS though are mostly down to if you can/will make use of the speed and scale advantages. The security aspect might be a bit of a wash, one can do E2EE anyway with a typical cloud provider, and while they're more publicly exposed they've got much more serious effort behind them too. At 1TB it's probably not worth the effort. But other options definitely get more expensive as one gets into 10-20+ TB, and the value of more serious data integrity and snapshotting and so on too. 10 gigabit and even more is also getting quite reasonable to do on LAN, it's easy to saturate these days, and particularly for those of us living in rural areas with mediocre uplinks that can be genuinely handy. I feel fortunate to though to live in a time when we all have so many options to meet our exact needs. Possible for a home or small business to put together options now that would have been top end enterprise stuff not that long ago.

kelnos 4y ago

> Although it feels silly to me to have a NAS at home and then still do regular backups via another storage/backup service elsewhere. I do exactly this; a nightly backup to S3/Glacier. I use duplicity, so it only uploads diffs from the previous night. My NAS is a 4-drive RAID5 setup (RAID is not a backup!), but if I lost more than one drive -- and that has very nearly happened once -- all that data would be gone, forever. It only costs me a few bucks a month for that added peace of mind.