you can run synology software on generic hardware https://xpenology.org/#What_is_Xpenology https://xpenology.org/#What_is_Xpenology having said that i bought

you can run synology software on generic hardware https://xpenology.org/#What_is_Xpenology https://xpenology.org/#What_is_Xpenology having said that i bought the $200 model (220j) with a steep discount with points on amazon and it works fine but is a little slower than the others. i just use it for rsync (which never-deletes by default) and as an SMB server. note the 220j unit doesn't do btrfs. the nas software seems pretty good but i don't use much of it. it takes some configuring to setup proper user home directories to rsync with but it only took me a few minutes of googling to figure it out. also their macos backup agent software kind of sucks but if you're using it for rsync or as a NAS volume it seems to work great. i don't use any of synology cloud or public cloud features.