truenas vs dsm – NAS Compares

Amazon Prime Day – Deals on NAS, Hard Drives, SSDs, Cameras and Network Equipment

Rob Andrews — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 17:00:20 +0000

Looking for the Amazon Prime Day Deals Page for October 11th and 12th 2022? Visit this page HERE

Prime Day Bargains on Synology, QNAP, Seagate, WD, Sabrent and More to Watch For

That’s right, it is that time once again when the biggest e-retail company in the world hosts Its very own mega sale – Amazon Prime Day 2022. No doubt many of us with a prime subscription burning a hole in our account every month will be keen to take advantage and perhaps save a few quid. Both home and business users alike often take this opportunity to upgrade or improve upon their existing data storage setup, and it should come as no surprise that several of the top-tier data storage and network tech providers in the world get involved with this annual mega sale. Unlike the likes of Black Friday, which is a longer and more widely spread bargain extravaganza, Amazon Prime Day is a shorter affair and therefore the time afforded to most buyers to make a decision on whether to buy or not can be criminally short. Today I want to highlight as many Amazon Prime Day deals that I can find below as possible. Alongside the deals that we (me and Eddie, working double time) find on network and data storage products during the event, I have also included a list of recommended hardware that you should keep an eye out for during this short sale event that is likely to spring up on lightning deals.

Important – Me and Eddie (the chaps that run NASCompares) have been running these deal-hunting pages every Prime Day and Back Friday, searching and sharing the deals we find that WE would 100% personally buy! If it’s not something we consider a deal/bargain, we won’t add it. Additionally, users can add their own deals to the list (using the gadget below). Ultimately, we do this for a mixture of reasons. We want to help people get the best storage and/or network solution for their needs, but also because by choosing to visit Amazon via the links to the deals below, any purchase you make results in a small commission fee being sent right back to us at NASCompares (which goes directly back into making great content every day). We see Prime Day and Black Friday as a means of fundraising for the site and still helping people get the best possible deal they can. If you need help choosing the right solution for your needs (and want to be 100% sure before you pull the trigger and spend anything), you can use our Free Advice service right here.

————– Useful Links —————

US Amazon – Amazon USA Prime Day Official Page – Amazon UK Prime Day Official Page

Amazon Warehouse (20% Off Everything on Prime Day)

USA – UK – Germany

Synology NAS to Watch this Prime Day – Here

QNAP NAS to Watch this Prime Day – Here

Recommended PS5 SSDs to Buy this Prime Day – Here

Still unsure of what you need – use the Free Advice Section here on NASCompares.

Will Synology NAS be in the Amazon Prime Day 2022 Sale and Which Solutions?

Synology of currently midway through their latest generation of hardware releases and because of this we think during Prime Day there will be a good mix of the familiar hardware that has featured in previous sales over the last 12 months, as many of the 2018, 2019, and 2020 generation of NAS in the brand’s portfolio (such as the DS218/DS218play/DS418) is still available yet also starting to look a tad dated. These big sale events always tend to result in the lowest end of the Synology range (the cost-effective J series, DS220j and DS420j) appearing on limited offers. Finally, with new releases appearing gradually in the 2022 and 2023 generation, I think we will see Prime Day deals on their home and prosumer 2/4 bay solutions. Last year’s Prime Day AND Balck Friday saw the DS920+ appear on a limited offer of £55/$75 off the RRP of this device and now the device is 2 years old, it will almost certainly reappear during the Prime Day Sale again. Here are the solutions I recommend you check on intermittently if you are looking for a Synology bargain:

Synology DS220j Budget-Friendly NAS

Realtek CPU + 512MB + 2-Bay

Synology DS418 Cost-Effective NAS

Realtek CPU + 2GB + 4-Bay

Synology DS920+ Media & Business NAS

Intel CPU + 4/8GB + 4-Bay

Will QNAP NAS be in the Amazon Prime Day 2022 Sale and Which Solutions?

QNAP has revealed noticeably more of their latest generation hardware than their big competitor Synology, however, the brand is still periodically offering promotions online for their 2020 generation of hardware at a large number of retailers for its TS-x53D and TVS-X72 series, almost certainly in efforts to reduce stock levels in the run-up to newer and better premium solutions soon. Now that the QNAP TS-464 system has been revealed (although availability is still quite regionally limited) and with the summer holiday just around the corner, there will be an inevitable new product push that these products tend to receive in the last quarter of the year (starting typically around September/October), I can definitely see QNAP listing their more affordable desktop ranges in Amazon’s Prime Day sale. QNAP’s range of NAS solutions is easily one of the most diverse of any NAS brand and although it is highly unlikely that any of the TS-x64 series will be on sale this Prime Day, I DO think we will see the likes of the QNAP TS-453D, TS-233 and TS-251D appear on sale. These solutions are a good mix of old but solid, as well as new but ‘value’ series. QNAP tend to be more engaged with Black Friday than Prime Day typically, but this event is arriving at an important crossroads in the release of new hardware, so it would be a good opportunity for them to clear old generation devices that still run their QTS/QuTS 5 software.

QNAP TS-233 Cost-Effective NAS

ARM v8 + 2GB + 2-Bay

QNAP TS-453D Prosumer 4K NAS

Intel CPU + 4/8GB + 4-Bay + 2.5G

QNAP TS-364 2022 Gen NAS

New Intel CPU + 4/8GB + 3/5-Bay + 2.5G

NAS Upgrades to look for this Amazon Prime Day

Perhaps you already own a NAS Drive from Synology or QNAP, but are considering using the promotional available this Amazon Prime Day to upgrade your existing server network. Most NAS drives released in the last 10 years that arrive built on x86 64bit architecture (i.e Intel Celeron, Pentium, Xeon or AMD Ryzen, Embedded Ryzen or Radeon Powered onboard) have the facility to upgrade several internal components, or even simply add further network or storage modules to the device in order to improve performance and allow it to be more future proof. Not every NAS owner takes advantage of this, as it more often than not requires a little bit of opening the NAS up, but more modern NAS releases have SIGNIFICANTLY reduced the necessity of this (often with upgrade slots/bays being accessible externally or via the main storage bays). The improvements of increasing your memory, adding SSD caching support, improving your network connectivity and/or adding an expansion are pretty huge and particularly business users with higher frequency ad volume of connections 24×7 will see AND feel the benefits. There are ALOT of 1st and 3rd party upgrades available, so it is important to check that 1) you are opting for an upgrade that is compatible with your system and 2) that you are remaining in the warranty/support area of your NAS manufacturer. If in doubt, you can ask me and Eddie HERE about an upgrade and it’s suitability in the free advice section, but otherwise here are the four upgrades that I recommend you look for this Amazon Prime Day.

CRUCIAL DDR4 Module

Value Memory Upgrade

Sabrent 3200Mhz Heatshield Memory

Highest Performance & Design

Startech 10GbE Upgrade

VERY Affordable 10G

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Best Price vs Durability Cache Drive

Will Terramaster NAS be in the Amazon Prime Day 2022 Sale and Which Solutions?

Terramaster NAS, frankly, ALWAYS appears on sale during Prime Day and Black Friday events on Amazon with exclusive deals for their more cost-effective value series of NAS devices. They are a brand that more often than not will provide a NAS solution that is comparable in hardware to Synology and QNAP, but significantly more affordable. Much like their competitors, Terramaster is in the process of rolling out their x43 2022 generation of hardware and we have already started seeing reductions in price on the 2020/2021 generation of devices in the FX-421 and FX-422 range of solutions. Of course, the brand also provides a range of thunderbolt raid solutions, and even though I anticipate some of the NAS hardware to pop up briefly in the sales, I think it is more likely that we will see their thunderbolt RAID solutions appear more prominently. Terramaster were one of the first to show off their 2022 series of devices and will be less keen for this hardware to appear in the Prime Day sale, however, thunderbolt 4 has begun to gain traction in the post-production world and therefore TerraMaster’s thunderbolt 3 hardware is in danger of looking a little outdated and is almost certainly due an upgrade in the near future. Therefore, keep an eye out for this brand’s Thunderbolt RAID hardware this Prime Day.

Terramaster F2-210 Low Price NAS

4-Core ARM v8 + 1GB + 2-Bay

Terramaster F5-221 Budget Media NAS

Intel CPU + 2/8GB + 5-Bay + 1G

Terramaster F5-422 Affordable 10G NAS

Intel 4-Core CPU + 4/8GB + 5-Bay + 10G

Will we see many NAS Hard Drive Deals this Prime Day from Seagate and WD?

Every Amazon Prime Day we see the two big hard drive manufacturers, Seagate and WD, throw all manner of storage media deals out to the general public. More often than not, these are external hard drives and USB storage for the most part, but they always include a few hard drive offerings too. Continued hardware shortages that date back all the way to early 2020 caused by everything from the pandemic to cryptocurrency and the impact of international conflict, likely mean that much larger capacity hard drives above 10TB will either not be featured in the sale at all or be in such low quantities that you will almost certainly miss them. However, deals on WD Red and Seagate Ironwolf drives at these big promo events do still appear and more often than not at the 4TB, 6TB and 8TB levels. If you are looking at populating your brand new NAS Drive or look into upgrade your existing storage, these may well be the ones for you.

NAS Hard Drives & SSD to Look for this Amazon Prime Day

WD Red HDD

5400RPM / 1-14TB

Seagate Ironwolf HDD

5900RPM / 1-14TB / Data Recov

WD Red SSD

SATA, M.2 SATA & PCIe3 NVMe

Seagate Ironwolf SSD

SATA, M.2 SATA & PCIe3/4 NVMe

Recommended IP Cameras, Web Cameras, PoE NVR and Surveillance Equipment the Prime Day

Not a single Prime Day goes by without a huge range of IP cameras from hundreds of different surveillance brands flooding the special offers page. Thanks to efficient software controllers and much more affordable lenses being developed, you generally cannot move for IP cameras arriving on Amazon. If you are looking at starting your own surveillance setup (such as with a Synology or QNAP NAS Drive or without using a complete NVR Solution) or simply looking to expand across an existing NVR or CCTV operation you have in place, be sure to look out for Riolink and D-Link this Prime Day as these two brands provide an extensive range of very well built cameras that tend to regularly appear on Amazon’s lightning deals and occasional promotional events. Otherwise, be sure to look for any camera that supports ONVIF, to ensure that you are not locked in to any first party, cloud or subscription storage.

Surveillance/Camera Brands to watch this Amazon Prime Day

Reolink Surveillance

Smart Cameras, Value Cameras, Dual Lense

D-Link Surveillance

Cost-Effective, Wide Range, AI Services

Annke Surveillance

Excellent Nightvision Cameras – Affordable

ONVIF CAMERAS for NAS

Cameras for Synology/QNAP

Recommended Network Switches to keep an eye on this Amazon Prime Day

It has taken a while, but the affordability of 2.5GbE and even 10GbE has finally reached a point where not only are they accessible to the average John Doe/Joe Blogs, but they regularly appear on seasonal promotions. During Prime Day there will be significant savings to be made on managed and unmanaged switches from the likes of Netgear, D-Link and QNAP, who have been bolstering their portfolio to rise to the demand of remote/home works and evolved networks during the difficult first year of the pandemic as office workers evolved. Even if you are not interested in these greater than gigabit network solutions, Netgear regularly reduce the price point of their 5/8 Ports 1 GbE switches during Prime Day to just a few quid (last year there was one for a frankly comedic £6) and you will really not find a better time to start improving upon your network environment and wired land than during this event.

Switches to Look for this Amazon Prime Day

QNAP Network Switches

Smart Cameras, Value Cameras, Dual Lense

D-Link Network Switches

Cost-Effective, Wide Range, AI Services

Netgear Network Switches

Excellent Nightvision Cameras – Affordable

PS5 SSD Upgrades to Look for the Amazon Prime Day

It is almost a year now since Sony enabled the storage upgrade capabilities of the PlayStation. 5 and in that time we have seen a huge number of SSD manufacturers, big and small, release countless SSDs that all promise to be the perfect storage upgrade for your new next-gen console. In the past year or so I have conducted and published hundreds of SSD PS5 tests and during that time identified what I believe to be the very best drives for your PS5 that you should consider buying this Prime Day. Much as I mentioned earlier with larger capacity hard drives, SSDs are also suffering something of a hardware shortage and it is the bigger companies such as WD and Seagate that appear to be suffering the most as they are the ones held in the highest demand. Therefore, during Prime Day, it presents a fantastic opportunity for less high-profile brands to provide much more flexible promotional pricing and during Prime Day, you can bet your bum that there will be a wide variety of PCIe 4 NVMe M2 SSDs on offer. Remember – Resist the marketing of any brand that is not prepared to publish its performance figures and also factor in that you are going to need a heat sink for this super-fast but also high-temperature SSD for your PlayStation upgrade. Here are the SSDs I recommend that you look out for this Prime Day for your PS5.

WD Black SN850 – For Value

500GB – 2TB, Heatsink Option

Seagate Firecuda 530 – For Speed/Durability

500B – 4TB, Heatsink Option. Data Recov

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus – Best All-Round

1TB-8TB, PS5 Design H/S, 176L NAND

GAMMIX XPG X70 – Price + Design

INNOGRIT CONT, 2 H/S Options Inc

DON’T FORGET YOUR HEATSINK!!!

Sabrent PS5 Design H/S	ElecGear PS5 Designed H/S	Generic M.2 Heatsink ($10-12)

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Amazon Prime Day Oct 2022 – Early Access Deals on Synology, QNAP, HDDs, SSDs, Cameras and Network Switches

Rob Andrews — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 19:00:39 +0000

Prime Day Bargains on NAS, Hard Drives, SSDs, Cameras and Network Equipment

ANOTHER Amazon Prime Day in 2022? Yep, just a month before Black Friday kicks off and Amazon has decided to host an impromptu 2nd in-house sale event beginning on Tuesday 11th Oct until midnight on Wednesday 12th Oct (in 15 countries; Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, and the U.S.). No doubt many of us with a prime subscription burning a hole in our account every month will be keen to take advantage and perhaps save a few quid. Both home and business users alike often take this opportunity to upgrade or improve upon their existing data storage setup, and it should come as no surprise that several of the top-tier data storage and network tech providers in the world get involved with this annual mega sale. Unlike the likes of Black Friday, which is a longer and more widely spread bargain extravaganza, Amazon Prime Day is a shorter affair and therefore the time afforded to most buyers to make a decision on whether to buy or not can be criminally short. Today I want to highlight as many Amazon Prime Day deals that I can find below as possible. Alongside the deals that we (me and Eddie, working double time) find on network and data storage products during the event, I have also included a list of recommended hardware that you should keep an eye out for during this short sale event that is likely to spring up on lightning deals.


Seagate 24TB Ironwolf PRO HDD (BF)	HDD	Amazon	USA	38% OFF - Now $399	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 86%
UnRAID License Now $34 and (BF) $94	NAS	UnRAID Store	USA	Price Drop & Multi-License Discount	OPEN 28th Nov	▲ 100%
Synology 4TB Beestation NAS (BF)	NAS	Amazon	UK	11% OFF – £221.37 (was £249.89)	OPEN 25th Nov	▼ 90%
UGREEN DXP2800 2-Bay NAS (BF)	NAS	Amazon	USA	$20% off – $319.99 (was $399)	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 100%
Terramaster F4-424 Pro i3 NAS (BF)	NAS	Amazon	USA	20% OFF, £503.99 (was £629.99)	OPEN 28th Nov	▲ 100%
Synology DS723+ NAS (BF)	NAS	Amazon	USA	$359.99 (20% OFF)	OPEN 29th Nov	▼ 82%
TERRAMASTER F8 SSD PLUS	NAS	Amazon	USA	$499.99 ($100 off)	OPEN 8th Oct	▲ 100%
Asustor FS6706T Flashstor 6 $419	NAS	AAAwave	USA	$419 ($30 OFF with code)	OPEN 18th Nov	▲ 100%
Synology DS124 1-Bay NAS (BF)	NAS	Amazon	UK	28% OFF – £132.97 (was £183.44)	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 100%
WD Red Plus 4TB NAS Hard Drive (BF)	HDD	Amazon	USA	29% OFF, Now $84.99 (was $119.99)	OPEN 28th Nov	▲ 100%
Western Digital 6TB WD Red Plus HDD (BF)	HDD	Amazon	USA	$99.99 (33% OFF)	OPEN 29th Nov	▲ 100%
QNAP TS-464 NAS $550	NAS	Amazon	USA	$550 (13% off)	OPEN 6th Nov	▲ 100%
UGREEN DXP4800 PLUS 4-Bay (BF)	NAS	Amazon	USA	$20% off – $559.99 (was $699)	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 100%
QNAP TS-464 (8GB) (BF)	NAS	Amazon	UK	$469 (was $589) HERE	OPEN 25th Nov	▼ 78%
Seagate EXOS Enterprise Server 24TB Hard Drive (BF)	HDD	Amazon	USA	20% off – $479.99 (was $599.99)	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 100%
Synology DS1621+ NAS (BF)	NAS	Amazon	USA	10% OFF – £854.36 (was £949.99)	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 100%
QNAP TS-464 NAS (BF)	NAS	B&H	USA	$120 OFF – $471.20 (was $591.20) HERE	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 100%
Synology WRX560 WiFi 6 Mesh Router (BF)	RTR	Amazon	UK	15% OFF – £196.50 (was £229.99)	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 100%
6 Port 10GbE and 2.5GbE Switch (BF)	SWH	Amazon	USA	$36.78 (Cheapest it has ever been)	OPEN 28th Nov	▲ 100%
Seagate Ironwolf (non-Pro) 8TB NAS HDD (BF)	HDD	Amazon	USA	$149.99 (17% OFF, was $179.99)	OPEN 28th Nov	▲ 100%
8 Port 10GbE Copper Unmanaged Switch (BF)	SWH	Amazon	USA	$223.98, was $279.98 (20% OFF)	OPEN 28th Nov	▲ 100%
Seagate 12TB NAS Hard Drive (BF)	HDD	Amazon	USA	$199.99, was $239.99 (17% OFF)	OPEN 28th Nov	▲ 100%
Synology DS124 NAS	NAS	Amazon	UK	£134.97 (26% Off)	OPEN 18th Nov	▲ 100%
Asustor Nimbustor 4 NAS	NAS	AAAwave	USA	$365 ($94 OFF)	OPEN 18th Nov	▲ 100%
QNAP 12TB /W RAID BACKUP BOX (BF)	DAS	Amazon	USA	$20% off – $519.20 (was $649) HERE	OPEN 25th Nov	▲ 100%
TERRAMASTER F4-424 Pro	NAS	AliExpress	USA	505.99	OPEN 27th Nov	▲ 100%
Synology DS223j NAS Drive (BF)	NAS	Amazon	USA	$161.99 (15% OFF, was $189.99)	OPEN 28th Nov	▼ 83%
Topton 10GbE N100 6-Bay NAS MITX Mobo (BF)	NAS	AliExpress	USA	$216 (was $250)	OPEN 28th Nov	▲ 100%
WD Red Plus Internal NAS HDD 3.5\" - 12TB	HDD	WesternDigital	USA	2 HDD for $399	OPEN 19th Oct	▲ 71%
Asustor AS5304T NAS	NAS	Amazon	UK	£439 (21% off)	OPEN 6th Nov	▲ 100%
WD 4TB My Cloud Home NAS	NAS	Amazon	UK	£165 (14% off)	OPEN 6th Nov	▲ 100%
Buffalo 2TB Linkstation 210 NAS	NAS	Amazon	USA	$129 (13% off)	OPEN 6th Nov	▲ 100%
Silverstone CS382 NAS Case $209	EXT	Amazon	USA	$209 (16% off)	OPEN 6th Nov	▲ 100%
UGREEN DXP4800 PLUS £629.99	NAS	B&H	USA	£629.99 ($70 off)	OPEN 6th Nov	▲ 100%
EARLY DEAL - QNAP TS-464-8G-US	NAS	Amazon	USA	$560 - 5% OFF	OPEN 18th Nov	▲ 100%
Synology DS224+ NAS	NAS	Amazon	UK	£299 (4% Off) HERE	OPEN 18th Nov	▼ 71%
Terramaster U4-423 1U Rack NAS	NAS	Amazon	USA	$499 (17% off)	OPEN 6th Nov	▼ 75%
Seagate 24TB Ironwolf Pro $439	HDD	B&H	USA	$439.99 ($210 off)	OPEN 6th Nov	▼ 75%
Synology DS423 NAS	NAS	Amazon	UK	£332 (15% OFF)	OPEN 6th Nov	▼ 57%
Synology DS223J NAS	NAS	Amazon	UK	£179.48 (6% Off)	OPEN 18th Nov	▼ 60%
TERRAMASTER F4-424	NAS	Amazon	USA	$399.99 (-20%)	OPEN 22nd Nov	▲ 100%
TERRAMASTER F4-424 Pro	NAS	AliExpress	USA	505.99	OPEN 27th Nov	▲ 100%
WD 8TB WD RED PLUS HDD	HDD	B&H	USA	£159.99 ($49 off)	OPEN 6th Nov
QNAP 5 Port 2.5Gbps auto Negotiation (2.5G/1G/100M), W125786480 (Negotiation (2.	MIX	Amazon	USA	180.88 OFF (WAS 283)	OPEN today
QNAP 1 Bay Home NAS with 4TB Storage Capacity, Preconfigured Seagate IronWolf Dr	MIX	Amazon	USA	13.19 OFF (WAS 155)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-233-US 2 Bay Affordable Desktop NAS with ARM Cortex-A55 Quad-core Proces	MIX	Amazon	USA	39.8 OFF (WAS 199)	OPEN today
[Amazon.co.jp Exclusive] QSW-2104-2S /AZ Unmanaged Switch with 2 QNAP 10GbE SFP+	MIX	Amazon	USA	9.14 OFF (WAS 202)	OPEN today
Asustor Drivestor 4 AS1104T - 4 Bay NAS, 1.4GHz Quad Core, Single 2.5GbE Port, 1	MIX	Amazon	USA	50 OFF (WAS 269)	OPEN today
Synology DS223 Diskstation NAS (Realtek RTD1619B Quad-Core 2GB Ram 1xRJ-45 1GbE	MIX	Amazon	USA	25.95 OFF (WAS 297)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-233-US 2 Bay Affordable Desktop NAS with ARM Cortex-A55 Quad-core Proces	MIX	Amazon	USA	5.59 OFF (WAS 280)	OPEN today
ASUSTOR Drivestor 4 AS1104T SAN/NAS Storage System - Realtek RTD1296 Quad-core (	MIX	Amazon	USA	36.09 OFF (WAS 327)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-433-4G-US 4 Bay NAS with Quad-core Processor, 4 GB DDR4 RAM and 2.5GbE N	MIX	Amazon	USA	56.8 OFF (WAS 360)	OPEN today
Synology DiskStation DS1522+ 5-Bay NAS Enclosure - 5 x 3.5 or 2.5" SATA HDD/SSD,	MIX	Amazon	USA	20.6 OFF (WAS 358)	OPEN today
QNAP QXG-10G2SF-X710 Carte réseau Interne	MIX	Amazon	USA	18.95 OFF (WAS 375)	OPEN today
Asustor AS5304T 4 Bay NAS, 1.5GHz Quad-Core, 2 2.5GbE Port, 4GB RAM DDR4, Gaming	MIX	Amazon	USA	94 OFF (WAS 459)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-462-4G-US 4 Bay Multimedia Desktop NAS with Intel Celeron Dual-core Proc	MIX	Amazon	USA	65.85 OFF (WAS 439)	OPEN today
QNAP QHora-301W Wi-Fi 6 IEEE 802.11ax Ethernet Wireless Router	MIX	Amazon	USA	20 OFF (WAS 430)	OPEN today
Asustor Lockerstor 2 Gen2 AS6702T - 2 Bay NAS, Quad-Core 2.0 GHz CPU, 4X M.2	MIX	Amazon	USA	23.81 OFF (WAS 459)	OPEN today
QNAP 12-Port Half-Width Rackmount 10GbE Managed Network Switch (QSW-M3212R-8S4T-	MIX	Amazon	USA	49.61 OFF (WAS 611)	OPEN today
Synology DS423+ 4 Bay Desktop NAS Storage Server	MIX	Amazon	USA	30.82 OFF (WAS 550)	OPEN today
Synology DS923+ 4-Bay Diskstation NAS (AMD Ryzen 4 Threads R1600 Dual-Core 4G	MIX	Amazon	USA	6.9 OFF (WAS 632)	OPEN today
Synology 16 Channel NVR Deep Learning Video Analytics DVA1622 with HDMI Video Ou	MIX	Amazon	USA	145 OFF (WAS 745)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-431XeU-2G 4-Bay 1U Short-Depth Rackmount NAS with 10Gbe SFP+ Port	MIX	Amazon	USA	6.56 OFF (WAS 661)	OPEN today
Synology DiskStation DS923+ 4-Bay NAS Enclosure Server \| AMD Ryzen R1600 Dual-Co	MIX	Amazon	USA	150.99 OFF (WAS 850)	OPEN today
Synology 4-Bay Rackmount NAS RackStation RS422+ (Diskless),Black	MIX	Amazon	USA	32.46 OFF (WAS 732)	OPEN today
Synology DS1522+ 5-Bay Desktop NAS Solution 5x3,5/2,5" SATA HDD/SSD, 2X M.2 2280	MIX	Amazon	USA	40.78 OFF (WAS 759)	OPEN today
QSW-M3216R-8S8T Half-width Rackmount 16-Port 10GbE Layer 2 Web Managed Switch fo	MIX	Amazon	USA	745.81 OFF (WAS 1511)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-410E-8G-US 4 Bay Professional fanless Desktop NAS with Intel Celeron Qua	MIX	Amazon	USA	14.86 OFF (WAS 803)	OPEN today
CH ASUST\|AS6706T R	MIX	Amazon	USA	145 OFF (WAS 1213)	OPEN today
Synology 4 Bay NAS 1.4Ghz Quadcore CPU - RS422+ Rack Station, Black	MIX	Amazon	USA	42.55 OFF (WAS 866)	OPEN today
Asustor 12-Bays FS6712X - Celeron N5105 2.0GHz (Quad-Core), 4GB DDR4, 12 x M.2 S	MIX	Amazon	USA	172.85 OFF (WAS 1191)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-432PXU-RP-2G 4 Bay High-Speed SMB Rackmount NAS with Two 10GbE and 2.5Gb	MIX	Amazon	USA	4.08 OFF (WAS 943)	OPEN today
Synology Diskstation DS1621+ DiskStation DS1621+, NAS, W125846548 (DiskStation D	MIX	Amazon	USA	243.8 OFF (WAS 1197)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-433eU 4-Bay NAS, 1U Rackmount Design, Short Depth, Edge Storage, File Ma	MIX	Amazon	USA	30 OFF (WAS 999)	OPEN today
Synology 4-Bay RackStation RS822+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	81.49 OFF (WAS 1081)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-431X-2G-USARM-based NAS with Hardware Encryption, Duad Core 1.7GHz, 2GB	MIX	Amazon	USA	10.3 OFF (WAS 1049)	OPEN today
NAS Server AS6510T 10 BAHIAS Atom C3538 Quad CORE DENVERTON 2.1 GHz 8 GB 2 x 2.5	MIX	Amazon	USA	10.85 OFF (WAS 1081)	OPEN today
Synology DS224+ 2-Bay Diskstation NAS (Intel Celeron J4125 4-Core 2.0 GHz 2GB DD	MIX	Amazon	USA	59.01 OFF (WAS 1178)	OPEN today
QNAP QVP-21C Surveillance Camcorder	MIX	Amazon	USA	17 OFF (WAS 1144)	OPEN today
Serwer NAS TS-464eU-8G 4x0HDD 1U Intel Celeron N5105/N5095 8G	MIX	Amazon	USA	45.9 OFF (WAS 1371)	OPEN today
Synology DS224+ 2-Bay Diskstation NAS (Intel Celeron J4125 4-Core 2.0 GHz 2GB DD	MIX	Amazon	USA	5.26 OFF (WAS 1144)	OPEN today
Synology DS423(Realtek RTD1619B 2GB RAM 2X RJ-45 1GbE LAN) 4-Bay 16TB Bundle wit	MIX	Amazon	USA	195.89 OFF (WAS 1345)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-473A NAS Tower Ethernet LAN Black V1500B TS-473A, W126324001 (LAN Black	MIX	Amazon	USA	71.93 OFF (WAS 1295)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-432PXU-2G	MIX	Amazon	USA	25 OFF (WAS 1272)	OPEN today
Synology 8 Bay RackStation RS1221+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	67.03 OFF (WAS 1367)	OPEN today
Synology 4-Bay RackStation RS822RP+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	91.98 OFF (WAS 1392)	OPEN today
Synology RX1217 Expansion for RackStation (Diskless) 88 mm x 482 mm x 696 mm	MIX	Amazon	USA	119.26 OFF (WAS 1456)	OPEN today
QNAP QGD-3014-16PT: 14 1GbE RJ45 PoE Ports(IEEE 803.3at PoE ++, W125905474 (PoE	MIX	Amazon	USA	14 OFF (WAS 1641)	OPEN today
QNAP 4-Bay TS-464U-8G Storage - Intel Celeron N5095 2.9GHz (Quad-Core), 8GB DDR4	MIX	Amazon	USA	15 OFF (WAS 1684)	OPEN today
Synology 8 bay RackStation RS1221RP+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	84.23 OFF (WAS 1784)	OPEN today
Synology 8-Bay DiskStation DS1823xs+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	85.31 OFF (WAS 1885)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-1655-8G-US 16 Bay high Performance and high-Capacity Hybrid NAS with Int	MIX	Amazon	USA	138.31 OFF (WAS 1987)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-832PXU-4G Internal Ethernet 10000Mbit/s	MIX	Amazon	USA	19 OFF (WAS 1928)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-864eU-8G Nas Server	MIX	Amazon	USA	17 OFF (WAS 2034)	OPEN today
Synology 12-Bay RackStation RS2423+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	31.87 OFF (WAS 2063)	OPEN today
QNAP 12-Bay NAS Quad-core 1.7 GHz rackmount (TS-1232PXU-RP-4G)	MIX	Amazon	USA	31 OFF (WAS 2760)	OPEN today
TS-864eU-RP-8G \| 8 Bays, Intel Celeron Quad-Core, 1x PCIe Gen3, Redundant Power,	MIX	Amazon	USA	7 OFF (WAS 2762)	OPEN today
Synology 12 Bay Rack Expansion RX1222sas (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	21.18 OFF (WAS 3156)	OPEN today
QNAP TVS-h674-i3-16G Intel Core i3 Processor, 16 GB RAM, PCIe Gen 4 expandabilit	MIX	Amazon	USA	27 OFF (WAS 3190)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-1655-8G-US Storage NAS (Atom C5125 8-core processor, 2.8GHz/128GB(4×32G	MIX	Amazon	USA	1446 OFF (WAS 4805)	OPEN today
QNAP TVS-h674 6-Bay Core i5-12400 32GB NAS Enclosure	MIX	Amazon	USA	124.38 OFF (WAS 3601)	OPEN today
QNAP TVS-h874-i5-32G Intel Core i5 Processor, 32 GB RAM, PCIe Gen 4 expandabilit	MIX	Amazon	USA	18 OFF (WAS 3814)	OPEN today
Synology Disk Station DS3622XS+ - NAS Server - 12 Bays - SATA 6Gb/s - RAID RAID	MIX	Amazon	USA	2421.35 OFF (WAS 7031)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-1273AU-RP-8G	MIX	Amazon	USA	60 OFF (WAS 4028)	OPEN today
Synology 12 bay RackStation RS3621xs+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	395.45 OFF (WAS 5023)	OPEN today
QNAP TVS-h874 NAS Tower Ethernet LAN Black	MIX	Amazon	USA	40 OFF (WAS 4669)	OPEN today
Qnap TVS-H874T-I7-32G	MIX	Amazon	USA	2554 OFF (WAS 7511)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-1673AU-RP-16G 3U 16BAY2.2GHZ	MIX	Amazon	USA	47 OFF (WAS 5543)	OPEN today
QNAP Systems TVS-H874T-I9-64G 8 Bay I9 16C	MIX	Amazon	USA	364 OFF (WAS 6434)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-h1887XU-RP-E2334-16G E-2334 18b TS-h1887XU-RP-E2334-16G Intel Xeon E-233	MIX	Amazon	USA	56 OFF (WAS 6564)	OPEN today
Synology 12-Bay Rackmount NAS SA3410 (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	127.07 OFF (WAS 6961)	OPEN today
Synology 24-Bay FlashStation FS3410 (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	USA	644.46 OFF (WAS 8297)	OPEN today
Qnap TS-h3077AFU-R5-32G \| 30-Bay 2.5-inch SATA, All-Flash, Ryzen Pro CPU, 2 x 2.	MIX	Amazon	USA	66 OFF (WAS 7681)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-h1887XU-RP-E2336-32G E-2336 18b TS-h1887XU-RP-E2336-32G Intel Xeon E-233	MIX	Amazon	USA	66 OFF (WAS 7702)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-h1677AXU-RP-R7-32G \| 16-Bay 3.5"/2.5"-inch SATA, Ryzen Pro CPU, 2 x 2.5	MIX	Amazon	USA	525 OFF (WAS 8263)	OPEN today
Serwer NAS TS-h2490FU-7232P-64G AMD EPYC 7232P 64GB RAM	MIX	Amazon	USA	756 OFF (WAS 14862)	OPEN today
Qnap TS-h2490FU-7302P-128G 24 Bay U.2 NVMe All-Flash High Performance Low Latenc	MIX	Amazon	USA	151 OFF (WAS 18983)	OPEN today
Synology RackStation SA3610, 12-Bay 3.5inch Diskless 4xGbE/2x10GbE, NAS (2U Rack	MIX	Amazon	USA	1762 OFF (WAS 20572)	OPEN today
Synology High Density HD6500	MIX	Amazon	USA	100.8 OFF (WAS 20101)	OPEN today
QNAP NAS TS-133 0/1HDD Tower	MIX	Amazon	UK	5.35 OFF (WAS 160)	OPEN today
Synology RT2600ac – 4x4 dual-band Gigabit Wi-Fi router, MU-MIMO, powerful pare	MIX	Amazon	UK	5.69 OFF (WAS 178)	OPEN today
Synology DiskStation DS223J Network Storage Drive (White)	MIX	Amazon	UK	33.94 OFF (WAS 211)	OPEN today
Synology WRX560 WIFI 6 Mesh Router	MIX	Amazon	UK	7.77 OFF (WAS 228)	OPEN today
Asustor Drivestor 2 Pro Gen2 AS3302T v2, 2 Bay NAS Enclosure Network Storage, 1.	MIX	Amazon	UK	30.03 OFF (WAS 269)	OPEN today
QNAP QXG-10G2T carte réseau Interne Ethernet 10000 Mbit/s	MIX	Amazon	UK	9.42 OFF (WAS 266)	OPEN today
Synology DS224+ 2 Bay NAS Desktop: Efficient Storage Solution	MIX	Amazon	UK	20.99 OFF (WAS 320)	OPEN today
Synology RT6600ax - Tri-Band 4x4 160MHz Wi-Fi router, 2.5Gbps Ethernet, VLAN seg	MIX	Amazon	UK	30.2 OFF (WAS 331)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-433-4G-US 4 Bay NAS with Quad-core Processor, 4 GB DDR4 RAM and 2.5GbE N	MIX	Amazon	UK	12.68 OFF (WAS 379)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-264-8G \| 2-Bay, Intel Quad-core CPU, 2 x M.2 Slots, 2.5GbE Desktop NAS,	MIX	Amazon	UK	4.78 OFF (WAS 399)	OPEN today
Synology Disk Station DS620slim - NAS server - 6 bays - SATA 6Gb/s - RAID 0, 1,	MIX	Amazon	UK	4.95 OFF (WAS 471)	OPEN today
Synology DS223j 2-Bay Diskstation NAS (Realtek RTD1619B 4-Core 1.7 GHz 1GB DDR4	MIX	Amazon	UK	299.74 OFF (WAS 779)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-253E-8G 2-Bay Intel Quad-core CPU Multimedia NAS with Dual 2.5GbE, 8GB R	MIX	Amazon	UK	51.01 OFF (WAS 549)	OPEN today
QNAP Switch QSW-M2106R-2S2T \| 10 Gigabit, Managed, Rackmount incl. Rack Kit	MIX	Amazon	UK	8.3 OFF (WAS 638)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-464 Series \| TS-464-8G, 4-Bay, Intel Quad-core CPU, 2 x M.2 Slots, 2.5Gb	MIX	Amazon	UK	63.28 OFF (WAS 569)	OPEN today
Synology 4-Bay DiskStation DS923+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	UK	34.99 OFF (WAS 575)	OPEN today
Synology DS923+ 4 Bay NAS enclosure	MIX	Amazon	UK	34.99 OFF (WAS 575)	OPEN today
Synology 16 Channel NVR Deep Learning Video Analytics DVA1622 with HDMI Video Ou	MIX	Amazon	UK	139.76 OFF (WAS 731)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-233-US 2 Bay Affordable Desktop NAS with ARM Cortex-A55 Quad-core Proces	MIX	Amazon	UK	137.97 OFF (WAS 758)	OPEN today
Synology DS224+ 8TB 2 Bay NAS Solution installed with 2 x 4TB HAT3300 Drives	MIX	Amazon	UK	113.7 OFF (WAS 747)	OPEN today
Synology - DDR4 - module - 32 GB - DIMM 288-pin - 2666 MHz / PC4-21300 - 1.2 V -	MIX	Amazon	UK	18.78 OFF (WAS 699)	OPEN today
Synology 4 bay NAS 1.4Ghz Quadcore CPU - RS422+ Rack Station, Black	MIX	Amazon	UK	8.11 OFF (WAS 663)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-433eU 4-Bay NAS, 1U Rackmount Design, Short Depth, Edge Storage, File Ma	MIX	Amazon	UK	34.31 OFF (WAS 693)	OPEN today
Synology DS223 12TB 2 Bay Desktop NAS Solution installed with 2 x 6TB Seagate Ir	MIX	Amazon	UK	9.75 OFF (WAS 670)	OPEN today
QSW-3216R-8S8T Half-width Rackmount 16-Port 10GbE Unmanaged Switch for SMB/SOHO	MIX	Amazon	UK	16.74 OFF (WAS 774)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-464-8G-US 4 Bay High-Performance Desktop NAS with Intel Celeron Quad-cor	MIX	Amazon	UK	21.68 OFF (WAS 711)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-432X-4G NAS/storage server Tower Alpine Alpine AL-524 4 GB DDR4 Qnap QTS	MIX	Amazon	UK	12.7 OFF (WAS 758)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-431X-2G 4 Bay Desktop High-performance NAS Enclosure - 2 GB RAM, 1.7 GHz	MIX	Amazon	UK	6.43 OFF (WAS 706)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-453E-8G 4-Bay Intel Quad-core CPU Multimedia NAS with Dual 2.5GbE, 8GB R	MIX	Amazon	UK	14.92 OFF (WAS 716)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-473A-8G 4 BAY 2.2 GHZ 4C/8T	MIX	Amazon	UK	5.96 OFF (WAS 753)	OPEN today
Synology DS224+ 2-Bay Diskstation NAS (Intel Celeron J4125 4-Core 2.0 GHz 2GB DD	MIX	Amazon	UK	96 OFF (WAS 896)	OPEN today
QNAP QGD-1600 Géré Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) 1U Noir, Gris	MIX	Amazon	UK	14.79 OFF (WAS 863)	OPEN today
Synology DS224+ 32TB 2 Bay NAS Solution installed with 2 x 16 HAT3300 Drives	MIX	Amazon	UK	318.35 OFF (WAS 1224)	OPEN today
Synology DS1821+8bay NAS V1500B Quad-Core 2.2 GHz,Black	MIX	Amazon	UK	43.78 OFF (WAS 1091)	OPEN today
QNAP QGD-1600 Géré Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) 1U Noir, Gris	MIX	Amazon	UK	12.47 OFF (WAS 987)	OPEN today
Synology RackStation RS822+ Reliable data management for remote and branch offic	MIX	Amazon	UK	48.49 OFF (WAS 1016)	OPEN today
QNAP QSW-M5216-1T Ultra-high-speed 25GbE fibre managed switch with 10GbE connect	MIX	Amazon	UK	12.45 OFF (WAS 1413)	OPEN today
Synology DiskStation DS1621+ serveur de stockage NAS Bureau Ethernet/LAN Noir V1	MIX	Amazon	UK	17.64 OFF (WAS 1042)	OPEN today
Synology 4-Bay RackStation RS822+ (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	UK	188.55 OFF (WAS 1219)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-832PXU-4G Internal Ethernet 10000Mbit/s	MIX	Amazon	UK	9.48 OFF (WAS 1267)	OPEN today
Synology RX1217 - Storage enclosure - 12 bays (SATA-600) - rack-mountable - 2U	MIX	Amazon	UK	23.7 OFF (WAS 1252)	OPEN today
QNAP QGD-3014-16PT-8G - Desktop Smart Edge PoE Switch - Cost-optimized intellige	MIX	Amazon	UK	17.54 OFF (WAS 1345)	OPEN today
QNAP 8-Bay NAS quad-core 1.7 GHz rackmount, TS-832PXU-RP-4G	MIX	Amazon	UK	43.43 OFF (WAS 1489)	OPEN today
QuCPE-3032-C3558R-8G	MIX	Amazon	UK	25.42 OFF (WAS 1544)	OPEN today
QNAP QGD-1602 Managed L2 Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) 1U Black, Grey	MIX	Amazon	UK	27.46 OFF (WAS 1566)	OPEN today
Synology DS1621+ 24TB 6 Bay Desktop NAS Solution installed with 6 x 4TB HAT3300	MIX	Amazon	UK	63.02 OFF (WAS 1662)	OPEN today
TS-864eU-8G \| 8-Bay, Intel Celeron Quad-Core, 1x PCIe Gen3, 2.5 Gigabit, 2U Rack	MIX	Amazon	UK	964.33 OFF (WAS 2606)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-673A-8G 24TB 6 Bay Desktop NAS Solution \| Installed with 6 x 4TB Seagate	MIX	Amazon	UK	69.5 OFF (WAS 1764)	OPEN today
Synology DS1823xs+ 8 Bay NAS Desktop: High-Performance Storage Solution	MIX	Amazon	UK	15.57 OFF (WAS 1731)	OPEN today
QNAP 12-Bay NAS quad-core 1.7 GHz rackmount (TS-1232PXU-RP-4G)	MIX	Amazon	UK	41.41 OFF (WAS 1792)	OPEN today
QNAP TVS-472XT NAS Tower Ethernet LAN Black i3-8100T	MIX	Amazon	UK	31.11 OFF (WAS 1960)	OPEN today
QNAP QGD-1602-C3758-16G network switch Managed L2 2.5G Ethernet (100/1000/2500)	MIX	Amazon	UK	31.92 OFF (WAS 1984)	OPEN today
Synology RackStation RS1619xs+ - NAS server - 4 bays - rack-mountable - SATA 6Gb	MIX	Amazon	UK	203.83 OFF (WAS 2259)	OPEN today
QNAP QuCPE-3034-C3758R-16G Intel C3758R QuCPE-3034-C3758R-16G Intel Atom C3758R	MIX	Amazon	UK	32.99 OFF (WAS 2047)	OPEN today
Synology RS2423+ 12 Bay Rack NAS Storage Solution	MIX	Amazon	UK	14.03 OFF (WAS 2058)	OPEN today
QNAP TVS-672XT-i3-8G, 6bay, 8GB RAM, Thunderbolt 3, 10GbE ready NAS (Network-att	MIX	Amazon	UK	203.7 OFF (WAS 2283)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-473A-8G/48TB-REDPLUS NAS/storage server Tower Ethernet LAN Black V150	MIX	Amazon	UK	263.73 OFF (WAS 2464)	OPEN today
Synology RX1222sas Expansion Unit - Storage enclosure - 12 bays (SATA-600 / SAS)	MIX	Amazon	UK	217.86 OFF (WAS 2773)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-1273AU-RP 12 Bay High-Performance Rackmount NAS with 2 x 2.5GbE Ports, R	MIX	Amazon	UK	4.17 OFF (WAS 2641)	OPEN today
Synology Deep Learning NVR DVA3221 - NVR - 32 channels - networked	MIX	Amazon	UK	10.34 OFF (WAS 2656)	OPEN today
QNAP TVS-h874-i5-32G Intel Core i5 Processor, 32 GB RAM, PCIe Gen 4 expandabilit	MIX	Amazon	UK	17.57 OFF (WAS 2687)	OPEN today
QNAP QuCPE-7012	MIX	Amazon	UK	37.75 OFF (WAS 2902)	OPEN today
Synology RackStation RS2821RP+ 3U 16-Bay Rackmount NAS for SMB	MIX	Amazon	UK	19.97 OFF (WAS 3403)	OPEN today
Serwer NAS TS-H987XU-RP-E2334-16G Xeon E-2334 4C 8T 16GB	MIX	Amazon	UK	180.81 OFF (WAS 4474)	OPEN today
QNAP QuCPE-7012	MIX	Amazon	UK	71.21 OFF (WAS 4453)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-H1277AXU-RP NAS Rack (2 U) Ethernet/LAN Noir E-2136	MIX	Amazon	UK	71.16 OFF (WAS 4774)	OPEN today
Synology DS1821+/128TB HAT5300 8 Bay	MIX	Amazon	UK	15.47 OFF (WAS 6657)	OPEN today
Synology DiskStation DS3622XS+ 12 Bay Desktop NAS Solution, Installed with 12 x	MIX	Amazon	UK	212.46 OFF (WAS 7266)	OPEN today
Synology 12 Bay FlashStation FS2500 (Diskless)	MIX	Amazon	UK	23.7 OFF (WAS 7410)	OPEN today
Synology UC3400 12-bay 8 Core 8 GB Active-Active IP-SAN	MIX	Amazon	UK	47.6 OFF (WAS 8634)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-H3087XU-RP-E2378-64G 30 Bay Rackmount NAS Enclosure	MIX	Amazon	UK	83.84 OFF (WAS 10475)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-H1090FU-7302P-128G 10-Bay Rack TS-H1090FU-7302P-128G 10-Bay Rack Mount N	MIX	Amazon	UK	40.79 OFF (WAS 10412)	OPEN today
Synology DiskStation DS3622XS+ 12 Bay Desktop NAS Solution, Installed with 12 x	MIX	Amazon	UK	63.63 OFF (WAS 11161)	OPEN today
Synology FlashStation FS6400 - NAS server - 24 bays - rack-mountable - RAID 0, 1	MIX	Amazon	UK	290.61 OFF (WAS 15504)	OPEN today
QNAP TS-462-4G	NAS	NewEgg	USA	$366.75 (WAS 439)	OPEN 10th Oct	▼ 0%
QNAP TS-462-4G	NAS	NewEgg	USA	$366.75 (WAS 439)	OPEN 10th Oct	▼ 0%

————– Useful Links —————

US Amazon – Amazon USA Prime Day Official Page – Amazon UK Prime Day Official Page

Amazon Warehouse (20% Off Everything on Prime Day)

USA – UK – Germany

Synology NAS to Watch this Prime Day – Here

QNAP NAS to Watch this Prime Day – Here

Recommended PS5 SSDs to Buy this Prime Day – Here

Still unsure of what you need – use the Free Advice Section here on NASCompares.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcExDZOFykc]

Will Synology NAS be in the Amazon Prime Day 2022 Sale and Which Solutions?

Synology of currently midway through their latest generation of hardware releases and because of this we think during Prime Day there will be a good mix of the familiar hardware that has featured in previous sales over the last 12 months, as many of the 2018, 2019, and 2020 generation of NAS in the brand’s portfolio (such as the DS218/DS218play/DS418) is still available yet also starting to look a tad dated. These big sale events always tend to result in the lowest end of the Synology range (the cost-effective J series, DS220j and DS420j) appearing on limited offers. Finally, with new releases appearing gradually in the 2022 and 2023 generation, I think we will see Prime Day deals on their home and prosumer 2/4 bay solutions. Last year’s Prime Day AND Black Friday saw the DS920+ appear on a limited offer of £55/$75 off the RRP of this device and now the device is 2 years old, it will almost certainly reappear during the Prime Day Sale again. Here are the solutions I recommend you check on intermittently if you are looking for a Synology bargain:

Synology DS220j Budget-Friendly NAS

Realtek CPU + 512MB + 2-Bay

Synology DS418 Cost-Effective NAS

Realtek CPU + 2GB + 4-Bay

Synology DS920+ Media & Business NAS

Intel CPU + 4/8GB + 4-Bay

Will QNAP NAS be in the Amazon Prime Day 2022 Sale and Which Solutions?

QNAP TS-233 Cost-Effective NAS

ARM v8 + 2GB + 2-Bay

QNAP TS-453D Prosumer 4K NAS

Intel CPU + 4/8GB + 4-Bay + 2.5G

QNAP TS-364 2022 Gen NAS

New Intel CPU + 4/8GB + 3/5-Bay + 2.5G

NAS Upgrades to look for this Amazon Prime Day

CRUCIAL DDR4 Module

Value Memory Upgrade

Sabrent 3200Mhz Heatshield Memory

Highest Performance & Design

Startech 10GbE Upgrade

VERY Affordable 10G

Seagate Ironwolf 510 SSD

Best Price vs Durability Cache Drive

Will Terramaster NAS be in the Amazon Prime Day 2022 Sale and Which Solutions?

Terramaster F2-210 Low Price NAS

4-Core ARM v8 + 1GB + 2-Bay

Terramaster F5-221 Budget Media NAS

Intel CPU + 2/8GB + 5-Bay + 1G

Terramaster F5-422 Affordable 10G NAS

Intel 4-Core CPU + 4/8GB + 5-Bay + 10G

Will we see many NAS Hard Drive Deals this Prime Day from Seagate and WD?

NAS Hard Drives & SSD to Look for this Amazon Prime Day

WD Red HDD

5400RPM / 1-14TB

Seagate Ironwolf HDD

5900RPM / 1-14TB / Data Recov

WD Red SSD

SATA, M.2 SATA & PCIe3 NVMe

Seagate Ironwolf SSD

SATA, M.2 SATA & PCIe3/4 NVMe

Recommended IP Cameras, Web Cameras, PoE NVR and Surveillance Equipment the Prime Day

Surveillance/Camera Brands to watch this Amazon Prime Day

Reolink Surveillance

Smart Cameras, Value Cameras, Dual Lense

D-Link Surveillance

Cost-Effective, Wide Range, AI Services

Annke Surveillance

Excellent Nightvision Cameras – Affordable

ONVIF CAMERAS for NAS

Cameras for Synology/QNAP

Recommended Network Switches to keep an eye on this Amazon Prime Day

Switches to Look for this Amazon Prime Day

QNAP Network Switches

Smart Cameras, Value Cameras, Dual Lense

D-Link Network Switches

Cost-Effective, Wide Range, AI Services

Netgear Network Switches

Excellent Nightvision Cameras – Affordable

PS5 SSD Upgrades to Look for the Amazon Prime Day

WD Black SN850 – For Value

500GB – 2TB, Heatsink Option

Seagate Firecuda 530 – For Speed/Durability

500B – 4TB, Heatsink Option. Data Recov

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus – Best All-Round

1TB-8TB, PS5 Design H/S, 176L NAND

GAMMIX XPG X70 – Price + Design

INNOGRIT CONT, 2 H/S Options Inc

DON’T FORGET YOUR HEATSINK!!!

Sabrent PS5 Design H/S	ElecGear PS5 Designed H/S	Generic M.2 Heatsink ($10-12)

1. Choose Your Country

2. Search For Your Product

3. What Your Budget Is

MIN MAX

4. Sign Up for Deal Alerts

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgmotsyn8SU]

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Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Design, GUI and Customization

Rob Andrews — Sun, 03 Apr 2022 23:16:36 +0000

Synology DSM vs TrueNAS Part 1 – The GUI, Software Design and Customization

Choosing between these two incredibly popular platforms for secure storage, accessing and sharing your data is not easy! With Synology and DSM, you have a premium hardware+software platform that easily emulates entire operating system levels of features, with an incredibly user-friendly design, initiative controls and a wide range of included applications and services with their own mobile applications. In TrueNAS you have an open-source and largely free to download service that allows you to create a detailed and completely customizable storage system, built on one of the most popular file systems in the storage community, a wide degree of 3rd party support and ease of integration thanks to the hardware being DIY and widely customizable. Both NAS software platforms are used by home and business users alike, but with one of them being paid and the other being free, there are plenty of arguments as to why one NAS software might be better suited to your needs than the other. So today I want to compare Synology DSM 7 and TrueNAS Core, breakdown each of their individual pros and cons, how they differ and ultimately help you decide if you should choose TrueNAS or Synology for your own private server. Let’s begin.

Part II of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (06/04/22 – Storage Management, Access & Sharing)
Part III of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (08/04/22 – Security, Apps, Add ons and the Conclusion)
Alternatively, you can read the (LONG) Guide of Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core is available HERE.

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Design & Navigation

Although the majority of NAS systems can be accessed via 3rd party software in your home or business, the majority of users still opt for controlling their NAS system via the browser-based GUI that these systems arrive with. In the case of both Synology and TrueNAS, navigation via all common web browsers is possible and supported on the popular operating systems out there. However, both brands take a notable different approach on how they allow the connect end-user (admin or general user) to interact with the NAS. Synology uses the DSM (Diskstation Manager) platform currently in it’s 7th version and it is widely regarded as one of the most user-friendly user interfaces out therefore managing your NAS. Styled on the Mac OS (with a little windows and Android settings in places) you are given the feeling of accessing a complete operating system via your web browser.

Navigation of DSM is pretty intuitive and the desktop/wallpaper can be customized, alongside the user control options and start menu largely being where you would expect them to be. This opens out into a greater range of software and system control options, presented as icons.

The arrangement of the tools and applications that the system arrives with (as well as those you choose to add later from the app center) are all presented here and you can choose to drag and drop these onto the desktop if you so choose. It feels incredibly straightforward and easy to use.

TrueNAS has a little bit more of a technical stance and whereas Synology has opted for emulating common domestic OS’ and making it chewable-easy-user-friendly, TrueNAS Core (version 12 for this comparison) favours providing the end-user with a tremendous amount of information and control in it’s GUI. TrueNAS (formally FreeNAS) is a platform that, despite its open-source and free availability, does not scrimp on the control and services that it offers in terms of managing your storage. The primary screen of the TrueNAS Core GUI presents lots of details about your storage, network, system hardware health and attempts to fit all this into a single screen (something that will eventually overspill as more services and storage targets are added over time). It can be quite overwhelming at first glance, but you cannot deny that TrueNAS is providing you with much more information at initial access than DSM.

Of course, this larger array of information, options and configuration choices so early on leads to quite a high learning curve requirement from the GUI of TrueNAS in your initial use. The display and theme customization of the GUI can be reached from the top right of the screen as you might intuitively expect. As with the desire by the designers of TrueNAS to allow practically all controls and tools to be accessible from that initial screen, all the options to navigate system management, changing settings, adding services and accessing 3rd party applications you choose to install are ALL listed in a breadcrumb style list of options on the left-hand side of the screen (each branching out into their subcategories.

Now, unlike the Synology DSM approach of trying to emulate an operating system, the GUI of TrueNAS is much more comparable to WordPress and control panels of web servers and switches. It is a greater degree more technical and whilst trying to find a middle ground between the accessibility of tools and customization, it can be quite daunting. To access the tools and applications that you install from the community pool of apps, you need to head into the add-on area and you can access their own respective GUI from there. This is still customizable and you can make additions to the primary GUI window of TrueNAS, but it is not something that you are going to click with immediately unless you have greater experience of more factual GUIs

Another quality of life design choice in DSM7 from Synology that is worth highlighting is the inclusion of a search functionality built into the main window of the GUI. This allows a user who is looking for a specific setting, service, tool or file to search the system quickly and easily. This is a small extra that is absent on TrueNAS but clearly something that has a place in modern software GUIs and OS’ (as this is all too often how most people navigate their platforms – gone are the so, so precise days of the Windows XP, Vista and 7 ‘Start’ menu – sigh). I am very surprised that this is not something available on TrueNAS as it would hugely counter the menu-overload that the GUI can cause at times for the less experienced.

However, when it comes to the areas where most users (especially the admins and techies) WANT more details and info at their fingertips, TrueNAS is largely unbeatable and one prime example of this is in the resource monitor and reports on how the system is performing. The TrueNAS platform provides a frankly insane amount of both live and historical information in the drive media, the pools, the interfaces, the system hardware, EVERYTHING! this information can be broken down into completely bespoke reports with numerous X/Y access variables. This is done incredibly quickly and all this is provided in the free TrueNAS Core and Scale, not just the premium TrueNAS Enterprise platform.

DSM 7 from Synology on the other hand is a little lighter on the details. You have a very barebones activity monitor on the initial GUI login via your browser in the bottom right corner (intentionally, to not overwhelm the user) which can be opened out easily into the dedicated Resource monitor. This monitor DOES provide a good amount of information on the system hardware, network and storage, but it is a little bit tame and limited when compared against the resource monitoring of TrueNAS. Likewise, you CAN enable historical information, but this is disabled by default and even then the level of information is still a little more limited by comparison to TrueNAS.

Now it is worth mentioning that Synology DOES have a much, MUCH more analytical and detailed system health monitoring service available in the form of Active Insight, that allows you to really, REALLY breakdown the health of your system+storage (as well as multiple other NAS systems in a single GUI) and produce some staggering detailed reports to be generated in the GUI or emailed to system admins/managers. However Active Insight is a subscription service and not available by default with your Synology NAS purchase, so although it IS available, the fact that this is an additional subscription locked model will put some users off a little.

Overall the user-friendly design, ease of use and intuitive design of Synology DSM genuinely cannot be understated, making it considerably more appealing to newer users and those who want a clear pathway toward their intended system setting, service or application. TrueNAS Core on the other hand is a significant degree more technical in its approach and can be both complex to navigate for the less novice user and intimidating to those fearful of making a miss-step when managing the system. This ends up meaning that the move overwhelming TrueNAS GUI can be a gold mine of control and information compared to DSM 7 for those that are willing to put the time in to learn. Whereas Synology DSM is considerably easier to navigate, but the extent to which it can be adapted and controlled via the GUI is also much less customizable.

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Users & Customization

As soon you have established your TrueNAS or Synology NAS system, you are likely going to start customizing the system to your own specific network and requirements. Most of the time this means that you will want to create several users, groups or system identities for applications to access your storage and in turn grant those accounts with their own range of storage access privileges, system powers and security settings. Both Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core allow you to do this, but once again the way in which they do this and the extent to which this can be approached differ noticeably on these platforms. Synology has an option in its control panel to allow you to create multiple user accounts, then give those individual accounts access to pre-defined folders and storage, as well as system application access, quotas and even rules on password validity. This is then further built on with similarly approached group structures with those same customization options, but also allows you to move one or more users in between groups to adapt their access/quotas as they move (useful for company staff and their teams).

TrueNAS offers a very similar level of creation and control in user and group creation, squeezing the window-by-window creation that DSM uses in its user-creator windows into a single window – which as you might expect is a great deal more informative BUT is another bit of detail overload at times once your system and structure increases in complexity over the years). In the case of both TrueNAS and Synology DSM 7, these user accounts each allows the owner to access the NAS in a separate/parallel access login via the GUI and connected services, as well as having security and access rules in place that can block malicious access as needed. These rules and access rights can be adapted on the fly by the admin easily on both DSM and TrueNAS.

One thing that is absent in TrueNAS (which is available to a degree in TrueNAS Scale however) but IS available on DSM is the option to create bulk accounts quickly, as well as upload an existing CSV of user accounts to the NAS. For those that are migrating from an existing database and want to move their user data over (and then move these users into groups), this is going to be a useful extra option. Not something for the long term, but a nice initial service nonetheless.

Both systems allow you to adapt the admin powers of existing users quickly, but it is also worth highlighting that the Synology NAS platform allows you to change a user’s credentials and access temporarily higher in a semi-automated ‘delegation’ option in the user control UI. TrueNAS has a similar setting to this, but lacks the timed management and ease of switching on the fly in how it is presented in DSM.

The design of the GUI in your web browser on both TrueNAS and Synology DSM are both a little rigid in just how much you can adapt what you can see and change to your liking. Both platforms allow you to change elements of the colours on screen and user login avatar to a point, however, the TrueNAS platform provides a much wider degree of choice of customization, thanks to its theme creator. This allows you to choose between a range of present colour/icon themes, as well as create your own colour pallet, font scale/detail and adapt the icons to your liking. Its only a few minor extras, but it is something that no other NAS platforms account for in their customization.

The Synology customisation in its GUI is a lot more limited, however, with the wallpaper, text sizing and icon changes being the only real options. That really surprises me, given the operating system vibe that DSM provides in the web browser GUI.

Overall, this is another case of Synology DSM being more user-friendly than the TrueNAS platform, but both platforms provide a similar level of user creation and customization. That said, the Synology DSM platform is pretty rigid in how you can customize the GUI in terms of fonts, icons and structure (only really offering the wallpaper and icon changes really) compared with the custom theme creation built into TrueNAS. That sad, bulk user creation and the option to import existing CSVs of users onto DSM are an often overlooked but huge time saving extra that I was surprised was not available on TrueNAS Core (but available on SCALE sort of). Overall, I think more complex user creation is going to run better on the TrueNAS platform, but fairly straightforward and larger-scale user creation is going to be much faster and easier on Synology DSM.

Part II of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (06/04/22 – Storage Management, Access & Sharing)
Part III of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (08/04/22 – Security, Apps, Add ons and the Conclusion)
Alternatively, you can read the (LONG) Guide of Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core is available HERE.

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Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Security, Apps, Add ons and the Conclusion

Rob Andrews — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 23:16:59 +0000

Synology DSM vs TrueNAS – Security, Apps and the Verdict

This is the 3rd and final part of my full comparison of Synology NAS DSM 7 and TrueNAS Core 12. If you missed the earlier chapters/parts, you can find them in the links below:

Part I of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (04/04/22 – Design, GUI and Customization)
Part II of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (06/04/22 – Storage Management, Access & Sharing)
Alternatively, you can read the (LONG) Guide of Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core is available HERE.

Now, if you read through my details on file/folder management on TrueNAS and Synology DSM, then you might have a good idea how this is going to go down when comparing these two platforms. However, it’s not quite as cut-and-dry as it might seem. Unsurprisingly, the range of first-party tools and applications is greater on the Synology DSM platform and graduating slightly from the SaaS apps mentioned earlier, Synology also offers a range of business and enterprise-class tools for backups, hybrid cloud synchronization and management tools for a wider array of systems in multiple locations in their CMS services. Now, TrueNAS supplies a lot of the wider area, multi-site services in their TrueNAS Command and TrueNAS Enterprise services (subscription/premium based) but regardless of all this, the range of applications in the 1st and 3rd party support are overall still larger on the Synology DSM NAS platform, with a wide array of applications immediately available and signed/trusted by the brand in the app center.

TrueNAS Core (indeed, the bulk of the TrueNAS platforms really) are much more community contributed and that results in far fewer first-party premium applications being available (with many elements that Synology offers as standalone applications being rolled into the general services of TrueNAS). Nevertheless, TrueNAS does arrive with a large range of third party applications available in the add-on center that are pre-configured for faster deployment in the TrueNAS environment. However, many TrueNAS/FreeNAS purest will choose to go full custom and homebrew and TrueNAS has tremendous flexibility in this direction. Allowing you to create custom containers (know as JAILS) that you can install community apps safely and then run very, very bespoke applications and services on your TrueNAS remotely.

Now, as proprietary, closed and (dare I say it) stuffy as Synology is, it is also worth mentioning that there actually is a surprisingly active homebrew scene on the DSM platform that, although Synology does not really support formally, do not detur. This community comprises of two main areas, the GitHub modifying crowd who will create custom tools (typically modified from existing Linux or windows applications/tools) and then modify them into Synology deployable .spk installation files or SSH command groups. The other marginally more accessible group (at least to the average user) is the Synocommunity app repository which is far more comparable to the office app center in appearance and installation. As mentioned, although Synology does not really support this, they also do not really stop users from pursuing this, adding an option in the settings menu that allows access to unsupported apps, uncertified applications and adding third party application repositories.

As mentioned, unlike the wider design of TrueNAS to make itself easier to be accessed by existing 3rd party network applications and services, Synology DSM focused ALOT more on those first-party applications and provides a wide variety of tools that are genuinely stand out – not just good as they are, but they really do rival enterprise and premium business tool. A couple of big examples of that are Synology Surveillance Station and Synology Active Backup. The Surveillance Station application is a web browser (and desktop/mobile client) supported video surveillance platform that allows you to add multiple cameras to your network environment and create a hugely customizable and secure surveillance environment. With the support of thousands of IP cameras that you can pick up for as little as $30 all the way up to enterprise AXIS cameras, the platform supports a vast variety of features. These include; Pan tilt Zoom control, Watermarking, Privacy masks, eMaps, Browser control/views, simultaneous archive+livefeed views, IP speaker control, intelligent recording patterns and more. It is a genuinely enterprise platform for your security, just do remember that the bulk of Synology NAS hardware only arrives with support of 2 cameras by default and adding more cameras costs an extra $30-50 (prices vary based on bulk packs) per camera. Although TrueNAS supports numerous surveillance platforms already (with at least one supported as an app in the add-on center and others able to point their storage recordings at the TrueNAS system) these will likely have their own subscription payments attached.

The other big, big enterprise application that the Synology DSM platform includes is Active Backup Suite, a single portal, multi-client backup management tool. Now, this isn’t to be confused with Synology Hyper Backup (with does manage backups, but in a far lower level and client way), which is designed to backup much more high profile storage and devices. These can range from local PCs and clients tools, to virtual machine hypervisors such as VMware and Hyper V and SaaS cloud services in Office365 and Google Workspace. This is provided licence free and is comparable (favourably too) against other enterprise-grade hybrid backup tools for businesses that cost thousands of pounds a year. It is quite a resource-hungry tool and I would not really recommend it for a more affordable Synology NAS, but it’s a real deal-breaker. Once again, there IS support of third party applications that provide these services on the TrueNAS app center, but they almost certainly have their own price plans attached.

Now, this has all been rather one-sided up to this point and it makes it sound as if TrueNAS does not have any applications. It really, really does, but they typically fall into those two categories of ‘3rd party supported’ or ‘integrated into TrueNAS natively’. TrueNAS takes the arguable mature decision to ashew the idea of 1st party applications in favour of these being existing services from within their software. Everything from iSCSI support to the individual file-sharing protocols being default on/off settings on day 1, TrueNAS has a lot of native software services built-in from the start and they can be enabled easily. The lack of 1st party applications available for first-party hardware clients (mobile clients and desktop clients) is noticeable, but as long as you are thinking about the TrueNAS system as an additional storage system to your setup and not its own independent system, then you will likely never even notice.

One big factor for more business geared users who are considering TrueNAS is how each NAS system approaches the subject of virtual machine deployment. The NAS hardware certainly serves as a base to host multiple VMs, but the need for a dedicated and competent hypervisor to host and mouth them all will make all the difference. In the case of TrueNAS, virtual machine creation and deployment is noticeably easier to do than on the face of it and straight away from the initial GUI, you can create a flexible virtual machine hardware system, customizable from the ground up.

Now, Synology also supports the ability to create a virtual machine, but they do so by installing the Synology Virtual machine manager software. The Synology VMM platform is a professional grade virtual machine platform that is included with your Synology NAS hardware purchase in DSM7 and allows you to create virtual machines quickly and easily. This hypervisor platform genuinely can rival the likes of VMware in its ease of use and even includes the means to convert/adapt existing Virtual machine images from other 3rd platforms into its own more compatible structure within a few clicks. Overall, the virtual machine support on DSM is a little broader than TrueNAS, but TrueNAS core is significantly more customizable in its hardware variables, as well as allowing more options during the creation of a new virtual machine environment on day 1.

When it comes to optional upgrades and add-ons to the NAS system, you cannot really fault the options that Synology’s DSM platform offers. Yes, Synology DSM is a paid platform vs the free-to-download open-source structure of TrueNAS, but even then, you can see where a lot of that money has been reinvested into DSM. Synology is remarkably keen to replace the core 3rd party applications that most users feature in their network environment, creating a closed Ecosystem, etc that provides all those applications under a first-party banner. The TrueNAS platform on the other hand provides virtual machine deployment options in its primary system software and is even the tiniest pinch more customizable in how you can build your Virtual Machine environment. This is also improved on a hardware level when you bear in mind that TrueNAS is hugely free in its hardware build and it allows end-users to build a powerful computer base for TrueNAS to then divide into different VMs as needed. Synology has some relatively powerful server-grade hardware at their enterprise level, as well as active-active servers with dual CPU setups that build with Intel Xeon Silver processors, but the hardware is still a fixed specification and aside from improving memory modules and adding caching, the scalability to the hardware on the NAS for multiple VM deployments will always be greater on TrueNAS in the long run. Ultimately, Synology still largely wins the battle of 1st party applications, add-ons and 3rd party hardware with their recent hardware, but the margin between the TrueNAS configuration and flexibility vs the Synology fixed but straightforward deployment is certainly worthy of note.

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Security

As you might expect from software that has been developed at a time when data security concerns have never been higher, both Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core are among the most secure platforms that you can store your personal or commercial data on. As bold a claim as that sounds, these two NAS platforms have been the least affected by ransomware, malware and exploited vulnerabilities over the years, with the only notable event being back in 2014 with Synolocker. Indeed, both brands have their very own Security Advisory pages that publish any found vulnerabilities and gives status updates on how they are being dealt with, with TrueNAS HERE and Synology HERE. All that said, both platforms are architecturally very different in how communication between services, tools and applications can communicate inside the system, as well as how security management is presented to the end-user. Moreso than arranging your storage, the Security settings and recommended setup for an individual user is going to be of huge concern on day one. Of the two brands, unsurprisingly, Synology has presented this in a much more user-friendly fashion, with the inclusion of a security advisory panel that can be run any time or on a schedule. This tool checks a wide variety of settings that can range from password strength, to active users, to ports, app controls, redundancy, backups and more. It is a really useful tool to those that do not fully understand the intricacies of keeping their system secure on a tech level and is something that really surprises me is absent on TrueNAS.

The TrueNAS platform on the other hand chooses the usual angle of providing a huge amount of control via a single screen (which to be fair features a lot of tips/? bubbles for guidance at times) that allows the users to choose how and what they want to allow to communicate. One useful thing to note is that by default, ALL of these communication settings and system tools that can affect your security are OFF by default. This isn’t particularly unusual (as many of these would be off on most NAS platforms), but on other NAS software such as Synology DSM or QNAP QTS, these settings and services are spread across multiple areas of the GUI control panel ad file services. Having them ALL listing in a single window so you can change settings much quicker makes a lot of sense and in terms of shutting ALL the doors in the event of a network security concern, this can save valuable time.

And whilst we are on the subject of being aware of security concerns (as well as when your system is exhibiting unusual behaviour) TrueNAS definitely provides a much better range of customizations on security alerts and notification than Synology DSM. That isn’t to say that Synology DSM doesn’t have notifications, it has lots of settings and they are be scaled as ‘light’, ‘medium’ ‘high’ and ‘custom’ for your convenience. But TrueNAS has an enormous ranging list of notification options that affect some remarkably detailed areas of system/network behaviour. They will take quite a long time to scroll and adjust if you want a truly bespoke notifications and alerts setup, but it simply has more variables than the default Synology DSM 7 NAS package. Now I say ‘default package’ because once again, Synology does have the subscription-based service Active Insight that is considerably better, can be broken down into excruciating precise detail and allows you to create custom reports that are delivered in a much more ‘human’ email format to the managers concerned. It is just a shame that this service is an additional subscription service and not one that is included with the system.

Then you have the often applauded TrueNAS Jails system that, although similar to Linux containers in the description, are much more secure and sophisticated. TrueNAS jails are contained instances of FreeBSD and they can be used to create standalone services and environments, with fully customizable levels of access to the rest of the system, your storage and users. By default, JAILS are almost completed separate from the rest of the system and in order to allow select users or services to interact with the JAIL (in either direction) is something the user needs to implement themselves which means that the chances of accidentally making an unsecured JAIL are reduced. Now, Synology DSM allows container creation for those homebrew/custom services to be added, as well as handling some 3rd party tools in its app center such as Plex Media Server (which hinges quite a lot of remote access port opening and access to your file/folder structure more than most) very securely. However, the services and tools that you install in the Synology NAS are tougher to configure on a detailed level (unless you use Putty and have some SSH knowledge, and even then it’s not guaranteed) and this makes the JAILS system of TrueNAS come out of it better.

Then you have the subject of Encryption. For those that are not aware, when it comes to encryption on a network-attached storage server, that can mean one of two areas. There is an encrypted connection that can be facilitated by an SSL certificate (both platforms support a wide range of paid/free SSL certificate options that can be applied to the system easily) OR much more often it can be referring to the data on your NAS living in a container that has encrypted lock and key architecture. This means that during the creation of your storage, you set the system to encrypt all data that is written to the disks and it can be mounted/locked with the use of an encrypted key or a downloaded digital key that was generated during setup. Now, as mentioned, both Synology NAS DSM and TrueNAS core support encryption, as well as supporting self-encrypted drives (SEDs). However, you can encrypt things to a wider degree in TrueNAS (Pools, zVols, zDevs, etc) than you can on the Synology DSM platform. Additionally, TrueNAS supports a wider range of encryption protocols and also supports an interesting ‘passphrase’ system that allows a user to lock/unlock their encrypted storage container quickly without entering a long key or keeping a digital encryption key on a local system.

Then there is the subject of security on the NAS in conjunction with connected and permitted users. We have covered that user and group account creation on Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core are quite comprehensive, but what about 2-Step authentication (also known as 2FA)? Two-step verification is the means to add an additional layer of user login verification by asking the user to provide a periodically generated code from an existing authentication tool (such as Google Authenticator on a mobile phone) that, although uses a 1 step setup algorithm, is randomly generated frequently. Now, Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core both provide this, but each has its own extra little spin on it in terms of how it is deployed. In the case of Synology, you can set up 2-step verification easily and on all associated system accounts, with numerous 3rd arty authenticator tools supported.

However, Synology go one step further and also provide their own authenticator tool for iOS and Android that allows you to keep your security in-house, as well as a few configuration options rolled in too. For companies that supply handsets to their staff, this allows them to keep continued use of Synology NAS storage to remain in a single company ecosystem. This also allows support of backing up the OTP profiles that you have created for logging into the NAS to your Synology Account. This resolves the often overlooked issue of if 1) you change phone devices and did not export your existing associated logins and more importantly 2) if you mobile phone unexpectedly fails/is lost, then you can restore the connected OTP login details very easily to a new handset.

Now Although TrueNAS does not have its own first-party authenticator application for iOS/Android (instead supporting the popular 3rd party applications out there) what TrueNAS DOES offer is an impressive range of setup customization options in its 2FA settings menu, allowing you to change the length of the code, the period of time between each refresh (VERY useful for those with accessibility difficulties and take longer to enter the access codes) and allows you to directly apply this customized code generation to SSH connections too. Although most users will likely stick with the default settings, I can definitely see particularly security-conscious users who need to distribute system access pretty widely liking this degree of flexibility.

Talking of wider access to the system, I do think it is also worth highlighting that TrueNAS is almost completely API designed. So, why is that important and related to security? Well, it is not always just going to be human users and installed applications that you might wish to access your NAS data. Alot of users are using the contents of a NAS to provide information to a remote services connection (such as web servers, external software CRM and CMS tools and security systems) and instead of supplying these services with powerful login credentials to the system (which can be a headache down the line if those account details, used in numerous smaller services, are changed for security reasons to the wider NAS system), they generate an API key to bridge the two and given that TrueNAS is massively API ready, it means that you can be quite flexible and customizable in the areas you connect. The Synology platform supports several API elements, but not to the same degree across the board as TrueNAS.

Overall, both the Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core platforms are very secure and although they take different approaches at times, they both seemingly come around to the same conclusion. On points, I would say that the TrueNAS system has the larger potential to be customized in its security setup, but (as usual) requires you to spend a greater deal of time to set it all up to your tastes/requirements. The Synology NAS DSM 7 platform on the other hand is considerably more user friendly (again, I know, I am a broken record) with options such as the security advisor to scan/change your system in line with its recommendations, as well as first-party tools in Active Insight and Secure Sign-in allowing you a much more brand supported experience. You can set up the security settings on a Synology NAS considerably faster than on a TrueNAS, but if you have a very particular idea of your network storage security setup, the TrueNAS platform provides a wider degree of flexibility there.

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Conclusion and Verdict

It is so easy to just look at the TrueNAS option as the free but complex choice and the Synology DSM option as the easy but expensive one, BUT the truth is a little more complex than that. For a start, the wide variety of customization and flexibility that is inherent to TrueNAS is something that I genuinely think only higher-end business users are going to be able to fully realise. Home users who are building their own NAS from scratch and opt for TrueNAS for the software will definitely enjoy customizing their solution to their needs/network-environment, but the most long term customizations, reports and adaptive protocols of TrueNAS are much better suited to a business that needs to change as business/staff/data grows. Ironically though, those users are going to be far more attracted to a ‘turnkey’ solution (i.e a NAS solution that is pretty much good to go, right out the box) and will pay for the privilege (i.e time is money). This is where Synology steps in quite confidently, as they know they are incredibly business appealing, with a massive range of first-party apps to migrate away from Google/Microsoft services, as well as management and security tools that are largely unparallel elsewhere in the industry. TrueNAS is still a viable option for businesses that desire an instantly deployable solution and business class support with the official TrueNAS hardware provider iXsystems providing pre-populated and customizable solutions, as well as tiered support subscriptions – but this only truly appeals to users who truly understand what FreeBSD and ZFS can provide that EXT4 and BTRFS cannot.

The Synology DSM platform is incredibly impressive and available in systems (as in included with the hardware as a single purchase) for as little as £120 (such as the DS120j) and scales up rapidly in price and power. Users who have little-to-no technical knowledge, do not have time to learn a new kind of technology and/or want to migrate away from cloud and SaaS services to a whole contained ecosystem without subscription costs, should opt for Synology NAS and DSM 7. It has a few subscription/license purchases on a few services, but is still largely a one-off purchase for the most part and the majority of Synology NAS users never buy an extra or a subscription. Alternatively, if you are someone who has the time and enthusiasm, already has the technical skills under their belt, has very specific storage and network requirements and/or are looking at a solution that they plan on upgrading and improving in the years that follow, then TrueNAS Core (and indeed TrueNAS Scale with Linux for that matter) is going to be a much better choice. What it lacks vs Synology DSM in 1st party applications and ease of use, it makes up for in a truly unbeatable range of customization and configuration choices that are unavailable elsewhere. Plus, ZFSis always going to be at the top of many pro-storage user lists – just remember that TrueNAS (unless you opt for an iXsystem) is Free, but the hardware and time you will spend deploying it was where it will cost you.

Those with unique storage requirements in terms of workflow or data structure
Users who are happy with/prefer community Support
Those Who Prefer an analytic GUI
Though who demand performance and happy to tweak things till they get it
Those who would rather spend their allocated budget on hardware, not software
Those with a dedicated IT Team/Individual
Users who like to fine-tune
Anyone that has ever built a PC
Anyone that prefers the power and customization of PC Gaming
Users who prefer a smaller but more concise number of plugins

Those who want to purchase a complete hardware/software solution to replace Google/DropBox etc
Users who prefer commercial-grade support
Those Who Prefer a graphic GUI
Users who want a 1st party ecosystem of hardware, software, add-ons and tools
Those who would rather spend their allocated budget on software/services, not hardware
The less tech-savvy that want the system to arrive ready to go (turn-key)
Users who want a system to do X thing X way without friction
Users who want simplified Warranty
Users who prefer Console Gaming as it is much more convenient and easy to deploy and enjoy
Users who prefer a wider variety of plugins

Part I of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (04/04/22 – Design, GUI and Customization)
Part II of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (06/04/22 – Storage Management, Access & Sharing)
Alternatively, you can read the (LONG) Guide of Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core is available HERE.

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Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Storage Management, Access & Sharing

Rob Andrews — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 23:16:48 +0000

Synology DSM vs TrueNAS Part 2 – Storage and File & Folder Management

This is the 2nd part of my full comparison of Synology NAS DSM 7 and TrueNAS Core 12. If you missed the earlier chapters/parts, you can find them in the links below:

Part I of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (04/04/22 – Design, GUI and Customization)
Part III of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (08/04/22 – Security, Apps, Add ons and the Conclusion)
Alternatively, you can read the (LONG) Guide of Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core is available HERE.

Almost certainly one of the biggest questions most users will have when considering TrueNAS and Synology DSM for their own private NAS server is how it manages storage. From how it keeps it accessible and stable, to how it reacts and adapts to changes in stability, these two NAS platforms have chosen their intended path very early and differ in some key ways. TrueNAS utilizes ZFS as its file system of choice and although it is a little more resource-intensive (predominantly in memory) to run its range of services, it is a fantastically enterprise file system that supports native inline deduplication across the system (i.e if data is being backed up from multiple clients is the same, such as OS data or shared databases, it only stores one copy and keeps an internal index of where that data is needed/stored across users), inline compression that saves storage space and a bunch of other advantages that are unique to ZFS. Synology and it’s DSM platform is (for the most part, barring some more economical devices in their portfolio) available using the BTRFS and EXT4 file systems.

Although EXT4 has a long-established history and support by storage users, BTRFS opinion is a little more divided as it is much newer than EXT4 or ZFS. Alot of that comes down to how BTRFS is implemented by the system, but in the case of Synology and DSM it is done so quite comprehensively and on the ground level. Indeed a number of key Synology applications insist on the use of BTRFS by the system in order to run (eg Synology Virtual Machine Manager). Both BTRFS and ZFS use a checksum/background comparison system on writers in order to identify errors and auto repair them, as well as both DSM and TrueNAS supplying a faster RAID rebuild system whereby only the areas of a rebuild drive that would have had data on them are built and the rest zero’d out. They also both provide low-resource consuming snapshot creation in the background and the ability to store many, many thousands of snapshot images with customized retention policies. There are lots of other similarities and differences to go through, but for now, let’s look at how Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core display your storage in the GUI.

ZFS	BTRFS	EXT4
XFS works extremely well with large files; XFS is known for its robustness and speed; XFS is particularly proficient at parallel input/output (I/O) operations due to its design, which is based on allocation groups; XFS provides excellent scalability of I/O threads, file system bandwidth, and size of files and of the file system itself when spanning multiple physical storage devices; XFS provides data consistency by using metadata logging and maintaining write barriers; XFS enables allocating space across extents with data structures stored in B-trees also improves overall file system performance, especially when dealing with large files; Delayed allocation with XFS helps prevent file system fragmentation, while online defragmentation is also supported; A unique feature of XFS is that I/O bandwidth is pre-allocated at a predetermined rate, which is suitable for many real-time applications. When comparing XFS vs EXT4, XFS also offers unlimited inode allocation, advanced allocation hinting (in case you need it), and, in recent versions, reflink support.	Journal and Copy-on-Write Support Filesystem-level Deduplication Filesystem-level Compression Support for huge files up to 2⁶⁴ bytes, which is the equivalent of 16EiB or exbibytes Online defragmentation and resizing Dynamic inode allocation Block sub-allocation and Tail packing Writeable and read-only snapshots Support for checksums Optimized support for SSD drives	Able to handle larger files and volumes than its evolutionary predecessors; EXT4 also extends flash memory lifespan through delayed allocation, which, in turn, improves performance and reduces fragmentation by effectively allocating bigger amounts of data at a time; Useful features that greatly increase reliability and fault-tolerance of the system like journaling (a system of logging changes to reduce file corruption); Persistent pre-allocation, journal, and metadata checksumming; Faster file-system checking; Unlimited number of subdirectories.

The Synology DSM Storage Manager GUI has received a relatively recent design change over the DSM 6.2 version and although it still continues with maintaining a high level of user-friendly design and ease of use, it features a little more graphical structure than previously. With Synology DSM only being commercially available when included with a hardware NAS purchase, it allows the graphical GUI to be a lot more specific to the NAS in a way that is not really possible in the open-source and DIY nature of TrueNAS. There are numerous options to set up a new storage pool, set up a hot spare, create your volumes, enabled intelligent caching with connected SSDs (SATA or NVMe) and there are a few extra options to allow auto RAID repairs and more. It provides all these settings whilst still maintaining a very easy to follow GUI.

The TrueNAS storage manager on the other hand, although EASILY more configurable and customizable to your needs, is also much, much more text/stat based and the configuration and creation options are built into a series of native settings menus on the side of each storage container. There are the ZFS specific details, such as adjusting and monitoring the inline compression/deduplication output, as well as the creation of volumes, data sets and further pools all being much more text-heavy. You do have a greater deal of control and flexibility in the storage manager in TrueNAS (as you expect) but it can be quite overwhelming and certainly not recommended to the novice.

Another consideration of choosing between TrueNAS and Synology DSM based NAS is how each system tackles the subject of redundancy in the storage. For those unaware, the bulk of storage systems in the world (NAS or DAS, which is direct-attached storage such as USB) that utilize more than 1x HDD/SSD media drive take advantage of something called RAID (redundant array of independent disks) which allows you to combine multiple media drives into a single pool of storage This is further bolstered by increases in performance (as multiple drives are read/written at once) and also allows safety nets for if one of the drives fails (known as redundancy). If, for example, you have 4 drives in a RAID that supports 1 drive of redundancy, it means if one drive was to malfunction, your data is still accessible and the RAID can be reverted back to normal when to install a new drive back into the system to replace the bad one. Now, this is all quite important, as TrueNAS+RAIDZ and Synology DSM+SHR+EXT4-RAID provide different benefits. Synology has its Hybrid RAID system (not available on the enterprise tiers) that allows you to mix and match drives in a way no other RAID configuration allows. In a traditional RAID, you need all HDDs or SSDs in the RAID to be the same capacity, otherwise, the redundancy and parity calculation will view all drives as the smallest available drive for stability (eg 4TB+4TB+4TB+1TB = 3TB storage in a mixed drive setup in normal RAID5). In Synology hybrid RAID you can mix the drive capacities, as it views the drives but calculates the redundancy and parity about the LARGEST available drive (so eg, 4TB+4TB+4TB+1TB = 9TB in a mixed SHR pool). This may sound silly on day 1, but after a few years of storage on your NAS, you may want to start introducing larger drives and expanding your pool of storage – so adding/mixing larger drives later will make ALOT more sense. Additionally, an SHR is much easy to expand and add more drives with an expansion enclosure than both EXT4 and ZFS.

ZFS on the TrueNAS platform does not have a flexible RAID configuration and instead, provides other advantages. RAID building (aka RAIDZ, RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3) is much, MUCH faster to build than RAID configurations, taking minutes as opposed to hours to finish synchronizing. Additionally, along with the fast RAID repair option that both DSM and TrueNAS provide, on a RAID Z3 configuration, you can create a 3 drive redundancy setting (i.e. create a RAIDD storage pool that can withstand up to three drives failing and still allow the data to be fine and RAID recoverable). For high-level enterprise users whose data is mission-critical and particularly in much, MUCH larger RAID arrays (12-24 bays and above on the hyper-scale) 3 disk redundancy is invaluable.

Synology provides up to 2 disk redundancy in RAID6 and SHR-2, but no real triple disk redundancy (though a somewhat haphazard version can be built with an SHR on two drives and adding more drives – much less efficient), however expanding your storage pool with larger drives or more drives on TrueNAS is not really viable. In Summer 2021 there were details on the means to expand your Storage Pool on ZFS/TrueNAS, but this system involves the added drives to live parallel with the original pool in a 2nd RAID group, running side by side technically (although only a single larger pool being visible) and being much less efficient.

RAID5 example of parity
Disk 1	Disk 2	Disk 3	Disk 4
1	2	3	P
5	6	P	4
9	P	7	8
P	10	11	12

In TrueNAS, choosing what you want to do with your connected storage media is broader in scope and creating pools, caching, fusion pools (when HDD+SSDs are combined for intelligently faster storage pools), hot spares and more is surprisingly well guided to the end-user. Equally, when creating your areas o storage, if you are creating an unrecommended or unstable setup (such as mixing storage media types in a traditional RAIDZ pool, mixing capacities, using unsuitable slower media for metadata and more) the system will warn you regularly throughout the build process and will not proceed until you choose to ‘force’ this option in the storage manager.

In the case of Synology DSM and its storage manager, there is a guide option that presents the end-user with choices on what do with an available drive, but they are a little more limited in scope and choice. Additionally, in most cases the Synology if you are running a setup that is less suitable will not let you proceed (no force it option in most cases). Finally, there is the subject of NVMe SSDs and Synology NAS. Despite Synology being one of the very first commercial NAS brands that offer off-the-shelf solutions to offer NVMe SSD support on their hardware, you can ONLY use NVMe SSD media on the Synology NAS hardware and DSM as caching, not for use in traditional storage pools. This will come as a bitter blow for some who have seen the prices of PCIe Gen 3 and even Gen 4 NVMe SSD storage become much more affordable. NVMe SSD use in Synology NAS hardware for caching is certainly beneficial and something that is widely available on this platform, but the lack of choice for the user to pick whether to use it as caching or as super-fast storage is a shame.

Another area of contention around the Synology NAS platform in recent months that might have played a part in why you are reading this article, is the brand’s recent change in the compatibility and DSM services policy on hard drives and SSDs on enterprise/big-business solutions. Synology currently provides a range of high workload, performance and durability Hard drives and SSDs in their portfolio that can be used in conjunction with all their NAS hardware. This media is rather good (as well as allowing users to upgrade the firmware of this drive media from with the Synology DSM software, something NO other commercial NAS brand offers). However, things get a little disruptive when the brand stated that their 2022 and onwards enterprise releases (such as the DS3622xs+ and DS2422+) will only provide all the software services in the storage manager to their own storage media drives, with 3rd party HDD/SSDs from brand such as Western Digital and Seagate in their respective WD Red and Ironwolf ranges) having fewer drive tools available and the system stating a warning status when using these drives. This rather divisive move by the brand (although only at the enterprise level and likely as a means to emulate top tier modelling from the likes of HP, EMC and NetApp) is something that currently does not affect the bulk of the Synology hardware available though and should only be a consideration to factor in at the higher tiers.

Returning to the subject of expandability, it is worth highlighting that although the expansion of RAID pools on TrueNAS is not really straightforward or efficient currently, the open-course nature and ZFS build of it DOES make hardware migration of an existing RAIDZ Pool into a new system considerably easier than it would be on a Synology NAS in DSM. Synology only allows hardware migration of RAID Pools in the Synology hardware ecosystem to stay within that same ecosystem and hardware which is larger and running the same version of DSM. TrueNAS and ZFS on the other hand is much more open, allowing you to exchange the storage pool directly into any DiY/Custom TrueNAS server as additional pools (eg, no need to replace the existing pool, just add it as another one in another enclosure, even a DAS over USB) and is also open source by design, so it will not lock out connectivity on a software level years and years later on a foreign system. As long as a system can see/understand ZFS (internally or as an external connection), it will be able to see your RAIDZ pool.

Once again, it should come as zero surprise that the TrueNAS platform is the more detailed, technical and least user-friendly BUT it also seems to have a greater degree of options in terms of long term mounting of the storage if your TrueNAS system fails or gets upgrading. Likewise, the appeal of overall faster RAID building, rebuilding and resilvering on TrueNAS with the bonus of triple parity will comfortably win over a lot of seasoned storage managers and admin managers with the time and knowledge to craft the ultimate storage system. That said, the Synology storage manager and the advantages DSM brings to their platform cannot be overestimated. BTRFS although a little greener in the eyes of some than ZF, is way, way less resource hungry and still provides data parity checks and file self heeling. Additionally, the flexibility of Synology Hybrid RAID and how it allows you to expand your storage on the primary Synology NAS system AND when connecting expansion chassis is something that is simply not available or poorly compared on TrueNAS currently. Synology’s policy on enterprise systems and HDD/SSD compatibility might be the thing that let’s this all down, as well as SHR not being an enterprise-level service on offer (not available above the PLUS series). But regardless, both Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core provide a huge level of storage capabilities.

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – File & Folder Remote Management

When it comes to accessing the data on your NAS on a file and folder level, I think it would be fair to say that Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core have quite differing views on this, especially when it comes to browser level access. Having all of your data in a stable, secure and robust hardware storage server is all well and good, but what good is it all if you cannot access it and via the means that best suit your client hardware. Both systems support numerous popular file protocols and storage sharing services that allow you to view and interact with your storage in their respectively tailored ways (mapped network drives, network mounted SMBs, remote internet-accessible WebDav protocols, iSCSI Targets & LUNS and many, many more. However, after that, the distinctions between Synology DSM and TrueNAS Core in web browser access and tailored proprietary file/folder access becomes very notable. Of the two, Synology DSM is much more accessible domestically and uses less complex means. One of the most oddly glaring advantages that less technical users will appreciate that is almost completely absent on TrueNAS is a simple file/folder explorer that is accessible in the web browser. This is not just a bog-standard breadcrumb structure viewer, but is a complete file manager with the ability to copy, paste, cut, archive, compress, view images, bolt-on remote storage, share files and more. This is usable in the DSM GUI on your web browser and is remarkably responsive, as well as client applications for iOS and Android that allow you to remotely access your Synology NAS storage on a file/folder level and manage the contents as you would in Windows File Explorer or MacOS Finder natively. The fact that this is not a native and easy option in TrueNAS is very surprising and although the file/folder breadcrumb structure can be accessed in a much more basic level (as well as in a detailed fashion by 3rd party applications and services) it is a really surprising omission on TrueNAS.

This trend continues further when you realise that there are a huge range of 1st party applications on the Synology DSM platform that are included with your system (licence free, for the most part and include mobile and desktop client applications too for native client hardware connection) that allow you to access the content of the folders on your NAS via their respective formats. TrueNAS has a number of first-party services built into its architecture and although they are no exactly applications, they are services and tools that are available to manage your storage quite comprehensively. Now, DSM has a lot (but not all) of these, but also have the file/folder access options that are not on TrueNAS. Key examples of this tailored NAS access such as Photography management in the Synology Photos application. This tool (with its partner mobile and desktop client apps) allows you to view photos in tremendous detail, create smart albums using photo metadata, using AI-supported services to search photo contents quickly, share photos with customizable rules and even create a professional share space that allows professional photographers to share access to their work with clients and professional colleagues.

Alternatively, there is the Synology media suite that includes music station for managing and customising an audio server collection, Video station to provide a similar level of video file management (including transcoding and metadata scraping) that is comparable to Plex Media Server, iTunes server, DLNA Media server and others that allow you to create smart or generic media server shares and more. Although 3rd party tools to accomplish this are supported on TrueNAS (with several of these tools being accessible in the add-on center of TrueNAS), the range of first-party tools to manage media on the Synology DSM NAS platform is unquestionably better.

Then you have efforts by Synology NAS and DSM to rival the likes of Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive and more with Synology Drive. This tool, in conjunction with the Synology collaboration suite) provides you with similar tools to SaaS (software as a service) platforms such as Google Workspace and Office 365. Synology Drive gives you a one portal web browser (and mobile/desktop app) access point to your NAS and can be used to open, edit, share all your files in a tailored fashion. This is done by DSMs collaboration suite that includes Synology Chat (like Skype or WhatsApp), Synology Office (like Office 365 and Google Drive), Synology Calendar, Synology Mail, Synology Contacts and more – a whole office suite of tools. This is further bolstered with Synology Drive local client on your host OS (predominately supported on Windows platforms) to allow file pinning and file streaming services. This means you can see the contents of your NAS file/folder structure, but can choose for it to not occupy ANY space on your PC – then you can just click the option in windows file explorer to access this file and/or pin it permanently. I know I am going on a bit here, but I am just trying to briefly cover how much Synology prioritizes 1st party access to their systems. Companies making the switch to NAS from the likes of Google Drive and DropBox shared storage will be right at home with the Synology and DSM range of servers compared with TrueNAS.

But what if you really just want to use the NAS as ‘dumb’ storage and have it appear as logical storage on your host client systems? This is typically an area where I would recommend TrueNAS over Synology DSM, as this is where the more flexible and wider 3rd party service support of that platform really shines. With a huge variety of services available on TrueNAS (that are securely disabled by default I might add), there is a huge array of choices of how you want to connect with your storage and although the learning curve on setting this up continues to be steeper than with DSM, I think I can safely say that TrueNAS will be able to connect with ANY client software/hardware, whereas DSM might connect with ‘most’ or ‘alot’

Synology DO support a variety of services and protocols and many are available to be viewed, configured and actioned in the control panel>file services, however, they do prioritize iSCSI mounting services for those that want to bolt-on areas of Synology services remotely to an existing network more than most other services in DSM, with the dedicated SAN manager. From here you can create some quite detailed targets and LUNS for use in everything from bog-standard 100M networks all the way up to 10/25/40G Fibre Channel networks.

Now, I should stress, that doesn’t; mean that TrueNAS have the means to allow users to access their data natively. The range of supported services and sharing tools built into TrueNAS is pretty vast and allows very customizable, secure and unique access remotely. Rather than attempting to emulate those SaaS and PaaS 3rd party providers, TrueNAS has instead chosen to concentrate SQUARELY on the storage element of the operation and then supporting as many 3rd party tools and services it can. In this, they achieve hugely and you cannot fault the storage management of TrueNAS and how it can adapt the storage pools, shares and access to best fit a particular connecting service. That means that if you were looking at a NAS server and were already heavily invested/comfortable with your existing 3rd party file/folder manage meant software, you will likely see a greater degree of flexibility and customization in the more open-source TrueNAS storage than Synology’s DSM platform that seems too much rather prioritize it’s own services (but still supporting 3rd party tools, in an arguably more uniform way).

Part I of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (04/04/22 – Design, GUI and Customization)
Part III of the TrueNAS vs Synology DSM Guide is HERE (08/04/22 – Security, Apps, Add ons and the Conclusion)
Alternatively, you can read the (LONG) Guide of Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core is available HERE.

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Synology DSM vs TrueNAS – Which is Best?

Rob Andrews — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 16:52:03 +0000

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Software Comparison

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Quick Conclusion

Those with unique storage requirements in terms of workflow or data structure
Users who are happy with/prefer community Support
Those Who Prefer an analytic GUI
Though who demand performance and happy to tweak things till they get it
Those who would rather spend their allocated budget on hardware, not software
Those with a dedicated IT Team/Individual
Users who like to fine-tune
Anyone that has ever built a PC
Anyone that prefers the power and customization of PC Gaming
Users who prefer a smaller but more concise number of plugins

Those who want to purchase a complete hardware/software solution to replace Google/DropBox etc
Users who prefer commercial-grade support
Those Who Prefer a graphic GUI
Users who want a 1st party ecosystem of hardware, software, add-ons and tools
Those who would rather spend their allocated budget on software/services, not hardware
The less tech-savvy that want the system to arrive ready to go (turn-key)
Users who want a system to do X thing X way without friction
Users who want simplified Warranty
Users who prefer Console Gaming as it is much more convenient and easy to deploy and enjoy
Users who prefer a wider variety of plugins

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Design & Navigation

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Users & Customization

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Storage Management

ZFS	BTRFS	EXT4
XFS works extremely well with large files; XFS is known for its robustness and speed; XFS is particularly proficient at parallel input/output (I/O) operations due to its design, which is based on allocation groups; XFS provides excellent scalability of I/O threads, file system bandwidth, and size of files and of the file system itself when spanning multiple physical storage devices; XFS provides data consistency by using metadata logging and maintaining write barriers; XFS enables allocating space across extents with data structures stored in B-trees also improves overall file system performance, especially when dealing with large files; Delayed allocation with XFS helps prevent file system fragmentation, while online defragmentation is also supported; A unique feature of XFS is that I/O bandwidth is pre-allocated at a predetermined rate, which is suitable for many real-time applications. When comparing XFS vs EXT4, XFS also offers unlimited inode allocation, advanced allocation hinting (in case you need it), and, in recent versions, reflink support.	Journal and Copy-on-Write Support Filesystem-level Deduplication Filesystem-level Compression Support for huge files up to 2⁶⁴ bytes, which is the equivalent of 16EiB or exbibytes Online defragmentation and resizing Dynamic inode allocation Block sub-allocation and Tail packing Writeable and read-only snapshots Support for checksums Optimized support for SSD drives	Able to handle larger files and volumes than its evolutionary predecessors; EXT4 also extends flash memory lifespan through delayed allocation, which, in turn, improves performance and reduces fragmentation by effectively allocating bigger amounts of data at a time; Useful features that greatly increase reliability and fault-tolerance of the system like journaling (a system of logging changes to reduce file corruption); Persistent pre-allocation, journal, and metadata checksumming; Faster file-system checking; Unlimited number of subdirectories.

RAID5 example of parity
Disk 1	Disk 2	Disk 3	Disk 4
1	2	3	P
5	6	P	4
9	P	7	8
P	10	11	12

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – File & Folder Remote Management

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – First Party Tools and Add ons

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Security

Synology DSM 7 vs TrueNAS Core – Conclusion and Verdict

Those with unique storage requirements in terms of workflow or data structure
Users who are happy with/prefer community Support
Those Who Prefer an analytic GUI
Though who demand performance and happy to tweak things till they get it
Those who would rather spend their allocated budget on hardware, not software
Those with a dedicated IT Team/Individual
Users who like to fine-tune
Anyone that has ever built a PC
Anyone that prefers the power and customization of PC Gaming
Users who prefer a smaller but more concise number of plugins

Those who want to purchase a complete hardware/software solution to replace Google/DropBox etc
Users who prefer commercial-grade support
Those Who Prefer a graphic GUI
Users who want a 1st party ecosystem of hardware, software, add-ons and tools
Those who would rather spend their allocated budget on software/services, not hardware
The less tech-savvy that want the system to arrive ready to go (turn-key)
Users who want a system to do X thing X way without friction
Users who want simplified Warranty
Users who prefer Console Gaming as it is much more convenient and easy to deploy and enjoy
Users who prefer a wider variety of plugins

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
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Join Inner Circle

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