You can get a DS418play for less than $600 with eBay 20% off sales, Even the DS 918+ was $620 during these sales.
Happily running a DS218J with 2x8TB drives running in RAID1 as my Plex Server and torrent box. Files direct play to MrMC on my ATV4K and Kodi on my NVidia Shield without needing to transcode...
You can get a 2600k based system for nix and run .nix for far less than $600.00! My server cost me $0.00. Essentially all you're doing is buying an appliance, that runs Linux - May as well make your own, it's not hard. Personally I use Kodi, but each to their own.
Yeah but I then need $350 of Red drives to go in it. I'm on the hunt flu!d fo an older CPU/RAM/Mobo kit. A good ol Sandy Bridge would do the job nicely. OR possibly a well priced Ryzen + Mobo and I'll use my 2600K as the server.
If you're not transcoding you have the option of stepping right down in CPU grunt. Any whitebox that's not a decade old C2D would do it. I had it running fine on an C2550D Avoton board for example (Freenas under the hood), people run off Shields, etc. Just go to the trading forums and you'll find something cheap. 1st gen ryzen might be a good balance between bargain and not too old.
Yep, I used to run a home server but like an actual server, not a whitebox (I'm an ex server and storage engineer, personally I'd never run a whitebox as a "server"). Aside from the noise, the power draw alone was the reason I ditched it, given it served plex and a few other docker containers it was completely overkill. Moving to a Synology was in one word, simple. I don't have to mess around with anything and it just works. It may just be a Linux appliance however the amount Synology invest in the software on these devices is crazy.
There are whiteboxes and there are whiteboxes. You can still put together something with xeon, ECC, IPMI etc. My ubuntu LTS server has nary a hitch and annihilated any synology in its price range. Containers and ZFS and KVM to your heart's content, except you get an actually useful amount OF RAM and real cores not atom lol. And it's probably quieter than the synology, drew maybe 50w idling with 4 drives.
You're missing the point of simplicity and convenience of not having to deal with...well anything, It's a media server not a lab. You said it yourself in B&EC
I guess I misinterpreted the point of your remark "personally I'd never run a whitebox as a "server""
You could install Ubuntu Mate and install the .deb for Plex server in the time it takes to configure that NAS. I do very little maintenance on my Ubuntu server, now and then when I remember I'll SSH into the machine and perform all updates. it also runs a PlayTV dual DTV tuner and serves FTA DTV via TVHeadend to the whole network.
How long do you think it takes to configure a NAS? I can give you a hint, it's about 2/10ths of fuck all. Plex is sitting right there in the package center ready to go out of the box. The longest part of setting up my nas was copying the files from my old server to it. That is exactly the same thing my nas does even down to the tuner. Albeit using less power and thanks to an NVME cache less disk writes.
Eh local based storage is so 2000's these days anyways. Anyone worth their salt has moved their plex server to a cloud based solution
Salt's pretty cheap. 90c a Kilo at Woolies online so assuming you're an average bloke somewhere between 90-120 kilos that puts your worth (on your scale) at $81-$108. Is that how we should value your opinion?
Well...It all depends on the NAS. Most of them come with no OS at all, just an installer, I've yet so see one ready to go out the box and that definitely includes Synology NAS products - So you have to download the OS and install it, which is no different to installing a Linux distro really. At least the distro will be updated and you won't download and install the OS and then have to update the OS separately which basically involves downloading and installing the OS again as happens under most NAS solutions. Then you have to configure users after the OS has been installed and configure user rights and shares, I can set up shares under Linux using the default admin user so I save time there.... In my experience, raid creation on a NAS takes far longer than the same process under Linux because low power processor vs desktop class processor.... Basically? I think given a good run you could get Linux up and running faster, if not the difference would be minimal. It's pointless using an appliance that runs Linux when you can use an old PC that runs Linux and SandyBridge is a pretty efficient architecture - I certainly haven't noticed a difference on my power bill.
Once again, its simplicity and convenience. It's the same reason people buy Apple devices or Toyota Corollas. I wrote a reply to the other dribble but honestly, I just don't think you get it.
It's wasteful, just like Apple devices and a constant rotation of Corolla's - Our chuck away society has become a joke of epic proportions based around outright consumerism. Why purchase an appliance running Linux when you can re purpose a machine, run the same OS and have the satisfaction of building something yourself and possibly learn a great deal? It's like Windows Admins buying Firewall Appliances running Linux, because they don't know how to use Linux and can't be arsed learning! We're lazy and we're wasteful. Buy the time you buy a NAS and fill it with the correct HDD's, you've burnt through the good part of a grand when you can get the same result for half that if not less.
There is one other advantage if I had an older windows based build as a server. Distributed encoding. I use Ripbot 264 quite a bit. Would be nice to have my ol 2600K running parallel to say a Ryzen 2600
Are you a quality purist? Because otherwise Quicksync / NVenc is so much faster than software its not funny. Pretty much anything decent (like your Sandy) is capable of realtime transcoding FHD for mobile playback etc. and its pretty much pointless to go for anything that can live transcode 4K (esp with UHD funkiness) unless you're aiming for HW acceleration to work perfectly which with old kit is unlikely.
