Opinions on storage upgrading.

Hey [H], with NAS's being all over the place as of late and the prices becoming more reasonable I'm curious if I'd see any true benefit from switching to them. I currently am just using this as a local backup of Dropbox and for storing movies and music. I connect to it through typical Windows Explorer on my HTPC when watching movies or playing music.

Here's what I've currently got going (home built file backup)

Norco 4020 case
SuperMicro MBD-X8SI6-F-O Board w/Gigabit Ethernet
8GB DDR3 1333mhz ECC RAM
PCP&C 750watt PSU
OS drive = 250 Samsung 960 Evo
All black drives:
(8)1TB
(2)2TB
2(3)TB
Win 10 Pro with Storage Spaces and File Duplication turned on.

All PC connections are gigabit with Cat6 run to everything.

Thanks!

Pretty much the main benefits you'll see are reduction in size, power consumption/heat, and noise. One could argue that the web management console is easier than RDP too. A 5 bay Synology should be more than adequate for you given how much space you have now and still leave you room to grow (so long as you fill it with 8TB+ drives). You honestly won't see any difference in performance if all you do is regular backups and media streaming.

I personally used to have a large Supermicro 4U file server like you at home and switched to a Synology NAS. I've been pretty content with my decision.

I am using an old PC with 14HDs in it + 2 Hot Swap Drives for backup and a 10TB WD Gold in my main PC where I store my live files. I am really ready to move to a Synology with 8 Bays + 10Gbit card and call it a day. I was also thinking of buying a NORCO and build one my self by year by year HD capacities outgrew my needs so I don't need 24 HDs anymore. I am aware that building one will buy me better hardware but I the ease of use a Synology provides out of the box is what made me change direction. I am also considering QNAP for better hardware at the same price but everyone says Synology has better software.

Anyway, I will save about 1,000-1200 Euros for a HOME NAS (excl. 10Gbit Card) and then I will decide based on what is available at the time (5-6 months from now since I need to buy several other hardware first).

My personal opinion on QNAP is that they were just trying to tack on as many multimedia features as possible and had a lot of gimmicks. The models I was considering (high number of drive bays) had 1/4" mic inputs for karaoke use. Synology also has btrfs support, which definitely helped sway me towards them.

I've looked at the Synology but it seems that they might be having some power related issues. I'll probably just keep my current setup and just swap the HDD's out for larger ones. That should be better on the electric bill in the long run, (4) 10TB vs (8)1TB, (2) 2TB and (2)3TB.

Where I'm getting my Synology info from:

I saw that video too. I personally haven't seen any issues. I have the 918+ 4 bay, the second NAS in the video. So far, it has been a fantastic NAS for me. I have 3 8TB Iron Wolf drives and a single 5TB seagate desktop drive. I have 16TB usable on the Iron Wolves and I use the 5TB drive as a DVR drive.

I use Plex as a media server and it handles live TV, DVR functions and all my media functions like a champ. I'm using "Synology Drive" software to automatically sync my Local Media, Photo's and Docs to the NAS and that in turn uses cloudsync to Backblaze B2 to get the data off site. Drive also does a full "bare metal" style backup every hour of my Desktop and daily for a few other machines in the house.

I have been extremely happy with it so far.

Before this, I had a home built server running an i3 processor with 8 hot swappable drive bays, running Windows Server 2012 R2 essentials. I gave up on it because every time Microsoft had a new release of Windows 10, it broke the Connector software to the server, To save power, I used "Lights-Out". It would put the server to sleep after 30 minutes unless it was being used. It would then wake up in the early hours and wake other machines to perform nightly backups. I could wake the server for remote access using Wake on WAN.

Given the current state of things, I feel the Synology solution is better. The low power draw, HW encoding, backup solutions and remote access, among other things is just easier to deal with. It's the first time a single machine has handled all of my needs. NAS, Media Center, DVR (with HD Homerun), backup and remote access.

Don't fix it if it ain't broke. It seems to me like you have a nice setup other than I'd spring for a Windows Server license. Stick with the operating system you know and hardware that uses off the shelf components. If it's not off the shelf then Dell, HP, or IBM imho so you can always get parts and tap experts if needed.

Personally I run a dual core Dell T20 server, 8 GB of ECC RAM, with Windows Server 2012 R2. Two drive WD red RAID 1 and a single OS HDD. It uses 17-24 killowatt hours every 30 days at $0.11 per kwh. Call it $2 a month.

I set this machine up 42 months ago to replace an AMD triple core home made NAS that was pulling 50-55 watts. About $4 a month. I've saved $84 in electricity in 42 months and in another 6 years I'll have broken even... if I value my labor at $0.

I'm in the same situation as OP. But I decided to stick with the DIY server because of these reasons:

1. I want the ZFS!
2. The 3TB WD reds I have in the system are rock solid, have 20 of them, and have not replaced any in the 5 years of operation of the box. I have seen failures on 8TB and 10TB disks in my circle of friends. I suspect that the lower data density drives are more reliable then the current crop of big HDD's.

There are now 14TB HDD's. Never has it been possible to lose so much data at once