defcon42

That's my short introduction from the lounge. I am in need of a completely new NAS, there are no parts available from older machines. Except HDD, i have 2x8TB and 2x12TB WD Gold drives in my current Syno DS418j. What do i want to do with the NAS? I am a heavy Plex user and my library of 4k source material is growing, which my Syno cannot handle anymore. The bottleneck seems to be the weak CPU and not enough RAM, both of which are not upgradeable. Performancewise, the NAS should be capable of 4k streaming to the internal network (1Gbit available through all network devices and clients) and to handle Plex encoding when necessary. Most of the time everything is streamed in original quality. Download tasks shouldn't be an issue for any system, i already have seen, that f.e. SabNZB is available for Unraid. The rest is pure data management and occasional syncing of cloud services, but that doesn't need much performance either. I think that Plex and 4k streaming is the only stress factor. Access to the NAS will be needed by only 3 clients in parallel as a max, 80% of the time it's only 1-2 clients. The HDD are configured with Syno SHR, so 1 HDD is used for redundancy and fault tolerance. A recommendation for the Unraid setup would be helpful. Only 15TB of data is used currently. If it is important: I am no command line wizard and don't use Linux as daily driver anywhere. But i can follow instructions, if needed. There where some special cases on the Syno, where i had to use the terminal to install software or set parameters. My small hardware related wishlist: 4 bays would be enough, 5 or 6 bays is also fine, if a storage expansion is needed in the future. Regarding the size of the chassis, something like the Node 304 or 804 would fit. Effective but silent cooling especially for the HDD is important, the NAS is located in the living room. I have given some thought to the network connectivity, but 1Gbit should be fine for everything. Link aggregation or even 2,5 GbE would need extra (and costly) hardware. In addition both my TV or Xbox cannot be upgraded to better connectivity. Maybe it's better to directly connect the TV to the NAS via HDMI and use the NAS as the video player? Things i don't know almost nothing about: Boot drive and SSD cache. I didn't have to think about this with my Syno and what could be the right fit for the tasks above in Unraid. Budget: I was hoping to get everything under 500€, but i am willing to pay a little more, if upgrades are possible or some features/specs are highly recommended. The switch to the new NAS doesn't need to happen in the 4 weeks. If new technologies, parts or chipsets are on the horizon, fall 2022 would be also ok. If i have forgotten anything, please ask. I will try my best and answer on short notice. Thank you in advance and hopefully i will soon join the Unraid community as an active user.

Ok. Then i will just skip to my last sentence and post a thread in the hardware section. Thanks!

Hello everyone, i have been using Synos for a couple of years now and my current system is getting to the end of its lifecycle performancewise. A new NAS is needed and maybe not only new hardware but an OS as well. At the moment i am sifting through TrueNAS and Unraid, but i have already settled this as a draw. Regarding hardware i have heard, that Unraid can be run on much lower build performance than TrueNAS. But, the hardware section in here doesn't seem to have sticky threads regarding this and i also couldn't find any hardware guides. Did i miss something? I would post a thread in the hardware section afterwards.