What’s the best NAS setup if I wanted to run Channels and have the best performance as far as load times, and multiple streams? I would also be using it as a standard NAS at the same time. Is the answer really DS920+ 4 bay?
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I do like my 920+. It does the job and generally does it well. Like most nas you are mainly paying for software more than the hardware specs. If you want to go faster and not break the budget, you could always go the custom way. Truenas scale or something like that. Its not as easy to setup channels and other containers but is totally doable. If your looking for a ready to use product and just pop in some drives, the j4125 chip in the 920+ will do a decent job and is cheap to run.
I am sure others have some good experiences with other brands. But the only nas I have ever owned is synology. I also have a test system setup with truenas scale. I am waiting for bluefin release of truenas scale to take full advantage of a intel 12400 processor. If you wanted me to compare the speed difference between the two. Its noticeable, but not so much so to where I would say forget the DS920+.
I have a Synology DS412+ which I have had for many years. Other than upgrading the drives every 2-3 years, it has been the most stable piece of hardware/software I have ever owned.
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Synology hands-down.
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I’m running my DVR on a M1 Max Mini right now. Do you think your Synology has the same performance as that? Forget specs but just actual use, do you think it’s close to the same speed?
A nas can give you redundancy in the event of a drive failure... The DVR will continue to run until you replace the failed drive. For me the DVR has become an integral part of our household so quick recovery in the event of a drive failure is a must.
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I've run on a mini pc (Beelink u59), M1 mini, and currently on a ds920+. All have performed that same for internal use. I don't stream remote and all finished commercial detection before I watched the show.
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I can't comment on a M1 Mini. Never owned one. But I think you will find what mrgf09 said. You wouldn't notice a lot of difference.
I agree with Edwin. It is nice to have the redundancy incase of a drive failure.
I run channels, plex, home assistant, pluto docker, eplustv docker, and 2 cameras on it with surveillance station from synology.
If you are looking to run virtual machines on it though. Like I did with home assistant. You will not have much room beyond that to add anything else virtual machine wise due to only having 4 cores.
That was the reason I started looking at custom options like Truenas.
The only issue I do have with synology is if your synology dies. You would be stuck with buying another synology to recover. Other than that it is a good machine.
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I concur with recommending the DS920+. I use mine in Raid 10 (disk mirroring + disk striping) with four 4TB WD hard drives for 8TB total storage. I get nearly 1Gb/s download and upload speeds since it doesn't need to calculate parity bits in Raid 10 = network speed limited.
See this test upload from my workstation PC to my DS920+ (111 MB/s = 0.89 Gb/s):
My NAS reports 117.4 MB/s = 0.94 Gb/s, which is probably more accurate than the Win10 indicated speed.
I have Home Assistant running on a PI right now but did plan to move it to the NAS if I got one. Home Assistant is still new to me and a bigger learning curve than I had anticipated!
Would it still get that kind of speed if it was SHR instead of RAID? Also what HDDs are you using out of curiousity? 5400 or 7200?
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As @mike48085 pointed out, redundancy is everything.
My NAS also serves as my back-up server. Every night every PC in the house is backed-up to the server. If a PC fails, I have the NAS. If a drive on the NAS fails, with the Synology, I can just "hot swap" it.
To me that piece of mind is priceless.
I don't have any direct experience with SHR, but I've read that it isn't quite as fast or as safe as Raid10. Having said that, SHR might be perfectly adequate for Channels DVR.
I forgot to mention that I also have two of these as cache drives: XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2
I run SHR 1. Seems to work pretty good. You can mix and match hard drives and when you start replacing them you can add larger drives. Here is an article from nascompares.
I also recommend CMR over SMR hard drives which @mike48085 link has. They are just faster in general.
Mine are Seagate IronWolf 5900 4 tb drives.
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Running on unraid here. Works great and it lets me consolidate channels, plex, emby and much more all on one nas
No, the M1 Mac Mini will outperform any Synology on processor speed. If I already owned a Mac Mini and was willing to dedicate it as a server, I'd probably use it. Similarly, I 'd use any spare PC with decent specs (with Linux) as a Channels Server if I had a powerful one around to spare. The Synology is doing lots of things besides running Channels. It runs the associated docker containers and video servers (Plex and DS Video). Performance is fine with Synology, but I'd like more power for sure for other tasks.
NetworkGuy recommends the better WD Red HD with 128MB cache. Oddly, it's much lower price on Amazon currently than the equivalent 64MB cache WD Red drives.
Also, after further investigation on my part and putting together this chart, I might convert to SHR the next time I decide to upsize my hard drives:
Yes, I'm a retired engineer with too much time on my hands.
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Well I for one find it very helpful! Thank you.