So, I am thinking about getting myself a NAS to host mainly Immich and Plex. Got a couple of questions for the experienced folk;
- Is Synology the best/easiest way to start? If not, what are the closest alternatives?
- What OS should i go for? OMV, Synology’s OS, or UNRAID?
- Mainly gonna host Plex/Jellyfin, and Synology Photos/Immich - not decided quite what solutions to go for.
Appricate any tips :sparkles:
I use UNRAID, I didn’t want to pay for a license originally but having the option to mix and match drives and have redundancy is nice.
I also use the built in docker feature to host most of my services.
Unraid is also awesome for places with high energy cost: Unlike with your typical RAID / standard NAS, it allows you to spin down all drives that aren’t in active use at a relatively minor write speed performance penalty.
That’s pretty ideal for your typical Plex-server where most data is static.
I built a 10HDD + 2SSD Unraid Server that idles at well below 30W and I could have even lowered that further had I been more selective about certain hardware. In a medium to high energy cost country, Unraid’s license cost is compensated by energy savings within a year or two.
Mixing & matching older drives means even more savings.
Simple array extension, single or dual parity, powerful cache pool tools and easily the best plugin and docker app store make it just such a cool tool.
This sounds very good, i like what i am reading and hearing about unraid! And I do live somewhere with very high energy costs…
I run most of my stuff on k8s, but I really enjoy simple docker ecosystem of apps that home assistant supervisor provides. Unraid app approach looks similar, preconfigured and working together. Even thou I don’t need fancy nas, I might try unraid just to evaluate apps ecosystem. How to u find their community apps?
I usually search thru the apps and they install as docker containers, I can edit the configs after the fact, it’s pretty nice. There’s also a terminal so I can run regular docker commands too.