Synology NAS, Change of Operating System

[Takuan]

Hi All.

 

I was wondering if it is at all possible to change the operating system of Synology's NAS'. Updating or upgrading of DSM is not what I mean here, but instead completely remove DSM and install a different OS. Is it possible to install say Windows 10 or Windows Server, perhaps one or more Linux distros? Has anyone had any experiences trying anything in this regard, and if so, how did it turn out and how - if I may ask - did you accomplish it?

 

Thank you very much.

[Windows7ge]

I'm going to go out on a lim here and gamble that the answer is no. Now if it runs off of effectively standard hardware you could potentially reverse engineer it yourself but the whole point of buying something like a Synology NAS or a QNAP or a WD MyCloud is for the express purpose of not having to install or configure your own OS. You'd kind of be defeating the purpose of it if you could/can.

 

If you're interested in installing a different OS (Like Windows) why didn't you build/buy a standard server to begin with?

[DeaconFrost]

I think I'd agree.  I'd be surprised if these weren't BIOS locked to prevent any other OS from running.  In fact, there's a project (name escapes me) that let's you run DSM on a non-Synology computer, but it requires a BIOS loader.  

[Takuan]

Thanks guys.

 

Are you saying that the motherboard is custom made with a BIOS developed by Synology, thus - I guess - making it somewhat "impossible" to actually make it work with another OS? On the motherboard I have noticed a sort of plug-in daughter board in style with an M.2 og mSATA interface that hosts the basic OS from Synology, so that the device can start up, even if no disks are inserted. Is what you describe perhaps related to this card and any lock of the board would be or could be associated with this? I have never tried to unplug this card and then start the NAS, but perhaps someone else have tried that?

[Pixel5]

beside what has been said there is also the thing that it makes absolutely no sense to do this as you can build a better system for less money and the one main reason to use a Synology system is to have their OS on it and get the features it has with minimal administrative effort.

[Takuan]

Sure, but if you already have the NAS, then spending more money is just more money out of your pocket. Having it, makes it kind of "free" vs having to buy new hardware for a completely different system. I am just wondering if it is possible, and/or if anyone has ever tried it. If so, I would like to hear about the experiences and which efforts were actually done.

[FalconBlue]

Chiming in a couple of years later for the record. 

On 7/9/2019 at 8:24 AM, Windows7ge said:

...the whole point of buying something like a Synology NAS or a QNAP or a WD MyCloud is for the express purpose of not having to install or configure your own OS. You'd kind of be defeating the purpose of it if you could/can.

 

If you're interested in installing a different OS (Like Windows) why didn't you build/buy a standard server to begin with?

That's a bizarre response. A person might always decide that experimenting with a different OS is worthwhile, especially for something like a NAS. The "whole point" of buying a NAS is not going to be a universal singular thing like not wanting to configure an OS. Different people will have different goals. For example, a NAS can be attractive just for being an inexpensive way to get the hardware, a multiple-drive bay device in a compact form factor like a 1U rack or the compact desktop NASes. General purpose rack servers are expensive, and cheap mini-PCs don't have the drive bays to be good NASes.

 

And of course at any arbitrary Time Point X, after buying the NAS, a person might decide they want to try other OSes on it, so objecting to the idea from the temporal perspective of someone making a buying decision is invalid. It's like telling someone to travel back in time and to just not have the same thoughts and curiosity they had in this timeline...

 

Synology's Disk Station Manager is based on Linux (why don't these companies ever innovate and build a new, optimized, and secure OS from scratch?). And the hardware is standard Intel parts. So that implies you can run anything that runs on the hardware. It's basically a PC like any other PC. Some of the hardware details might be unusual, like where they store and load the OS – I read that it's a separate little flash disk. I wondered about FreeBSD, which seems like an excellent choice for a NAS, and found this guy's successful attempt. So depending on your Synology model, it should be possible to do what he did. Note that the hitch was the power going to the SATA drives, and he had to find a workaround, which in his case was just physically attaching another power source so that they were powered by default.

[Windows7ge]

@FalconBlue ~1.75 years later. The Internet never forgets, eh?

 

Where were you when OP posted this on July 9, 2019? Usually people oppose my opinion after a matter of minutes not years...

 

If he got it for free. All the power to him to try installing something else. If he paid for it he didn't think far enough into the future as to weather or not it'd meet his needs. These are the types of things you're suppose to think about before buying an appliance. If he learns that now it's a mistake he won't make in the future.

[Silent Screamer]

On 3/25/2021 at 6:51 AM, Windows7ge said:

@FalconBlue ~1.75 years later. The Internet never forgets, eh?

 

Where were you when OP posted this on July 9, 2019? Usually people oppose my opinion after a matter of minutes not years...

 

If he got it for free. All the power to him to try installing something else. If he paid for it he didn't think far enough into the future as to weather or not it'd meet his needs. These are the types of things you're suppose to think about before buying an appliance. If he learns that now it's a mistake he won't make in the future.

That is a very limited view. I now find myself in a similar situation. Trying to get rid of DSM for something a little more conventional (Linux OS or bare metal virtualization). I bought the Synology NAS after research with the expectation / promise that it was going to be the bees knees and the answer to all my storage needs. Lured by the promise that it was going to "simplify" my life, but DSM has been a massive let down with a lot of application simply not working, or not working the same way they do on a typical OS equivalent.

 

You can't really know how successful an OS is going to be until you use it in every day production use. Unfortunately in the case of DSM you have to buy an expensive NAS and hope for the best in terms of it working the way you expect it to.

 

So like the OP, I would rather not throw away $1500 worth of hardware to go back to a built PC. I am hoping since this question was asked 3 years ago that someone has come up with an answer to the DSM problem.

 

[Windows7ge]

@Silent ScreamerAlright. I'll admit you've got me there. If they make it sound like the bees knees for all your needs and it turns out to be a let down that's not necessarily your fault assuming you made an effort to do at least some research before you pulled the trigger.

 

I'm unfamiliar with the hardware of these NAS products. I assume it's low-mid Intel Atom or Xeon with a spun up motherboard with locked down firmware so you can't just up and install another OS.

 

Unfortunately the discussion of jailbreaking is prohibited on this forum. So if you planned on doing so. We can't help you but I can say if the system is x86_64 or another common platform standard it shouldn't be impossible.

[Silent Screamer]

2 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

@Silent ScreamerAlright. I'll admit you've got me there. If they make it sound like the bees knees for all your needs and it turns out to be a let down that's not necessarily your fault assuming you made an effort to do at least some research before you pulled the trigger.

 

I'm unfamiliar with the hardware of these NAS products. I assume it's low-mid Intel Atom or Xeon with a spun up motherboard with locked down firmware so you can't just up and install another OS.

 

Unfortunately the discussion of jailbreaking is prohibited on this forum. So if you planned on doing so. We can't help you but I can say if the system is x86_64 or another common platform standard it shouldn't be impossible.

At the moment I am contemplating a second system. I am fortunate enough to have a spare PC (currently has ESXi 6.7 on it) that has a decent processor and plenty of RAM. So I might use it for things like VM's, docker, transcoding ect. And just use the NAS for media storage only. It is very disappointing since I was looking for a single device that could do it all. It is kind of counter productive to store the files on one device and serve them from another, but while the Synology seems to install the applications fine (most of the time), there is often issues and complication in configuring it to get access to the applications (works fine in theory but not so well in practice). While DSM is based on Linux it is severally crippled, which of course you don't find out till you buy it. Perhaps on a real PC they might be more easily configured. Although that means another device running 24 / 7 which was why I was drawn to the lower power requirements of the Synology in the first place.

[Silent Screamer]

CPU is a 2.2Ghz AMD Ryzen V1500B, so not sure if that is going to make things easier or harder.

[Windows7ge]

6 hours ago, Silent Screamer said:

CPU is a 2.2Ghz AMD Ryzen V1500B, so not sure if that is going to make things easier or harder.

For consolidation of various services a hypervisor is generally desirable. If you're going for low idle power consumption you can use low TDP Xeons or Atom boards. Beyond that you would have to invest in a 12V only system so the PSU doesnt waste energy creating +5V & 3.3V. Not sure what your options would be there especially if you have a lot of drives.

[Silent Screamer]

3 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

For consolidation of various services a hypervisor is generally desirable. If you're going for low idle power consumption you can use low TDP Xeons or Atom boards. Beyond that you would have to invest in a 12V only system so the PSU doesnt waste energy creating +5V & 3.3V. Not sure what your options would be there especially if you have a lot of drives.

While trying to be efficient, there comes a point where you have to question what you stand to gain by trying to do too much with too little. While Synology make all kinds of promises of what DSM is capable of doing. Saying we have all of this software, and that software is going to solve all your problems in one place. The hardware resources they provide are not really up to doing half of what they suggest it can do.

 

Even if I could get things like docker to work properly in the DSM environment, it still is limited to 4GB of RAM without buying some very expensive additional RAM (even then you are slot limited). The spare PC I have has 48GB of RAM, so it is far more likely to be able to support VMs than the NAS. When it comes down to it the Synology NAS is little more than a toy. And as such I am now reconsidering if it is even worth trying to put another OS on it.

 

I am now thinking that I should leave DSM on it and use it for just basic media file serving, and leave the heavy lifting to something far more capable of doing the job. It won't have the simple GUI driven all in one configuration of DSM that was so attractive. The reason I put the spare PC aside was because I was looking for a more simple solution that I don't need to spend a lot of time maintaining, but in hindsight now think the Synology promised way more than it can deliver.

[CowboyButler]

And here we are.... 20-01-2023 - as I'm reminded of this thread (in the backpage of my memory cell) by the LTT WAN show last night (20-01-2023) when Linus announces that he has become the Angel Investor in a [software] company :::  A NAS software company!

Ps. I know it's not directly related to [finding] an alternative O/S to the Synology DSM O/S; just worth the giggle to follow up on in the future as this new Linus-invested NAS O/S progresses.