can I build my own NAS and use Synology OS ? legit ?

[PSP.]

Hello 

planning to build my own NAS and hardware 
but there few things need to know about 
1- legit ?
2- for Linux not sure which distro Synology Use but can use Nvidia gpu ?
3- there limit list or supported cpu ?
4- OS free or not ?
5 - can restore my files when I use my own build ?

Thanks

[manikyath]

1: questionable. there's xpenology, but it's very much not supported by synology.

2: afaik hardware support is fairly limited on synology, because they only need to support what hardware they elect to use.

3: i dont think so, but there's no guarantees in unchanted terretory.

4: that's where #1's questionability comes in. you cant buy a license for the software, but there is no official way to install it on anything else than synology hardware. the question here is if the company has the recovery files to reinstall available for free, does this mean that the software itself is also free?

5: yes, but again.. uncharted terretory, no guarantees here.

 

i've dabbled with xpenology, and from experience i can tell you to use something else instead. it's a fun 'project' but long term there is zero guarantee that your NAS will keep running as expected.

[m9x3mos]

18 minutes ago, manikyath said:

1: questionable. there's xpenology, but it's very much not supported by synology.

2: afaik hardware support is fairly limited on synology, because they only need to support what hardware they elect to use.

3: i dont think so, but there's no guarantees in unchanted terretory.

4: that's where #1's questionability comes in. you cant buy a license for the software, but there is no official way to install it on anything else than synology hardware. the question here is if the company has the recovery files to reinstall available for free, does this mean that the software itself is also free?

5: yes, but again.. uncharted terretory, no guarantees here.

 

i've dabbled with xpenology, and from experience i can tell you to use something else instead. it's a fun 'project' but long term there is zero guarantee that your NAS will keep running as expected.

Yeah I tried it as well. It is very picky about what you run it on and how you run it. I would recommend against it as well. 

[Bersella AI]

There have been trends involving Synology DSM systems in custom NAS builds in Chinese communities, which have developed various workarounds to adopt even the latest DSM releases, available in some websites like mi-d.cn. The pros are apparent: plenty of built-in features suitable for NAS, straightforward management, and extensive community support. I had indeed involved DSM on my custom build for 3 years, before switching to TrueNAS.

 

However, cons are getting apparent as well in recent days:

1. It is, theoretically, illegible to use DSM in custom builds, despite being "unnoticed" by Synology. When you purchase a genuine hardware from Synology, the DSM is bundled as part of service, and does not cost further, thus being literally "free" to use, but this would not be the case for custom builds.
2. Installation of DSM requires some tricks including disconnection from Internet, and manual application of DSM images, as described in mi-d.cn.
3. The Linux kernel in DSM has been stuck in version 4.4 for years. Therefore, any newer platform (starting from 9th Gen Core processors) would face incompatibilities, for example, in integrated GPUs, with even the latest DSM builds. Only Intel iGPUs from Haswell/Cherry Trail (4th gen) to Coffee Lake (8th gen) are officially supported. This has been described in mi-d.cn.
4. Most builds of DSM like DS918+ do not support utilizing more than 8 threads from processors. Some models like SA6400 may have better support, but would not go beyond 24, as described in mi-d.cn. Performance would therefore be compromised.
5. Such copies of DSM would fail to start after an upgrade, due to incompatibility with the bootloader. Therefore, they would never become available to upgrade, and would thus become vulnerable to cyberattacks.
6. Synology DSM does not support pool creation on M.2 NVMe SSDs before version 7.2.
7. NVIDIA GPUs are not officially supported in DSM, requiring manual installation of a driver app from community repos.
8. Synology DSM utilizes an older implementation of BTRFS, making the pools hard to read in other Linux systems with kernel newer than 4.4.

There may be further more constraints with DSM not listed. Take risks on your own anyway.