Synology DS418 vs DS418play

[GeorgeDouj88]

Purpose and Need

Hey guys, so I've been looking at NASes to get to use as a home media server with Plex and possibly to store security camera footage, if I can figure out how to do it. I also want to use the NAS as a private cloud where I can access it like another folder on my computer or something like that, which I'm sure I can do that although I'm not exactly sure how I did it. I'm planning to fill the NAS up with 4 drives or possibly two. I made a configuration list with a bunch of configurations I was considering of different combinations 

 

NASes Considering
Synology DS418: $369.99
Synology DS418play: $422.99

 

IronWolf Pro + DS418play (Price Included in Total) Configurations

If Synology Hybrid Raid is the same as Raid 5 then I would use the Synology Hybrid Raid

EXAMPLE: [Raid Type] [Number of Drives] x [Space per Drive] | [Usable Drive Space]: $[Total Price of Drives and NAS]
R1 2 x 4TB | 4TB: $772.97
R5 3 x 4TB | 8TB: $947.96
R1 2 x 8TB | 8TB: 1,006.01

R5 3 x 6TB | 12TB: $1,106.06
R5 4 x 4TB | 12TB: $1,122.95
R5 4 x 6TB | 18TB: $1,333.75
R5 3 x 10TB | 20TB: $1,577.96
R5 4 x 8TB | 24TB: $1,589.03
R5 4 x 10TB | 30TB: $1,962.95

 

of number of what drives in raid 5 or raid 1 (although I want to use Synology hybrid raid which I think is similar to raid 5 and only makes one drive unusable to redundancy (I heard of the hybrid raid thing in this video from HardwareCanucks:

)

 

What I Need

My final choice for a NAS is the DS418play since it's a realy good NAS and the play version is better for home media purposes. I just need people to tell me if

• Is this is a good choice
• Would the non play version be better than this one for my purpose
• How I could use a NAS to store the video feed of a non officially compatible surveillance camera too
• How do I use the double Ethernet connection like I've heard people talk about

For the double Ethernet connection, I whipped a quick diagram in Photoshop that can show you my network setup with how I think I'm gonna setup the NAS.

 

 

Please don't leave comments on why it's better to just stick a few drives in my PC and use that as a home media server or how easy it is to just build one since I know how to build a PC already.

All help is appreciated

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 minutes ago, G3ORG3Douj88 said:

I whipped a quick diagram in Photoshop that can show you my network setup with how I think I'm gonna setup the NAS.

Where? for almost all home setups, just use one network connections.

 

8 minutes ago, G3ORG3Douj88 said:

How I could use a NAS to store the video feed of a non officially compatible surveillance camera too

Normally you can't. If you want a better suvaliance system, get a server and run a vm for this or get a deticated box.

 

 

 

Id get fewer bigger drives as they use less power and room for expansion. ANd with shr you can just add a drive to the existing array.

[beyonddc]

29 minutes ago, G3ORG3Douj88 said:

• How I could use a NAS to store the video feed of a non officially compatible surveillance camera too
• How do I use the double Ethernet connection like I've heard people talk about

For the double Ethernet connection, I whipped a quick diagram in Photoshop that can show you my network setup with how I think I'm gonna setup the NAS.

Is it just me? But I am not seeing your diagram

 

Might be helpful to include the brand and model of your surveillance camera setup.

[GeorgeDouj88]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Where? for almost all home setups, just use one network connections.

 

Normally you can't. If you want a better suvaliance system, get a server and run a vm for this or get a deticated box.

 

 

 

Id get fewer bigger drives as they use less power and room for expansion. ANd with shr you can just add a drive to the existing array.

 

1 hour ago, beyonddc said:

Is it just me? But I am not seeing your diagram

 

Might be helpful to include the brand and model of your surveillance camera setup.

oh sorry, I forgot to include it, but I have a very fast connection where my dad payed for 300 megabit per second and I usually get 350 to 400 megabit, even when I download something on steam and look at the speed it's downloading and then convert the megabytes to megabits, it's around 350 to 400 megabits (the steam download is a better real world test) I'm gonna add the diagram now

[beyonddc]

21 minutes ago, G3ORG3Douj88 said:

 

oh sorry, I forgot to include it, but I have a very fast connection where my dad payed for 300 megabit per second and I usually get 350 to 400 megabit, even when I download something on steam and look at the speed it's downloading and then convert the megabytes to megabits, it's around 350 to 400 megabits (the steam download is a better real world test) I'm gonna add the diagram now

 

Not sure why you want both network adapters from the NAS connect to your Internet switch.  I don't see a point doing so.  You are not making anything faster there.

 

A more appropriate use case is if your PC has a 2nd network adapter then you can connect your NAS to your PC directly.  By doing so, when you do any big file transfer, none of these network traffic would hit your switch and router.

 

 

Or you can create a more sophisticated network such as adding another router and switch to your network and having the 2nd network adapter from the NAS connect to it.  That might be overkill for your scenario and most people don't need that. 

[GeorgeDouj88]

3 minutes ago, beyonddc said:

 

Not sure why you want both network adapters from the NAS connect to your Internet switch.  I don't see a point doing so.  You are not making anything faster there.

 

A more appropriate use case is if your PC has a 2nd network adapter then you can connect your NAS to your PC directly.  By doing so, when you do any big file transfer, none of these network traffic would hit your switch and router.

 

 

Or you can create a more sophisticated network such as adding another router and switch to your network and having the 2nd network adapter from the NAS connect to it.  That might be overkill for your scenario and most people don't need that. 

I'm definitely not adding another network but I'll probably just get a PCIe ethernet card and connect the NAS to me and through it. I was asking about the dual ethernet cause I heard people say it in a way like, "If you have a fast network then why not just plug in two ethernet cables to boost the speed" Also, just out of curiousity, if I wanted two have two ethernet cables providing the NAS with internet then would it just be as easy as what I drew earlier? And two more practical questions

• If I'm using my NAS with Plex can I still use it like an online folder (folder as in I can navigate it like a folder on PC) which I'm pretty sure I can with the Synology software but I just want to make sure it's possible.
• And although the DS418play is supposedly better for a more home media purpose, should I just get the DS418 version since it has better specs like a quad core cpu and ddr4 ram instead. And I'm also gonna use it as a cloud drive to store stuff in and potentially surveillance cam stuff.
• The surveillance cam is 

I am overseas now on vacation but my dad is still at home in the US since he has to stay for work and he has the cameras but I don't think he set them up https://www.amazon.com/Night-Owl-Wireless-Security-WNVR201-44P-B/dp/B071S9N565

The only thing I know about them is that these are the cameras and I sadly can't really do research since the internet here is extremely slow so just trying to brows ironwolf pro drives on newegg and browse NASes on synology is already hair pulling task.

[Electronics Wizardy]

33 minutes ago, beyonddc said:

 

Not sure why you want both network adapters from the NAS connect to your Internet switch.  I don't see a point doing so.  You are not making anything faster there.

 

A more appropriate use case is if your PC has a 2nd network adapter then you can connect your NAS to your PC directly.  By doing so, when you do any big file transfer, none of these network traffic would hit your switch and router.

 

 

Or you can create a more sophisticated network such as adding another router and switch to your network and having the 2nd network adapter from the NAS connect to it.  That might be overkill for your scenario and most people don't need that. 

why would you connect like this? It won't make it any faster?

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, G3ORG3Douj88 said:

I'm definitely not adding another network but I'll probably just get a PCIe ethernet card and connect the NAS to me and through it. I was asking about the dual ethernet cause I heard people say it in a way like, "If you have a fast network then why not just plug in two ethernet cables to boost the speed" Also, just out of curiousity, if I wanted two have two ethernet cables providing the NAS with internet then would it just be as easy as what I drew earlier? And two more practical questions

• If I'm using my NAS with Plex can I still use it like an online folder (folder as in I can navigate it like a folder on PC) which I'm pretty sure I can with the Synology software but I just want to make sure it's possible.
• And although the DS418play is supposedly better for a more home media purpose, should I just get the DS418 version since it has better specs like a quad core cpu and ddr4 ram instead. And I'm also gonna use it as a cloud drive to store stuff in and potentially surveillance cam stuff.
• The surveillance cam is 

I am overseas now on vacation but my dad is still at home in the US since he has to stay for work and he has the cameras but I don't think he set them up https://www.amazon.com/Night-Owl-Wireless-Security-WNVR201-44P-B/dp/B071S9N565

The only thing I know about them is that these are the cameras and I sadly can't really do research since the internet here is extremely slow so just trying to brows ironwolf pro drives on newegg and browse NASes on synology is already hair pulling task.

dual ethernet won't just double the speed unless you have a very specfic configuration. And even then this model really don't have the cpu power to go much faster.

[beyonddc]

20 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

why would you connect like this? It won't make it any faster?

 

 

Will it be faster?  Probably... But will it be noticeable?  Maybe not

 

By having direct connection between NAS and your PC, you are reducing the overhead from routing and switching.  There's no middle man except your NAS and PC.

 

If you have dual NIC on your PC, I don't see why you wouldn't want to do this.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, beyonddc said:

Will it be faster?  Probably... But will it be noticeable?  Maybe not

 

By having direct connection between NAS and your PC, you are reducing the overhead from routing and switching.  There's no middle man except your NAS and PC.

 

If you have dual NIC on your PC, I don't see why you wouldn't want to do this.

the over head of a switch is very small, this is in margin of error territory, you really can't measure this.

 

The problem with this is that its harder to setup, and if you nas goes down you no no internet access, so now you have another point of failure for no reason.

[beyonddc]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The problem with this is that its harder to setup, and if you nas goes down you no no internet access, so now you have another point of failure for no reason.

Hey, you might miss something in the diagram.

 

The PC is still directly connect to the switch as shown in the diagram.

The NAS is still directly connect to the switch as well.

 

The NAS and PC is directly connected using their second NIC.

 

There's no single point of failure from the NAS because the PC is still connected to the switch directly.

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, beyonddc said:

Hey, you might miss something in the diagram.

 

The PC is still directly connect to the switch as shown in the diagram.

The NAS is still directly connect to the switch as well.

 

The NAS and PC is directly connected using their second NIC.

 

There's no single point of failure from the NAS because the PC is still connected to the switch directly.

Then don't bother, the difference isn't noticeable. If you need faster NAS connections go with something like smb multichannel or 10gbe.

 

And can we please make good diagrams

[beyonddc]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then don't bother, the difference isn't noticeable. If you need faster NAS connections go with something like smb multichannel or 10gbe.

 

And can we please make good diagrams

At least OP put an effort to create a diagram.  The illustration looks fine to me.  It's understandable.  Perhaps you could recommend a tool to create better looking diagram.

 

I think we shouldn't only look at performance but also consider reliability.  You mentioned single point of failure in a previous post.  If the NAS and PC is connected directly then you are increasing reliability by eliminating the chance of a router or switch failure.

 

There's many ways to look at this, the configuration is up to how you want to set it up and what make sense to you.  If you don't think it make sense then that is fine.  I am just offering what I think is a possible legitimate scenario.

[Pixel5]

i would recommend the play version, i currently have a 918+ and i absolutely love the transcoding features, i now store everything in full quality because i dont need to care anymore if i can play the format on other devices.

 

Surveillance Cameras are no problem either as long as they give you the option to connect to a stream of the video feed, you could build your own using a raspberry pi zero w easily and have 1080p 30FPS network cameras for very low cost.

 

you can use two network cables, the Synology software even offers you build in options to have the same IP on both ports so utilize both at once.

You will probably not feel much of a difference unless you have a very very fast internet connection and move something via this connection while you also copy files within your network.

 

but since the port and the option is there it also wont hurt to simply connect it like you have shown here.

 

last bu not least if you want the best of both worlds with having a quad core CPU and still have hardware transcoding you may want to consider getting a 918+ which also offers you the option for m.2 SSD cache if you feel like you may need it.

[GeorgeDouj88]

7 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

i would recommend the play version, i currently have a 918+ and i absolutely love the transcoding features, i now store everything in full quality because i dont need to care anymore if i can play the format on other devices.

 

Surveillance Cameras are no problem either as long as they give you the option to connect to a stream of the video feed, you could build your own using a raspberry pi zero w easily and have 1080p 30FPS network cameras for very low cost.

 

you can use two network cables, the Synology software even offers you build in options to have the same IP on both ports so utilize both at once.

You will probably not feel much of a difference unless you have a very very fast internet connection and move something via this connection while you also copy files within your network.

 

but since the port and the option is there it also wont hurt to simply connect it like you have shown here.

 

last bu not least if you want the best of both worlds with having a quad core CPU and still have hardware transcoding you may want to consider getting a 918+ which also offers you the option for m.2 SSD cache if you feel like you may need it.

Well the 918+ is a little expensive and if I was to by an M.2 SSD then it would be pretty expensive so I don't think I would do that. And when I say a little too expensive, I'm talking saying it as if it's a little too overkill and I don't need to spend that much because for me, getting a cheap 2 bay NAS with 4 TB usable space is already overkill for just uploading some movies and videos to plex. Maybe a few years down the line I could really setup a pretty smart planned out security system with ethernet cables and a bigger and beefier NAS but right now, my dad only got the cameras as a little surveillance for when we're out of town incase anyone tries to break in so I won't need to use this NAS with it. but there is something I want to ask:

• should I get the DS418 nonplay since it has ddr4 ram instead of ddr3l and a quad core cpu instead of a dual core.
• and could you explain what is cache's role in NASes and any servers in general since I'm trying to gain more understanding in the server field after already learning a lot about pc building (obviously as a hobby, I don't mean get into the field in a professional way)

[dalekphalm]

4 hours ago, G3ORG3Douj88 said:

Well the 918+ is a little expensive and if I was to by an M.2 SSD then it would be pretty expensive so I don't think I would do that. And when I say a little too expensive, I'm talking saying it as if it's a little too overkill and I don't need to spend that much because for me, getting a cheap 2 bay NAS with 4 TB usable space is already overkill for just uploading some movies and videos to plex. Maybe a few years down the line I could really setup a pretty smart planned out security system with ethernet cables and a bigger and beefier NAS but right now, my dad only got the cameras as a little surveillance for when we're out of town incase anyone tries to break in so I won't need to use this NAS with it. but there is something I want to ask:

• should I get the DS418 nonplay since it has ddr4 ram instead of ddr3l and a quad core cpu instead of a dual core.
• and could you explain what is cache's role in NASes and any servers in general since I'm trying to gain more understanding in the server field after already learning a lot about pc building (obviously as a hobby, I don't mean get into the field in a professional way)

Just adding some thoughts here:

 

1. The DS418 is a much slower CPU. It uses 4x ARM CPU Cores. Having DDR4 vs 3 won't make any appreciable difference when the CPU itself is much slower. So if you intend on using Plex, which features on-the-fly transcoding abilities - go for the Play version.

2. Don't bother with dual Ethernet on the NAS. To properly utilize extra speed, you need to use link aggregation (an enterprise feature that is generally not available on consumer switched).

3. Don't bother direct-connecting to the PC either. There's negligible overheat on the switch, so in 99% of situations you won't notice any difference in speeds. Furthermore, because both the NAS and the PC are connected to the switch, no internal traffic between them will go through the router. They'll take the shortest route through the switch only.

4. I'd suggest starting off with 2 or 3 large HDD's, and using SHR so that you can easily expand the array when you need to buy more drives.

5. I wouldn't bother with worrying about caches or anything else like that. This is getting a bit advanced, and you should keep things simple. A cache is basically just a fast temporary storage location for data transfers, where the NAS dumps files quickly, then slowly writes those files to permanent storage. This is only useful if you have a fast enough network to utilize it. For a home media server NAS, it's a waste of time.

[Pixel5]

On 6.6.2018 at 3:48 PM, G3ORG3Douj88 said:

Well the 918+ is a little expensive and if I was to by an M.2 SSD then it would be pretty expensive so I don't think I would do that. And when I say a little too expensive, I'm talking saying it as if it's a little too overkill and I don't need to spend that much because for me, getting a cheap 2 bay NAS with 4 TB usable space is already overkill for just uploading some movies and videos to plex. Maybe a few years down the line I could really setup a pretty smart planned out security system with ethernet cables and a bigger and beefier NAS but right now, my dad only got the cameras as a little surveillance for when we're out of town incase anyone tries to break in so I won't need to use this NAS with it. but there is something I want to ask:

• should I get the DS418 nonplay since it has ddr4 ram instead of ddr3l and a quad core cpu instead of a dual core.
• and could you explain what is cache's role in NASes and any servers in general since I'm trying to gain more understanding in the server field after already learning a lot about pc building (obviously as a hobby, I don't mean get into the field in a professional way)

i was in a similar situation a few years ago and i did exactly this that i bought a 2bay NAS which worked great for me for many years but now that i got the 918+ i gotta say its a huge difference and i really dont want to have a NAS without hardware transcoding anytime again.

 

Also note only because you get a 4bay NAS does not mean you need to fill all 4 bays, i would recommend going with two drives and then expand as your space requirements grow.

 

especially once you go for 4k content space is filled extremely quickly, i added around 1.5TB of files to my NAS over the last few weeks and its only a hand full of movies and TV series.

 

[GeorgeDouj88]

On 6/6/2018 at 2:29 PM, dalekphalm said:

Just adding some thoughts here:

 

1. The DS418 is a much slower CPU. It uses 4x ARM CPU Cores. Having DDR4 vs 3 won't make any appreciable difference when the CPU itself is much slower. So if you intend on using Plex, which features on-the-fly transcoding abilities - go for the Play version.

2. Don't bother with dual Ethernet on the NAS. To properly utilize extra speed, you need to use link aggregation (an enterprise feature that is generally not available on consumer switched).

3. Don't bother direct-connecting to the PC either. There's negligible overheat on the switch, so in 99% of situations you won't notice any difference in speeds. Furthermore, because both the NAS and the PC are connected to the switch, no internal traffic between them will go through the router. They'll take the shortest route through the switch only.

4. I'd suggest starting off with 2 or 3 large HDD's, and using SHR so that you can easily expand the array when you need to buy more drives.

5. I wouldn't bother with worrying about caches or anything else like that. This is getting a bit advanced, and you should keep things simple. A cache is basically just a fast temporary storage location for data transfers, where the NAS dumps files quickly, then slowly writes those files to permanent storage. This is only useful if you have a fast enough network to utilize it. For a home media server NAS, it's a waste of time.

THANK YOU! You're the first person who actually gave a straight up answer that clearly answered the question and explained, this is all I wanted to someone to tell me. Whenever I asked a question on a post I always had to fight for the answer and keep asking commenters the question directly. You finally made me realize why people would actually buy the play vs non play because I knew that it had a quad core cpu instead of the dual core and it had DDR4 vs DDR3L which at first glance is a pretty big improvment, but then you actually told me what it meant. Also, to answer what you said about cache getting too advanced, I do want to make my Home Media Storage overkill but that is once I'm gonna build a NAS in a PC case/server case, not when I have a SOHO diskless NAS from someone. I'm gonna end up most likely getting 3 drives, very rare but possibly 4, and running it in Synology Hybrid in the Synology DS418play. Thanks again for the help