I'm researching options for adding another NAS to our network. Because there is a 4-year-old ReadyNAS (Pro Business with 5 3TB drives) on the network, I had initially thought of simply going with another ReadyNAS.
However, from what I've read the new OS (6.x) doesn't appear to be quite ready for primetime. I expect that Netgear will eventually iron it out, but I'd like to hear if anyone has any insight into its competitors (e.g., Synology, Thecus, and QNAP), although they seem to have issues too.
I don't have direct experience with other manufacturers, however it is true that OS6 is currently in a "user frustration" zone. Many things I took for granted with radiator just don't work with os6 and the unit's connectivity is not stable on my lan even though everything else is ( including 2 othernon os6 readynas units).
I did a lot of research and synology was a clear number 1. The reason I went with another readynas was the forum support , it is still far better than qnap and synology. It is the forum support that has really helped me the most over the years.
I'm actually looking at the same decision. My Ultra4s are full and I have at least 3x2TB drive lying around unused. I was considering 316/516 but the drastic changes to OS6 seem to be a rocky road, and I'm not sure of the benefit to me for this product line.
It is a good thing to start new, fresh untethered to old technology. But that means you bring no good will and a small subset of you client base to the new party. Your new product gets judged against all the other players on a new field. What will follow is the community of support and products you've built. And that has been weak. Weak apps, weak support for the evolution of even your own apps. That doesn't look good for the future of a whole new environment.
The add-ons for the Ultra were attractive, but 3 years later they have NO REAL VALUE to me. The ReadyNAS VPN client performed poorly and was barely supported. The tuntap secret of fixing it on the Mac was buried in a 4?5 year old post by a user. I replaced it with the FTP server--which has limited performance, but works reliably for us. The Plex client requires more CPU than it has to transcode--so that got moved to 3 year old Dell Insprion 410 (ZinoHD, $600 mini PC)--which handles everything we demand from the Plex server. The itunes/firefly server barely works, and I believe the original development team killed firefly in ?2009? So no hope of it ever working right. I have dropbox on there, but the service dies out and I've no clue that files aren't updating.
The new cloud shares might eliminate the FTP, but only if it handles large, resumable downloads. The ReadyRemote became useless because an SMB transfer of a 600Mb software image would get interrupted and you'd have to start all over again.
I have yet to see anything to guarantee me that the 516 would handle multiple PLEX transcodes. At least then, I could move the server off the Windows 7 Zino. The $500 difference between 316 & 516 is all CPU and memory. If I don't have KILLER APPS to run, nothing justifies a $500 upgrade to the CPU/Memory.
Synology looks like they might be more polished on the apps side, but I have to see if that is true. Netgear looked better than they were, too. With Synology I could do a 8-bay for less than the 516, which would be quite nice.
I think both Qnap and Synology make great devices. For UI slickness nothing beats Synology, even if Qnap (and to a much lesser extent NTGR) have functional interfaces and most of the functions. I recommend Synology for the following reasons:
* NTGR have not shown commitment to existing users * NTGR have shown a disturbing attitude to app developers (who make most of the interesting apps) * NTGR have obviously released OS6 much long before it was anything close to stable or feature-complete * NTGR have chosen a new and unproven file system for the new OS, a file system that has many well-known bugs * NTGR have introduced features and "services" that are simply unneeded and/or irritating and/or malicious; registering needed at the slow Genie store, call-home functions that are hard to disable, etc. * Many of the Synology packages are both awesome and easily installed/administered. I'm specifically thinking of the VPN app and the mail server app, which package several hard-to-configure items in a "for dummies" fashion.
It's clear that NTGR have worked up a significant backlog during the years; what we are seeing is a perfect example of what is called "technical debt" and frantic attempts to fix it, with (likely) a way too small staff.
Confession: I have a heavily "Netgeared" shop, so tend to look there first. Commercial, Pro and Prosumer versions have all been rock solid over about a 7 or 8 year period. I switch failure and it was replaced without question.
That said, the purchase of the 314 has been disappointing and given I am still in my refund window it may still go back, which will start me on the look for replacements for my aging NV+ v1 boxes. It's a shame, as I said they have been rock solid.
The problem is two fold at this time. I had added Ultra 4+ to the mix and now, in less than 2 years, I find it is EOL'd with no plans to support it under the new OS, no plans to extend some features such as replicate that could easily be put in place for the still servicable and quite capable units. Even without the shortcomings of the new OS, that kind of support of loyal customers gives me pause.
The current stable version of the OS is woefully lacking. At least they have heard some of the complaints, and I have been told by support that the beta 6.1.1 should fix some concerns when it is released. I'm not adverse to testing betas, and as of now data is still being migrated to the new unit so it is not critical, but again some of the bugs and features that this release corrects, should never have been allowed to get out in the wild.
Although synology boxes in the range of the 300 and 500 series may be more home oriented, they have add-ons and features that would be very welcome on the ReadyNas, and clearly the hardware can handle it.
So I am conflicted, if you are just starting on the NAS journey, I hate to say I would look elsewhere and compare to see what is really important for the network environment in which the NAS will function. Look at long term stability. I must say that my older Netgear products have functioned well, even when I tinkered with them - adding memory and root access. Thank goodness although half of my units are still under warranty, I have not had to use it.
In the end, I think I am just disappointed in the direction the company seems to be taking. I'm only a small business, and with the forum community, this really felt like a home, with products that suited my situation. It just seems I've been left dangling a bit. Thank goodness for the community.
With the soon to come 6.1.1 release I think NTGR have a good product. Only think missing is the APPs that Synology have.
I think ReadyNAS is more a business product and Synology is a home product.
Actually many of the packages on the Synology are geared directly and only for business. ERM, CRM, Ticketing system, WebCommerce, Domain and Directory functions-- these have little home function other than as a development for a professional. Not to mention all the web tech (drupal, wordpress, tomcat, apache, java, etc).
I was considering Synology BECAUSE I saw more business possibilities. I could probably move my website & blogs to my house and save annual costs. It's clear that Netgear is more the home/enthusiast product.
My worry with synology is in the bad reviews I read. Most of them catalog failures that ended with a complete loss of all data--something Netgear has never allowed in 3+ years for me. This is despite two disks faulting in a single unit and a corrupt OS (I believe because the OS partition filled up, a Netgear Oops for certain).
The second worry is that many of the severe problems couldn't be handled y U.S. Synology support, and was bumped up to the next tier, available from Taiwan. The time zone difference alone will stretch out any resolution. I don't think I read any review were Taiwan got involved and a positive outcome was reached.
So... there may be poor raid resiliency and questionable support. Not a good combo. I can live with questionable support. The resiliency is worrying.
I guess you'll get opinions based on one's own experience. In my case, I have a 3 year old Duo and a 9 month old NV+ v2. I stayed with Netgear because, well just because it was what I chose first time and it has not let me down. I use both units at home with relatively lightweight use. File serving mostly.
I am however troubled by many recent changes to how Netgear handle customers.
However, from what I've read the new OS (6.x) doesn't appear to be quite ready for primetime.
For sure this is not too robust.
I expect that Netgear will eventually iron it out
Well, if they introduce another new hardware upgrade, they will drop support for the current units like a brick, i.e. Duo/NV+ v2 units are no longer getting upgrades. This is really poor, especially since the v5.3 sw was never "finished" in the sense of all the features you'd reasonably expect to have.
I'd like to hear if anyone has any insight into its competitors (e.g., Synology, Thecus, and QNAP), although they seem to have issues too.
Personally I like the look of QNAP, but Synology appear to have the better software package. I say appear because I have no experience and I've really sifted through their respective forums. Maybe the grass is not greener!
The post royalef "My worry with synology is in the bad reviews I read. Most of them catalog failures that ended with a complete loss of all data", which would be very bad indeed 😞 . I've not seen this anywhere, but I haven't looked that hard yet.
Yes, I understand there is a bug fix release coming soon, which is good. There are some tricky bugs, especially the "duplicate" share deletes all your data bug.
I like the support I get here on the forums, don't get me wrong, but the v2 products have had a very short shelf life. This is poor. Synology DSM and QNAP QTS both appear to support quite old units and in fact have significantly more functionality in the front ends. If I was starting from scratch, as I did 3 years ago, then I would seriously consider both of these, but I have no experience so possibly I'd end up in the same boat anyway.
With the soon to come 6.1.1 release I think NTGR have a good product. Only think missing is the APPs that Synology have.
I think ReadyNAS is more a business product and Synology is a home product.
Actually many of the packages on the Synology are geared directly and only for business. ERM, CRM, Ticketing system, WebCommerce, Domain and Directory functions-- these have little home function other than as a development for a professional. Not to mention all the web tech (drupal, wordpress, tomcat, apache, java, etc).
I was considering Synology BECAUSE I saw more business possibilities. I could probably move my website & blogs to my house and save annual costs. It's clear that Netgear is more the home/enthusiast product.
My worry with synology is in the bad reviews I read. Most of them catalog failures that ended with a complete loss of all data--something Netgear has never allowed in 3+ years for me. This is despite two disks faulting in a single unit and a corrupt OS (I believe because the OS partition filled up, a Netgear Oops for certain).
The second worry is that many of the severe problems couldn't be handled y U.S. Synology support, and was bumped up to the next tier, available from Taiwan. The time zone difference alone will stretch out any resolution. I don't think I read any review were Taiwan got involved and a positive outcome was reached.
So... there may be poor raid resiliency and questionable support. Not a good combo. I can live with questionable support. The resiliency is worrying.
What is the most important job for a NAS to do in a business? Keep your data safe or provide apps that can/should be running at a real server?
IN MY EXPERIANCE ID SAY SOMETHING ELSE!!!!! I'VE SPENT ALMOST A WEEK TO GET THIS SLOW POS REANYNAS TO WORK RIGHT AND ALL MY TIME WAS WASTED IT DOESNT WORK!!!
Be very careful when moving away from a ReadyNAS. I was lured in by the nice glossy interface and promises of easy add-on servers and applications for the Synology NAS (DS213+, DSM4.3) and it sure looked nice and seemed to work very well during the week I tested it. The problem is when trying to set file permissions on shared folders.
The default permissions on shares is 777, just to make them work nicely with all other systems. There are no "setfacl"/"getfacl" commands, only the "synoacltool" which is undocumented.
I read as much as I possibly could on the Synology forum, posted my own question and contacted support, but nothing could really be done. The "smb.conf" the Synology uses is overwritten by secret values stored in some obscure file on every reboot, so it does not matter if you try to fix the permissions yourself, as soon as you reboot they are back to the default again.
This was the reply I got from their support department: Since the rules you would like to setup will cause conflicts due to the privilege priority is as follow: No access > Read/Write > Read only. - RW: users group - NA: everyone (Please be noticed all users account belong to users group by default) Which means everyone is NOT possible to access the shared folder include admin.
In our current design, the default shared folder permission is 777 since we also need to handle different type of permission controls across various platform (windows,Mac and Linux).
I have had a ReadyNAS Duo v1 for many years now and the share permission settings just worked the first time I configured it and has continued to work ever since... I think I understood from the manual of ReadyNAS OS 6 that the permissions are still handled the same way, maybe someone can confirm this? 🙂
I have had a ReadyNAS Duo v1 for many years now and the share permission settings just worked the first time I configured it and has continued to work ever since... I think I understood from the manual of ReadyNAS OS 6 that the permissions are still handled the same way, maybe someone can confirm this? 🙂
The permissions with the new OS don't seem to work the same way, out of the box, as the old. I've been having a bear off a time getting access to all files after the first migration of files. I thought I had it right until the first time I tried to push an rsync backup to a readynas ultra. It changed the owner of the files to a random UID, which never could get sorted.
Pulling all my backups with the Ultra has solved it on an interim basis, but evidently I need to set up some chron jobs to maintain ownership and permissions. That really does need to be fixed.
I have had a ReadyNAS Duo v1 for many years now and the share permission settings just worked the first time I configured it and has continued to work ever since... I think I understood from the manual of ReadyNAS OS 6 that the permissions are still handled the same way, maybe someone can confirm this? 🙂
The permissions with the new OS don't seem to work the same way, out of the box, as the old. I've been having a bear off a time getting access to all files after the first migration of files. I thought I had it right until the first time I tried to push an rsync backup to a readynas ultra. It changed the owner of the files to a random UID, which never could get sorted.
Pulling all my backups with the Ultra has solved it on an interim basis, but evidently I need to set up some chron jobs to maintain ownership and permissions. That really does need to be fixed.
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Hmmm, that is good to know, thank you. I will probably replace both my old v1:s with 31X:s at the same time, so hopefully they will be able to maintain the permissions properly between themselves.
My RN102 is used mainly for backup, and I am pulling the backups from the OS6 system.
DeeCee52 - what was the "random UID" that the files were being set to?
I don't think the UID problem is exactly the same as file permission handling. The issue is more about mapping user accounts across systems that don't have the same UIDs.
One problem is that the OS6 systems use different UIDs/GIDs for nobody/nogroup (99 for OS6, 65534 for OS4), which can create problems if you are backing up to/from the older systems. I worked around this by avoiding nobody/nogroup on my pro.
You could also try resetting the username to match the share owner in the OS6 backup job. Though early on there was a bug with that setting, so you'd need to test it.
I would get a random low number UID that didn't correspond to a group or user on my windows workgroup. Everyone was then kicked out unless the share is set to everyone.
I didn't see a case where the OS6 system just made up a random UID/GID.
I have seen it preserve the OS4 UID/GID instead of mapping it by name to the corresponding OS6 value. That was with pre-release beta firmware.
These were completely different UID and they were not from OS 4 either. I've been traveling and haven't been able to consistently be available to respond to support, so I decided to pull back ups instead off push them.
Back on the topic off sticking with readynas / netgear, at the end off the day, even with my frustrations with the system, the EOL of muy still under warranty Ultra unit, my experience with Netgear when things go terribly wrong has been exemplary.
My unmanaged switch died and it was replaced quickly with little fuss. And off course the NASs have been rock solid running 24/7.
