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Questions about Synology NAS


TroyKing

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TroyKing

So I’ve been using Emby for a couple of years, but I’ve been using it with a seedbox which I pay a substantial amount of money for per month. 
 

So I’ve been doing some research on ways to basically not have to pay all that money and I came across the Synology NAS. But before I pull the trigger I have 3 questions that hopefully y’all can answer for me. I don’t really mind paying for the most expensive model (Within reason) since It’ll  be worth it in the end. So here they are:

1. How’s the performance? I like to add my Blu-ray Discs to Emby and some of them are even in 4K. So can the NAS handle a transcode of a 50GB movie? If so how many streams?

2. I have gigabit connection, can the NAS take advantage of the bandwidth if is plugged in with Ethernet? This is important because I have a lot of friends who use it remotely

3. Finally, how is Emby on it? Are there a lot of issues when it comes to Emby on the NAS?

These might be very simple questions but I’ve rather hear the answers from actual users than some ad or marketing. Also, feel free to leave any other recommendations that might better fit my plan.

 

Edit: I’m thinking on buying the DiskStation DS1520+

Edited by TroyKing
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RobsterUK

I have been using Emby server on Synology devices since the early stages of Emby development for this platform.
About 4 years or so now. It's a very stable platform. I use the media apps daily and it is integral to my viewing habits.

Emby transcoding is only supported with a Premiere license 

The performance of the Emby installation is dependant on the hardware it's installed on.
I can see you have added that you are considering the DS1520+ which has an Intel Celeron J4125 4 core with 8 GB RAM.
This should be able to handle transcoding sufficiently, how many streams would require testing on your part.
Search this forum for some kind of idea. I only serve media inside my network and all devices stream - rather than transcode. So I can't comment on multiple transcode streams I'm afraid.

There has been a lot of work into the current Emby Synology Server app and it's  recently been overhauled to run on .Net.
The forum is active and you can see the Synology section is third on the post count behind only Linux & Windows.

What kind of hardware does your seedbox emulate? Can you compare against other systems?

You could always consider Xpenology. Synology boot loader running on custom hardware. You can choose what hardware you want it to run on.
https://xpenology.com/forum/
I acutally use this rather than an official Synology box. Much cheaper.

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TroyKing
2 minutes ago, RobsterUK said:

I have been using Emby server on Synology devices since the early stages of Emby development for this platform.
About 4 years or so now. It's a very stable platform. I use the media apps daily and it is integral to my viewing habits.

Emby transcoding is only supported with a Premiere license 

The performance of the Emby installation is dependant on the hardware it's installed on.
I can see you have added that you are considering the DS1520+ which has an Intel Celeron J4125 4 core with 8 GB RAM.
This should be able to handle transcoding sufficiently, how many streams would require testing on your part.
Search this forum for some kind of idea. I only serve media inside my network and all devices stream - rather than transcode. So I can't comment on multiple transcode streams I'm afraid.

There has been a lot of work into the current Emby Synology Server app and it's  recently been overhauled to run on .Net.
The forum is active and you can see the Synology section is third on the post count behind only Linux & Windows.

What kind of hardware does your seedbox emulate? Can you compare against other systems?

You could always consider Xpenology. Synology boot loader running on custom hardware. You can choose what hardware you want it to run on.
https://xpenology.com/forum/
I acutally use this rather than an official Synology box. Much cheaper.

Sounds like I made the right decision then. To be honest I don’t remember the specific specs of the seedbox I’m using but I’ve never had any problems playing any type of file. Most of the time my movies and shows direct play and if it does transcode is at most two streams at the same time. The main issue is the storage, I pay $60 for 9TB and is almost full and I rather have my own NAS than pay over $60 for more storage. 
 

I actually did purchase the 1520+ and is arriving today along with a 8TB hard drive. Hopefully it works out. Thanks for the recommendation and the support. 

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RobsterUK
4 minutes ago, TroyKing said:

Sounds like I made the right decision then. To be honest I don’t remember the specific specs of the seedbox I’m using but I’ve never had any problems playing any type of file. Most of the time my movies and shows direct play and if it does transcode is at most two streams at the same time. The main issue is the storage, I pay $60 for 9TB and is almost full and I rather have my own NAS than pay over $60 for more storage. 
 

I actually did purchase the 1520+ and is arriving today along with a 8TB hard drive. Hopefully it works out. Thanks for the recommendation and the support. 

When you isntall the NAS makes sure you choose to set the disk up as a Synology Hybrd Raid (SHR). It will let you add more drives when you need them without having to re-do a RAID array.
It's a great feature of Synology DSM.
https://nascompares.com/2016/07/06/what-is-shr-and-what-is-the-difference-between-synology-hybrid-raid-and-ordinary-raid/
Think you can select SHR with one drive - but you wont get any redunancy until you add more.

Edited by RobsterUK
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TroyKing
1 minute ago, RobsterUK said:

When you isntall the NAS makes sure you choose to set the disk up as a Synology Hybrd Raid (SHR). It will let you add more drives when you need them without having to re-do a RAID array.
It's a great feature of Synology DSM.
https://nascompares.com/2016/07/06/what-is-shr-and-what-is-the-difference-between-synology-hybrid-raid-and-ordinary-raid/
Think you can select SHR with one drive - but you wont get any redunancy until you add more.

Thanks for the article. Very detailed and informative. Exactly what I needed

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I bit the bullet five years ago and invested almost £2000 in a DS1815+, 8 x 6TB WD Reds and extra RAM.

The NAS box has been running 24/7 handling downloads etc.... I had a problem 2 years in and Syonology replaced the NAS, since then it's been running for 3 years apart from for 1 week last Christmas when the PSU failed, luckily I found a cheap-ish spare on ebay, replacement parts for the NAS boxes seem expensive and hard to find!

I've been using emby for my media for the last 18 months ran directly from my Synology, before that I used a Windows based i3 NUC.  Running the NAS from the NAS box has been excellent.  DSM is a great OS for the box.

I use the NAS box for myself, most of the time it's just me and the wife using it on the lounge TV.  I do use it from time to time with multipule devices, my phone, spare tablets etc.... Just recently I have purchased a holiday home and set up both houses as Airbnb's, I'm now using my NAS more than ever.  I can happily stream files from my NAS to my remote location and guests can have happily watch files where the NAS is located.  I'm only limited by my upstream, unfortunatly, thats 2mbps 😕 but is good for one device streaming remotely, but the never have a problem with transcoding etc...

As for internal network, DSM with the right boxes has the ability to Bond your LAN ports (the DS1815+ has 4x 1Gbps ports) so long as you have a compatible switch (I brought an additional switch when I got my NAS) and router. I had to disable my LAN Bond (just checked and its called Link Aggreation - LACP) as my new WiFi Mesh system router didn't like it, however I never got anywhere near needing 4Gbps downstream.

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