So, I am thinking about getting myself a NAS to host mainly Immich and Plex. Got a couple of questions for the experienced folk;

  • Is Synology the best/easiest way to start? If not, what are the closest alternatives?
  • What OS should i go for? OMV, Synology’s OS, or UNRAID?
  • Mainly gonna host Plex/Jellyfin, and Synology Photos/Immich - not decided quite what solutions to go for.

Appricate any tips :sparkles:

  • @[email protected]English
    2•9 months ago

    Unraid is great. Don’t let the FOSS heads say otherwise.

    I paid $100 3 years ago, ONCE. Best purchase I’ve ever made.

    I’ve tried the foss alternatives after getting familiar with unraid, and I still prefer unraid.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•9 months ago

      Seconded. But for more details… it’s great because you can throw in many different drives of different sizes, unlike RAID servers where every drive has to be the same size. You can also specify however much you want to use as parity (backup) drives.

      It has a nice web interface that you can access from any other PC on your LAN. I also have mine set up with Unraid Connect which allows me to access it from the open web also. It has a strong password and 2FA so I’m not concerned about security.

      It also makes it easy to serve Docker containers and full blown VMs. You can set them up right in the UI, or you can also SSH to it and use it as a normal Linux OS if you’re a power user. The web UI also has a button that’ll launch a SSH terminal in a separate window too.

      You can just use it as a NAS if you want, but Unraid makes it easy to expand your capabilities if you later feel like it. For example, you are only a few button clicks away from running Jellyfin to provide a nice UI for all your media files that you may be storing on your NAS.