*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***

[RSR]

I’ve been looking to move from a QNAP TS-873A to a Synology unit. I originally ordered a 1821+ a week ago, but cancelled it.

Waiting to see what Synology do Q1 25 if anything.

Storage wise, NFS, iSCSI and SMB atm. I do like the look of the backup apps on Synology, but could run a veeam instance instead on the proxmox box.

While there is nothing wrong with my Synology, I have a few annoying irks. For example, my DS1621XS has a fan that comes on and off, which is even louder than when it's on full speed, so I have had to run it in the loft to get around that but I believe the 8-bay units don't have this issue due to using 120mm fans. The XS unit, which runs the Xeon CPU, has a higher idle power than the Plus mode with the AMD CPU. That's a fairly minor one, but the main one for me is the vendor drive locking as an example if you want to use SSD's the Synology branded ones are around £1000 for a 4TB drive when you can get a ~8TB enterprise drive for a lot less than that or something like a WD Red for 300-400 or so.

I have looked at Qnap as well which seems to offer better hardware than the Synology counterparts but not sure on the software side.

So, I have been looking at a white-box solution. The issue I am finding here is the MB size / PCIe slot and lanes but I am set on using Kioxia drives

 

[ChrisD.]

While there is nothing wrong with my Synology, I have a few annoying irks. For example, my DS1621XS has a fan that comes on and off, which is even louder than when it's on full speed, so I have had to run it in the loft to get around that but I believe the 8-bay units don't have this issue due to using 120mm fans. The XS unit, which runs the Xeon CPU, has a higher idle power than the Plus mode with the AMD CPU. That's a fairly minor one, but the main one for me is the vendor drive locking as an example if you want to use SSD's the Synology branded ones are around £1000 for a 4TB drive when you can get a ~8TB enterprise drive for a lot less than that or something like a WD Red for 300-400 or so.

I have looked at Qnap as well which seems to offer better hardware than the Synology counterparts but not sure on the software side.

So, I have been looking at a white-box solution. The issue I am finding here is the MB size / PCIe slot and lanes but I am set on using Kioxia drives

I run 4x WD Red SSDs in my DS1821+. I've done the drive hack thing fooling the unit into thinking they are compatible. I did come from QNAP, but I had some weird quirks relating to performance; support were pretty useless in trying to identify it. Then there's the various security issues QNAP have had over the years which made me move away. I initially went to TrueNAS, but it's, err, interesting. Exceptional performance but it's not the easiest to setup, and when I did have iSCSI issues with it, I went on their forums for help and despite the CPU being compatible they eventually just said that's AMD for you. Okay, thanks!

I do really, really like my Synology unit despite their clear focus on using their own drives and enterprise. The lack of support for multiple VLAN tags on the same interface is also frustrating.

The UniFi NAS is interesting though. It just lacks a few things I'd really like it to be able to do for my use case (8 bays, multiple NIC/PCIe, m2 support, iSCSI etc).

 

[Mikey]

UNAS-Pro has been installed in the rack and given a bit of a clean-up, it's early days yet but the UNAS just works transfers are in the 400/600MB/s region so I am pretty impressed tbh

The best part is I am down quite a bit on power compared to the Synology, I will give it a bit more time to bed in before giving my final thoughts on it.

Rack 2024 setup, a few bits will change in 2025

Impressive. I'm looking at the blanking plates too, vented or solid like you have. Only need 5 etc. Planning on taking advantage of the free shipping.

I have a Unifi NVR I've never opened, had it about 4 months that I planned to use with Protect, but still using the cloud key plus unit. The spare disks I was going to use have subsequently gone into a DS224+ Synology unit as an offsite replication target.

My rack is no where near as nice as that, it's a 6U unit in the loft with Sophos XG 135 1U firewall x 2 pfsense/Sophos XG Home, 48 Port PoE Pro switch.

On the subject of Protect, today I have installed G4 Doorbell pro PoE and G5-Pro. Doorbell is nice, however the surface mount block just makes it stick out far too much. mmmm

 

[Mikey]

I do really, really like my Synology unit despite their clear focus on using their own drives and enterprise. The lack of support for multiple VLAN tags on the same interface is also frustrating.

The VLAN thing is my biggest gripe, but still wanting to give the 182? a crack, I did have an 1821+ in Jan 2023, but it was faulty so got returned. I wonder what will be in DSM 7.3 and I also wonder what Synology will do re their Plus market. Equally interested to see how the Unifi NAS evolves.

I would look at the Unifi NAS more, but keep stopping due to the backup aspect and site to site replication I'm wanting to leverage. I have S2S IPSec VPN between Sophos XG Home/pfsense+ and pfsense CE that replicates via RSYNC atm, but would want to do native Synology to Synolgy.

All compute is via a Proxmox box atm with P2000 GPU for plex. I haven't got any 10GBe yet and whenever I look for the Unifi SFP+ RJ45 units, they've been out of stock. I'd have to replace the Unifi 16-lite switch on my desk too, purchase a 10GBe NIC for Proxmox etc.

 

[Simon42]

Impressive. I'm looking at the blanking plates too, vented or solid like you have. Only need 5 etc.

I have a Unifi NVR I've never opened, had it about 4 months that I planned to use with Protect, but still using the cloud key plus unit. The spare disks I was going to use have subsequently gone into a DS224+ Synology unit as an offsite replication target.

My rack is no where near as nice as that, it's a 6U unit in the loft with Sophos XG 135 1U firewall x 2 pfsense/Sophos XG Home, 48 Port PoE Pro switch.

I chuckle when I see pretty racks. My 22U has fairly tidy cabling but no cable colour matching and has a mix of brands so various colours on the devices and brush/blanking plates as well.

I've honestly never thought about making it look good as its behind a dark glass cabinet door in a cupboard, but maybe I'm not keeping with the times.

 

[Mikey]

I like to keep mine tidy, but it's in the loft, so not on show etc. I'm looking at the blanking plates to help with airflow and other things. I know they're hugely expensive, but if Unifi did a 6U wall rack with the fans I'd be tempted lol

 

[robj20]

I chuckle when I see pretty racks. My 22U has fairly tidy cabling but no cable colour matching and has a mix of brands so various colours on the devices and brush/blanking plates as well.

I've honestly never thought about making it look good as its behind a dark glass cabinet door in a cupboard, but maybe I'm not keeping with the times.

It stems from making them tidy so the next person to come and do any work finds it easier to understand what's going on.

 

[Simon42]

It stems from making them tidy so the next person to come and do any work finds it easier to understand what's going on.

Everything I have is labelled with nicely printed labels, fully documented and even has labels on the rear for when working from that side of the cab. My patch cables are not a mess of wires as they're reasonably short so I am at a loss how matching colour devices, leads and panels improves that?

 

[robj20]

Everything I have is labelled with nicely printed labels, fully documented and even has labels on the rear for when working from that side of the cab. My patch cables are not a mess of wires as they're reasonably short so I am at a loss how matching colour devices, leads and panels improves that?

It's just someone taking the next level of pride in their work I guess.
I have colour matched cables but they're so I can quickly see which room they go to as they cross over each other for different speed and Poe requirements.

 

[Mikey]

Anyone using the WD Red SSD drives in their Cloud Key Gen2+ units? Looking at a 2TB or 4TB drive as running protect. I could install the UNVR, but I haven't as it's just yet more kit drawing power and such.

 

[RSR]

Anyone using the WD Red SSD drives in their Cloud Key Gen2+ units? Looking at a 2TB or 4TB drive as running protect. I could install the UNVR, but I haven't as it's just yet more kit drawing power and such.

I've been using WD Red SSD's in my UNVR for ages now with no issues.

I'd avoid MX500's as mine had issues with those, as it would lose the drives on a reboot but I assume that's due to the RAIN feature on those.

 

[ChrisD.]

Also using them in my NVR with no issues.

 

[Mikey]

With the SSDs, what power consumption are you seeing from the UNVR unit?

CKG2+ is running network, protect and talk.

 

[RSR]

With the SSDs, what power consumption are you seeing from the UNVR unit?

CKG2+ is running network, protect and talk.

I think it's around 20-30w at most, it's not a lot from memory, I'll pop a meter on it if I get a chance tomorrow.

While on the subject of power, my whole rack draws between ~240W to ~260W and 90W's of that currently is PoE devices so cameras and AP's