I sold my Synology NAS as soon as I found out, that I can’t change the underlying software (DiskStationManager). It wasn’t open source and the hardware was dependent on that propriatary software. As soon as they decide, that your device is too old, they drop support and you are left with an unsecure brick.
And you are saying the software is open source. Did I miss something? Did something change?
Any advice for a near (tech) illiterate newb on what to get? I only recently switched from using a patchwork of like 2 dozen different google drives to store all my stuff to a single nextcloud account through hertzner. But it costs per month, and that’s always risky with my finances. Would love to learn how to do it myself, but don’t know where to start. If it matters, I got the 5tb plan, and have 5 people on it (self included).
Here is how I (noobinoob) built my own Nextcloud-Server
Hardware: I took the old PC from my aunt, no idea about the specs. Added 4 x 8 TB NAS HDD drives and removed the graphics card, the onboard graphic from the CPU was enough. No raid-controller, just connected the hard drives to the motherboard. In future I can add a PCI-Card with more SATA-ports.
Software: I installed Linux Debian, put my 4 HDD drives in a btrfs-raid1 pool, encrypted them with LUCS, installed dropbear to ssh into my server when it is not started and unlocked yet, installed ddclient to update my domain with my home-IP and followed most (not all) of this guide to install nextcloud. Unfortunately, it is in german, but there are plenty of english intructions out there.
internet-stuff: I bought a domain (10 Euro/year) and set up DynDNS. I opened the neccessary ports on my router/firewall.
I had to look up a lot of things and failed many many times, but now it works and I am very happy with it - no downtime in the last year. It took about 6-12 months to get there.
In conclusion:
Your way (nextcloud on hetzner) is the much better way. You save time and money and your data is more secure.
But if you want to learn a lot of new stuff, building your own server is fun.
It is safer in the sense that, when you selfhost, you have to take care of your own backups. You have to make sure your data is still there, even if two hard drives fail, or your house catches fire and your server burns down. Hertzner is doing that for you.
But you are right of course, from a privacy standpoint it would be much better to have your data on your own server and only send encrypted backups to a remote server like Hertzner.
That makes a lot of sense. I think I’d like to do it, eventually, if for no other reason than I am 33, and I feel like my time to learn this shit is slipping away pretty quickly sometimes, but maybe not for all my important stuff like family pictures. Start small and just make sure i can do it first, once I understand a little more
I started with 30, so not far off. My first step was to try to daily drive Linux. Best decision ever, working with a computer suddenly was fun and exciting again.
I think it’s closed source indeed, but their support window is very long at the moment, so while you’re right, at least until now they’re actually acting responsibly.
It would be easy to unlock the devices for different Software - like ugreen does.
And imagine all the possible backdoors in their software. No one can check, because it is closed source. And this on a device with your most senisble data.
Calling their acting ‘responsible’ is a huuuge strech.
Also, I had a very bad experience with Synology support when the C2000 bug hit my DS415+. Once this thing dies, I’ll definitely won’t get another Synology.
By your definition no closed source company can act responsibly. If that is your definition, they indeed don’t act responsibly, my point is that they appear to ship security updates for at least a decade after the device got released, which seems pretty decent. And they have a good record on quickly responding to any security issues and keeping everything up to date.
So they’re doing pretty good. Would it be nice if they go open source? for sure, but for a closed source system, it’s currently doing great.
I sold my Synology NAS as soon as I found out, that I can’t change the underlying software (DiskStationManager). It wasn’t open source and the hardware was dependent on that propriatary software. As soon as they decide, that your device is too old, they drop support and you are left with an unsecure brick.
And you are saying the software is open source. Did I miss something? Did something change?
My bad I think. Looks like some parts of the Synology Nas is open source but not DSM directly.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dsgpl/
Any advice for a near (tech) illiterate newb on what to get? I only recently switched from using a patchwork of like 2 dozen different google drives to store all my stuff to a single nextcloud account through hertzner. But it costs per month, and that’s always risky with my finances. Would love to learn how to do it myself, but don’t know where to start. If it matters, I got the 5tb plan, and have 5 people on it (self included).
Here is how I (noobinoob) built my own Nextcloud-Server
Hardware: I took the old PC from my aunt, no idea about the specs. Added 4 x 8 TB NAS HDD drives and removed the graphics card, the onboard graphic from the CPU was enough. No raid-controller, just connected the hard drives to the motherboard. In future I can add a PCI-Card with more SATA-ports.
Software: I installed Linux Debian, put my 4 HDD drives in a btrfs-raid1 pool, encrypted them with LUCS, installed dropbear to ssh into my server when it is not started and unlocked yet, installed ddclient to update my domain with my home-IP and followed most (not all) of this guide to install nextcloud. Unfortunately, it is in german, but there are plenty of english intructions out there.
internet-stuff: I bought a domain (10 Euro/year) and set up DynDNS. I opened the neccessary ports on my router/firewall.
I had to look up a lot of things and failed many many times, but now it works and I am very happy with it - no downtime in the last year. It took about 6-12 months to get there.
In conclusion: Your way (nextcloud on hetzner) is the much better way. You save time and money and your data is more secure.
But if you want to learn a lot of new stuff, building your own server is fun.
I understood some of that! Mostly the things like “a,” “the,” “and,” and other such technical terms. Lol
Is my data more secure on hertzner? I thought self hosting was supposed to be better for that?
It is safer in the sense that, when you selfhost, you have to take care of your own backups. You have to make sure your data is still there, even if two hard drives fail, or your house catches fire and your server burns down. Hertzner is doing that for you.
But you are right of course, from a privacy standpoint it would be much better to have your data on your own server and only send encrypted backups to a remote server like Hertzner.
That makes a lot of sense. I think I’d like to do it, eventually, if for no other reason than I am 33, and I feel like my time to learn this shit is slipping away pretty quickly sometimes, but maybe not for all my important stuff like family pictures. Start small and just make sure i can do it first, once I understand a little more
I started with 30, so not far off. My first step was to try to daily drive Linux. Best decision ever, working with a computer suddenly was fun and exciting again.
I’ve been daily driving fedora for a few years now, but I never really get deeper into anything than opening Firefox, and a few Gnome extensions. Haha
I think it’s closed source indeed, but their support window is very long at the moment, so while you’re right, at least until now they’re actually acting responsibly.
It would be easy to unlock the devices for different Software - like ugreen does.
And imagine all the possible backdoors in their software. No one can check, because it is closed source. And this on a device with your most senisble data.
Calling their acting ‘responsible’ is a huuuge strech.
Yep, my DS415+ is still going strong and fell out of DSM support, so I’m stuck with DSM7.1. However, people successfully converted their xx15+ to a xx17+ model and were able to update to DSM7.2. So there’s no technical reason to not support these older systems.
Also, I had a very bad experience with Synology support when the C2000 bug hit my DS415+. Once this thing dies, I’ll definitely won’t get another Synology.
By your definition no closed source company can act responsibly. If that is your definition, they indeed don’t act responsibly, my point is that they appear to ship security updates for at least a decade after the device got released, which seems pretty decent. And they have a good record on quickly responding to any security issues and keeping everything up to date.
So they’re doing pretty good. Would it be nice if they go open source? for sure, but for a closed source system, it’s currently doing great.