Thoughts on the Synology DS1019+?

Plex Media Server NAS & Devices
1

Looking to downsize my server a lot (My 4U server is huge, power hungry loud and overkill for what i use it for) so i was checking out this NAS.

Locally all of my media is Direct Play, externally it will be 1080p and a mix of H264/H264 content. I will take as many users as i can get externally but ill cut down my user count based on what this can handle.

I am used to running plex in a windows VM so this will be my first time without it in a VM. Will I still be able to installed my own scanners (I have some added ones for my anime library). and then I also run Tautulli (definitely want to keep this) and Ombi (Would like to keep this one too but isnt a deal breaker). Currently I also run a VM with my VPN/Torrent software so i am not sure if i could duplicate that setup on a device like this (doesnt have to be a VM of course)

Thoughts?

3

I do have Plex pass and was definitely planning on using the hardware acceleration aspect of it.

4K HDR content is local only and Direct Play (it is not shared) Only 1080p (or lower) non HDR content is shared (mostly h264 but there is some h265).

My devices support subtitles (Nvidia shields) but the external clients are quite a mix.

I do want the extra drive bay of the 1019, i have to reduce my library as it is to fit into that one lol

4

DS1019+
2016 era Celeron J3455 (Apollo lake) 10W 4 core 1.5-2.3Ghz CPU with HD graphics 500 GPU, QSv5 included. 8GB max DDR3 ram according to Intel ARK, this is not great if you want to do much virtualization

It hold 5 3.5" so, decent amount for media, 2 PCIEv2 2x NVME cache slots for SSD.

No 10GigE built in or even expandable to, might not matter to you, but a deal killer for me, NAS can last a long long time.

649$ US$

compare to

QNAP TVS-951X-2G-US
2017 era Intel Celeron 3865U (Kaby Lake) SQv6 15W 2 core 1.8Ghz CPU with HD610 graphics. max 32GB RAM DDR4

holds 5x3.5" and 4x2.5" for SSD

10/5/2.5/1GigE built in

699$ US$

The CPUs are nearly equal in total power with the apollo lake’s quad only slightly better in total CPUmark, and worse in single threaded.
The GPU portion (critical for transcoding) is much better in the kaby lake with 10bit hevc decode , VP9 support etc.

The Qnap comes with 2GB only, but in my opinion the ability to expand it later to 32GB way more than makes up for it.

The Synology supports NVME, but it is neutered by the atom grade CPU, and without 10gigabit Ethernet, more expensive but no more useful than SATA.

In Synology the SSDs are read / write cache only. In the QNAP you can use them for cache, for auto-tiering, or for SSD volumes. much more flexible.

QNAP even has HMDI out so you can use it as a PC / media player if you wanted to.

I have owned three Synology NAS, but the QNAP is just so much better.

5

Thanks for the breakdown mervincm,

I have no brand preference but,

*the 10gb doesnt matter to me (it will be time for me to upgrade the NAS before i switch to 10gb)
*While the nvme speed doesnt really come into play I do have 2 spare 512GB nvme drives but 0 2.5" SATA SSDs available
*Apollo Lake CPU’s do support H265 10bit decode (not encode) but i dont think it is an issue anyways because I wont be transcoding any HDR content anyways. Same with VP9 (decode but not encode)

Since I already have the NVME drives and i wouldnt need to buy the RAM the Synology seems like a better value in my case?

6

I can’t foresee your requirements, but I thought the same thing about 10GigE when I bought my DS1812+ , and DS1815+

I wanted to get something much more powerful, so I built an Xpenology system, and the Synologys are now serving as backup destinations. They would be so much more useful if they had 10GigE, backups would be 4-6 times faster.

Can you not imagine yourself, 5 years from now, doing something similar? These devices last a long time :slight_smile: 10GigE is cheap now, and then will be commonplace.

a pair of free cache SSD is hard to argue with, but have you tried synology ssd cache? while its OK, sometimes its a net negative, and when it helps it just can’t compare to the auto tiering feature or raw performance of a simple SSD volume.
Still free is free …

I double checked the quick sync on the wiki article, as I didn’t find a good intel source. You are right partial support is there.

partial support, plus a lower overall spec GPU, vs the fixed full function in the kaby lake… I am not really sure when and if that will make a difference.
I moved mine from Haswell to Coffee refresh.

`Version 5 (Skylake) (apollo is 1 step better than)

The Skylake microarchitecture adds a full fixed-function H.265/HEVC main/8-bit encoding and decoding acceleration, hybrid and partial HEVC main10/10-bit decoding acceleration, JPEGencoding acceleration for resolutions up to 16,000Ă—16,000 pixels, and partial VP9 encoding and decoding acceleration.[10]

Version 6 (Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Whiskey Lake)

The Kaby Lake & Coffee Lake microarchitecture adds full fixed-function H.265/HEVC Main10/10-bit encoding and decoding acceleration & full fixed-function VP9 8-bit & 10-bit decoding acceleration & 8-bit encoding acceleration`

7

For comparison I am running this all on unraid right now which is not fast at all, and have been running it all over 1gbe without issue. I have all ubiquity networking equipment at home and i like their stuff so until their 10gbe is affordable i wont be upgrade.

The TVS-951X is tempting though but i wish it had nvme slots instead of 2.5 sata

8
9

Thats what got me thinking about it in the first place haha

10

I saw that review too and there must be something about the method of testing to achieve 9 transcodes with HA. Ive been doing a lot of research in the last week and even a NUC with a j5005 celeron was only capable of 4 simultaneous 1080p transcodes.

I dont think my needs will exceed 4 1080p transcodes so just want something that can handle that. So I was thinking of a self build NAS using the j5005 and freenas/unraid, but I would much rather have a purpose built unit.

Be interested to hear what anyone else things of the review and if the box could handle 4x 1080p transcodes?

11

source files can vary from a couple mbps to over a hundred times that. 4 vs 9 is meaningless without all the other variables equal.

12

I think he mentions that his 4K file is actually just 25mbps. Which is not as “fat” as a UHD remux usually is.

13

So I got the Synology and now i gotta figure out a few things. Anyone know how/if i can force the plex meta data to stay in the cache drives on my NAS?

15

So my only hope is that the data gets accessed frequently enough that the NAS decides to cache it? (I will have both read and write cache drives)

17

Well my Plan B is to possibly use a NUC for the compute aspect of it and leave the media on the NAS (the combo of the 2 give me a very small footprint still)

19

Well I already have the 1019+ already haha but the NUC might be coming in the near future. I just have to make sure i can passthrough the Intel IGPU to a VM since its the only display adapter (ive read mixed success when its the only adapter)

21

No worries, to be fair at the start of the post i didnt have the NAS lol.

I am in the process of transferring my data to it (gonna take a couple days). Ill try plex on the NAS and see if it is acceptable and if not ill grab a NUC and run Plex on that (one of the i7 NUC’s with Iris graphics which should have more than enough punch for plex)

23

I havent really had much time with it, basically just made the pool and started the transfer. ill get to play around with it a bit more once the data is on it. So far it seems to be nice. I really do like the small foot print

25

I see you have quickly discovered one of the limitations that I mentioned. cache only vs. options.
I tried my plex install three ways. on HDD, on HDD w R/W cache, and on SSD volume. All three were “good enough” were you really notice the impact of HDD only is when you are using your client scrolling through the movies etc. the SSD volume is quick/instant, where the HDD you have to wait for them to be displayed. The cache helps but not as much as I hoped. maybe if you have lots of folks using your plex it might keep the metadata in the cache better than what I saw. The read write cache also helped the library scans. Right now I have a both. PLEX on SSD volume and read/write cache (just sata) infront of my HDD (ignore sequential) this works great.

26

What size did you go with on your ssd volume? I’m using two 250gb in raid one. Do you think that’s enough space if just using the machine for plex?

27

I had 180GB volume and it ran out of space. I had to disable thumbnails for shows and that helped. I am not sure how close I was to getting it done, but it was about 60GB till I turned on the thumbnails.