So now that I have 2 NAS devices running (at least till I can sell off the old one!), I thought it would be good to capture some notes on the software differences between the two. These are really just personal observations and is not meant to be an exhaustive list (although I will continue to add-on where possible). FWIW, I have a QNAP TS-459 Pro and a Synology 1813+.
QNAP Firmware version: QTS 3.8.3 Build 20130426 (I know QTS 4 has been out for some time but I just didn’t want to risk doing an upgrade at this point)
Synology Firmware version: DSM 4.3-3810 (at the time of writing, DSM 5 is still in public beta)
- Security
- IP Blocking
- Both QTP and DSM allow you to deny access (blacklist) or allow access (whitelist) to specified IP addresses.
- (+) QTP allows IP addresses to be specified either individually, by subnet or as a range.
- (-) DSM only allows you to do it individually or by subnet in the Firewall and QoS section, i.e. there is no way to specify a range of IP addresses.
- (+) However, in DSM, you can upload a list of IP addresses to block or allow via the Auto Block section. In theory, I think this would allow me to use public IP block lists, more research required here.
- IP Blocking
- Reports
- (+) QTP: In the Disk Usage tab under Resource Monitor, there is a pie chart that shows a % breakdown of space utilization by network shares.
- (-) DSM: In the Volume tab under Resource Monitor, the pie chart only shows a % breakdown between used and free space.
- Despite QTP being better here, this is an area where I think both really require serious improvements, e.g. why not provide a report that allows admins to drill down into exact utilization by share, by folder, etc. Or a report of the Top N largest files.
- Time Synchronization
- (+) QTP: The NTP server and interval can be specified.
- (-) DSM: Only the NTP server can be specified. To change the interval settings, you have to SSH in and edit the /etc/ntp.conf file.
More comparisons to add on the RAID modes supported, but in short, Synology’s SHR > Raid-5 based on available space provisioned when the array contains larger disks than the base HDD size.
This seems to be a very biased article :-(.
As I stated, these are personal notes and observations, not meant to be an exhaustive and in-depth comparison. It is based on having used both (albeit with DSM it was much shorter time) and only taking into account those features that I touched. For what it’s worth, both have pros and cons and I’d still be happy with both any day. And I’ve been very happy with my Synology 1813+ for the last few months now.