Questions about the Synology DS920+ for the homelab

Computer Hardware & Server Infrastructure Builds
1

Hi there! I’m considering a DS920+, and I have a few questions before I pull the trigger and I’d like some opinions from you guys.

I have four 8TB WD CMR drives that I would install into the device. I was hoping to have one 16tb or 24tb storage location that will be shared among linux and windows physical and virtual machines - and have bitrot protection going forward. (This has been an issue for me and I can’t let it happen again)

  • Which RAID setup - SHR or SHR2 - would enable me the simplest repair-ability in case of drive failure or data corruption? That’s what I’m worried about here. If I have to use 2 of the disks for parity, but recovery of data is more likely - that makes the choice easy for me. On the topic of drives, I’m hoping for the entire unit to have full disk encryption for all drives. Is the option for FDE a baked in option?

  • For offsite backups, how hard is it to get encrypted backups going to a $12/mo Google drive business account on a schedule?

  • Can automatic scans for corruption be scheduled, and how often can btrfs fix corrupted data?

  • Is SSD caching worth implementing if I have a spare nvme drive just sitting doing nothing currently? Does utilizing this feature increase the likelihood of data corruption? For example if the SSD dies before finishing a copy to the hard drive.

  • Is the synology office system/file format any good? I have a moderately complex excel spreadsheet that I would prefer to be able to access anywhere and edit off the NAS versus having to sync a saved .xslx file.

  • As a company, has synology had any issues in the past - like pushing a bad update, or providing sub-par support? m relatively new to the company and I’d just like to know if there’s any gotchyas with them.

Thank you for your time.

Edit - formatting

2

I used Synology back in the day, I’ve since switched over to QNAP because it gives a bit more on the hardware side. You can give https://xpenology.org/ a spin if you want to see what the OS is like.

Do recall something on the bitrot issue, I believe some of their NAS’s support this but not all as standard, suppose you ought to double check the manual.

3

Up to you what level of protection you want, but we have not really had any issues with the Synology raid setups.

I have not used their office tools, we mostly sells these system for NAS storage in an office with a Backblaze bucket for backups. As for their updates, have not had any issues.