NAS for photo's and surveillance

[ianfitz]

Hi there gents. I need a little guidance if possible.

I'm looking to get into my first NAS and move away from the cloud providers. My use case will be;

• File sharing for the family e.g. work/school docs such as Word, Excel, PDF.
  
• Photo management/storage (I particularly like the look of Synology Photo's).
  
• Surveillance for a total of 6 cameras (Reolink), and I'd want one disk dedicated to this. I'm aware that I'd need to also purchase extra licences for this.
  
• Home Assistant via container manager or VM.
  
• We have a small amount of movies stored, but no transcoding would be needed.
  

Synology looks to be a good fit, so I initially narrowed it down to;

• DS224+ (I've included this, but should I discount it with no backup given one of the disks would be dedicated to surveillance?)
  
• DS423+
  
• DS723+ (Same question as the DS224+)
  
• DS923+
  

I've also looked at the DVA series, but being honest, the four bay is way to expensive for me at the moment.

Would love your recommendations please.

Thanks!

[ed]

Hey there! It sounds like you're diving into the exciting world of NAS, and Synology is indeed a solid choice for your needs. Considering your requirements for file sharing, photo management, surveillance, and running Home Assistant, let's narrow down your options. While the DS224+ is compact, its limitation with only two bays might pose a challenge if you're dedicating one disk to surveillance without redundancy. Instead, I'd recommend considering the DS423+ or DS723+. Both models offer ample storage capacity and performance for your tasks, with the DS723+ featuring a Ryzen CPU, which can handle virtual machines more efficiently. Plus, with their expandability and future-proofing, either of these options should serve you well for years to come. Happy NAS hunting!