Synology
Backlinks: 2025 Recap | Data storage | Home Lab | Personal projects
I currently run a DS 224+ (amazon), paid $254.99 ($270.93 after tax) on November 24, 2023.
Running dual Seagate Ironwolf 8TB drives at $139.99 each ($297.48 after tax), purchased the pair December 18, 2023. Could consider getting different lots so they don't fail together.
I'll cover some of the apps I use and projects I've undertaken. There are other apps I installed but didn't really utilize (like MediaWiki), I don't really have much to say about them.
Synology Photos
I use the Photos Mobile app on iOS and it works pretty well. Since I want it to work away from home, I set the IP address for my Synology to the Tailscale IP. This means I need to have Tailscale on for it to work.
Upgrading the RAM
Backlinks: Home Assistant
Did this so I could run Home Assistant in a VM (see notes there on installing the software). Used the serial number / model recommendation (16GB DDR4 2666 MHz CL19 Laptop Memory CT16G4SFRA266) from Reddit and it worked (link)! Paid $37.90 plus tax, a great deal to 9x the RAM (2 -> 18).
Backblaze
Backlinks: Backblaze Drive Stats for 2024
Back it up. So easy to configure for peace of mind. This moves a big step towards 3-2-1 backup.
Tailscale
Must-have. Make remote access so easy!
Synology VM Manager
Use this to run Home Assistant. More info there on Installing on Synology as a VM.
Synology Web manager
How I host this blog! Proxied with Cloudflare.
Plex
This felt like ad-ware from the start, gross, uninstalled it. Now I just use the Synology Media Server and that works with Google TV.
Synology Media Server
Works on Google TVs, I couldn't get it to load via VLC on my mac. The new TV we got was Google-based just so it supports this!
Synology Drive
This is the drop-in replacement for Google Drive. I've moved all my files over.