I can only look at Mikrotik gear in jealousy since they don’t have a reseller here, so all that’s available are overpriced, un-warrantied gray imports…

Thanks for the Intel x520 recommendation, those are looking like a much better deal right now than the Mellanox cards I was looking at.

Glad to hear it about the BSD networking!

I’m still trying to avoid the Xeons for power consumption reasons, hehe, although it would be a lot more fun for sure!

Yeah I’m not ordering anything until I have the connection up and running, which is why I opted to rent the ISP router to begin with, but looking at results online that others on the same ISP have posted, I can probably expect up to around 7 Gbit real-world so I’ve been thinking that I will at least want something better than the standard 1 Gbit or even 2.5 Gbit stuff out there, hence why I’m trying to research what the hardware requirements actually are!

We also need to consider the practical aspects. Who mucks after the horses? Who feeds them? Do we need a stall? Does it need to be air conditioned in the summer/winter?

The problem is that it all looks really $$$, even on the used market

For anyone who’s not in the Synology ecosystem, this is what the release notes are:

Starting from this version, the processing of media files using HEVC (H.265), AVC (H.264), and VC-1 codecs will be transitioned from the server to end devices to reduce unnecessary resource usage on the system and enhance system efficiency. These codecs are widespread on end devices such as smartphones, tablets, computers, and smart TVs. If the end device does not support the required codecs, the use of media files may be limited.

This mostly affects things like streaming to a TV, streaming box or tablet with limited codec support.

When watching videos on Linux, the support on the NAS itself doesn’t matter, just the support only your PC. When opening videos over SMB in dolphin, the codec support on the NAS does not come into play. The thumbnails are generated by your PC.

Just install VLC on your PC and it will play whatever you throw at it, regardless of OS codecs. I would not re-encode anything.

edit: It looks like the biggest impact is using Synology Photos - it can’t generate thumbnails for HEIF photos/HEIC videos anymore

Backblaze B2 for automatic syncing of all the little files

Glacier for long term archiving of old big files that never change