Generally it's simpler if you have your NAS separate from your application server. Synology runs NAS really well, but a separate application server for docker/etc is a lot easier to use and easier to upgrade than running on Synology. Your application server can even have a GPU for media transcoding or AI processing. Trying to do everything on one box makes things more complicated and fragile.

I would recommend something like Debian or NixOS for the application server, and you should be able to manage it over SSH. You can then mount your NAS as an NFS share, and then run all your applications in Docker or NixOS, using the NAS to store all your state.

I personally have them be the same device, but I have a DIY NAS, so my specs are already way overkill for regular NAS duty (it's my old desktop PC).

Assuming your home network is fast, you should be fine to split them up. I personally designed my setup to make it easy to move things around should I decide to. I use Docker containers for everything, Caddy for TLS, and HAProxy set up at the edge to route based on domain, so moving a service to another device is just:

1. copy relevant docker compose and Caddy config to new machine
2. set up network mounts for anything the containers need
3. point HAProxy (and my router DNS) to the new address
4. test

I don't have to remember where any of the config files are since they all live next to the compose file. I also don't need to forget which directories need to be mounted because it's already listed in the compose file.

So as long as you make it easy for yourself to move things around, it really doesn't matter where your actual data lives.

I run Jellyfin on my thin client server, with movie library folders mounted feom my old dual bay Buffalo NAS. Works like a charm.

Running the media streaming software on a separate machine is a good idea IF you need transcoding; ie, you need/want to translate the files into another format or a lower quality (for poor remote connections) on-the-fly before serving them to users.

If your clients can play the files just fine as-is, another machine doesn't really add anything except complexity.

If you can map a network drive (very east fstab edit BTW), then yes, its a great way to go.

That's what I do, I have two 5-bay NASs, both use all 4 uplinks (LAG) to my switch, and my media server is an LXC on an 8th gen intel, with GPU passthrough.

If you reboot your nas, you may need to reconnect from the server. If you reboot your server, you dont have to do anything since its connecting when it starts up. If you end up needing more space, you just mount that new NAS alongside it.

To me its the better approach.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

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Yeah, you definitely should run it on a separate machine. A home NAS itself probably shouldn't be doing anything beyond serving files and basic maintenance. Using them for too much will reduce their ability to serve data fast enough. Just be sure the media server and NAS have appropriate network cards, preferably gigabit, though even 100Mbit probably is enough for most of your network isn't already too busy, and ideally are connected to the same switch (again preferably gigabit) with good quality network cables.

Dep ending on your NAS ports, you may have a better direct connection over USB vs Ethernet, but otherwise no issues.