Synology has completely alienated the homelab and prosumer crowd. Between vendor-locked drive whitelists, sluggish hardware refreshes, and an increasingly walled garden, that ship has sailed.
Firewalla already nails the hardest part: rock-solid network appliances, a killer mobile UI, and software that just works. Bringing that design philosophy to a prosumer storage box would instantly capture the crowd Synology left stranded.
My exact wishlist:
The Hardware Spec
Network: Dual 10G SFP+ ports standard. No proprietary NIC upgrade cards.
Compute & Memory: Capable x86 CPU and open, user-expandable RAM so we can actually run services without pegging the box.
Storage & Expansion:
Dedicated M.2 NVMe slot for the OS/boot volume.
An open PCIe slot so we can drop in an AIC for extra M.2 cache/scratch drives or high-speed cards.
eSATA port on the back for hooking up standard DAS shelves, RAID arrays, or cold blob storage.
Form Factor: 4, 6, or 8 hot-swap bays—or even partner up with COTS chassis builders.
Zero Drive Whitelists: Let us run whatever iron, helium, or SSDs we want without warning banners or crippled features.
1U form factor as shelf or rack kit.
The Software Stack
Container-Native (K8s / Podman): Portainer 3.0’s hard pivot to a Kubernetes-first architecture shows where container runtimes are headed. Skip the old Docker CE traps and build native on Podman or lightweight K3s.
Kernel-Level Hardening: Back the container engine with an SELinux-enforcing kernel (or at least battle-tested AppArmor profiles) to guarantee strict isolation between storage pools and container volumes.
The Firewalla Touch: Keep the clean Firewalla UI for what it does best—monitoring array health, pool alerts, smart networking rules, and VPN tunneling.
Guided Deployments: Give us one-click “app recipe” setups for the heavy hitters like Arcus, Blue Iris, Frigate, or immich so the family services just work.
Full Escape Hatch: For everything else, let us jump straight into a K3s dashboard, Podman CLI, or Portainer to deploy our own manifests and stacks at will.
The prosumer space is starving for an appliance that bridges turnkey reliability with genuine freedom. Firewalla is uniquely positioned to build it.
PS. Sorry for it sounding AI. I used Gemini to capture all of my thoughts on the way to work.
Might be a better idea for Firewalla to focus on maturing their AP and switch product lines; branching out is a great business model, but not until you’re solid with your current lines. Spreading out too quickly is spreading yourself too thinly to maintain quality.
Are you saying they aren’t effectively doing that? If you compare net hardware against other mainstream, they are arguably more mature and refined. They haven’t lost sight of the users and their use cases.
No. I’m saying that there are a lot of additional channels to pursue within both the AP and switch lines. APs: outdoor, extenders, higher density,…etc. Same for switches… pure sfp, non-poe, small/high density,…etc.
Ehh, I ordered 2 of each, lol. Complaint about density, yes. However the timing was right for what I was trying to do with my network. I am waiting anxiously for mine.
plenty of opportunities for firewalla to expand on their network devices offering without going into the NAS market, as somebody mentioned already (APs: outdoor, extenders, higher density,…etc. Same for switches… pure sfp, non-poe, small/high density,…etc.). QNAP, UGREEN to name a few exists.
Your first line request is what I’ve been requesting for almost 2 years now and we got a single sfp+ port Firewalla now but not as powerful as their other gold model.
You’re going to be met with excuses of hardware prices but they’re going to shift that to their subscription plan to for the byod now I guess.
anyways though just build your own NAS use unraid call it a day and enjoy it
MS-01 minisform even with basic addition of storage would not be much more than the current firewalla gold pro. If you needed to shave it down I’m sure you could find a manufacturer to do that and it would be within budget. I’ve thought about the crystal SE with the minisform myself just so I can get the sfp+ I’ve been wanting but I like many don’t want to be paying a subscription just to get 2 ports that I and a handful of others have been wanting for a long time for.
right now you can get a MS-01 for $600 without and storage sure but you can get a 16g kit for $300 and a solid sub 1tb nvme for $100 and be on par with current prices.
so yes it can be done cheaper and prior to the ramagedon it would have been even cheaper.
edit: I just scored one with 32gb ram and 1tb storage for $680 mine might be used but it’s definitely possible.
firewalla could even do a barebones kit for a top tier Firewalla.
I am sure AI could fill in the gaps. /sarcasm.