I’m not sure what it is, but Scale has never thrilled me. I’ve tested it a couple times and I just didn’t get along well with it. I’ve tested know Jim Salter (practicalzfs.com) has frequently recommended XigmaNAS as a strong (albeit less pretty) alternative to TrueNAS. I did some tests with that as well and it seemed perfectly fine. In the end I decided that when I migrate off of Core this winter, it’ll be to a bare metal FreeBSD system. I’m using it as an excuse to better learn that ecosystem and to bone up on ansible, which I’m using to define all of my settings.

There’s lots of good stuff on YouTube, including from David Bombal and Jeremy Cioara. If you’re more of a listening-while driving person, years ago the Security Now podcast did a “how the internet works” series that gives a terrific overview of the TCP/IP stack (it’s from 2006, but it’s still very applicable). And if you like to read, Michael Lucas just released a “Networking for Sysadmins” book, which is excellent.

To my thinking the most important difference would be mobility. Using the Synology app would probably make setup somewhat easier, but if you ever decided to leave the Synology ecosystem migration would likely be more complicated. That by itself isn’t a recommendation one way or another, but it should definitely factor into your planning.