I'm new to running services on a Synology NAS and I'm trying to understand the practical difference between installing Jellyfin as a native Synology package versus running it in a Docker container. Does either option use noticeably less CPU or RAM, offer better performance, or make maintenance easier? I'm also open to suggestions for the best setup if I may eventually move the service to another Linux machine.
2 Answers
A container usually won’t improve performance. In fact, Docker adds a small amount of CPU and memory overhead, although it’s generally minor. The bigger differences are maintenance, version availability, configuration, and portability. Native packages may integrate more neatly with the NAS, while containers make it easier to pin versions and move the application elsewhere.
If portability is important, running Docker Compose inside a small Linux virtual machine can be a good long-term approach. You can keep the Compose files and persistent volumes together, then recreate the setup on another Linux host later. It also avoids being too dependent on the NAS vendor’s customized container interface, though the VM itself needs additional RAM and CPU.
For simple, lightweight services, the NAS’s built-in container manager is probably fine. The virtual-machine approach is more about consistency and easier migration than raw performance.
The container tools supplied by some NAS platforms can also lag behind current Docker releases, which may matter for applications that depend on newer container features.