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- Hacker News
- I didn't see them mention anything about adding features that aren't strictly about storing files... things like containers and virtual machines...by nubinetwork
- That's really just a side effect of processors becoming much more powerful, no point letting it go to waste just because historically a NAS had enough on its plate facilitating file access.by benoau
- I agree on most points, except perhaps for the expectation of compute and RAM since NAS = ‘network attached storage.’
I’ve had a HP N40L for 15 years and every time I see the current offerings I hope I don’t have to look for hardware soon; it’s been such a great homelab server. After FreeNAS > TrueNAS Core, I now roll my own FreeBSD. It felt like a great leap into the deep end going from GUI to CLI, but I haven’t once looked back.
- I use a mini amd pc with a disk bay. Surprisingly it is cheaper than many nas, and much more configurable (from memory to ssd) and have a much better gpu.
The only challenge would be finding a very good cable that stays solidly.
by asdewqqwer - Expensive drives have become such a pain. Maybe five years from now, if supply meets demand, I just wish I can afford a 1PB all-flash NAS. I really don't want to hear noise and I wish data centres would release their used supply on market. I will put backup on HDDs.
Soldered RAM and novel format hardware is a pain point. Macbook storage upgrade needs special custom hardware. Synology still doesn't allow third party HDDs in their extension units. NAS devices are truly a fantastic category on its own. My data remains local, while also allowing me to use it as a server for my workloads.
by iamshs - > I wish data centres would release their used supply on market.
They do: https://serverpartdeals.com/
Haven’t used them myself, but afair Wendel (Level1Techs) mentioned them at some point.
by bingo-bongo - Just last month I bought a HP Micro server (N54L) from 2012, two second hand 4TB drives, 16GB of DDR3, and a 2.5GbE dual port network card. All in, that was about £180. I may shell out another £30 or so for a half depth, low profile graphics card that can support a couple of transcoding streams.
Reading the article, I don't regret it. Part of what puts me off the regular NAS market is price, but also things like non redundant boot options, ambiguity about whether or not I can install my own OS, and the lack of slots. The NAS form factor itself is off-putting because if you're buying something that isn't Synology or whatever, the RAM tax is still there.
Maybe I'm a cheapskate who will have slightly higher opex, but old hardware does seem to be pretty much as good as new hardware, to me.
by hkt - That's what I was running for the best part of 8 years until last year. Was very reliable.
In the end I just cleaned out all my shit and got rid of it. Less is more.
by cryo32 - Given the (non-) responsiveness of the page, I’m going with they focused too much on “storage” and not enough on “network attached.”by thadt
- The website is also so hilariously enshittified that the “enshittification” text barely peeked through the ads and other popups.by solarkraft
- Haha touché! Hope it starts working soon so I can verify this statement.by swipee
- While I don't disagree with the individual complaints, I've seen this niche go from running scuffed OSes on underpowered Synologies or building DIY NASes with limited case options like the Node 304, to multiple hot swap NASes running great x86 chips (and memory slots) and many DIY build paths including 3D printed cases. Things probably suck for those reliant on Synology, but I'm stoked for this hobby, especially when Minisforum/Aoostar to start pumping out Wildcat Lake stuff.by cyberrock
- I don't share the author's view of the OSs becoming copycats of eachother and not that specialized.
Truth to be told, a NAS is the perfect place to have your home server. You can have both your applications and data on the same device and avoid having to build a lab just to have nextcloud or some other utility self hosted. However, to achieve this, the OS must become more similar to a normal linux distro, for better or for worse
by Almondsetat - He didn't make the point clear, but the recent OSes are just trying to be Synology DSM copycats.by iamshs
- If it's a home server, it's not a NAS. A NAS is defined as a storage box. I also do not run Immich on the ARM controller of my hard drive.by inigyou
- The cookie preference pop up on this site is unacceptable - 1 click to accept all cookies, SEVEN clicks to reject all cookies.by urbandw311er
- Not to excuse the site, but you should really be using an ad blocker that takes care of that. I see nothing, neither on mobile nor desktop.by layer8
- I don't see these because I use the, 'I still don't care about cookies' add-on.
I also use, 'Cookie Auto-Delete', which deletes a sites cookies as soon as I close the tab, unless I specify to keep them, which I do on sites I want to remain logged into.
It surprises me people put up with these annoyances, or ads either.
by timbit42 - And after a few minutes of reading a pop-up shows for joining their mailing list.
There is no mention of the usual enshittyfication, instead their complaint is that things look generic and that is the last of the list. I would say this is a feature.
The points about locking and dumbing down products are well researched, true and worrisome.
I’ve bought a NAS after watching NASCompares a few years ago, and also an ethernet adapter. His videos are nice. Talking about enshittyfication on an enshittyfied site misses the mark a little bit. “Legitimate interest”… lol.
by Stitch4223 - And if you scroll down you get a popup to ask for your email for their newsletter. The irony of an article about enshittification on a site that is clearly enshittified is strong.by boxed
- > The cookie preference pop up on this site is unacceptable - 1 click to accept all cookies, SEVEN clicks to reject all cookies.
Yeah, that kinda dark pattern / malicious compliance junk ought to be straight up illegal. At least on par with "contempt of court" type situations. Sure, they may (just barely) comply with the absolute letter of the law, but the spirit of the law is surely being very much abused and deeply disrespected there.
by blooalien - Many of us are sysadmins at home. Home Assistant, home NAS, home DVRs, etc. Consumer NASes are in tension against the DIY hacker / homelab people who often run these things. These NASes are just complicated enough to be consumer unfriendly, but not enough for "our" needs. The author has a good point about how NAS hardware is more integrated - less capable for power users - while the software has stagnated into a sort of semi embedded, minimal viable product.
Just yesterday I heard about a friend-of-a-friend type situation where the sysadmin husband was in hospice, and the wife was struggling to figure out how to operate the NAS to recover family photos, etc.
I think consumer NAS manufacturers could add a "foolproof backup connection method," such as a USB port in USB device mode, so the NAS could be easily connected to a laptop by someone with little computer knowledge, in read-only mode.
That said, my home NAS is "the littlest server": an aging ProLiant DL380 Gen8 MicroServer. It's behind a double conversion UPS. SAS card + drives, Proxmox running virtualized FreeNAS, etc. Typical overdone geek build. I have not seen a finer NAS platform for the precocious home admin. I wish there were newer versions which kept the enterprise style "lights out management," and added m.2 and such, but I think HP Enterprise as a company is not interested in the homelab use case.
by hackshack - Consumer NASes should take advantage of physical presence. There should be better functionality for a user that is standing next to the thing.by 2OEH8eoCRo0
- I built my own NAS, just Ubuntu+ZFS using an old PC I had and it works great. Don't know why people are so crazy about buying prebuilt NASes.by zeafoamrun
- I do the same with Debian. An old 3079 nvidia card for the server, docker for most service, and the onboard amd onboard discrete gpu passed through to a blueiris vm. Power is a bit higher but I’m fine with the flexibility and lack of vendor lock in and upgrade paths. If it dies any zfs machine could mount those drives.by zeagle
- Situation on market is very simple to explain: People spending months in 8-5 jobs to save money to buy HW don't bother to spend few minutes to make research on what they're buying.
I have Ugreen DXP4800 plus NAS with 10-core i5-1235u and 32GB RAM, 10GBit LAN for price of what people pay for Synology with 4-core low power Ryzen 1500 and 8GB RAM and 2,5GBit LAN.
And if I wanted to save money, I would buy some older workstation for pennies with hell lot of GB ECC's, lots of caddy's add extenion cards for NVMe.
by shuwix - i did that, and really wish i bought something , mostly because i have like 4 hhds just lying in the bottom of the caseby mcfedr
- Maybe power efficiency?by yjftsjthsd-h
- Hot-swappable, lockable drive bays with individual LED indicators. Needing more SATA ports than PCs typically come with. Features like auto-shutdown on USP failure that work out of the box. NICs with more than 1 Gbps. Lower power usage.by layer8
- For me, it was laziness. While I have the skills to built one from parts, I just wanted a big drive in an aesthetically pleasing box. I didn't want a project. I wanted something small and somewhat rugged. So I got a synology 5-bay almost seven years ago and have never looked back. It lives beside my UPS and wifi router in a small tower, all objects I expect to "just work" for months on end without any attention.
My AI rig ... that is a project. (After a kernel update, one of my GPUs has disappeared. Fixing that will be a project for my next day off.) I don't want my NAS to ever become a weekend project.
by sandworm101