Will this support expansion in the case of all bays being filled?
EDIT: Nevermind, the product page has an option to add up to 32 additional drives via expansion units. Nice!
Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
301–310 of 376 posts
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#302What am i missing here? They should have been using ZFS all along. Sounds like a marketing piece frankly.
This is a marketing announcement about a new enterprise NAS product+product line.
The UNAS line from 2024 was targeted for smaller/simpler prosumer type setups (2-8 drives, no ECC, often no power redundancy, weaker CPUs, & 2.5G-10G networking) and still uses Btrfs on top of traditional RAID.
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the ZFS changes were due to needing a way to allow qnap systems to expand zfs pools. The raidz expansion features in openzfs probably took too long for qnap to wait.
OpenZFS released the zpool expansion as stable last year. Hopefully QNAP is charting a path to allow their users to migrate from their fork to OpenZFS, though of course these kinds of things take time to develop. I would be really worried if they are diverging further from OpenZFS rather than converging.
> Hopefully QNAP is charting a path to allow their users to migrate from their fork to OpenZFS
This kind of migration is the stuff of nightmares. The main job of a NAS is to keep the data safe. A file system migration that works in every one of those corner cases present in the wild is statistically unlikely. The kind of bad publicity this can bring is what can sink a company. The only way I'd ever do this is by starting fresh on different storage and replicating the data.
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just wish they would put better processors in their stuff. Is this yet another NAS powered by an ARM Cortex?
I have heard others say the same as you about Ubiquiti devices. I genuinely curious what bottlenecks you've hit. I've only been using Ubiquiti as a pro-sumer, but it has held up well for my use case of Plex and little game servers. I use a Synology NAS for my storage though, which is a slightly beefier mobile AMD chipset. I'd be very interested to know what I should and shouldn't expect from my ARM based network stac…
I echo what the others say in that it's much more important to know what portions of your traffic are going to need to be processed by the CPU than it is to know how beefy the CPU is. E.g., just to give an example of the usual investigation process:
- The EdgeRouter 12P is ancient and had a weak CPU for even the time
- However, the EdgeRouter 12P has a good selection of hardware offloads for things like routing/NAT & even a hardware switch chip. These functions will often run at (or very near) line rate without touching the CPU much, and the latency/jitter/buffer handling will often be better than when even fast CPUs handle the traffic on other products.
- Buuuut there are oddball restrictions. E.g. on the newer 2.x or 3.x software streams (i.e. for the last ~5 years) hardware offload for VLAN tagged traffic on the switch does not work, and the CPU cannot switch a full 1G of traffic without choking (it gets close, but not quite). Also the hardware switch only covers a certain range of ports, some ports can only be routed or software bridged.
- Even then, if you add a bunch of advanced firewall inspection rules it's gonna run out of CPU. Quicker if it didn't have offloads for some of the work, but still easy to make it go from a solid full gigabit WAN NAT box to 100-200 mbps depending on what you enable. This can repeat for a lot of features, like VPN and so on.
As far as host networking (i.e. a server sending data out of its NIC rather than trying to be a network switch/router/firewall between segments) usually the CPU will be a limitation for other things before it's the limitation for sending things out the NIC. And a quality NIC (which these particular ones seem to be) can make that even more true in a similar, but less extreme, way as the switching/routing hardware offloads on the EdgeRouter. E.g. ZFS can be CPU heavy with all of the parity/encryption/deduplication features you can enable and trying to do that on top of using SFTP to transfer the data to a remote host in a single encrypted stream can stress the CPU even more... but this CPU also doesn't look like a typical bargain basement ARM CPU you'd find in cheaper Ubiquiti products and would probably do fine for what it has.
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I've been so impressed with Ubiquiti that I've decided to target FreeBSD for my current side project. As much as I wish Ubnt are using BSD in their product, which they are not. I am understanding how FreeBSD relates here.
There's a port of Unifi network controller for both FreeBSD and OpenBSD. https://www.freshports.org/net-mgmt/unifi10/ https://ports.to/path/net/unifi/main.html I guess not officially supported but I use them, they work well.
Interesting - but I just run it in docker. I also run opnsense, which is a FreeBSD, and I find it very high friction.
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
Recently they removed the option to take certain types of backup locally (for the Network app). Now it only does it to the cloud, for those who allow this. It’s these small things that make me cautiously pessimistic that long term Ubiquity won’t pull the rug from under the customers. Once you invest thousands in network equipment or cameras you’re less likely to jump ship when they start sneaking things in. And this…
It is their number one selling point vs. the competition. The space has already a dozen vendors with a healthy product mix.
It's definitely where they fit now, but are Ubiquiti's goals really always going to be the cheapest option when there are already a dozen other vendors who have demonstrated how to get higher margins & subscription revenue?
The usual trend that the smaller upsets compete on cost until they get higher and higher volume and work their way into higher and higher end markets. Ubiquiti 10 years ago was mostly doing volume for small niche ISPs or prosumers at home, now it's got enormous gains in SMB & products aimed at enterprise. I don't think they'll just stop at where they are, focus will keep shifting to wherever they think they can grow to rather than where they've had success before.
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always advise ppl against ubiquiti devices. They are not open at all, its yet another proprietary router/switch/wifi/nas/etc
So what do you actually recommend?
I like unifi despite the appliance feel. I recommend using the kit that works fire you, but avoiding the temptation to stick everything in a single pane of glass. Use the wifi, don't also cram your routing and switching and firewalling into the same vendor relationship.
It's like being apple-everything. Freedom until you bump into the walls of your cell.
Unifi APs are a sweet spot of price/performance, and I have no difficulty recommending them. Ruckus hardware is better at five times the price.
UISP gear has worked very very well for me for ptp and ptmp. But that's a completely different line.
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a port of Unifi network controller for both FreeBSD and OpenBSD. https://www.freshports.org/net-mgmt/unifi10/ https://ports.to/path/net/unifi/main.html I guess not officially supported but I use them, they work well.
Interesting - but I just run it in docker. I also run opnsense, which is a FreeBSD, and I find it very high friction.
Long time ago I used these BSD-based appliances such as opnsense, beleiving I'll have it easier with their web interfaces than with editing config files in vi.
In the long run, after investing some time into learning actual BSDs I find editing a few config files much more convenient than clicking around in web interfaces.
OpenBSD is great for a router.
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#309Eh I gave up on ubiquiti (for home/small office).
Their UI is pretty (lmao ui.com) but their software is terrible, unreliable. Logs are filled with errors which is "normal" etc.
Re: Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would legitimately be horrifying - you break in somewhere, suddenly all is dark and fog spreads everywhere, then the growling begins and then you're Ewok'd from behind by a tree.
A series of booby traps based on a phonetic pattern would be hilarious. fog, dog, log, jog, hog, bog, pog, nog Enveloping fog Dogs and wild pigs set loose Log launches at you off a treadmill Trap door drops you into a flooded basement Barrage of paper disks Eggnog super soakers
We've the plot for the next Home Alone - Kevin McCallister is now grown up trying to develop a home security company ...